2014 – Page 57 – Shall Not Be Questioned

New Background Check Regulations

There’s been a fair amount of talk about new NICS regulations from the right, but I don’t see anything that really causes me great concern. The provisions are:

Grant access to NICS for tribal police.
Allow police to use NICS when returning seized firearms.
Store records for people who have been denied.

I’m not sure that, under the Brady Act, that the President has the authority for provisions one or two, as the Act makes it pretty clear that the NICS system is for the use of Federal Firearms Licensees. State or tribal law enforcement access is simply not mentioned.

This is another case where the Obama Administration is acting unilaterally, beyond its power, but where it’s unclear who would have standing to sue. Federal Firearms Licensees are still permitted to access the system, and therefore aren’t harmed, necessarily, by tribal or or state and local police having access to the system.

The third provision would be allowed under the Brady Act. Perhaps it could be argued that provision one and two are reasonable, but they should require Congress to act rather than the President acting unilaterally.

Peruta Stayed

John Richardson notes that late Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the mandate in the Peruta case. It’s worth noting that San Diego already agreed to start issuing on a shall-issue basis. I was very intrigued with Dave Hardy’s line of thinking:

Quaere: since the Defendants have announced they will issue CCW permits to all law-abiding folks, is there even a “case or controversy” left, or is the case moot?

Good question. What happens from here will be interesting. Hopefully the Court here just wants to appear to be reasonable, but will find that neither party has any standing to intervene. No state law was challenged here, only the sheriff’s interpretation of “good cause.”

The 64,000 Dollar Question

So with the Russia reasserting itself on the world stage, and rumors of Putin wanting to build a new Russian military base in Cuba, does that mean that the original Red Dawn is timely again? The bear is back, folks! Thank God we have sensible people in the White House who really get this Smart Diplomacy thing.

NJ Dems Saving the World From the Scourge of .22 Rifles

Emily Miller notes they are at it again:

Thus, the experts found that at least 43 common rifles would suddenly be considered a prohibited â€œassault firearm,â€ such as the .22 caliberÂ Marlin ModelÂ 60,Â Remington NylonÂ 66 and Winchester 190.

When New Jersey instituted its original Assault Weapons Ban back in the 90s during the Florio Administration, the Model 60 had a 17 round tube magazine standard. There were tons of these weapons in the hands of New Jersey gun owners, with their owners completely unaware they had an assault rifle that had to be registered. You still hear stories every once in a while of some poor fool getting pinched for having an unregistered early Model 60.

Marlin modified the rifle to only hold 15 rounds, but now it appears all those people who have compliant guns would be forced to register them as assault weapons, which most won’t because they would never imagine they own an “assault firearm” as they are classified in New Jersey Law. This will instantly create more felons, which is probably the idea.

If we can’t get a veto out of Christie for this, he might as well just decide not to run for President right now.

The Trend is Toward Gun Rights

Glenn Reynolds notes in USA Today:

Overall, the trend of the past couple of decades seems to be toward expanding gun rights, just as the trend in the 1950s and 1960s was toward expanding free speech rights. America has moreÂ guns in private handsÂ than ever before, even asÂ crime rates fall, and, after a half-century or so of anti-gun hysteria, the nation seems to be reverting to its generally gun-friendly traditions.

I agree, and it’s good to be optimistic. But it’s also worth noting that we’re one death or retirement away from losing the Second Amendment entirely. Once the lower courts get the green light, they’ll reduce it to a meaningless right, and the Supreme Court will willingly go along with it. Remember, right now, in most federal circuits, the Second Amendment only means a right to have some kind of handgun, but not any type of handgun, in the home, and even that being subject to severe requirements, limitations, and qualifications. At this point, the Second Amendment may be “ordinary constitutional law” as Prof. Reynolds notes, but it’s far from a meaningful right for a sizable number of American citizens. We still have a lot of work to do, especially in 2014 and 2016.

Anti-Gun Forces Pushing for En Banc

I guess California and Hawaii going shall-issue is a bridge too far for them, for they are willing to push for an en banc ruling, which would likely reverse Peruta, and put the decision to appeal back in the hands of the NRA, probably sending this to the Supreme Court. They have every cause to be worried, because even now sheriffs are being deluged with concealed carry license applications. The Supreme Court, having rejected several new gun cases this week, probably strengthened the hand of the antis, figuring they can get reversal, and the Supreme Court will decline to review. Unfortunately for us, that is not an improbable outcome.

Peer Reviewed

You can’t argue with science, or the peer-review process, except when it’s been demonstrated repeatedly that the process is horribly broken, as represented by the fact that many prestigious peer reviewed journals are having to remove papers that are automatically generated gibberish.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril LabbÃ© of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by LabbÃ©, say that they are now removing the papers.

These were people trying to game the system, but it’s been done deliberately to expose weakness:

There is a long history of journalists and researchers getting spoof papers accepted in conferences or by journals to reveal weaknesses in academic quality controls â€” from a fake paper published by physicist Alan Sokal of New York University in the journalÂ Social TextÂ in 1996, to a sting operation by US reporter John BohannonÂ published inÂ ScienceÂ in 2013, in which he got more than 150 open-access journals to accept a deliberately flawed study for publication.

Someone quick, send them a Turbo Encabulator!

Shannon Watts Still Pressuring Facebook

Having given up on convincing legislatures to commit political suicide, she now turns to the biggest source of moral cowards in America, corporate board rooms. With that, she’s been pressuring Facebook to become more anti-gun. I say more anti-gun, because as the article points out, they already do not allow legitimate federally licensed gun dealers to advertise on Facebook.

I’m honestly not sure what she expects them to do? Set their systems to trigger on the word gun, or pictures of guns, and make sure no one is trying to sell something? Put something in their policy about not allowing people to sell guns illegally? I get these people are big on thinking pieces of paper and words can stopped psychopaths and sociopaths, but I have to believe she’s looking for a little more bigotry out of Facebook than that. Shannon Watts is a world class fanatic, after all.

If Facebook ends up banning pictures of guns, or talk about guns, I’m through with it. It’s already pretty much ruined itself. The only downside for the big is that Facebook is now in my top five sources of traffic. Maybe NRA should direct its 3 million followers on Facebook to call the company and tell them to tell Shannon Watts and her 147,000 rabid mommies to go to hell. Facebook has a lot more to lose if we leave.

UPDATE: Caleb with basically the same post. Shows what happens when I don’t have time to check in with the other bloggers.

You’re Doing it Wrong

This guy will be a candidate for a Darwin Award:

The victim reportedly held three handguns to his head and pulled the trigger, explaining that firearms are safe when theyâ€™re not loaded.Â A fatal bullet was discharged from the third gun.

I’m pretty sure the lesson here is don’t take gun safety advice from this guy.

News Links for Wednesday

I appreciate everyone’s patience with the fact that I can’t really post much on Tuesdays and Fridays, which are the days I’m in the office. We just have too much going on right now, and the company has lost a lot of time because of the winter weather this season. When I’m home, I recover two to three hours every day not having to commute, so I can contribute more content to the blog.

The Week wants to ban the Second Amendment.Â They note that a “consolidated democracy” has never gone “Full Weimar.” What’s a consolidated democracy? And what’s full Weimar? The Weimar Republic was no picnic, but it’s what came after that was the problem. Someone is a bit history challenged. Ask Ukraine or Venezuela how democracy worked out for them?

The push from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to get Visa to drop its NRA programÂ is getting a decent amount of press, despite the fact that almost no one showed up to the protest. The burning white hot hate that CSGV has for NRA’s 5 million members couldn’t be more apparent.

E.J. Dionne’s Stand Your Ground fantasies. More on this from Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection.

Another Connecticut newspaper arguing that 300,000 of their fellow citizens belong in jail. This is Irish Democracy at work. My hat is off to the refuseniks.

Remember, our opponents in the gun control movement believe you have an obligation to obey. You need to sit back and take whatever your government dishes out. Comply citizen!

Should we amend the Second Amendment? I’d like to. I’d suggest “The right of the people to buy, transport, carry, bear, practice with, repair, arms, which means firearms, ammunition, particle beam weapons, knives, swords, and any other weapon one can pick up and carry, shall not be infringed. Period! That means strict scrutiny. That means no balancing tests or judicial weaseling. We mean it.” But I’m pretty sure they’d find a way to screw that up too.

Unfortunately, I think the republican spirit is dead.

Off topic: Clayton brings up one of my pet peeves, the H1B program. It traps immigrants in often lousy jobs at substandard pay, and makes it too difficult for them to compete on the open market with everyone else. It’s a terrible program and it should be replaced with a visa that’s portable across jobs. That way they aren’t abused by companies as sources of cheap, compliant labor.

Rising up against government.

Personally, I think Piers Morgan, now departing CNN, probably helped our cause more than hurt it. Talk about someone you don’t really want on your side.

The sooner someone with mental illness gets treatment, the better the outcomes. Though, our elites and media prefer to ignore mentally ill people until they go on shooting sprees, and then blame the “gun culture.”

“Some Thoughts About Remington, Jobs, And Its Union”

California could see 1.4 million concealed carry licenses issued.

Another false flag? They are popping up like daisies.

Infolinks anti-gun?

The truth hurts: A parody of the Moms who demand action.