June 2015 – Page 4 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Democratic Operatives Call for IRS to Investigate NRA

Yahoo News is following up on their hit piece against NRA, reporting onÂ Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) calling on the IRS to open an investigation into the NRA. This is a hit piece, because nowhere in the article does Yahoo News mention that CREW was started by political hack David Brock, who’s exploits include illegally carrying a firearm around Washington D.C.Â Nowhere does the article mention that CREW is funded by noted non-partisan outfits such as SEIU and completely politically neutral billionaire George Soros’ Democracy Alliance. George Soros, who has of course never donated a dime or ounce of his attention to the international gun control movement.

So a bunch of left-wing operatives call on the Obama Administration to turn its scandal ridden and politically weaponized IRS on the National Rifle Association, like we haven’t seen enough of that already. I’m guessing Yahoo, which has been slowly circling the bowl for a while now, thinks it can get more eyeballs by being the Weekly World News for leftist hacks. We’ll see how well that works out for them.

Language of “Lawful Purpose and Self Defense Act”

Here’s the text of the bill. You need to have the Gun Control Act portion of the United States Code in front of you to understand what it does. It also makes some changes to the NFA‘s definition of Destructive Devices to offer more protection for shotguns. A lot of striking and replacing sections of code. It would seem that everything is as advertised from what I presented yesterday, but I thought I’d go into a bit more detail as to what the bill does.

Section 1 lays out the title of the act, the “Lawful Purpose and Self Defense Act.”

Section 2 clarifies the language of the armor piercing ammunition law to make it clear that it only applies to rounds designed to be used in a handgun, rather than “may be used in a handgun.” This should stop ATF’s practice of reclassifying rifle ammo as “armor piercing” just because someone makes a handgun for it.

Section 3 deals with importation. It pretty much does what the section heading says, and allows any non-NFA firearm or non-armor piercing handgun ammunition to be imported without regard for whether it’s suitable for sporting purposes. Except there’s a part that deals with an obscure section of the Gun Control Act that allows FFLs to ship firearms (except undetectable firearms) to troops overseas or their affiliated clubs. Currently this is subject to a “sporting purposes” restriction, and this section eliminates that.

Section 4 relates to the National Firearms Act. Shotguns, having a bore diameter greater than 0.5 inch, and many big game rifles chambered in greater than 0.5 caliber, avoid being classified as destructive devices solely through classification by the Attorney General that they are “recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes”. It changes the language from â€˜â€˜recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposesâ€™â€™ toÂ â€˜â€˜recognized as suitable for lawful purposes.â€™â€™ Personally, I would have rather solved this by raising the 0.5″ limit to 1.0″ and be done with it, but there’s no arguing that the proposed language is much improved.

Section 5 does pretty much what the section heading says. You have a bunch of language in 18 USC Section 922 that allow for temporary interstate transfers for “lawful sporting purposes.” This goes through and eliminates “sporting” and just makes it “lawful purposes.”

Other than the NFA language still leaving a bit of wiggle room for future Attorneys General to abuse, I’m pretty happy with this bill and think it should be supported. Expect the other side to raise the long dead specter of the infamous “street sweeper” which the gun control movement fear mongered over in the 1990s. This cuminated in Lloyd Bentsen reclassifying the Striker as a destructive device in 1994. This bill would arguably provide grounds for challenging that classification.

Biggest Pro-Gun Reform of GCA ’68 since FOPA ’86 Introduced

The bill just introduced in the House is H.R. 2710, which would gut the sporting purposes language, introduced by Republican Congressman Rob Bishop from Utah. The bill would, according to NRA:

eliminate ATF’s authority to reclassify popular rifle ammunition as “armor piercing ammunition;
provide for the lawful importation of any non-National Firearms Act firearm or ammunition that may otherwise be lawfully possessed and sold within the United States;
protect shotguns, shotgun shells, and larger caliber rifles from arbitrary classification as “destructive devices” which under federal law subjects them to onerous registration and taxation provisions and creates a ban on possession of the firearm in some states;
broaden the temporary interstate transfer provision to allow temporary transfers for all lawful purposes rather than just for “sporting purposes.”

As our Vice President would say, this is a big ‘effin deal! This would be the most substantial reform of the Gun Control Act since FOPA in 1986. Get calling and ask your Congressman to co-sponsor this bill.

UPDATE: Here’s the text of the bill. You need to have the Gun Control Act portion of the United States Code in front of you to understand what it does. It also makes some changes to the NFA‘s definition of Destructive Devices to offer more protection for shotguns. A lot of striking and replacing sections of code.

Weekly Gun News – Edition 4

I wanted to get this out yesterday, but time did not permit. Sorry for the dead air. It was more busy rather than lack of things to talk about. Let me gather up all the news:

Wisconsin is about to be rid of its waiting period to buy a handgun, among other improvements.

Eugene Volokh: “If you openly carry a gun, donâ€™t do it while loudly singing Hakuna Matata.” Probably good advice. As open carry becomes more ordinary, expect people who do it for the wrong reasons to get more and more outrageous in search of attention.

Major management shakeup at Remington.

Ed Peruta is a colorful character, to put it mildly. Mother Jones somehow manages to do a fair article on the man.

Professor Glenn Reynolds notes “The TSA can’t spot ordinary guns. So what’s the response?” Ban the plastic ones, of course (even though undetectable plastic guns are already banned).

The Daily Beast questions the effectiveness of Wear Orange Day.

Newsweek thinks campus carry passing in Texas is a victory for gun control, since we didn’t get everything we wanted. Don’t you worry, Newsweek. We’ll be back for the rest later.

Charles C.W. Cooke writes about the proposed ITAR regulations.

Wired: “I made an untraceable AR-15 ‘Ghost Gun’ in My Office — And It Was Easy.” I hope he used a bullet button, otherwise that AR-15 is illegal in California.

Bloomberg View: “When Tech Kills Gun Control.”

Michael Pfleger: NRA “will pay pay for the murder of our children.” I thought for a minute he was saying NRA was doing a whole murder for hire thing in Chicago. Pfleger is a world class nut job. I could believe anything from him.

You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. If Ted Cruz had gone on a shoot with a prohibited person, the media would have torn him apart and his campaign would be over. Instead, they criticize the campaign for running background checks on prospective shooters.

You know the whole “mass shootings on the rise” meme started by an FBI report?Â Yeah, the characterization of the report was bullshit. The FBI researchers admit it. This was all ginned up by the Administration to support its gun control agenda.

Hey, I just want to be able to carry if I choose without having to carry a rule list of where I can and can’t go around with me. These are the people who are truly obsessed.

Oregon may be getting some reciprocity, since apparently a lot of Dems are worried about their votes on banning private firearms transfers.

Musical targets! I guess you’d need three or more shooters to do chords.

Colonial Williamsburg to open public musket range.

Off Topic:

Only sort of off topic, since I allow comments too: Reason gets hit with a federal subpoena to uncloak nasty commenters. Popehat takes the feds to task over itÂ in a way that only Popehat can. Apparently this is legal, but it’s clearly abuse, and meant to intimidate.

The Fallen of World War II. I saw this floating around on social media on the D-Day anniversary. Really well done.

Note to Chris Christie: Debate is a healthy thing. I’ve had about enough of people shutting down debate.

Keeping Firearms out of the “Wrong Hands”

Over eight years of observing the gun control movement, and trying to understand what motivates them, I’ve come to the conclusion that at the movement’s core, gun control is an attempt by power elites to keep firearms out of the hands of the lower classes. Of course, if you framed your movement that way, no one would buy in. So it is necessary for the other side to couch their goals in language where they look like heroes of the lower classes rather than people out to disempower them.

Ever expanding the class of prohibited persons to encompass people convicted or accused of ever more minor offensesÂ is a logical strategy for a movement that has had very little luck with any other form of gun control. There’s a significant amount of ignorance among elites about what “domestic violence” can consist of. Most people envisage someone beating their wife, and certainly that does happen, and those people deserve to go to jail. But domestic abuse can, in some states, consist of something as little as grabbing a cell phone out of someone’s hand or pushing someone out of the way as you run out of the house in a huff.

Remember that lower class people don’t have money to hire lawyers in most cases, and can often be one vindictive ex-girlfriend away from losing their gun rights for good. Lower class people tend to have these kinds of problems more than the upper classes do. This is really a perfect issue for the gun control movement, because few people want to be seen standing up for domestic abusers, and fewer people understand how the law in these cases actually works to understand the wool is being pulled over their eyes by very deceptive people.

Another Pardon for Chris Christie

Charles C.W. Cooke reports on Governor Christie’s latest pardon of yet another person who found himself caught up in the web of the Garden State’s byzantine gun regulations. Christie still has not announced whether he’s going to run in 2016. Despite the fact that he’s been better on guns than most every other New Jersey governor, he’s not going to overcome the fact that he’s a governor in a state where people die waiting for gun permits.Â That’s not a small issue. For Carol Brown, whatever Second Amendment rights anyone will claim she had did not effectively exist for her. She would have been no worse off living under a regime where guns were simply banned entirely, because she died waiting for fingerprints to get back from the FBI.

Personally, my biggest beef with Chris Christie is that he’s got a “law and order” streak a mile wide, and I’ve grown tired of that branch of the “conservative movement.” He also does not hide his contempt for libertarians, so I don’t see he’s really working to earn my vote. But I will give him credit where it is due, pardoningÂ Steffon Josey-Davis was the right and decent thing to do.

Bad News for the Second Amendment from SCOTUS

All eyes have been on the Supreme Court to see what they would do in the case of Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco, which challenged San Franscisco’s ordinance mandating that firearms kept in the home be locked and rendered essentially unready for self-defense. The Court had the option of summarily reversing the decision, but it chose not to. Additionally, Justices Scalia and Thomas filed a dissent to the denial of cert:

The decision of the Court of Appeals is in serious tension with Heller. We explained in Heller that the Second Amendment codified a right â€œâ€˜inherited from our English ancestors,â€™â€ a key component of which is the right to keep and bear arms for the lawful purpose of self-defense. 554 U. S., at 599. We therefore rejected as inconsistent with the Second Amendment a ban on possession of handguns in the home because â€œhandguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the homeâ€ and because a trigger-lock requirement prevented resi- dents from rendering their firearms â€œoperable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.â€ Id., at 629, 635. San Franciscoâ€™s law allows residents to use their handguns for the purpose of self-defense, but it prohibits them from keeping those handguns â€œoperable for the purpose of im- mediate self-defenseâ€ when not carried on their person. The law thus burdens their right to self-defense at the times they are most vulnerableâ€”when they are sleeping, bathing, changing clothes, or otherwise indisposed. There is consequently no question that San Franciscoâ€™s law burdens the core of the Second Amendment right.

It only takes four justices to agree to hear a case, and it seems that Scalia and Thomas certainly wanted to take this one. So which of two of the Heller Five are just fine with letting the lower courts gut the Heller decision, and why? I’m fairly certain that Justice Alito is pretty solid on the Second Amendment, however for whatever reason he may not have wanted to join this dissent. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy weren’t willing to destroy the Second Amendment, but for whatever reason are not particularly keen to revisit the issue, even in the face of the lower courts thumbing their nose at Heller and McDonald.

This is a lot of tea leaf reading, but I don’t think this says good things about the Second Amendment and SCOTUS. We have to put a Republican in the White House in 2016. If the Courts can’t agree to take a case like Jackson, which would really just be reaffirming Heller, the Second Amendment is effectively dead unless we can get Scalia and Thomas the extra solid votes they need.

Public Comment Period for ITAR Gun Owner Silencing Rule

A reader asked about the public comment period for the proposed rule by the State Department to muzzle free speech for gun owners. Here is what the proposal says about public comments:

DATES: The Department of State will accept comments on this proposed rule until August 3, 2015.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may submit comments within 60 days of the date of publication by one of the following methods:

Email: DDTCPublicComments@state.gov with the subject line, â€˜â€˜ITAR Amendmentâ€”Revisions to Definitions; Data Transmission and Storage.â€™â€™

Internet: At www.regulations.gov, search for this notice by using this ruleâ€™s RIN (1400â€“AD70).

Comments received after that date may be considered, but consideration cannot be assured. Those submitting comments should not include any personally identifying information they do not desire to be made public or information for which a claim of confidentiality is asserted because those comments and/or transmittal emails will be made available for public inspection and copying after the close of the comment period via the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls Web site at www.pmddtc.state.gov. Parties who wish to comment anonymously may do so by submitting their comments via www.regulations.gov, leaving the fields that would identify the commenter blank and including no identifying information in the comment itself. Comments submitted via www.regulations.gov are immediately available for public inspection.

So you have until August to submit a public comment. I encourage everyone to do so. Remember, they are legally required to address serious comments. If they receive even tens of thousands of them, it will seriously interfere with their ability to promulgate this regulation according to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). If they are going to do this power grab, I see no reason to make it easy for them!

Marcus Brown Withdrawn

The nomination for the ~~Police State~~, I mean State Police, Commissioner has been recalled as of this morning. It looks like it’s a good news/bad news scenario.

Marcus Brown will continue as Acting Commissioner, giving him the ability to continue to abuse his power violating the rights of Pennsylvanians to criticize him and his decision relating to his office. Brown has a history of publicly backing Martin O’Malley’s extreme gun control proposals. The agency he ran in Maryland was accused of targeting gun owners to find any reason to pull them over and search them. The bad news is that he is free to continue these practices (those documented on video and alleged) here in Pennsylvania for the moment.

The good news is that the Pennsylvania Senate has to formally accept the recall, and they have indicated they will not unless Gov. Tom Wolf agrees to nominate someone else. That would get Brown out of the office, and may we’d be lucky enough that he’ll leave Pennsylvania. The flip side of that coin is that anyone nominated by Wolf is unlikely to be friendly to Second Amendment rights.

UPDATE: And that didn’t go well for Wolf… The Senate moved forward with a vote regardless of the recall request and voted Marcus Brown down. That’s good news for those of us who have a little respect for the rule of law.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what the process is now that Brown has officially been turned down by the Senate. I would hope it means he’s hauled out of his office as Acting Commissioner right now, but I realize that’s a bit of hopeful thinking.

In NJ, it is the law to delay

One of the pieces of conventional wisdom you hear in New Jersey gun ownership circles is that the NJ Judiciary gutted the 30 day requirement for issuance of a pistol purchase permit or a Firearms Purchasers ID Card, but you never get a reference to the case in question, or the details. So, spent a few minutes googling, and after running my search, I found this case.

We read the statutory scheme as requiring a chief of police to withhold action on an application for a firearms purchaser identification card until receipt of the requisite SBI and FBI fingerprint reports.

We thus conclude that the inability of the chief of police to obtain the requisite SBI and FBI reports within the thirty day period constitutes “good cause” for a denial, but does not require the chief of police to deny the application on that account. He must withhold rendering a decision on the application until the fingerprint reports are obtained from the SBI and the FBI.

If the reports so obtained do not disclose a criminal conviction or any other disqualifying disability, the “good cause” for the denial of the permit evaporates, and an identification card must be granted immediately. Conversely, if the SBI or FBI report yields information disclosing good cause for the denial of a permit, the applicant should be notified in timely fashion.

So, the Berlin Township’s Chief of Police saying that they hadn’t received the fingerprint results means he was required to not issue under this decision. So, all the armchair lawyers who are suggesting 1983 suits, please don’t. It’ll be an expensive waste of time. Instead, push the NJ legislature to go to NICS.