Category: Gun Rights

I’m not sure how the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency can ban depictions of guns in movie posters isn’t a violation of the First Amendment. Generally speaking, the restrictions allowed on commercial speech are greater than that on non-commercial speech, but I don’t believe this kind of restriction is permissible, in addition to being thoroughly ridiculous in terms of public policy. The Supreme Court created a test for commercial speech restrictions in the case of Central Hudson Gas & Electric v. Public Service Commission. Subsequent cases have not been so friendly toward restrictions on commercial speech, and given the expressive content in movie posters, it’s difficult to see how the SFMTA, which is a governmental agency, can justify their restriction. There have been other cases of this happening that have resulted in federal injunctions. The promotion company should really file suit and get an injunction against the SFMTA, rather than taking a poster like this, and turning into a mockery like this.

UPDATE: Bitter e-mailed Eugene Volokh, the real expert on these matters, because I wasn’t very sure about my position because of the fact that this is a transportation authority. His opinion is that is it unconstitutional, but for different reasons than I laid out.

UPDATE: After reading more closely, not really that different from what I thought. But I’m not that informed on the matter of public/non-public venues as Professor Volokh is.

Clayton is reporting they are suing the Second Amendment Sisters now too.

Yet another court has hinted that non-violent felons may be able to retain their Second Amendment rights. The Court ruled that as applied to Williams, who was a violent felon, was not unconstitutional, but said a non-violent felon might be able to prevail on 922(g)(1) being overly broad. What’s interesting to me is that Justice O’Conner was sitting on this panel by designation, and signed on to the unanimous opinion. It’s long been believed that O’Conner would have been a “no” vote on Heller had she not been replaced by Justice Alito upon her retirement from the Court. Her concurrence here is interesting, but offers little insight into how she would have voted on Heller, I think.

NRA statement on the matter can be found here. The vote was 63-37. More to come as I gather more info.

UPDATE: In the end, Ben Nelson was the only Democrat to vote against her. The only Republicans to vote for her were Graham, Gregg, Lugar, Snowe, and Collins. With those Republicans voting yes, filibustering her was not a possibility.

As I said, the Democrats are betting that NRA can’t mobilize anger over the Supreme Court. We’ll see about that. This would have been an easy vote for many Democrats like Webb, Warner, Tester, Baucus, Specter, and Casey.

This is pretty amazing. I’m guessing this guy never has to worry about the range know-it-all coming up to him and lecturing him on how his grip is wrong, but then again maybe I’m displaying too much faith in the range know-it-all.

The Hill notes that NRA seems reluctant to put their full weight against Kagan:, quoting from the head of another conservative group:

The group said Kagan’s record shows “nothing to indicate support for the Second Amendment” and promised to count her confirmation vote as a “key vote” when compiling congressional scorecards.

But it has not waged the intensive grassroots campaign some conservative activists had hoped for. These activists believe the NRA is reluctant to strain relations with Democrats, such as Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who often side with gun owners in legislative fights.

From what I’ve seen so far, that full weight is behind it. NRA is urging membership to contact their Senators, and have several times. I’m not sure what kind of “grassroots campaign” that Steve Levey is expecting. This is pretty standard fare for a major vote. I’m also not sure how he can critique their strategy on the Hill, considering that his organization would seem to have no presence on it. The big problem is that 5 Republicans are defecting on the Kagan vote, and a lot of Democrats are sure to defect. Defeating a nomination is hard.

What Democrats are counting on is that NRA won’t be able to mobilize anger on election day over Court nominations. Maybe they are right, but in that case I don’t have a lot of faith we’re going to get broad and robust Second Amendment protections.