Category: Gun Rights

Wyatt offers his opinion to the Mayor on blaming the  the city’s problems on guns. Nutter’s noting that many Florida permits are going to high crime areas does not surprise me. Philadelphia routinely uses the “character or reputation” clause to deny people improperly. You can appeal, but that goes to a Board stocked with the Mayor’s cronies, and they always uphold denials. You can appeal a denial to the Court of Common Pleas, but you have to hire a lawyer to do that, and a Florida license is a lot cheaper than a lawyer.

This Florida issue wouldn’t be an issue if Philadelphia issued LTCs under the same standards employed in the rest of the state.

Emily Miller went through the D.C. process for legally obtaining a gun. In this article, she mulls over the questions asked on the form the D.C. police require before approving you:

Also, if you’ve ever been convicted of “vagrancy”, you’re out of luck. I’m not sure why hanging around the 7-Eleven parking lot too long makes you unqualified to have a gun, but someone in the city government does.

They are also worried about someone who has operated a “bawdy house” from possessing guns. And even after she’s done with this particular form, and gets it notarized, there’s still 17 more steps to go. There is no way we can allow this to stand, and I don’t care what the courts say. After we get HR822, repealing DC’s gun laws and removing the subject of firearms regulation back to Congress needs to become a priority.

It could be argued that Washington D.C. has so few gun owners, this is not a wise use of limited legislative resources, but I disagree. If the D.C. City government had taken the Supreme Court decision in Heller seriously, it easily could have restructured its laws with due respect for the fact that it was a fundamental constitutional right. It chose not to. D.C. chose to see what it could get away with. This charade is now being repeated in Chicago.

I want to set up D.C. as an example, to convince other jurisdictions that it’s better to accept the inevitable than to continue playing games with people’s Constitutional rights. The only way to do that is to say D.C. is bound only by the United States Code and federal regulations when it comes to gun laws, and take their toy away from them by modifying home rule so they can never regulate firearms again. Right now jurisdictions like D.C. and Chicago are betting they can thumb their noses at us with impunity. We have to show them that this is a grave error, and will only result in losing more than they would have if they had just behaved themselves from the beginning.

HR822 has been replaced by the Franks Amendment. It’s a bit different than the original bill, but I’m not sure the practical effect of this bill is any different than the last version. Here’s the meat:

(b) The possession or carrying of a concealed handgun in a State under this section shall be subject to the same conditions and limitations, except as to eligibility to possess or carry, imposed by or under Federal or State law or the law of a political subdivision of a State, that apply to the possession or carrying of a concealed handgun by residents of the State or political subdivision who are licensed by the State or political subdivision to do so, or not prohibited by the State from doing so.

The Brady folks are getting hysterical about this change:

But the Franks Amendment forces states to recognize the concealed carry licenses of non-residents, even if they are ineligible to possess a handgun in the state where the carrying occurs.

For example, under Tennessee law, Tennessee residents with concealed weapons permits may be prosecuted for violating the State’s law prohibiting handgun possession by persons ‘while under the influence of alcohol.’

The Franks Amendment would make that prohibition unenforceable against someone with a concealed carry permit visiting from another state, who is caught in possession of a gun in Tennessee while intoxicated.

I seriously don’t understand how this can be the case. Not being intoxicated while carrying is among the “conditions and limitations” that are “apply to the possession or carrying of a concealed handgun by residents of the State.” So Dennis is either bad at reading legislation, or being deliberately deceitful. As best I can tell, this is the same bill as it was before, just worded a bit differently. The language for this version is just a little more solid, I think, rather than different.

This idea would now seem to be endorsed by the Brady Campaign, as there is a White House petition for it as well. You can see the kind of juice the Brady Campaign has by the numbers appearing there. I’m wondering what other fundamental constitutional right requires you to pee pee in a cup before you can exercise it. It’s certainly interesting to see what new and strange ideas the Brady Campaign is supporting.

An additional 200 signatures have been added to the anti-HR822 petition since this morning. I’m becoming more convinced the White House may be using the e-mails they are collecting to get people to sign that petition. An intrepid reader has noted many of these folks track to individuals who are just generic lefties.

If you get anything from the White House, or anyone else, asking you to sign that petition, please forward it along to me. This could be a critical piece of evidence that could be used as a political club when the elections roll around. This is especially true if the e-mail is deceptive.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Just FYI, the pro-HR822 petition, which is the bill that create a national recognition scheme for concealed carry licenses, meaning states will recognize licenses from other states universally, can be found here. Please take some time to sign your name to it, so we can beat the forces of Obama and Mayor Bloomberg who are attempting to defeat it.

SayUncle notes another bill is being introduced to allow people to buy handguns out of state from FFls, and significantly ease interstate transactions between FFLs. These restrictions were a cornerstone of the Gun Control Act of 1968. If this can be repealed, it will be a testament to how far we’ve come. The sponsors of this bill are Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, and Senator Mark Begich of Alaska.

Our opponents are duly focused on HR822. But I don’t worry about them. They are in great shape to fight a multi-front war against the likes of us.

I’m glad our opponents are busy helping make lists of politicians to vote for based on today’s mark-up session for HR822. That will save me some time:

GOP House Judiciary members were virtually unanimous in voting today to allow the following individuals to carry guns in public in states outside their home state: 1) Misdemeanant sexual offenders 2) Individuals on the Terrorist Watch List 3) Individuals with misdemeanor convictions for stalking. We really must have this bill. If the NRA says we need it, they will vote for anything without thinking through the real life consequences. Or maybe they have thought through the real life consequences which is even scarier and stupider!

I have a friend who’s a misdemeanor sex offender. Her offense? She did some modeling when she was younger, and did a topless photo shoot on what she thought was a secluded beach. Apparently not so secluded that someone didn’t notice, and called the police. She plead down to a charge that didn’t require registration, but it’s still a “sex offense.” Do you know what also is a misdemeanor sex offense? Getting a little too drunk in college and mooning someone. Being convicted of touching children is a prohibiting offense in every state that I know of, and touching children is exactly what our dishonest opponents want you think about when they mislead the public by proposing nonsense like this.

Individuals on the terror watch list we’ve long covered, but suffice it to say we don’t deny constitutional rights in this country without due process, which is precisely what our opponents advocate when they suggest this asinine idea.

I’m not even sure what a misdemeanor conviction for stalking is, as a matter of a “one-size-fits-all” rule. This is a new one. It’s always good to know the thinking of the gun control crowd when they are thinking of new ways to get more and more people prohibited from gun ownership.

I checked Pennsylvania’s statutes, and “Stalking” in Pennsylvania is a 1st Degree Misdemeanor, with a possible sentence of up to 5 years. This is a disabling offense federally. One thing to remember is that you’re a prohibited person under federal law if you’re convicted of any misdemeanor that has a possible sentence two years or more, even if you don’t end up serving any time in jail at all.

Given that HR822 only applies to individuals who are not prohibited under federal law, what classes of persons do our opponents mean to cover here? Once again they are being misleading and dishonest. Once again, they are hoping the American public doesn’t know better. And once again, I would like to point out, they are losing.

Supposedly HR822 is scheduled to be voted on in the judiciary committee today. I think it’s likely a fore-drawn conclusion that it will be voted out of committee. Our opponents are nervous. “Blood in the streets!” and yada yada. They probably could have gone with reading a bit more Aesop than Alinsky.

UPDATE: I’m to understand that this is a markup session, to consider various amendments to the bill. Our friends at CSGV have been following this very closely. You’d think they were worried or something.

A few weeks ago, the Philly papers started running “Florida Loophole” stories again. Once here in the Inquirer, then again in a different article. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has recently covered the topic.  I’m guessing this is part of Bloomberg’s push to defeat HR822, even though that act doesn’t have anything to do with “Florida Loophole,” since it does not force individual states to recognize other state permits for its own residents. Now yesterday, I notice an article in the St. Petersburg Times speaking about the issue.

Does anyone really expect us to believe this is a coincidence? That multiple papers just happened to start blasting on the “Florida Loophole” issue again, after months of saying nothing? I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. The Allentown Morning call also covered this issue, but I’m fairly certain this editorial didn’t happen at the prompting of gun control outfits.

A bill to do this has cleared the House. Previously, the Department of Veterans Affairs has added people to the NICS database for reasons that did not rise to the level of a full adjudication. If this bill makes it, unless a veterans is adjudicated a danger to himself or others, Veterans Affairs won’t be able to report him to NICS.