Category: Gun Rights

I’ve never been one to jump onto the victimization bandwagon or erect villains that gun rights folks can portray themselves as fighting against. I tend to think think this kind of activity can remove the focus from real action, and instead get people’s energies and attention fixated on the villains. ATF is one of our favorite villains, and much of the time they do things to deserve people’s derision and scorn. But ATF, while unique in some respects, doesn’t really act much differently than other federal regulatory bureaucracies, as anyone who’s ever worked in a regulated industry can attest to. As long as we have federal gun laws, there will be an agency charged with regulation and enforcement under the authority of those laws. That put us back to square one, no matter which three letter acronym the agency carries. That’s largely why in the case of the Austin Gun Show controversy, I’m a lot more interested talking about courses of action rather than railing against ATF for the sake of vilifying the agency. Action has to be related to goals, and the goal in this case is to preserve the integrity of the show, and prevent the City of Austin and ATF from attempting to meddle with any more shows. In the last post we saw that raising a preemption claim against the Austin Police Department was likely going to be problematic, because the landlord of the property is really the ones doing the coercion. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the attention of these regulators. I would propose the following courses of action:

• File state and federal FOIA requests in regards to any and all communication that happened between the involved agencies and the landlord (actually, this was Dave Hardy’s idea, and a good one I think.) Depending on what you find, you might have a preemption claim. But even if you don’t, you’ll have a clearer picture of what went on.
• Almost all police departments receive funding from their states, and Texas has a very gun friendly legislature. Speak to the key committee chairs that control funding to local police departments. Agencies pay close attention when their funding sources get threatened, or there’s even a hint of a possible threat. Remember how I said how the request by APD nuisance unit to the landlord could have a threatening nature just by the very nature of who’s asking? Well, two can play at that game, and we should.
• If you can get an impressive number of gun owners together in Austin to go to a City Council meeting, and make your displeasure known, that could also have an effect. But you’d have to make an impressive showing. Three guys showing up isn’t going to be intimidating to the politicians. Filling the room is going to make them concerned.
• ATF is also not immune from funding pressures. Bit of a tougher fight there because Daniel Inouye is chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, but Hutchison is also on that committee and is running for governor, she’ll want to stay on the radar of the gun vote. Things in the are better, because Dave Obey heads the House Appropriations Committee, an A- rated Democrat. In addition, you have five Texans on that committee, the lowest of whom is a B rated Democrat, and the rest A rated. Make sure those individuals know you’re unhappy about ATF involvement in pressuring landlords who host gun shows.

I guess what I’m trying to suggest is: don’t get mad, get even. The way you get even with bureaucrats is to get the people who essentially pay them mad. There are other avenues other than ones I mentioned here. I offer these a way to think about how politics works, and how a motivated and pissed off group of gun owners can effectively direct their energies.

A reader sent me a link to a dust up between a gun show promoter, the Austin, TX police, and ATF. I was hoping today to getting around to looking at this story more closely, but in a fantastic bit of citizen journalism, Howard Nemerov already has the scoop on this issue. His conclusion:

There are no clear-cut villains and victims here. In the final analysis, you the reader need to decide the best course of action. Facts, not rhetoric, help make educated decisions.

Having this kind of thing happen to a gun show is not all that unusual. We lost a big one here in Pennsylvania because the Fort Washington Expo Center’s new management decided they no longer wanted to host gun shows on their property. Not much you can do in that situation except find a new venue. I would point out that the Fort Washington Expo Center is now defunct, however, so maybe kicking the gun show to the curb was not their only poor business decision.

But I still want to write about what I think would be a novel legal issue in regards to gun shows, particularly if nuisance ordinances are used against them. Texas, like most other states, preempts local governments from enforcing anti-gun ordinances:

No governmental subdivision or agency may enact or enforce a law that makes any conduct covered by this code an offense subject to a criminal penalty. This section shall apply only as long as the law governing the conduct proscribed by this code is legally enforceable.

Texas preemption statute is very strong, and I suspect whatever Austin might want to construe its nuisance ordinances to mean, it can’t construe them as meaning they can use them to force out a gun show. But does it prevent them from asking the landlord to put restrictions on the show? One could argue if there’s no legal threat, it’s not enforcement, and so preemption does not apply. But one could also argue that any lawful authority, such as a nuisance unit of a police department, that even talking to a landlord, who might have good reasons to want to stay on good terms with a police agency of that nature, amounts to a form of coercion. This would, of course, be a long shot argument, but such arguments have been made successfully in other contexts.

It’s interesting what could happen if other cities suddenly started taking generally applicable laws, and even hinting to property owners that they could be applied if they don’t kick out gun shows. Preemption laws, in spirit, are supposed to deal with that problem, but that gets more dicey laws get applied sneakily or stealthily, in a way that makes it hard for us to prove a preemption violation. For this, we will need show promoters to fight, and work with relevant organizations, like NRA, NSSF, etc, to uncover exactly what local authorities are up to if they suspect pressure is being applied to get gun shows out of their jurisdictions. Preemption is merely a tool, it’s not an absolute protection against all malfeasance on the part of local governments. Making is work is up to us.

VCDL is reporting on a bill that’s being introduced in Maryland, much along the same lines as Delaware, which while still technically being a may-issue state, was able to, nonetheless, pass a reciprocity bill. This Maryland bill will recognize licenses issued by surrounding states, including Pennsylvania, but oddly not including West Virginia. I don’t know why they left out West Virginia. Maybe the sponsor has it in for them. Either way, I don’t think this bill stands much of a chance, but it’s worth supporting anyway, just to let the politicians know we still care. I just wouldn’t have unrealistic expectations about its chances. It is scheduled for a committee hearing, so if you live in Maryland, that’s one thing to consider showing up for. It’s scheduled for next Tuesday at 1:00PM.

And before anyone says I’m just being a Negative Nancy with my assessment of the Bill’s chances, I’d encourage folks to look at the makeup of the Maryland House Judiciary committee. You have a B- chair, which might be how we got a hearing at all. You have seven pro-gun (NRA B and higher) votes on that committee, plus the chairman, out of 22 members of the committee. It’s a very polarized committee, where everyone is either and A or B or  D or F, which probably reflects the state as a whole on the gun issue. There are a lot of question mark candidates, but in a state like Maryland, those should be counted as likely Fs. There is one C grade on the committee, but even if you swing that one, it’s still not enough votes to get it to the floor. And even if you get it to the floor, it’s going to die there.

It is still worth contacting legislators, and showing up. It takes a long time to bring a movement to eventual success, but we should approach the fight with realistic expectations. Otherwise you risk disillusioning your followers. The real benefit going forward is to get all these question marks on record, so next election they carry grades that reflect their actual attitude toward our rights.

I’ve said before that no gun owner ever complained about permits being public record until newspapers decided to be bozos and publish lists of permit holders. If the Brady Campaign and MAIG were smart, they’d be the first on the phone to these papers telling them to knock it off. I would have no problem with papers iterating through the permits finding and reporting on people who legitimately should not have them. But that’s not what they do. That’s what we would call real reporting, and no newspaper has the money to do that these days.

But why should the Bradys be against publishing? Because that will create a backlash that will cause the law to change.

Thursday, a House committee voted 11-0 to keep information about gun permits from being released to the public — information The Indianapolis Star has used to document how guns have fallen into violent hands.

The NRA lobbyist for Indiana is Ashley Varner, mentioned in the article, who used to handle NRA’s media relations with bloggers when she was working in ILA’s Public Affairs office. A lot of us bloggers know her, so I think I can speak for us all when I say “Go get em Ashley!”