Category: Gun Rights

So beings the long four year nightmare of gun owners.  Let us hope it will not be as bad as we fear.

Gun control coming to Uruguay.  They estimate that half the gun owners in the country already don’t comply with the existing laws, so clearly if they pass more laws that’s sure to make a difference.

The bill Joe highlights here in the Montana Legislature would run into problems with the Supremacy Clause, but it shows how states can take measures to resist federal encroachments on fundamental rights.  If the state of Montana were very serious about such a measure, to the point where it would be willing to arrest federal agents sent to enforce unconstitutional gun laws, things would get interesting.  I’ve discussed this in more detail here, about how state governments resisting laws they find intolerable can up the ante, so to speak, and serve to draw a line in the sand that is an alternative to what others advocate.  States like Montana, Wyoming and Idaho already seemed primed for such action, even if under the current circumstances, these bill are merely symbolic.

I’m sure this is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind.

This woman’s son was killed in a gun accident, and she’s become an advocate for safety training:

She’s convinced that gun-safety courses, especially for teenagers, can avert tragedies such as the one that forever changed two families.

The foundation is circulating an online petition — about 440 people have signed — asking for mandatory safety training. Stein plans to send the petition to Barack Obama.

”People who don’t have bad intent should at least be taught how to handle guns,” Stein said. “You don’t let [teens] behind the wheel without knowing how to drive . . . This is not about taking people’s rights; it’s about keeping people safe.”

Morris Stein bought a gun after graduating from Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School. It was a choice more whimsical than ominous: an antique French rifle.

”I’m allowed to have a long gun,” he told his mother. “I’m an American citizen . . . No one knows where the clip is but me.”

Mandating gun safety training in high schools is a proposal I would gladly stand by Robin Stein and advocate.  I think everyone should know how to safely handle a firearm, including not pointing it in unsafe directions, or keeping firearms gratuitously loaded and unsecured.  But I won’t get behind any proposal to make training a prior restraint on purchasing a firearm.

Religion in the wrong hands can be quite deadly, yet we do not require training in peaceable religion before purchasing Bibles, Torahs or Korans.  We do not require people first read The Gulag Archipelago before purchasing a copy of The Communist Manifesto, or the Diary of Anne Frank before buying Mein Kampf.  I agree that we need more education on firearms, but that education cannot be a barrier to the exercise of a constitutional right.

David Codrea takes on the notion that youth today are violent because of “easy access” to firearms over at the Cleveland Examiner.

The hearings are finished at this point, with the vote scheduled to take place on January 21st.  If you’re going to write, call or e-mail your Senator, be sure to do it before then.

Steven Halbrook, one of the leading Second Amendment attorneys, has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the nomination of Eric Holder.

Continuing to reveal Holder as a staunch opponent of the Second Amendment, Halbrook concludes, “Eric Holder has taken a constricted view of Second Amendment rights. Millions of law-abiding Americans exercise the right to keep and bear arms. Mr. Holder’s opinion is that the people have no such right unless they are commanded to exercise it in a formal militia, which renders the right meaningless… Many Americans have reason to be uneasy about Mr. Holder’s nomination for Attorney General. They deserve to have a person in this role who is committed to upholding all parts of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder has proven himself not to be that person.”

Halbrook is a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and author of The Founder’s Second Amendment.

UPDATE: Halbrook is actually testifying now, on C-SPAN.  (Finished around noon)

Eric Holder seems to have told Senators that his options to fight for gun control has significantly narrowed:

Attorney General-designate Eric Holder conceded during his confirmation hearing Thursday that the government’s options for regulating the possession of firearms have been narrowed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment ensures an individual right to bear arms.

“Reasonable restrictions are still possible,” Holder said, including measures such as a ban on the sale of what are called “cop-killer” bullets.

I doubt any of our fair senators were gunny enough to ask him exactly what a “cop-killer” bullet was?  I mean, any bullet can kill a cop if there’s a dirtbag shooting at him.  In truth I doubt Eric Holder has any idea what a cop-killer bullet is, other than the fiction he’s seen in movies.