Category: Gun Rights

John Richardson has the details. I don’t think this speaks well for our opponents chances that even Northeast states don’t seem to want to go there. Apparently there were more than 200 people that showed up to the hearing, many testifying against it. Democracy works for those who show up, and we do more than our opponents.

Dave Kopel reminds us. The uprising started with ten handguns. Yet we’re told by our opponents that such resistance is futile, so why bother. In the end, the uprising probably didn’t save any Jews, but everyone has a choice to make about whether to submit, or fight. Our opponents only want us to have one of those choices.

I guess after signing Constitutional Carry, she didn’t feel like we had much room to ask her to take another chance on us. In her veto statement, she expressed a belief that the law was unclear, because it only protected the right-to-carry on “rights of way” through campus. Legislators understood this to mean streets and sidewalks, but Brewer stated, “Bills impacting our Second Amendment rights have to be crystal clear so that gun owners don’t become lawbreakers by accident.”

We got it through the legislature this year. My opinion is that we come back next year, take the Governor’s words to heart, and give her a clear bill she can’t veto.

Apparently they mean discouraging people from taking any initiative on their own. This is a story of a school safety agent, who picked up a downed officer’s Glock, and fought off the attackers:

The agent, who is not licensed to carry a gun, could face charges, sources said. Two of the robbers were wounded in the gun battle.

Clearly these are common sense gun laws. You see, we’re all cowards. They are heros defending the world against gun violence. They want us to be as impotent as they are. In fact, they will demand it. You will comply or face the wrath of the state. You will be a compliant citizen, or else.

We have to destroy these people politically. The New York and Chicago citizen control regimes have to be utterly laid to waste, or we have failed.

Hat tip to Dan Pehrson.

I’m surprised that the Roanoke Times, of all papers, would say gun control advocates are too quick to criticize Virginia’s Attorney General for his ruling that self-defense was a sufficient reason to carry a firearm in a church. Virginia law prohibits carry in churches unless the person has “good and sufficient reason.” Cuccinelli’s ruling is a completely reasonable reading of the statute.

I don’t see why this wouldn’t work out for New Hampshire. Vermont is certainly no bastion of crime. New Hampshire would be the fourth state to repeal the permit requirement, bringing the number of states that do not require one to five.

I am told that former Congressman Harold Volkmer (D-MO) died last night. He was primarily responsible for pushing the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act (FOPA) through the House back in the mid-1980s. I once had the pleasure of once sharing a table with Congressman Volkmer at an NRA lunch event. He was truly one of the giants of the movement to preserve the Second Amendment.

UPDATE: Dave Hardy has more information.

UPDATE: Obituary appears here:

Harold was busy literally in his last days reviewing a legal case for the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund. Known to all simply as Harold, he was touched tremendously by the hundreds of greetings that came to him recently on his 80th birthday.

We have truly lost one of the great ones of this movement.

Thirdpower has the details of a Twitter debate that’s been going on this Friday between Colin Goddard and a few gun rights people. Debating on Twitter is kind of like dueling haiku, so it’s impossible to discuss complex topics. The topic at hand is background checks. Goddard’s position can be accurately paraphrased as “The innocent have nothing to fear.” But that misses what drives our opposition by a mile.

I think the background check requirement is about as useful for lowering violent crime as pissing out your car window. But if done with respect for the core right at hand, I’m not sure it’s a serious enough impediment to its exercise to rise to the level of unconstitutionality. That said, the proposals by the Brady Campaign are almost certainly not open for debate, largely because they target gun shows with onerous requirements, and impose a significant tax on the transfer of firearms by forcing transfers through FFLs. So we fight it.

Pennsylvania currently bans private transfers of handguns. You have two choices here for transferring a handgun to someone who isn’t your spouse, son, grandson, father, or grandfather. You can pay an FFL to do it, which around here costs a minimum of 32 dollars at some of the smaller, out of the way shops, or drive forty minutes to the county seat, and have the Sheriff’s Office do it. No doubt many gun control advocates don’t really appreciate bringing cost into the equation, but when it comes to exercising rights, costs imposed by government are a serious issue that can’t be lightly dismissed. Especially when the effectiveness of the measures is dubious at best. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania prohibits private transfers of handguns, straw purchasing has become a big enough problem, we’re told we need to acquiesce to a whole host of other controls. The Brady Campaign supports rationing gun purchases in order to deal with this problem in my state, just to name one proposal on the table.

Negotiations on this issue are a non-starter unless something I otherwise could not get is also on the table. Most of that is going to be unacceptable to Colin’s employer, if not Colin himself. Politics is a process of compromise, but compromise is what happens when either both sides are unable to move forward without concessions to the other, or when one side begins to fear his opponent might be able to move an issue forward despite opposition. The gun control movement has never been interested in that kind of compromise. If the Brady Campaign really wanted universal background checks, they could probably get them. Ask how many gun owners here would trade a universal background check you could do with a driver’s license and a cell phone for, say, a repeal of the Hughes Amendment. I think you’d find takers. Ask how many would trade the same for easing restrictions on short barreled rifles/shotguns, and suppressors? National concealed carry? I’d bet you’d get takers just giving up the 4473.

Could Brady make that deal? Are background checks that important? If they answer that question honestly, you’ll see why this goes nowhere. Background checks are a political hobby horse Colin’s side is riding as a gateway to other issues which are more important to them. This was never about the background checks, and I think Colin knows that as well as I do.

They are challenging the ban on firearms possession by lawfully admitted aliens, and the ban on firearms and ammunition purchase by lawful resident aliens. There is very strong case law that will support getting the ban overturned for lawful resident aliens. If I understand the first aspect of the lawsuit correctly, this challenges the ban mere possession, meaning challenging the fact that it’s a crime to take you friend visiting from overseas to a shooting range. Given the Supreme Court has said plainly this is a fundamental right, that probably plays strongly that a blanket ban on possession is unconstitutional, though it may be constitutional to restrict lawful admitted aliens from purchasing a gun under the Heller dicta that permits some degree of qualification on commercial sales of firearms.