Category: Gun Rights

She’s introducing a bill to prohibit foreign felons from possessing firearms, regardless of whether the foreign country in question has the same due process protections as American Court.  Recall that in 2005, in the case of Small vs. US, the Court said that “convicted in any court” did not apply to foreign courts.  Just thinking of some famous cases where DiFi’s prohibition would apply:

1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, served time in a Soviet gulag for being an enemy of the State.
2. Francis Gary Powers. convicted in a Soviet Court and sentenced to hard labor for spying after his U2 was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960.
3. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, convicted of spying on North Korea after being kidnapped from China.

I, for one, am glad that finally DiFi is protecting us against enemies of the State, and welcome our new police state overlords.  Of course, Feinstein’s bill has an exception in it:

except that a foreign conviction shall not constitute a conviction of such a crime if the convicted person establishes that the foreign conviction resulted from a denial of fundamental fairness that would violate due process if committed in the United States or from conduct that would be legal if committed in the United States’.

And how exactly does the convicted person establish this?  In court after he’s been arrested and charged for being a felon in possession?  After a NICS denial?  Is the Attorney General empowered to create a process here?  No.  This is a meaningless exemption without some kind of idea of how the exemption is asserted.  DiFi isn’t stupid.  She wouldn’t write up a bill with an actual process, because that wouldn’t create an ever growing class of people who can’t exercise their Second Amendment rights.

UPDATE: Thinking more about it, if DiFi is so peeved at Small, why is she passing a law where Small would have eventually fallen under the exemption anyway.  In fact, it’s hard to say what foreign convictions would qualify, since many Civil Law jurisdictions don’t do trial by jury, and don’t allow, for instance, confronting your accusers in all circumstances.  Even in other Common Law jurisdictions, there can be some limitations on jury trials that don’t exist in the United States.  How much deviation would be considered enough to render the foreign conviction moot?

This really opens up a rather large can of worms for the courts when it comes to someone brought to trial for felon-in-possession where the felony is from a foreign court.  Taken literally, it would actually require American Courts to stand in judgment of the legal process of foreign courts.  It will be very difficult for people in this category to know whether they are prohibited or not, so the likely practical effect will be they are prohibited, unless they can establish as an affirmative defense that they fall under the exception when brought up on charges and brought to trial.

But I suppose that’s the idea.  Which is why I will argue the exception is virtually meaningless, and still largely amounts to a prohibition in practice, if not in strict legal fact.  Doing this “correctly” would be a significant regulatory effort, in order for people to understand what foreign convictions are prohibiting and which ones aren’t.  Aside from that, anyone with any foreign conviction, whether legitimate or not, runs the risk of being arrested, jailed, and put on trial — forced to explain why his conviction falls under the exemption.   That might be good government in DiFi’s world, but not mine.

Mark Warner has joined some of his fellow Democrats in supporting Sotomayor.  But I don’t particularly appreciate the quote seen here:

“I’m very disappointed. [NRA seems] to be going beyond their Second Amendment issues, particularly when I think the judge’s positions on those issues are still fairly open,” Warner said. “I trust in her judgment and temperament. I think the NRA at some point has gone beyond its mission, and are perhaps allowing themselves to get hijacked by those who are in the extreme.”

Fairly open because she didn’t answer any questions, even on vague constitutional principles which she ought to be able to answer.  If there’s one thing I’ve disliked about guys like Tester, and now apparently Warner, is that they’ve been entirely willing to carry water for virulently anti-gun people for the sake of their party.  Most Democrats seem to be lining up with the party on this one, which is what I expected.  Like I said, we aren’t doing too badly with this Senate, but there are obviously limits to how far we can push. Scuttling a nomination is difficult.

Republicans had better watch it, because considering I’ve seen more action out of Harry Reid’s overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, than I ever saw in 12 years of Republican control, I’m not pleased to see this:

The Brady Campaign, the anti-gun group that had experienced a rather tough run during the Bush administration, is pointing out that three Republican senators who were endorsed by the National Rifle Association in their last campaigns have committed to supporting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have all come out for Sotomayor, as has Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), who ran for re-election in 2004 as a Republican.

Considering some of Alexander’s other votes, maybe it’s time for the people of Tennessee to send him packing.

PayPal has long had a problem with people using their service to buy guns, or even gun related parts or items.  I avoid using PayPal as much as possible, which ends up being that I only have to use it (because I want something, and that’s all they take) once or twice a year.  PayPal, even aside from the gun issue, is pure unadulterated evil.  See here.

Kevin has quite the story about how PayPal treats gun owners, and publishes their customer service number for people to complain about their policy.  Personally, I just wouldn’t use it.  The sad part is, there aren’t a lot of services out there which are a reasonable substitute for what PayPal offers.

When I was a kid, I remember playing with something like this, and thinking it was the coolest water pistol I had ever seen.  But in our modern society, which seems to be entirely ruled by hysterical and fearful people, such things aren’t sold anymore.  There’s no better example than in New York, where their hysterics has descended into this:

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said his office has sent letters to more than 100 retailers ordering them to halt sales of look-a-likes that violate the ban.

State law requires toy guns to either be made from materials that couldn’t possibly be confused with an actual weapon, or carry colorful markings including a big orange stripe.

Inspectors with Cuomo’s office said they conducted spot checks and found plenty of toys on sale that didn’t follow those rules.

Imagine where we’d be if instead of policing toy stores for improperly painted toys, the authorites were, call me crazy here, out trying to catch actual criminals.  But that’s not all.  We have yet another example of New York City slipping head first off the water slide of reality here too:

The Revolutionary War buff charges the Bloomberg administration with tyranny for trying to seize his handmade flintlock rifle – a dead ringer for the weapon once used against the redcoats.

“This is the last legal gun that you can have without registration in New York,” Littlejohn said. “And yet Mayor Bloomberg is driven crazy by my flintlock gun – the one that won the American Revolution.”

I’d like to buy this guy a beer for standing up to Bloomberg over this. The police say he can end all this if he just complies with the non-law.

A police source says the war could end peacefully if Littlejohn applied for a permit with the NYPD handgun license division.

Littlejohn would rather fight. The Brooklynite says he’s willing to sue for his rifle rights.

I hope he does, but thanks to Sonya Sotomayor, there is no Second Amendment for New York residents, and if she has her way on the Supreme Court, there never will be.  That might be of little consequence though, because he is within his legal rights.  No license is required in New York City for the possession of a long gun which does not fire fixed ammunition.  The law is clear on that.  If Bloomberg wants to press this, he’ll be acting under color of law, and I hope Mr. Littlejohn sues him.

In short, it’s still happening, despite the draconian laws.  What’s the solution?

Further details of the loophole emerged yesterday when a magistrate called for gun owners to be fingerprinted or even DNA tested to guarantee their identity.

And when that doesn’t work, and criminals are still getting guns, they’ll ban them entirely.

Governor Corzine seems to be bringing the old punching bag back out.  Governor Corzine’s punching bag being, of course, law abiding gun owners.  Get this quote here:

Corzine called for the mandatory microstamping of new semi-autmoatic handguns, an emerging technology in which lasers inscribe numbers on firing pins. That means spent casings show a serial number that law enforcement can trace.

This bill has been languishing in committee since March.  I would expect Corzine’s puppets in the legislature to start it moving now.