Category: Gun Rights

Due to pressure from gun control activists, Evanston, IL has decided to take no action on its gun ban.  Better lawyer up, Evanston.  This won’t be cheap or easy.

Hat Tip to Carl in Chicago

A federal judge has ruled there’s no unconstitutional property taking involved in Florida’s law allowing employees with Concealed Weapons Permits to carry to work.  He also ruled that the law does not violate OSHA standards.  I’ve said before that I don’t agree with the NRA’s push for these laws, both on pro-liberty grounds, and because I think resources would be better spent elsewhere, but I found the notion that OSHA regulations mandate a gun free workplace to be silly, and I’m happy to see that reasoning rejected.

That’s right, it’s not DC v. Heller.  Dick Heller is suing the District of Colombia once again over their new gun laws.  We wish Mr. Heller the best of luck.

UPDATE: You can see a copy of the complaint here.

UPDATE: Now that I’ve had time to read, it looks like they are basically asking for an injunction against:

1. The ballistics testing nonsense which requires an undefined fee.
2. The nonsense about not being able to register a semi-automatic pistol under DC’s ridiculous definition of “machine gun”
3. They ask for any further relief the court may want to offer.

What they are not asking for an injunction on is whether semi-autos that can shoot more than 12 rounds from a magazine.  Also, again, they aren’t challenging the registration itself.  That’ll all be later cases.  Pick the low hanging fruit first.

Looks like we can expect a few more communities around Chicago to join Wilmette and Morton Grove:

But Wilmette threw in the towel earlier this week. Evanston plans to repeal its ban Monday, and so does the village of Morton Grove, which passed the first ban in the country 27 years ago.

We look forward to Evanston rejoining these United States.  Welcome back.  But this is an interesting development:

The city of Chicago is modifying its ban on handguns slightly but maintaining the teeth in the ordinance as the Daley administration prepares to fight the gun lobby all the way back to the Supreme Court. And they’ll be joined by the village of Oak Park, which appears to be the only suburb that’s not throwing in the towel, despite the Supreme Court ruling and the potential legal bills.

I’m wondering what “modifications” Daley is planning to make.  No doubt he wants to differentiate his ban from Washington DCs to make it a bit harder for us.  I thought he said that was out earlier in the week, but I guess it’s back in.

Based on the poll I took a few days ago, there seem to be some people who believe registration is the line in the sand, but it’s not a majority.  Only about 11% of people who answered the poll.  I don’t disagree with folks on this for two reasons.  For one, if the reason we hate registration is because it enables confiscation, we already have that.  For all intents and purposes, 4473 is registration.  All a government would have to do is call in all those forms and scan them into a computer, or just keep going down the list.  Sure, it would be incomplete, but it’s probably complete enough for most of us.  Second, registration depends on voluntary compliance.  Unless you’re going to go around searching people’s houses door to door, in which case we have bigger problems than the registration law itself, if people don’t comply, there’s not much the government can do.  This is a good candidate for civil disobedience, which has worked very well in Canada.

But how far is too far?  Has California gone too far?  Chicago?  DC?  New Jersey?  Would someone there be morally justified in shooting it out?  I tend to think that as long as firearms of reasonably modern lineage are available to people for purchase and use, then the line hasn’t yet been crossed to the point where we’re ready to start thinking about the exercising the second amendment’s true purpose.

I hate California’s assault weapons ban, but it does regulate cosmetic features.  It’s what makes the ban silly, but it also doesn’t do much to prevent people from carrying out the purposes of the second amendment.  Are you really that badly downgraded with an M1 Garand, or a Mini-14 ranch rifle than an AR-15?  The ban is annoying, and yes, I do believe it infringes on the second amendment, but in terms of it’s practical significance in preventing the execution of its purpose, California’s laws frustrate the second amendment, but do not entirely destroy it.

I’m also skeptical about resorting to the doomsday scenario in response to local laws.  There is a fine tradition in America of saying “f^*k this!” and voting with your feet. People have been fleeing Massachusetts and New Jersey by the droves.  New York, particularly upstate, has also been depopulating.  No doubt this is not all over gun laws, but it would seem that when governments stop respecting their citizens, and start over-taxing, regulating, infantalizing them, they get sick of it and seek out greener pastures.  Who would have known?  I think gun owners can get a lot of mileage out of moving to states that repsect their rights.  I think you can even make a plan out of that.  Sure, picking up your life and moving it is a big commitment, but a far less so than pulling the trigger.

That said, I do think we need to keep the government from destroying the second amendment.  That’s a line that can’t be crossed, because if it is, you can bet others will be.  Fortunately, the government seems more interested these days in saying that it means something, rather than looking for ways to undermine it (Fenty and Daley’s turds in the pool notwithstanding), but if we do start heading down the path to destruction of that right, my attitude will not remain so moderate.

For anyone who’s interested, this is the original Letter to the Editor Mike was responding to.  Tamara probably had the best all time response to fools who believe in this:

Okay, this pen is a gun. The paper I’m holding is my license and the paper you’re holding is the registration. Using only these two pieces of paper, explain to me just how you are going to keep me from shooting someone?

Michael Bane makes the argument that Mike’s letter to the editor was merely asking the age old question “Who Will Bell the Cat”.  As much as I want to put this whole thing behind us, I do want to address some points Michael made in his post:

The first is that there is a huge disconnect between us and them, us being the gun culture; them being the more amorphous “majority” of our society.

The problem with this outlook is that the gun culture is also quite amorphous.  At what point are you part of the gun culture?  Does merely owning a gun count?  Do you have to shoot it?  How often?  Do you have to buy in to lawful machine gun ownership to be part of the gun culture?  There are almost as many opinions on what the second amendment means in the gun culture as there are people in it.  There’s a reason this is funny, because it’s true.

There is no clean line you can draw and say people with beliefs X, Y, and Z are part of the gun culture and everyone else is not.  To the extent that you try, you only end up making your tent smaller.  In electoral politics, the size of your tent is directly proportional to your political power.  There are plenty of folks out there who would like to purify the movement; to drive out the hunters, the sportsmen, and the sunshine patriots.  That is a recipe for electoral ruin, and makes the inevitable terrible consequences more likely.

The reason I get uppity when it comes to crafting the gun rights message is because the gun culture has to overlap into the mainstream culture.  Subcultures do not fare well under electoral governments if they become unpopular.  Just ask smokers.  The larger impressions the general public has of gun owners and of the gun culture is of great importance in both the acceptance of gun ownership among the general population, and in recruiting gun owners and non-gun owners from the mainstream culture to join the fight for the second amendment.

As a hypothetical example, I give you Bob.  Bob is a pretty ordinary guy.  He’s married, has two kids, lives in a quiet suburb outside a metropolitan area.  Every day Bob gets up, and goes to his professional job.  He’s active in his kids’ sports league, and participates in a few other community groups.  He follows politics.  Not in detail, but votes in every election because he thinks it’s his civic duty.  Bob also keeps a shotgun in his closet, because he wants to be able to protect his family, and every once in a while, he likes to go to the range and break a few clays.  Bob believes in the Second Amendment, but is not active in the issue.

Bob keeps his ownership of a shotgun, and his beliefs to himself.  He is afraid of what his peers will think.  You see, Bob’s neighbors, friends and colleagues only have exposure to the parts of the gun culture that’s shown to them by the main stream media.  In that world, the NRA is extreme and crazy, and then there are those scary folks preparing for revolution.  Bob doesn’t want to be seen as crazy by his peers, so Bob shuts up.

Bob overhears a few coworkers talking about a letter to the editor they saw in the paper, and hears them speak of “gun nuts” and “whaked out extremists”  Bob disagrees, because he is a gun owner, but figures he better not speak out, for fear of being painted with that brush by those around him.

Many folks would say Bob is a coward, because Bob is not willing to stand up for himself or his beliefs.  They would say Bob is useless, worthless, and not good enough for them.  But you know what?  There are a lot of Bobs out there.  A lot of them.  And I want them all to start speaking.  Because what happens when Bob speaks?  Many of his coworkers, perhaps aghast at first, suddenly realize “Bob is a normal guy.  I like Bob.  Maybe all those things I see on TV and read the papers about gun owners aren’t always true.”

That is how you start to break down image the media has built of gun owners.  There is no inside the gun culture, or outside it.  The gun culture is not an insular community that doesn’t participate in the greater national community.  It can’t be.  Not if we want to win the battle for gun rights.  Given that, I see no reason for gun owners to provide the media with more tools they can use to create an image of gun owners are being dangerous, and far outside the main stream.  In fact, we need to work very hard to foster the opposite impression in the media.  You and I, who are neck deep in the gun culture, understand what we mean when we talk about lines in the sand.  Bob and his peers do not, and if Bob is afraid to speak, we’re finished.