Category: Gun Rights

Yesterday there was quite a show in Iowa, with the Democrats walking out over some proposed gun bills. But the bills managed to pass. Iowa is one of only a few states without any right to keep and bear arms provision, and this bill would propose an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to give it one. What’s more important, the language is much stronger, and not open to interpretation by the courts:

The right of an individual to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer and use arms to defend life and liberty and for all other legitimate purposes is fundamental and shall not be infringed upon or denied. Mandatory licensing, registration, or special taxation as a condition of the exercise of this right is prohibited, and  any other restriction shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

One Iowa representative, who is on the NRA Board, had joined with Democrats to water the language down to just be a rehashing of the Second Amendment, which would have defeated the whole point of this endeavor. I asked some folks I know at NRA what was up in Iowa, and they assured me they would be attempting to fix the language on the floor. It appears that was managed, and this has passed through the House with the original, strong language. I don’t know why Clel Baudler weakened the language, but there could be a number of reasons that don’t amount to sabotage. It’s important to note that Clel voted to improve the language in the final bill. We will try to contact his office and see if he’s willing to talk about what happened there. This bill is of extreme strategic importance the way it is, and language that just repeated the Second Amendment would not have the impact we need.

Long Term Strategy

There just aren’t many states left without a RKBA provision where we could do something like this, but with lower courts in this country consistently reading the Second Amendment to be a narrow, essentially meaningless right, passing something like this would be a strong signal to the courts as to how the people interpret their right.

Secondly, Iowa is not a state known for radical politics in either direction. Most Iowans I’ve met are pretty mellow, easy going people. If a provision like this can pass in Iowa, we can probably pass it in other states. This is important, even for states that already have RKBA, because in the event the left interprets the Second Amendment out of the Constitution, overturning Heller and McDonald, or narrowing the decisions into meaninglessness, pushing a federal constitutional amendment is going to be the only recourse. Passage of a constitutional amendment this strong in a state like Iowa would serve as a warning to the left-wing judges to treat the Second Amendment seriously, because we might have the juice to pass this as a federal amendment if the backlash is severe enough, and with language that won’t leave any weasel room.

Short Term Strategy

Our opponents fear and loathe this proposed amendment. Despite all their hewing and hawing about how gun owners are bullies who don’t believe in democracy, this bill would have to pass the Legislature twice in two back-to-back sessions, and then be voted up or down by the people of Iowa. Our opponents should welcome this. But despite their machinations, they don’t really believe in democracy either. They don’t have the money to fight a ballot measure, and they know we do. Gun control leaders are great supporters of Democracy if they think Democracy will go their way. Not so much if they think they’ll lose.

Also, short term, this fixes a lot of problems for Iowa, where not every local community has welcomed the changes in their gun laws, and this should allow some restrictive laws to be challenged in court. It also ought to preserve carry rights. Had language that echoed the Second Amendment made its way through, the courts in Iowa would have likely just piggy backed off the federal protections, which would have gotten Iowa nowhere.

Short Term Tactics

If you live in Iowa, contact your Senators. Hold them accountable in the up coming elections if they don’t help move this. Iowa’s senate is still controlled by the Democrats, so there’s probably little chance the RKBA amendment bill is going to be taken up. But some phone calls might put some fear into Senators to act.

A bill to legalize suppressor use for hunting on private land has passed out of committee. Looks like Silencerco has retained Todd Rathner as a lobbyist. Todd is a member of the NRA Board, and Darren LaSorte, who is also mentioned in the article, is Manager of Hunting Policy for NRA-ILA. This should put to bed notions that NRA is hostile or somehow afraid of pushing NFA causes. They will push them to the extent the politicians are willing to listen, and they seem to be opening their ears when it comes to the importance of this issue to the shooting community.

Five years ago, if you had said we’d be mainstreaming suppressors, I would have thought you were a wild eyed optimist. But we’re doing it. Maybe in a decade we will be able to reform the machine gun regulations. But for now, getting suppressors moved to Title I would be quite an accomplishment. I think we could be getting there.

The two anti-gun bills have passed out of committee, as is reported by TBCKADOOT. It’s critical to crush these on the house floor, and then turn around and push the anti-2A forces back further than they would have been pushed had they not tried this stunt.

Apparently the DC City Counsel is considering eliminating the five hour training requirement to get a handgun. Emily Miller deserves a lot of credit for this, I believe. I just went upstairs to make sure the skies weren’t filled with winged porcines.

No more ballistics tests either. Don’t for a minute think that City Council in DC is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts and their love of the Constitution. They are doing this because they know if Emily Miller goes before Congress, then Congress is going to preempt them from regulating guns at all. They are trying to deal with the threat Emily Miller poses to their ability to regulate firearms.

UPDATE: No more having to re-register either. You can kind of see what laws they want to preserve, namely their registration scheme, the restrictions on so-called assault weapons, and various other issues. It’s kind of amazing that antis have such a gut reaction to semi-automatics firearms, given that they accept the most popular pistols, and rifles are so rarely used in crime as to not be worth worrying about.

UPDATE: No more vision test.

UPDATE: The bill still has to be approved by the entire City Council, and enter a 60-day review by Congress. Law likely to go into effect this summer.

Our opponents in the gun control movement often claim to be sticking up for law enforcement officers, and officer safety, even though I don’t believe for a minute they won’t disarm cops given half the chance. But our opponents don’t speak for law enforcement, or rather, they speak for a very small minority of police officers. Take the 23rd Survey of Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs in the United States. Also see the 22nd survey, and you’ll notice the numbers haven’t gotten any better for the gun control crowd.

The 2011 survey shows that 77% of Chiefs and Sheriffs surveyed support the NRA agenda of H.R.822, universal reciprocity among states. 98% support civilian ownership of firearms by the law-abiding. 74% believe law-abiding armed citizens can be of assistance to professional law enforcement. This is what happens when you poll actual cops, rather than a small number of big city police chiefs who join Joyce funded front organizations.

Like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was for the gun control movement in the United States, the long gun registry might turn out to be a bridge too far for the Canadian gun control movement:

“The vote against the registry was a historic day, no two ways about it,” says National Firearms Association spokesman Blair Hagen. “But we’re still opposed to a licensing system that makes paper criminals out of peaceful firearms owners.” The NFA’s ongoing complaints with guns laws range from “possession-only” certification introduced in 1998—which forced all gun owners to acquire a licence, when previously you just needed a licence to purchase a gun—to still-standing provisions in C-68 for warrantless searches of homes by firearms inspectors. “We’re not so much celebrating the defeat of part of a particularly hated law, as we are coming to the realization that reform is possible,” says Hagen.

Read the whole thing. This is what has energized our movement as well; the realization that we could not only stop them, we could push them back to the point of near destruction. But we kept pushing, kept talking to gun owners, and kept waking them up to what was happening, and what our opponents end game was. A big source of our success, I think, is getting more women involved in shooting. Canadian shooters would do well to emulate that. Women are, surprisingly, much easier to radicalize on the issue of gun rights then men are. I don’t know what that is, but it is.

An officer of 35 years speaks out in favor of Minnesota Castle Doctrine, which passed the Senate this past Thursday. We’re very close in Minnesota to getting Castle Doctrine through the legislature, but it will still face the obstacle of the Governor’s signature, who indicates he’ll veto. Someone more in tune with Minnesota politics will have to chime in with odds on an override. The votes have been pretty lopsided, however, in favor of the bill.

Another thing I’d like to see changed in Minnesota? Reciprocity. Come to think of it, Nevada, Oregon and Maine could use some fixin in that department too. But Minnesota wins are always especially sweet victories, because it’s the home of our favorite Brady board member.

Dave Kopel wrote an article for the February edition of First Freedom that I believe should be mandatory reading for every gun owner in the country. In it, he tells the story of Massachusetts gun owners who faced an all out confiscation measure that was put to the ballot in 1976. There are lessons for every type of political scenario we face in 2012, even if confiscation is currently off the table as long as Heller and McDonald are allowed to stand.

I think some of the tidbits from the article very much relate to the issues we face today. For example, the issue of whether NRA should back pro-gun Democrats:

The leader of the “People vs. Handguns” organization was the popular Republican John Buckley, the sheriff of Middlesex County. Buckley was fresh off a 1974 win against a pro-gun challenger. Alongside Buckley was Robert diGrazia, the police commissioner of Boston who was appointed by the staunchly anti-gun Boston Mayor Kevin White.

At the insistence of Buckley and diGrazia, the Massachusetts handgun prohibition lobby did not think small. Confiscation would be total, with no exemption for licensed security guards or target shooting clubs. Even transporting a handgun through Massachusetts (e.g., while traveling from one’s home in Rhode Island to a vacation spot in Maine or a target competition in New Hampshire) would be illegal, except for people with handgun carry permits (which, as of 1976, were almost never issued by most states).

Buckley had the benefit of “incumbency” in the election for the Sheriff’s office because he was appointed by a Republican governor, according to this history of the office.

Kopel also highlights the plans for anti-gun groups to take the confiscation plan far beyond the borders of the Bay State, and how this plan has still been used in recent history.

A Buckley speech to the Conference of Mayors detailed “How to Circumvent the Legislature for Gun Confiscation in 37 States by the Initiative Petition.”

Eventually, it was hoped, the mass of state and local bans would provide the foundation for a national ban. …

The tactics of the national gun-ban groups are to use state and local bans as the starting point for national bans.

By 1994, only four states and a handful of cities had passed bans on so-called “assault weapons.” Two of the states (California and New Jersey) had far-reaching bans, while in Maryland and Hawaii, the ban was only for “assault” handguns. Yet this four-state foundation was enough for the gun prohibition lobbies to be able to push a national ban into law in 1994.

To me, this is one of the biggest problems we’ve faced in the pro-gun movement. While not screaming that the sky is falling at every turn, making gun owners realize just how close we have been to actually dealing with the knock at the door by Dianne Feinstein is something we are really only starting to overcome thanks to the internet.

I recall a story from the 2004 Pittsburgh NRA meeting where I was told an activist from Massachusetts sat down at a bar for a meal next to a guy from Pennsylvania who also came in for the convention. When the Massachusetts resident described what it was like to be a gun owner in the Bay State, the guy from Pennsylvania argued that he was exaggerating because things like that simply can’t happen in America.

Oh yes, they can. They can, and they do. I wouldn’t be shocked if that same Pennsylvania guy was actually floored by the news with Heller that the Second Amendment had never been interpreted as an individual right by the Supreme Court. For many of these types, it’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they find it hard to swallow that other citizens allow governments to act so badly without fixing it at the ballot box.

Go read the entire article. Come back here to discuss it if you like. It’s really eye-opening and worth your time.

I have to hand it to Ashley, who is NRA’s State Liaison for Missouri, Indiana and Oklahoma, because there’s been quite a lot of positive activity as of late. In Indiana, she’s working to legalize suppressors in hunting, as well as a bill that would allow for charity gaming (important for Friends of the NRA’s fundraising). Meanwhile in Missouri, there are four bills ready to be considered. Lowering the carry age from 21 to 18, a bill to legalize open carry, another to prevent discrimination in hiring and firing of concealed carry permitees (the fourth is just technical changes to the license system).

I’m not sure what I think about the last bill, but it doesn’t create quite the instinct to shake the bowcaster like the parking lot bills do. I guess I feel like if the state is going to make me get a permit to carry, well, protecting me from discrimination as a result of it is kind of the least they can do. But it still strikes me as the less-than-ideal solution to this problem.

I don’t know how many of these bills will make it to final passage, but this is an ambitious agenda, and I thought it was worth offering some kudos to Ashley.