It’s not often that you come across a Civil War-era photo of your 3rd great grand uncle. Of course, if your reaction to seeing the photo is to shout “Finger!” at it, then you also know you’re a gun nut.
Year: 2014
ANJRPC Alert on Magazine Ban
From ANJRPC:
GUN BAN / MAG BAN
& TRANSPORTATION BILL
AT ASSEMBLY HEARING THURSDAY
Hearing Time Changed to 1:00 p.m.Â
Gun Owners and Sportsmen Need to Pour it On
Between Now and Thursday!
The rescheduled hearing of the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee that was cancelled due to winter storm Titan will take place on Thursday, March 13.  The hearing time has been changed to 1:00 p.m. Please plan to attend and testify in person if you are able.
The hearing is scheduled to take place in the State House Annex, 125 West State Street, Trenton, New Jersey 08608, in
committee room 12 on the 4th floor. The committee room is subject to change without notice (please inquire when you arrive).
Between now and Thursday, it is extremely important that gun owners sustain their efforts to urge members of the committee to oppose A2006 (gun ban / magazine ban), and to amend A2777 (transportation of firearms) to make a one-word amendment to restore judicial discretion on reasonable deviations in transport.  Contact information for committee members is at the bottom of this alert.
Committee members have already been overwhelmed with calls and correspondence from gun owners over the past two weeks, and that needs to continue throughout this and every upcoming phase in the life of this legislation. Legislators who won’t see the light need to feel the heat. (Note: one legislator, Assemblyman David Rible (R-30), has responded to each of the thousands of gun owners who have contacted him, indicating his opposition to the A2006 gun ban/mag ban. We will have a further update on those who support the Second Amendment after the hearing).
A2006 IS AÂ GUN BAN
More From Erwin Chemerinsky
He was quoted in the ABA law seminar just one post ago, and now I find Prof. Chemerinsky in the OC Register. Now keep in mind this was a law professor that was being sold as a legal expert on this topic:
California law generally prohibits individuals from carrying concealed weapons. Such laws are common throughout the United States.
Excuse me? This isn’t true in California, and it’s not true at all in the rest of the country. A total prohibition was not the issue in Peruta, it was the interpretation of what constituted “good cause” to apply for a carry license. Illinois remained the last hold-out on the issue for several years, and they recently started allowing licensed concealed carry when the 7th circuit court of appeals struck down the prohibition. How can an “expert” on the Second Amendment not know this?
From 1791 until 2008, the Supreme Court always had held that the Second Amendment means what it says and that it protects only a right to have firearms for purposes of “militia†service.
Name the case where the Supreme Court said this? There isn’t one. Even the Miller Court did not go this far. I’m not going to rehash all this, because all the relevant scholarship on the matter was presented to the Heller court, and we prevailed. This is now settled law, and Chermerinsky is on the other side of it.
Moreover, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court clearly indicated that laws prohibiting concealed weapons are constitutional. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, used laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons as an example of the type of regulations that are permissible under the Second Amendment.
Read Heller. Please dear God would you people read the f**king opinion honestly? In Heller, the issue of concealed weapons was discussed several times, and every time in the context of the state having the power to regulate the manner of carry. In every one of those cases, concealed carry was allowed to be prohibited because open carry was the more socially acceptable method of carry, and was readily available to people “carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation.” In Heller, a right to carry a firearm for self-defense outside the home was assumed. The other side continually cherry picks a few sentences out of the decision without any willingness to consider the decision as a whole. Unfortunately for us, there have been plenty of federal courts that have all too willingly embraced this cherry picking approach.
Write up on Anti-Gun ABA Conference in Philly
In the ABA Journal: How to tackle gun violence without violating 2nd Amendment rights? Legal leaders share strategies. Let me fix that for you: “How to tackle gun violence by nibbling at the Second Amendment around the edges. Anti-gun leaders share strategies.” It shows how delusional the other side is:
The challenge of crafting a legal response to gun violence without violating Second Amendment rights was tackled by the next panel. Juliet Leftwich, legal director of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that public revulsion over the 2012 Newtown, Conn., tragedy, in which a gun-wielding assailant killed 20 children and seven other adults, may have reversed a 30-year trend of weakening gun regulation.
Really? You passed new laws in a few states where you always had the power to burn us any time you generally wanted. The only real pickup was Colorado, and that started a backlash that would effectively kill the gun control movement post-Newtown. And even if the states friendly to gun control, they failed in New Jersey, and they failed in California. There’s such a thing as making lemonade from lemons, but there’s a fine line between that and outright delusions.
Chermerinsky noted that in general, courts tend to uphold laws regulating guns. “I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of decisions that have struck down gun regulations,†he said.
It’s not a numbers game. We can lose all decade long in the lower courts, but if we win key appellate cases, that has real impact. Illinois now issues concealed carry licenses, and the first are being mailed out as we speak. That was a direct result of the 7th Circuit ruling. California and Hawaii are inching ever closer to shall-issue due to a major win at in the 9th Circuit. Sure, we haven’t one in every circuit, but Illinois, California and Hawaii going shall-issue is what Joe Biden would call a “big f**king deal” and there’s honestly no other way you can spin that. The gun control people might win more cases, but we’re winning some very important ones.
UPDATE: I’d note that they held their conference at the National Constitution Center. I’ve reported on this organization before and their questionable stances on the Second Amendment. I won’t necessarily ding them for hosting an event, but since NRA has been known to do legal seminars in Philadelphia, I look forward to the National Constitution Center hosting one of those as well, just as a demonstration they are open to the view of the Second Amendment accepted by the Supreme Court.
Protesting the Burlington Gun Control Laws
About 800 people turn out in Montpelier to tell the Vermont Legislature “no” on the Burlington gun control ordinance. In Vermont, there is preemption, but there’s a provision for the state legislature to approve local ordinances.
Looks like good turnout. There’s always a worry I have that all the lefties that have been relocating to Vermont will start making the idea of passing restrictive gun laws plausible.
A Work of Art
From the no such thing as bad publicity department, the Italian Culture minister is threatening legal action against Illinois-based Armalite for using images of the Statue of David in an advertising campaign. I don’t know if Armalite has any presence in Italy, but I doubt it, meaning the Italian government will have to bring suit in the US.
Since we have this little thing called the First Amendment in the United States, they won’t be able to bring suit in this country on their stated grounds, which is that they own any image of the State of David. This pant wetting episode on the part of the Italian government is only giving Armalite free publicity. If they aren’t popping champaign corks in Genesco over this, they ought to be.
I’m wondering, since this is appearing in the UK media, how many people will smugly suggest they are glad to live in UK, where such menacing weapons are of course illegal, without realizing that the AR-50A1 is as legal as grandpa’s deer rifle in the UK, as long as you have a Firearms Certificate (FAC).
More on the Sandy Hook Riders
They are starting to pick up some more press coverage, but the vast majority of it was at the starting point in Connecticut. They did draw some coverage from the NY Daily News when they passed through Harlem.
Originally they were scheduled to rally at Central Bucks West, but CGOPA had people call  CB West school district and ask them to reconsider allowing their high school to be used for a political event, and the school district agreed and booted the event. That forced them to, at the last minute, search for a new venue. They moved their event to a church.
Since I earlier criticized CGOPA, I at least owe them some praise when they do something I think is good. Leaning on the school district and forcing them to scramble at the last minute, sowing confusion among our opponents, was a smart thing to do. Also, deciding to cancel the counter-protest was also the right thing to do, since they moved their rally to a church.
UPDATE: Some coverage of the event in New Jersey, that just appeared.
Update on Peruta Case
From the organizers of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund National Firearms Law Seminar:
The deadline has passed for a judge to ask for en banc sua sponte. No judge called for it. The only possibilities for en banc review are AG Harris’ Motion to Intervene and a request from Yolo County in the Richardson case. The Yolo County Sheriff’s deadline is March 19th.
We will see what happens.
In the meantime, feel free to sign up for the Law Seminar if you plan to be in Indy for the NRA Annual Meeting and you’re interested in learning details about firearms law.
Insult to Injury
Not only did a Pennsylvania man have his home broken into by thieves who took off with several antique firearms from his collection, but then added insult to injury by drinking the homeowner’s beer while they were stealing his stuff.
However, the case gets interesting because it appears the state police don’t have a method for getting the word out about really old guns to other law enforcement.
[The stolen guns] included a [“pre-Civil War”] dueling pistol…a pair of blackpowder Derringer pistols and a circa-1914 shotgun, as well as three more modern rifles. …
Police usually file serial numbers to a database in case officers later find the weapons in criminals’ hands, but hunting rifles aren’t as likely as handguns to end up among criminals. …
It’s not clear whether a 19th-century blackpowder pistol could even be filed in the gun database, he noted.
Given the unique variety of historic guns stolen that would be largely ineffective and of no real value in the criminal world, I would think the best solution here would be to put out a description of the guns to all FFLs in the area, as well as any local law enforcement in the region just in case they find them ditched somewhere. But it’s interesting that their system of reporting stolen guns can’t even handle historic firearms.
(The photo shown isn’t one of the guns stolen. At least, I hope it isn’t because the fuller picture shows the price tag of $4,000. It’s a photo I snapped at an antique gun show that I thought was relevant since it was made in Pennsylvania by a Pennsylvanian.)
Discussion of the Constitutionality of Magazine Limits
Eugene Volokh discusses the issue. I’m sorry to say, because I otherwise think Eugene Volokh has made great contributions to the Second Amendment, but I really think this kind of concession is unhelpful to those of us who want a broad and meaningful Second Amendment right.
I couldn’t disagree more that such limitations are constitutional, at least as far as magazines holding more than ten rounds are commonly used and possessed by law-abiding citizens. Additionally, every state law limiting capacity exempts the police, who use them for self-defense the same as civilians do. For someone who has three intruders break into their house, and runs her magazine dry before stopping her attackers, that person’s Second Amendment right might not as well have existed at all if the state may arbitrarily limit her magazine capacity to ten rounds.
It may, under most circumstances, be a relatively light burden on the right, but I wish Professor Volokh would not concede that there’s a state interest in restricting magazine size to even balance against whatever minor burden it may place on Second Amendment rights. The very fact that police are exempted should call into question the motives in regards to enacting such legislation, which is transparently a hostility toward the concept of an armed civilian population.
We should not concede any state interest here, and then encourage the courts to take an interest balancing approach, where they analyze the burden on the right, and weigh that against the state interest. We’ve seen so far that those kinds of interest balancing approaches will always be weighed in favor of the state when Second Amendment rights are involved.
Firearms with magazine capacities over ten rounds have been commonly selected by civilians and police alike for self-defense virtually since the technology became available, more than a century ago for rifles, but more recently for handguns. It’s not the place of the courts to determine whether such preferences are rational or not. The state may simply not arbitrarily apply these kinds of limits if the Second Amendment, as a right of the people, is to have any real meaning.