Category: Gun Rights

Looks like the powers that be, owned by certain a egomaniacal Mayor, are nervous as hell about HR822, as can be seen in this article. It’s a really good mix of both hysteria and misinformation. For instance, the bill would not allow a resident of New York City to carry on a Florida license, only people who resided out of state. This won’t help people in may-issue states carry in those states.

The bill “effectively prevents a state from controlling who has guns within the state, which has always been a core police power function of state government,” said John Donohue, a professor at Stanford Law School, who said he thinks it would be held unconstitutional. “It is so ironic that it is the conservatives who are trying to push this encroachment, since they usually are very active in championing states’ rights.”

Segregating schools used to be a core police power function too, you know. How about coming up with an argument that’s actually compelling, professor. Here’s some other interesting opinions:

While the Constitution’s commerce clause gives Congress authority to regulate commerce between the states, the reciprocity bill probably wouldn’t fall within that power, said Weisberg, the law Stanford professor who serves as faculty co- director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Nor would it fall under Congress’ power to enforce such existing constitutional liberties as the right “to keep and bear arms,” he said.

That’s funny because the federal law barring felons from possessing firearms and ammunition is based on the exact same commerce power that the reciprocity bill is based on. So why is it constitutional for the federal government to prohibit possession by felons, and unconstitutional for it allow possession by the law abiding on the public streets?

 

A quite excellent post from Extrano’s Alley that quotes several books which suggest that gun control in the old west was, at best, selectively enforced, and generally speaking not enforced at all. I think that would suggest, again, at best, that law enforcement in those towns used it as a tool to lock up troublesome outsiders.

I’ve also heard, anecdotally, from people who lived in the South prior to the advent of shall-issue laws, that carry laws were generally not terribly well-enforced there either, and it was common practice for law enforcement to look the other way if the gun you were carrying wasn’t some cheap piece of crap more commonly carried by criminals rather than respectable folks. It would be interesting to study, given that gun control laws were mostly passed in order to keep undesirables (who varied a bit depending on where you were in the country) from carrying, whether the advent of the shall-issue concealed carry movement came about when those laws started to be more more equally and fairly enforced.

Professor Adam Winkler is one of the true moderates on our issue, and though I think comes at this more from the other side, at least takes pro-gun arguments seriously, and makes serious arguments in favor of his position. Such is the case with his observation that some towns in the old west had some fairly serious gun control laws. The professor concludes with:

Even in the Wild West, Americans balanced these two and enacted laws restrictin­g guns in order to promote public safety. Why should it be so hard to do the same today?

Who is to say we haven’t? I don’t think there are too many serious arguments that the prohibitions on felons or the mentally ill possessing firearms are unconstitu­tonal, nor is anyone advancing similar arguments in regards to the instant background check. This is despite the fact that both types of prohibitions are relatively recent practices. Heller pretty much left open the option to ban guns in “sensitive” places, even though the Court poorly defined what those could be.

I don’t find the argument to be that remarkably compelling that because some towns in the Wild West enacted prohibitions on carrying firearms that such prohibitions must therefore be constituti­onal. All manner of rights were likely flagrantly violated in frontier towns in ways that would not meet with constitutional approval under modern standards. I seem to recall hanging horse thieves was a fairly common practice on the frontier, but I would still question whether the practice should inform us as to whether imposing the death penalty for car thieves amounts to a violation of the 8th Amendment. 

Who would have thought, even five years ago, you’d have mainstream media articles being written about the utility of silencers.

The Arizona Star is continuing to beat on the manufactured controversy with the Glock raffle, even though by this point it’s pretty clear that it has backfired:

Yet, it comes as a complete surprise to the Pima County Republicans’ interim leader, Mike Shaw, that anyone might object to raffling off a gun to raise money to defeat Democrats in the next election.

But it shouldn’t be a shock – and given the publicity the Pima County GOP has received from its galling decision, it’s perhaps not an unwelcome surprise.

So about that list of adjectives:

Crass, insensitive, vulgar, displaying a lack of empathy or compassion, dumbfounding, offensive, callous, boorish, thoughtless – all words that would fit.

The only people I’ve heard complain about this are the left-leaning Arizona media, the Pima County Democrats, and irrelevant anti-gun groups. The grassroots response was to get into the raffle, so much so they decided to raffle a rifle as well. To borrow Robb’s analogy, would it be outrageous to auction off a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue if a year ago someone plowed into a school bus, and they found a half drunken bottle of Johnny Walker Red in his back seat? Would that be “Crass, insensitive, vulgar, displaying a lack of empathy or compassion?” or would it just be normal?

As the Tucson Citizen points out “By the way, Giffords owns a Glock. Where’s the outrage?” Well, that just doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Michigan Attorney General, Bill Schuette, has issued an opinion that suppressors are legal in Michigan, provided that the NFA requirements are complied with. The demonization of silencers, or more accurately, suppressors, never made a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider noise complaints are the biggest issue shooting ranges face, especially places like around here, which have numerous suburban and exurban shooting ranges, with plenty of neighbors in earshot.

“We thank Attorney General Schuette for this well-reasoned opinion, which will allow Michigan residents to possess suppressors in compliance with federal law,” said Chuck Cunningham, NRA-ILA Director of State and Local Affairs.  “Noise suppressors are an effective means of reducing hearing loss among shooters, and we are pleased that shooters in Michigan, like those in 38 other states, will now have the freedom to choose these useful safety devices.”

When you put it that way, you’d almost think they were going mainstream, and you’d be right. I think suppressors may very well be the best shot we have at chipping away part of the National Firearms Act. A few years ago I didn’t think it would be possible, but now I think it might be.

A judge has denied a preliminary injunction on the border rifle reporting requirement, saying that the NRA failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm. There’s still hope for the NSSF case. I’d say being forced to comply with a provision which has no basis in law should qualify as irreparable harm under any standard.

So he’s saying now:

“I am a staunch advocate of the second amendment — don’t get me wrong I have a perfect record from the NRA — but we need to do what we can to make sure that someone can’t come to a gun show or some place and exploit a loophole.”

Perfect record? Going into the 2004 elections, I seem to recall the guy had a C for supporting this kind of crap in the past. The reason he won the endorsement was because no matter what you might say about McCain otherwise, he wasn’t a former director of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation, and hadn’t called for handgun bans.

So let’s dispense with this perfect record crap. This guy has made a career out of not being as bad as the other guy, and that’s about the best you can say about him. If he had been running against, say, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in 2008, it would have been a completely different story.

The big problem with McCain, is you never know when he’s going to go all “Maverick” on you. Sometimes I really think he’s his daughter’s father.

So if the evil “gun lobby” is all about securing the “profits of the gun industry,” who, of course, donate money back to groups like NRA (the whole Triangle of Death thing), then why wouldn’t the self-interested response to Fast and Furious be to look the other way? If the goal is to help make money for the evil gunmakers, an operation like Fast and Furious, with the full blessing of ATF to sell as many guns to straw buyers for the Mexican cartels as they can, should form a great symbiotic relationship. So why the outrage on our side? Why was it gun bloggers who first did the digging to discover this scandal? What interest would NRA have, who is part of the Triangle, have in pushing Congress and raising the profile of this issue?

If this was about gun industry profits, we should love Fast and Furious, but we don’t. If that isn’t enough to make our opponents question the veracity of their own rhetoric, they are absolutely blind to the truth.