Sebastian – Page 250 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Yeah, Been There, Done That

Joan Peterson, our favorite Brady Board Member, brings up the topic of concealing while bowling. Been there, done that.

Would you expect that there would be people at the local bowling alley carrying guns for self protection? I mean, what could possibly go wrong? There’s a lot of moving around when you bowl and a lot of families with kids at a bowling alley, depending on the time of day. Also, most often, beer and other alcohol is served at most bowling alleys.

Personally, I don’t drink when I bowl. Bitter will tell you that I take my bowling very seriously. It’s a family thing. I learned to bowl from my mother and grandmother. I even have a big trophy in my living room I won with my mother. I think I cracked 200 in the only game I’ve ever bowled with Bitter, and I hadn’t bowled for a while. I sometimes miss it, but just don’t have the time. But I have been bowling several times since I started carrying, and I don’t find it to be a particular challenge.

Either way, the story Joan links to tells the tale of a man who hit his pocket revolver with a bowling ball in it went off. To our opponents, guns are just bad, you see. There’s no way to do anything with them that’s responsible, especially not carry them. If you carry a gun you are being reckless. That’s just all there is to it. They regularly point to “trained” people who also do stupid things. What they don’t accept, and will never accept, is that there are people on this planet to revel in ignorance, and that no amount of training will relieve them of. To our opponents that means no one should carry, but how is that any way to run a free society? By that standard, we should absolutely, positively never give anyone a license to operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Just today, Bitter and I were on our way to a meeting, and noticed a guy swerving wildly on the road. I figured it might be a drunk, but upon very cautiously passing him, we noticed he was reading a magazine — literally staring down at a magazine he had propped open on the steering wheel. At that point we both were so very glad that our state legislators, in their infinite wisdom, chose to protect the public from the dangers of texting while driving. What Joan Peterson wants is the same kind of “every problem is a nail that requires the hammer of legislation,” that lead to our legislators trying to outlaw a symptom of “some people are morons and there’s just not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.”

Going to Need a Bigger Gun

I might need to start carrying my Smith & Wesson 629 if this kind of headline keeps appearing in my neighborhood. Maybe open carrying long arms in the ‘burbs isn’t such a bad idea after all.

On Federal Preemption

It’s hard to work through the news of the day to find something to write about waiting for the Verizon guy to run the fiber connection into our bay. But typing a post out on the iPad I can do. A topic that was discussed with some of the academic folks at NRA Annual Meeting is saving the folks in Blue America using the federal government. At this point, it’s mostly wishful thinking. National reciprocity is the only preemptive measure NRA has put on the table, but that is a measure that benefits Red America more than Blue America. In the long term, as I’ve said in a previous post, we can’t tolerate two Americas.

There are several powers of Congress under which this can be accomplished. The familiar ones are the commerce clause and Congress’ Section 5 power of the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court has slowly been taking a more narrow information of the commerce clause, and any exercise of the 14 Amendment power runs squarely into the case of City of Boerne v. Flores, which essentially says that the federal courts, and not Congress get to determine the scope of a right.

But when it comes to preempting state bans, and other state restrictions, I think there maybe a power of Congress upon which such an action may most firmly rest:

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

I would argue that it is both necessary and proper for Congress to execute laws that preempt state laws that prohibit or frustrate the ability of ordinary citizens to own, transport, and practice with ordinary small arms, such as, but not necessarily limited to, the AR-15, Beretta 92F, M1911, etc. Congress needs individuals familiar with arms and shooting, in order to have an effective militia from which it may draw to raise an army. I even think in this age of terrorism, National Reciprocity could be plausibly based on Congress’ militia powers.

We ought to be skeptical of federal power, which can used for ill as readily as good, but I don’t see any other means to prevent the spread of this cancer of ignorance. Either we restore a healthy shooting culture to Blue America, or we watch the cancer slowly spread. Colorado was a real wake-up call that we may need to rethink our priorities. If they can beat us in Colorado, it won’t be long before we start losing in other swing states. It wouldn’t be long before they had the votes to screw the rest of us federally anyway. It’s something to think about.

Busy Day

I didn’t have any time to queue anything up for this morning last night, and today we’re getting an Internet pipe delivered to our new location for our spinoff business. I’ve been waiting for the telco to show up to run the circuit, but got tired of waiting. I figure it was better to wait in the cafe of the nearby Wegman’s munching on sushi and drinking beer than wait in an empty space with no Internet all day. Wegman’s has WiFi, so let me see if I can find anything to write about while I wait for the telco to call me and tell me they are enroute.

Our current offices, for the main business, are located in an old mansion that’s been converted to office space. It’s nice that some of the offices have ornate fireplaces. Other offices have ornate fireplaces that’s been hidden behind drywall. We even have a dumbwaiter whose shaft is handy for running ethernet cabling through the building. I general, our offices looks like a place where you’d kill Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe. It’s a cool space. The neighborhood is a pretty rich estate community. We’re not far from Radnor Hunt Club, and on calm nights I can hear the dogs from the office. Lots of horse and hobby farms of the rich. It’s not unusual to see people on horseback decked out in whatever rich people wear when they get on horses. Something like this. The big downside is it’s in the middle of nowhere, and Comcast is pretty much my only bandwidth options, short of the ones that cost a small fortune.

The new location for the side business is located next to a junk yard, and our immediate neighbor is an auto mechanic. But for this spinoff we are going to be using it for, it’s perfect, discrete, and more importantly, I can get bandwidth. Speaking of bandwidth, the telco just called and they are on their way. I guess I’m going to have to pack up and head over.

Trying to Tie Chris Christie to the NRA

A few readers have sent me this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer, that I think needs some clearing up.

Based on the task force’s report, Christie made anti-violence recommendations that gun control advocates said didn’t go far enough. Around that time, two donations came in to Christie’s gubernatorial re-election campaign from NRA lobbyist Randy Kozuch, campaign records released yesterday show: $2,000 on March 5, as the task force was completing its work, and $1,000 on April 23, a few days after Christie issued his final gun proposals.

Randy used to head up State and Local Affairs, which is essentially NRA’s state lobbying effort. All the NRA State Liaisons report through State and Local Affairs. When James Baker came back to ILA several years ago, he was put in charge of ILA’s Federal Affairs team. Chuck Cunningham, who at the time headed up Federal Affairs, moved to head up State and Local Affairs. Kozuch went to work for the Office of Advancement, which is outside of NRA’s political arm (ILA). He donated to Christies campaign privately.Â In short, maybe Randy Kozuch “isn’t mad at Christie,” but it’s completely factually inaccurate to suggest “NRA sent cash,” as the Philadelphia Inquirer has done here.

Pennsylvania Quietly Adopting Campus Carry Policies

Governor Corbett has been asking universities to review their policies on this matter, and many schools have, including Kutztown, Shippensburg, Edinboro, Slippery Rock, and Millersville. It’s not blanket campus carry at this point, but it’s at least getting a discussion started.

Students with concealed-carry permits had questioned the constitutionality of blanket weapons bans at state-owned universities, prompting a legal review that found such bans were vulnerable to court challenge.

About a year ago, the state system provided a model weapons policy for consideration by all 14 schools “that more narrowly tailored the firearms restriction, addressing both public safety and constitutional concerns,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman for the governor’s Office of General Counsel.

It’s always been an up-in-the-air question as to what power state universities had to control guns on campus. Pennsylvania law does not prohibit firearms on college and university campuses specifically, but it’s not clear how much power the state university system has to control students from carrying, or exclude non-student LTC holders from carrying on their campus or in buildings. State law preempts not only local municipalities from regulating firearms, it also prohibits any “political subdivision,” a term which is not defined in the statute. Are the Regents of state universities political subdivisions of the state, given they are state chartered institutions?

Corbett is at least willing to force the universities to start taking those questions seriously, rather than dismissing them and doing what they want. Combine this with the fact that Corbett’s post-Newtown pronouncements on gun control essentially indicated the Governor’s Office would have our back, and it leads me to be quite pleased with Corbett from a gun policy point-of-view. Pennsylvania has a long history of Republican governors being lukewarm to the interests of gun owners, but Corbett is someone I’ll happy volunteer for in the 2014 election. If he doesn’t win another four year term, I believe it will be a major setback for us, especially given the slate of likely opponents are all thoroughly anti-gun.

More Meddling Doctors

I agree that they have a First Amendment right to ask. And I have a First Amendment right to say “None of your goddamned business, Doc.” I know there are a lot of doctors out there who are pro-gun, but you need to speak up against the politicization of your profession, especially given that it’s starting to look more and more like a government protected cartel.

Magazine Ban Delayed in New Jersey Senate

Most of the “uncontroversial” (only to NJ politicians) made it through the Senate, save one:

The Senate also continues to refuse to take up a bill approved by the Assembly to reduce the number of bullets permitted in a magazine from 15 to 10 rounds, although Assembly leaders appeared to have softened their position on blocking the Senate gun bills in return.

A big unknown in all this is how serious Chris Christie is about his presidential ambitions. Even if he plays the Schwarzenegger game of symbolically vetoing one provision or two, but signing the rest of the package, it’ll be over for him. There’s not much middle ground left on this issue anymore. The states that have generally been pro-gun have grown their gun culture, and gotten more pro-gun, and the states that successfully destroyed it have gotten more anti-gun. Christie has the misfortune of being a Republican in an anti-gun state, but I think even New Jersey Republicans have seriously overestimated the ability of this issue to hurt them. Christie could veto all of this, still get re-elected, and still be a contender in a Presidential run.

Ballot Measures are a Bad Idea

I think this Maryland activist’s heart is in the right place, but I don’t agree with using referendum to try to overturn gun control laws. While, generally speaking, gun bans have never fared well in ballot referendums, they are a hugely expensive undertaking if you want to have a prayer of winning. Why? Because you have to reach a lot of low-information voters who barely pay attention to your issue, and may not understand it. There’s also very very dire consequences to losing. I cannot stress enough how dire the consequences would be to losing a ballot measure on O’Malley’s gun control package. And losing is a possibility. Why?

Because it comes down to spending. That’s it. Grassroots mobilization is certainly important in a ballot fight, but it’s the money that’s going to get you to a majority for the win. In a battle of our grassroots energy against Bloomberg’s billions, I’ll put my money on our grassroots any day of the week. In a cash fight for low information votes? It’ll be NRA’s money against Bloomberg’s money, and if Bloomberg wants to, he can outspend NRA. So I’m a little amused and more than a little annoyed to see that GOA is getting behind and effort to spend NRA’s money in a ballot fight we could end up losing because we’re up against a billionaire who can outspend us if he wants to. Do you feel confident you can beat a ballot measure with Bloomberg filling the airwaves with images of schoolchildren getting mowed down with automatic weapons? Oh, I know it’s a lie, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what works, and who has the money to lie the loudest.

NRA is correct in this matter. The courts is the far safer course of action. Those of you who are regular readers know how little faith I have in the courts, so that gives you an idea of how reckless I think our side volunteering for ballot fights is.

GCA 68′, Saturday Night Specials, and More

From Professor Nick Johnson:

The reason I retrieved Sherrillâ€™sÂ Saturday Night SpecialÂ from the back of a high shelf was that he offers a lively argument that the 1968 Gun Control Act was mostly about controlling Negroes and not much about controlling guns. That account was the primary reason I bought the many book years ago, and I confess I only just now read it cover to cover. Some of it is quite extraordinary.

Once you cut through the vitriol, the striking thing is Sherrillâ€™s clearheaded critique of several issues that are central to the current gun control debate.Â Indeed, on several key points Sherrill is in basic agreement with claims that I have developed in detail in my scholarship and summarized in previous posts to this blog.

There have always been honest gun control people, like Robert Sherrill, who’s book Prof. Johnson speaks of, that have been willing to admit that many of their core tactics are a sham. Read the whole thing.

As a side note, I’m also glad to see someone else railing against the current status of the nondelegation doctrine. I think the empowerment of the bureaucratic elite is one of the most damaging things the courts have ever allowed to be done to our government. Far worse than the current broad reading of the commerce clause, in my opinion.