Sebastian – Page 172 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Justice Thomas Gets It

From a Supreme Court case in 2000,Â Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 1001 (2000), Footnote 16 of Justice Thomas’ dissent:

“The fact that the statutory term â€œpartial birth abortionâ€ may express a political or moral judgment, whereas â€œdilation and extractionâ€ does not, is irrelevant. It is certainly true that technical terms are frequently empty of normative content. (Of course, the decision to use a technical term can itself be normative. … But, so long as statutory terms are adequately defined, there is no requirement that Congress or state legislatures draft statutes using morally agnostic terminology. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. Â§ 922(v) (making it unlawful to â€œmanufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weaponâ€); Kobayashi & Olson, et al., In Re 101 California Street: A Legal and Economic Analysis of Strict Liability For The Manufacture And Sale Of â€œAssault Weapons,â€ 8 Stan. L. & Polâ€™y Rev. 41, 43 (1997) (â€œPrior to 1989, the term â€˜assault weaponâ€™ did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of â€˜assault riflesâ€™ so as to allow an attack on as many additional firearms as possible on the basis of undefined â€˜evilâ€™ appearanceâ€). See also Meese, 481 U.S., at 484â€”485.”

Emphasis mine. This shows at least one of the justices gets it. If you love your gun rights, pray for Justice Thomas’ good health.

h/t to Annual Firearms Law Seminar.

Thursday May 22, 2014 News Links

OCT Fallout:

Legal Insurrection’s Andrew Branca, author of The Law of Self-Defense, does not go kindly on the Open Carry In Your Face crowd.

SayUncle notices something disappearing down the memory hole at NRA. This doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve seen it happen before. What probably happens is the person who puts together the news links puts up something NRA doesn’t want to take a position on. As annoying as the OCT crowd is, it’s best for NRA not to comment on it, even if it’s just offering up a link, and even if Shannon Watts is egging them on.

Esquire salutes the moms who got guns banned from Chipotle.

Christian Science Monitor’s Patrik Jonsson covers the broader issue and notes “The Chipotle decision, analysts say, may spur further campaigns to prod corporations to stake out ground on publicly displayed guns and whether they should become part of everyday life for Americans.” Yep. Thanks Open Carry Texas.

Bloomberg’s gun group now says it’s safe to eat at Chipotle. Obviously they’ve never tried their burritos. “Despite its new gun policy, Chipotle insists it is a neutral party in the Second Amendment debate.” They were a neutral party. Then you caved to Shannon Watts. Personally, I never really liked their crappy food.

Newsbusters takes a look at Jon Stewart’s reaction to the OCT demonstration in Chipotle. I don’t watch The Daily Show anymore, because I don’t like Stewart’s politics, but OCT gave him irresistible ammunition.

The havoc in their wake.

General Gun News:

Bob Owens of Bearing Arms talks about how the gun review world works. I’ve never been a fan of Truth About Guns because I don’t like sensationalism and don’t appreciate how they’ve interacted with the gun community. And that’s a shame, because sometimes their content is excellent.

Dave Kopel talks about the vagueness challenge to NYC’s interpretation of their gravity knife law.

Laser engraved bolts for the 10/22. I’ve always wanted to build a custom match grade 10/22. This would be a nice looking addition to such a project.

Dems pushing to restore CDC funding for using your tax dollars to undermine your gun rights.

SAF notes that being more gun friendly could help New Jersey’s economy and budget. They don’t care. As far as the anti-gun politicians in New Jersey are concerned, those are jobs for the wrong kind of people.

You would think that the Army Times would know something about guns.

Weird Crime Stories:

Another mass knifing, 4 killed and a dozen injured.

Those Crazy Anti-Gunners:

Tam: Clutch the pearls! Takeaway quote: “[Y]ou could turn up better out of the cabs of the pickup trucks in the parking lot of any blue collar employer in flyover country.”

Another MAIG Mayor charged with a crime. Everytown might be a stupid name, but can you blame the guy for rebranding?

OK, this one isn’t about anti-gunners, but a university in North Dakota kicks a fencing team off campus. It won’t just stop with guns. These people are mentally deranged.

It’s always good to talk to antis who are willing to talk, as Joe Huffman relays.

Hot Court Action:

Cal-FFL and Cal-Guns are taking Attorney General Kamala Harris to court again.

The Brady Center is suing Gander Mountain, they seem to assert that you can’t go shopping for firearms with a friend, spouse or girlfriend because that’s indicative of a straw buy. We’ve called out theÂ anti-gunners before for equating women buying firearms as automatic suspected straw buyers.

John Richardson takes a deeper look at Brady’s suit against the NJ Attorney General to file the smart gun reports.

Legislative:

Massachusetts gearing up to make its gun laws worse. Yes, it’s apparently possible.

Off Topic:

P.J. O’Rourke’s commencement speech to Rutgers, if he had given one.

New Literature Challenging Standard Model

I have never read anything published by Professor Michael Waldman on the topic of the Second Amendment until I read this articleÂ in Politico, promoting his new book,Â The Second Amendment: A Biography. This book looks a lot like many of Adam Winkler’s assertions on early gun control laws, combined with a bit of CSGV tilting at windmills, reasserting ideas that have been thoroughly discredited in the Standard Model literature. From the Politico article, we begin with a marginalization of the Second Amendment as a quaint, meaningless passage in the Bill of Rights from the founders:

But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

Yes, because for two centuries, there wasn’t any serious attempts to restrict it. Absent the laws on Title II firearms, under the National Firearms Act, almost every piece of gun control now present at either the state or local level was enacted in the past half-century. The research into the Second Amendment was a direct response to the Gun Control movement. It would not have existed without it.

Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weaponâ€”and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand.

This is channeling some of the arguments in Professor Winkler’s work, Gunfight. But Clayton Cramer has probably done the most thorough research on this area with his books, Concealed Weapons Laws of the Early Republic,Â For the Defense of Themselves and the State, andÂ Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie. But I could spent paragraphs just listing out the academic works on this subject. Citing Patrick Henry’s famous quote that â€œThe great object is, that every man be armed.â€:

But if you look at the full text, he was complaining about the cost of both the federal government and the state arming the militia. (â€œThe great object is, that every man be armed,â€ he said. â€œAt a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed.â€) In other words: Sure, let every man be armed, but only once! Far from a ringing statement of individual gun-toting freedom, it was an early American example of a local politician complaining about government waste.

So the suggestion is that Henry would have promoted the idea that we can limit individuals to only one firearm? That’s quite a stretch. There’s another bit where he speaks of Jefferson quotes in context, where Jefferson uses the phrase “One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them,” noting that the context shows Jefferson used this phrase as a metaphor. But Jefferson was an avid arms collector, as was George Washington, to whom Jefferson wrote this passage. You can find passages in writing where both Jefferson and Washington describe carrying firearms in private self-defense. It’s simply hard to believe either of these men would have had any sympathy or even notion of modern gun control laws, but in order to preserveÂ the modern 20th century sentiments on the right to keep and bear arms, they have to in fact turn the tables, and argue that it’s our view that is the modern invention, and not theirs.

I have purchased the Kindle Edition of his book. If I manage to get through it, I’ll review it.

Pennsylvania’s Marriage Law Overturned

This is somewhat outside the normal topic for this blog, but I felt I should note that aÂ federal court tossed Pennsylvania’s marriage law that excluded gays. I agree with the end result, but I’m skeptical that having the courts implement gay marriage will be healthy for the Republic over the long run. But regardless of that, the best thing the PA GOP could do for its future is to decline to appeal this ruling.

Given that it’s an election year, I think the chances of Corbett declining to appeal are zero. He has too much trouble with his base in general to just walk away from this. But here’s what’s going to happen: at some point, the Appeals Court will probably overturn the District Court ruling, restoring Pennsylvania’s original marriage law. It might take getting to the Supreme Court for this to happen, but unless the Supreme Court changes in the next three years (for the sake of gun rights, pray that it does not) it’s likely this ruling gets overturned.

And then what? Well, you have a whole generation of young people out there willing to vote on the issue of gay marriage, and to whom it will become quickly apparent that the only way to get gay marriage in Pennsylvania legislatively is to end Republican control of the House, Senate and the Governor’s mansion. I said originally that this is somewhat off topic. When the Republicans eventually fall on the issue of gay marriage, our gun rights are likely to go right along with it. It sucks, and it’s unfair, but Millennials are going to vote on gay marriage over gun rights, and a lot of Gen Xers will too. This is a hopeless struggle the GOP would do better to just give up on.

It Gets Worse

Bob Owens points out that one of the two individuals pictured at the Chipotle would seemingly have a drug problem, first noted by this anti-tea party site who went digging. The alleged Facebook post saying:

I want to Smoke Some Kushh so Badd. But fuckk thatt. My Babys need me And Not sitting behind barzz …. Maintaining….

Youngg enoughh to still Sell Dopee, But Old Enoughh … i Knows betterr.

Maybe he’s a recovering addict, and the latter are rap lyrics. As long as you’re not currently addicted, the law has nothing to say about it, but it’s illegal to be both a stoner and gun owner. Generally speaking, it takes seriously poor judgement to admit to a felony publicly. I hope for his sake he’s a recovering addict, because I would imagine this could be enough evidence to get a judge to support a search warrant. It would certainly warrant an officer checking on his background to ensure he’s not a prohibited person.

One problem I have with the tactics that OCT uses is that it had a very high likelihood of bringing out attention whores and other people with less than great social skills. You can’t control what people do, but you can control your tactics. Everyone supports making handgun OC in Texas legal, but there are probably dozens of better ways to go about achieving this. I’m not optimistic OCT will reconsider, but if they were open to ideas, I’d sure like them to see them adopt Chris from AK’s recommendations.

Brian Anse Patrick on the NRA Annual Meeting

Brian Anse Patrick is the author of two books that I think are required reading for any Second Amendment activists, and that I think every new NRA employee should read as part of their orientation. Brian Anse Patrick was the speaker at the lunch portion of the law seminar, and I had the opportunity to speak with him at the reception. He seemed surprised when I mentioned I had read both of his books, and was a really nice guy. He’s working on a new book about the zombie phenomena.

Today, he released a post on his blog (which I didn’t know about before now) taking aim at Anna Marie Cox’s hit pieces in the Guardian just after the convention:

Noting another significant myth perpetuated by the column, NRA is not â€œthe gun lobby.â€ Among many other functions, too many to list here but which include safety training and civil rights legal defense issues, NRA does indeed lobby on behalf of gun owners. But the gun manufacturers have their own exclusive trade associations and lobbies. NRA represents the interests of a people, not an industry. Â These members pay the dues that support NRAâ€™s manifold operations; no shadowy corporations front the money. As such, NRA members assemble in voluntary association; they converse among themselves and with others by means of various print, broadcast and computer-based media; and they peaceably petition government entities.Â When the NRA does all this, organs such asÂ The GuardianÂ andÂ The New York TimesÂ call it â€œlobbying,â€ but more accurately, it should be described as a principled application of the First Amendment. Such â€œlobbyingâ€ is merely the First Amendment put into practice.

I would encourage folks to head over and read the whole thing.

Next Battles in the Restaurant Wars

Now that we’ve endured three losses at the hands of the rifle OC crowd, it does beg the question of what to do to mitigate the damage. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to get Texas to pass an open carry bill as soon as humanly possible, but I suspect that’s going to be a bigger uphill climb the longer this goes on. I also suspect it wouldn’t stop. If you take a look atÂ Open Carry Texas’ mission statement, you’ll notice affecting legislation is number three. Their primary goal is to “educate” Texans. So I think we’re stuck with this. I also don’t think we’re going to convince them to stop, so we can expect more losses. One thing I’d mention is that Watts seems to be pushing each company a little further. I believe this is meant to desensitize us to the losses, until she can eventually convince one company to actually ban guns on their premises, and then eventually to post. I’m fairly certain this is where it will lead. One one company crosses that Rubicon, others will follow. It’s a grim future.

Taking a look at Open Carry Texas’ busy schedule, we have the following Restaurants up who I’m nearly certain will be targeted by Shannon Watts:

Pizza Hut
Double Dave’s (Never heard of them before. We don’t have those up here.)
Sonic

I don’t believe Shannon Watts will jump on these until we’re closer to the planned event. She’ll want the pictures and the news footage to promote the campaign. Sonic is an Oklahoma-based business. They stand a good chance of standing up to Shannon Watts. But who knows? Open Carry Texas must be taking some heat, or they wouldn’t be trying to deny any responsibility. I’ll repeat, a tactic that accomplishes nearly nothing, yet motivates our opponents to action and causes us to lose ground in the culture is a bad tactic. The biggest asset we have, and the biggest problem they have, is that there’s a very wide enthusiasm gap on the gun issue. People who want gun control just don’t want it as bad as we want freedom. But OCT is helping close that gap. If you look at Moms Demand’s Facebook group, their posts on open carry draw a much higher level of engagement (measures by shares, likes and comments) than other non-OC topics. Whether you mean to or not, if you carry a rifle into a fast food joint, you’re not accomplishing anything except helping Shannon Watts succeed.

Fenway Gun Control Billboard to Find a New Home

So notes the Boston Globe:

The mega-billboard facing the Massachusetts Turnpike between Fenway Park and the Citgo sign has long been a landmark of grim tidings. On Monday, its updated digital counter read, â€œ45,864 Americans killed since the massacre at Sandy Hook.â€

It is the kind of stark message that has made the 252-foot-long billboard a graphic, look-at-me advertisement for stricter gun control. But after 19 years, its owner is searching for a new home.

Looks like the people who own the property are looking to do some kind of project that makes more money than a gun control billboard. Hopefully whatever new home it will find won’t be as good a location.

Hat Tip to Cam Edwards

Gun Control Activist Caught in Lie?

Bob Owens continues digging on the assertion of a pro-gun-control activist being spit upon by a pro-gun activists, and it looks more and more like it’s just a lie:

Progressives TodayÂ went one step further, noting that there wasÂ no footage of the Moms Demand protest shown at the airport.

I’d put my money on her being a liar. The whole thing has smelled of BS from the very beginning. I’d note if you follow the link to Bearing Arms, this is a progressive site reporting on this. Bob Owens notes:

It also remains to be seen if Longdonâ€™s apparent deception will be enough for Moms Demand Action/Everytown to dissociate themselves from her.

Fat chance. They are professional liars themselves. They have no concern for the truth if the media is willing to buy their lies hook, line and sinker.

Chipotle Caves

They pulled a Starbucks:

Chipotle is asking customers not to bring guns into its stores after it says gun rights advocates recently brought military-style assault rifles into one of its restaurants.

They’re not saying it’s a ban, which probably means it’s not. Either way, these are terrible cultural losses for us. How many of these are we going to have to endure before the rifle OCers start to understand they aren’t accomplishing anything except helping drive Shannon Watts’s fundraising, and helping her continue to build her organization?

UPDATE: Their release is here. Much more strongly worded than either Starbucks or Jack-in-the-Box. Personally I decided to stop going to Chipotle when they started putting anti-ag messages on their drink cups. I don’t need people preaching religious claptrap to me when I just want a burrito. That and the qualify of their food and service at our local location has headed downhill recently. I intend to comply with their request and take my business elsewhere. I strongly encourage other gun owners to do so as well.