The Senate has finally voted to kill the long gun registry in Canada. Needless to say, the Quebecois aren’t all that happy, and are talking about starting a provincial registry. I guess the French Canadians don’t mine flushing money down the toilet that would be better spent on traditional policing. Firearms enthusiasts in Canada can also enjoy the sweet, sweet tears of defeated anti-gun folks. I think they’ll find they are energizing.
Category: Gun Rights
2 out of 3 of Brian Aitken Convictions Squashed
Eugene Volokh mentions the case. Aitken’s convictions for unlicensed transport, and high capacity magazines were reversed. His conviction for having hollow point ammunition was allowed to stand. There’s one crime Brian Aitken is guilty of, and that’s believing when he moved to New Jersey he was still living in America.
- On the charge of transportation without a permit, the court found that the judge’s failure to properly instruct the jury as to exceptions was sufficient to squash the conviction.
- On the charge of the high capacity magazine, the court ruled that the state failed to introduce proper evidence that the device was a large capacity magazine. At trial they showed that the magazine could hold 16 rounds of ammunition, but they failed to show that it was operable with that many rounds of ammunition, and the court ruled that was required.
- On the issue of hollow nosed ammunition, Aitken argued that the statute was unconstitutionally vague. He also argued that the rule of lenity should apply, given that the statute didn’t exempt moving between residences, that it should based on a reading of the statute, which allows possession in the home.
- Aitken also made a Second Amendment claim, which the court summarily dismissed without any discussion. This is wrong.
So Aitken is still a convicted felon and prohibited person, because of the hollow nose bullet charge. I think he should appeal, and appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary.
Marion Hammer on NPR
She declined an interview, so they played some past interviews. Says the Brady representative Brian Malte:
Marion Hammer and the NRA are the masterminds of a dangerous, paranoid mentality that got Trayvon Martin killed, the mentality that’s responsible for endangering all of our lives. It’s based on a lie that you need to be armed to the teeth anywhere you go.
Get that? Paranoid mentality. Looks like the Brady folks are adopting the CSGV technique of moving forward by demonizing gun owners. I predict this will ultimately prove to be no more successful than the moderate path under Helmke.
Bloomberg Going After Stand Your Ground
Not surprising he’d target it. One clarification on New York law. New York does have the common law duty to retreat from an affray, but under New York Law you’re permitted to use deadly force, with no duty to retreat, to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. Nonetheless, if Martin was on top of Zimmerman, duty to retreat doesn’t play into this case.
Hunting With Suppressors Legal in TX
UPDATE: Apparently a hunter suppressor law was just signed by Gov. Brewer in Arizona too.
Why No Discussion of Black on Black Crime?
The Daily Caller wants to know:
The reason so many people want to discuss Trayvon’s shooting is that it advances a narrative of racial hatred, while discussing black-on-black murders does not. But the black community would be far better off if there was an open dialogue about black-on-black crime and the black community’s culture of death.
The media is much much more comfortable speaking about racial hatred than they are black-on-black crime. I’ve often believed gun control is a cop out to avoid having to discuss the topic. Suggesting that we ought to disarm blacks, without disarming everyone else, is thankfully, legally and politically untenable and would be regarded by most people as a racist policy. But it’s perfectly OK to suggest laws that apply to blacks and whites equally, but just happen to make the right to own and carry a gun much more difficult for blacks to exercise because of the cost and discretion often given authorities to deny “unsuitable persons.”
It’s always been a very interesting coincidence that most of our gun laws are aimed at making gun ownership more expensive. This is a minor burden to whites, who’s average household income is 67% higher than the average household income of blacks. But for poor blacks, who’s need for self-protection is probably considerably more acute than your average suburban dweller, a 120 dollar gun permit might be a difficult obstacle. That’s why I think everyone ought to be outraged at the latest ruling from New York City, which suggests New York’s insane fees for exercising Second Amendment rights are just fine constitutionally:
The judge says there’s no evidence the fee has stopped anyone from exercising their rights. He says the city showed the fee helps cover administrative costs.
Easy for a well paid, comparatively, judge to say. If the public demands to interfere with individual rights for the public good, the public should bear all the cost. To do otherwise is to say that some American’s rights are more important than other Americans. Bloomberg should be ashamed.
Our Founding Fathers on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Philip Mulivor e-mailed to discuss his new book, Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The author notes:
The premise of Proclaiming Liberty is simple — the Web is littered with false or inaccurate quotations about the right to arms, and I felt the time had come to take out the trash. I vetted more than 130 key quotes—including nearly all the famous firearms-related remarks attributed to our Founders—by checking them word-for-word against original books and documents. Many of those books and manuscripts predate the Declaration of Independence.
The book debunks several phony quotes and sets the record straight on dozens of others. I included reproductions of title pages from centuries-old books used in my research. To many readers, though, the real value of the book is contained in the detailed citations for each quote (all are in MLA format for the benefit of students).
This sounds pretty interesting to me, since we’ve all seen a lot of quotes out there falsely attributed to certain Founders. It’s great, I think, to have an authoritative source. This is definitely a must have if you’re going to participate in Internet gun discussions. If there’s one thing we all hate, it’s when someone is wrong on the Internets.
National Reciprocity in the Senate
I’m becoming less optimistic about the prospects for National Concealed Carry, mostly because the GOP seems more interested in election year posturing than actually passing anything. In order to actually pass something, it requires cooperation from the Democrats. It must be a bipartisan bill to achieve success.
We had a bill introduced, S. 2188, which started off the gate with bipartisan support, being sponsored by Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). Then Senator Vitter and Thune introduced their bill, S. 2213. The Thune bill is identical to the one that failed last time in the Senate, which including a measure to deal with Vermont, allowing Vermonters to carry without a permit in any state. I’d be happy to have this measure, but I think it has a few political problems:
- It’s not in the House version, so it’ll complicate things in conference.
- Schumer had a several of votes in his pocket against the identical bill last time. Schumer played a very clever game: he lined up all his no votes, then once it became clear he could defeat the bill, he allowed some of his vulnerable no votes to switch to yes. One of those was our Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. Remember that when he tells you he’s pro-gun this election.
Senator Crapo has pulled his co-sponsorship of S. 2188 and given it to S. 2213. S. 2188 added Senator Tester (D-MT) and Senator Baucus (D-MT). S. 2213 has 29 co-sponsors, but they are all Republicans. Not a single Democrat has signed on to S. 2213. While it’s quite good to have both parties competing for our votes, the end result of this partisan divide is going to be that we don’t get a bill passed. Without cooperation from the Democrats who control the Senate, it’s just not going to happen.
The Republicans are essentially treating gun owners as a hobby horse, to be trotted out and ridden at election time. We had an opportunity for a bipartisan bill, but that’s not the direction the GOP wants to go. Strategically, I think this is a mistake. It would far better benefit the GOP to put a bill on Obama’s desk than it would trying to snipe at a handful of Democrats who the GOP thinks are vulnerable. Perhaps the GOP is worried if they did that, Obama just might be tempted to sign it? I don’t think he can politically, especially not with this Florida thing blowing up on him.
My bet is we get no National Reciprocity bill this Congress.
Floridian Gun Owners Need to be Heard
Governor appoints a task force to review the state’s self-defense laws. The Florida media is really piling on about the laws. Our friends at Media Matters are also going after Marion Hammer full bore. Marion Hammer is one of those folks I’m glad to have on my side, because I’d be afraid if she were on the other. She is a tough, pit bull of a lobbyist, and not someone lightly trifled with. I’m here to tell David Brock he should be paranoid. That Glock might not be enough.
I kid, I kid. But as good a lobbyist as Marion Hammer might be, she needs gun owners backing her up and calling their reps. This actually shouldn’t be limited to Florida gun owners. This attack is across the board in all 50 states, and we even need to be on the look out in states that have had no duty to retreat forever, and those are numerous.
UPDATE: In that vein, Arizona papers are starting to question their law. Arizona is one of those states where “because he needed killing” has traditionally been an effective defense, and still largely is. But that’s not stopping the paper from blaming the NRA for Arizona’s law.
Something Else to Talk About?
It’s been all Zimmerman all week, and it’s getting kind of tiring. But open up the Google Alerts and my other sources today, and that’s all that’s in there. But if anything, the case has been good for traffic. We’re up about 50% over previous weeks. That usually happens when gun owners are scared and looking for news. Gun owners should be scared, because the media is now full bore in blaming gun laws and self-defense laws for the shooting. I literally have pages and pages of media stories along these lines.
While this continues to be a gift for our opponents, one things that has traditionally worked in our favor is that gun owners are quite powerfully motivated by fear. Fear stirs the sleeping giant. So I am fairly confident that if we line the ducks up on our side, we can prevent the gun control folks from encroaching on any of our gains. But we have to be heard. We can’t let one mall ninja ruin things for the rest of us.