It looks like Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma is having second thoughts about the open carry bill there. Will he sign? The big problem for him would seem to be opposition from the Oklahoma State Troopers Association. Keep in mind this is coming from a state where gun rights generally are not really controversial.
Category: Gun Rights
Bloomberg’s Testimony
The Hill reports on his testimony before a Senate Homeland Security Committee, where he notes that the Second Amendment should be no barrier to arbitrarily denying Americans their right to purchase a firearm.
Berkeley Doesn’t Stand Up to the Man Very Well
I just couldn’t help but chuckle and picture hippies declaring how they’ll fight “the man” on this one. Except, that’s not at all what happened.
In response to a pre-litigation demand letter sent by lawyers for the NRA and CRPA Foundation, on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to repeal that city’s ban on the possession of certain semiautomatic rifles, which had remained “on the books” as Municipal Code Section 13.47 despite being obviously preempted by state law.
The repeal is the culmination of discussions between attorneys for the NRA and CRPA and the Berkeley City Attorney’s office. The City of Berkeley initially resisted all requests by the NRA and CRPA to repeal this ordinance. But the City Attorney’s report to the City Council makes clear that the motivation to finally repeal the ordinance was the threat of litigation from NRA/CRPA.
One person objected to the repealing of the ordinance during public comment, but the City Attorney quickly corrected him that, as explained by the NRA/CRPA letter, this is a settled legal matter for which the City of Berkeley has no recourse.
It’s a good thing in the end. It saves precious litigation money that can be used to fight more meaningful fights. I just find it very funny to see how quickly those radicals in Berkeley back down.
Getting Rid of POC Systems
There’s been talk among pro-gun voices in Pennsylvania about eliminating PICS, the state point-of-contact background check system. It looks like there’s an active effort in Colorado to do just that. It’s being touted as a cost saving measure, because the state would save approximately 1.7 million dollars by relying on the federal system. In this time of tight state budgets, the money argument is probably the winner. The only difficulty we have here in PA is that our PICS system is being used for a number of different reasons, including conducting background checks for teachers. That complicates the issue a bit more for using the cost saving argument, at least here in Pennsylvania.
The main reason for doing this here in PA, is that the state system has more downtime than the federal system, and when the system is down all gun sales are halted, and we revert to the Brady waiting period. Since very few dealers are willing to do default proceeds after the waiting period, this essentially halts all gun sales for the duration of the outage. The other reason is that it would interfere greatly with the State Police using PICS to keep a registry of all guns sold in the Commonwealth. The legislature intended to prevent this eventually, but the State Police found a legal argument around it. If you’ve bought a gun in the past decade, they know about it. We’ve had individuals have guns seized from them in traffic stops because local police erroneously believe the State Police database is a comprehensive registry. This has been difficult to remedy legislatively.
Open Carry Victory in Oklahoma
It’s won house approval. I support this bill. I don’t personally like open carry, but I believe it should be legal. You still need a concealed carry permit, but if you have one, you have a choice. As the article mentions, which is true, very few people, practically are going to choose to do it.
Making Sausage in Illinois
The Chicago establishment, in a last ditch attempt to keep the gun issue alive, are trying to run numerous bills in Springfield. Thirdpower has some video of NRA’s Illinois Liaison, Todd Vandermyde giving as well as taking at the state house. Todd has done a very effective job at helping keep the Chicago establishment at bay on the gun issue, and it’s been quite a while since they’ve been able to score a major victory there. Watching this unfold is a lot like watching sausage be made. It’s not pretty, and when legislators get it in their heads to do something, your best bet is to try to herd the cats in a more productive and less damaging direction.
Chest Beating
So much in politics can really be explained as the same reason a Gorilla beats his chest. It’s a display, intended to scare rivals or assert dominance. Since it’s primary season we can expect to see a lot of that. Paul Helmke’s latest bit on the Indiana primary, which is today, falls into that category. Helmke notes the NRA favored candidates are expected to lose, noting:
Tomorrow’s results in the Indiana GOP primaries could tell us how strong the anti-DC mood is with the GOP in the heartland, and whether the NRA’s opposition or support makes any difference.
For another perspective on the Indiana primary race, you can look at Jim Geraghty’s summary here. My feeling is that it’s a three way race, which always complicates things. The pro-gun vote will be split between two candidates. But this is far from a race where there’s a wide open lead. NRA generally won’t waste money on a lost cause, so this will indeed be interesting to see. All three candidates have wide open leads over Brad Ellsworth, so in this instance, the primary is pretty much the general election for the Hoosiers.
Look for Brady to play this card often. They are beating their chests to show that NRA is not so tough. This will be fertile ground too. NRA is going to be getting behind some pro-gun Democrats who are likely to lose their seats because of their votes on other issues. Oddly enough, the 2010 elections I think will not be a good year for NRA, in terms of their win percentages. The biggest loss is likely to be Harry Reid, who is the only reason we’ve accomplished anything in the 111th Congress. His likely successor is either Dick Durbin of Illinois or Chuck Schumer of New York. Either of those two leading the Senate, we better hope we don’t replace these pro-gun Dems with squishy Republicans. I hope all the Hoosiers get out there today to vote.
Guns at Walmart: The Good and the Bad
Arma Borealis has a post up on buying a gun at Walmart. He’s from Alaska, and I’ve heard that Walmart even sells pistols up in Alaskan stores. He complains about being escorted out with the gun. That’s something even Cabelas does. I’m guessing it’s an insurance issue more than a shoplifting issue. He also mentions Walmart’s deal with MAIG, which is why I’ll never buy a gun there.
Turning Around?
Dave Hardy thinks we may be going backwards on gun rights. Backwards to before the 60s, that is:
Add in DC v. Heller, and the likely outcome of McDonald v. Chicago. The press becoming almost even handed on the gun issue. I think we’re looking at an enormous cultural shift here. It’s a reversal of the shift that occurred in the 1960s. In 1960, firearm ownership was quite acceptable. President Kennedy was happy to accept life membership in the NRA. Somewhere in the early 60s, the American Bar Assn gave an award for a pro-individual rights article on the Second Amendment. And you’ve probably heard we ancients speak of the days when universities had rifle teams and students thought nothing of bringing guns to school. Then came the 60s — three assassinations in 1963-68, the summer riots, and by the later 60s guns were the source of all social ills, and anyone who would defend their ownership was a neanderthal, a fool, or a selfish social menace.
Fifty years later, we may be switching back.
The issue has come a long long way even from the time I first became aware of it. The earliest recollection I have in regards to the debate on gun control was the fight over the Brady Bill. But probably the think that convinced me that gun control was pretty much a load of BS was the fight over the assault weapons bans, which started in the late 80s. Even as a kid from a non-gun-owning family I knew what the difference was between fully automatic and semi-automatic, and knew what they were selling to civilians were semi-auto. Nonetheless, there’s the major networks trying to bilk the public by showing fully automatic weapons. Things were still rough in the late 199s, but since the turn of the century everything has changed dramatically.
Blog fodder is a good bellwether, I think, and the amount of things I’ve had to write about, in regards to media bias, has fallen off substantially. The media is largely ignoring the gun issue, as I would expect when everyone is worried about the country going broke, a crappy economy, and losing their jobs. Another big contributing factor Obama has ignored the issue, and refrained from using the bully pulpit on the issue of guns. That benefits us. Dave might be right. I do think there’s been a culture shift. Maybe we are headed back to the future.
Pennsylvania’s Own Ron Paul
Apparently supporters of Sam Rohrer are starting turn into Ronulans, appearing heavily in the Capitol Ideas post that covered CeaseFire PA’s endorsement policies to promote their favorite candidate. I like Sam Rohrer. Hell, I’ll even vote for him in the primary. But as I mentioned rather facetiously last October, the leap he was trying to make was probably too great. As our A+ rated reps go, I’m going to miss him from the state House, and wish he would have tried to step up to a more modest office before making the big leap for the big chair.
But I’m not worried too much. Tom Corbett, if he wins both races, will be the most pro-gun governor we’ve had in 24 years. On other issues, I don’t find him to be particularly offensive, which likely means Independents won’t find him particularly offensive either, and you need Independents for a Republican to win in Pennsylvania.