ATF has ruled that people with medical marijuana cards are ineligible to purchase firearms, and have sent a letter to dealers outlining such. As a matter of federal law, their determination in this case is quite correct. Whether the federal law is proper or constitutional, I think is open for debate.
Category: Guns
Gun Rights Policy Conference
John Richardson has his impressions of his first GRPC, which is an annual event put on by SAF and CCRKBA. I’ve never been to one, but it’s on my list to get to one of these years. Obviously, considering our employment situation, this was not going to be the year.
New York City Air Defenses
I was interested to see this post over at Extrano’s Alley that the NYPD commish was bragging that they had the ability to take down aircraft. I’m thinking unless they picked up an SA-7, or some cheap and only likely marginally effective Soviet or Chicom AAA armored vehicle, that a Stinger or some other such MANPAD was awfully expensive for even a city as large as New York. Nonetheless, you never know, given enough budget and reckless abandon, what city officials will purchase. So I at least gave them the benefit of doubt that perhaps the NYPD got their hands on the mother of all toys.
Turns out that the NYPD commish bought his own bullshit, and was referred to the Barrett .50 cals in his department’s inventories. If they had a couple of Ma Deuces strapped to an SUV, or even a mini gun, I might concede that perhaps they have the ability to take out a rogue aircraft with the right kind of gunner, if it’s moving slowly enough, and they don’t mind raining lead down on large parts of the city when they miss (which will be most of the rounds). But if the M82A1Â is what the commish thinks is his anti-aircraft kit, he’s a lot dumber than I thought.
Chiappa RFID Tags
This is a nightmare. From the Firearm Blog:
The latest issue of the European gun magazine Gun Trade World quotes Chiappa’s Cinzia Pinzoni saying “The information on the microchip can be rewritten several times” and “the chip is very difficult to remove … accompanies the weapon forever providing all the information gathered regarding its production … and the registration of the gun and the owners details.”. Scary, very scary!
It would be remarkably easy for gun thieves to steal guns if all they had to do was drive down any given street and get an inventory. That’s not even mentioning that it surely could be abused by hostile authorities. Chiappa has clearly never heard of Joe’s Jews in the Attic test. This is major fail.
All this is doing is giving our opponents ideas. They know we don’t like this. The only thing I sincerely hope prevents them from taking this awful idea and running with it is what a boon it would be to gun thieves.
More Bad News for Our Opponents
… the latest national telephone survey finds that 39% consider it a positive when a political candidate is described as being “pro-gun.â€
Only 27% see this as a negative description, while another 30% say it lies somewhere in between. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Of course, this seems to vary between Democrats and Republicans:
Naturally, there are strong partisan divides on both labels. While most Republicans (62%) and a plurality of voters not affiliated with either party (42%) sees being labeled “pro-gun†as positive, 49% of Democrats see that as negative.
But it’s interesting that even among Democrats, you can’t get half of them to describe being pro-gun as negative. I’d really hate to be our opponents these days. It’s nothing but bad news chasing after more bad news, from their point of view.
If This Guy Doesn’t Own a Gun After This …
Read this horrifying account of a mob attack in the Port Richmond part of Philadelphia. A good Samaritan took the two intended teenage victims into his home and protected them until the police got there. Unfortunately, the good Samaritan did not have a firearm to protect himself, and nearly got shot by one the yobs. Fortunately for him, the police arrived before it could get really ugly.
Our opponents like to pretend that there’s never any reason to own a gun. They would also probably argue that it was a good thing no one was hurt. The difference between them and us is that I think it would have been a net social good if each of these yobs had been shot dead as they entered this man’s home.
The police in Philadelphia pretty clearly have lost control of the streets. Hardly surprising given police are one of the first places the incompetent boobs who run that city cut when the going gets tough. The only thing that’s going to put a stop to this behavior is if private citizens raise the cost of doing it. At the very least, if this man had a gun, the City would possibly have reduced the population of people willing to chase and beat other human beings by a few members, in which case it’s hard for me to see why that would be a net social negative. Not all gun violence is a bad thing. Our opponents have long failed to understand the difference between predatory and protective violence.
Illinois Supreme Court Carry Case Amicus Brief
The law professors who have written the new Second Amendment book have also filed an Amici Curiae with the Supreme Court of Illinois over a carry case that will be heard before the state high court. You can read the amicus here. From the brief:
Over the past two centuries, courts applying the right to bear arms for self-defense under state and federal constitutions have repeatedly affirmed that the right includes the carrying of arms in public. The right can be regulated to an extent, such as required that defensive weapons be carried openly, rather than concealed. However, the right cannot be destroyed by prohibiting public carry.
Our opponents are on incredibly weak legal ground with the argument that the Second Amendment only protects the right to have a gun in the home. Heller pretty clearly recognized the right as being broader than that, and as this amicus points out, state courts have a long history of recognizing that under state right to bear arms analogues. The professors do point out that the character of the state Court decision has allowed substantial leeway for the regulation of the manner in which arms may be borne, but that under virtually all state analogs, a prohibition on the right to bear arms, such as exists in Illinois, has never been held to be constitutional. The professors note:
Post-Heller courts that confine the Second Amendment to the walls of the home have ignored this body of precedent. Astonishingly, the decision below does not cite or examine a single one of the cases discussed above, including the ones explicitly relied upon in Heller. In fact, it does not examine any pre-Heller judicial opinions explicating the right to bear arms — except for the decision in Kalodimus v. Villiage of Mortaon Grive, 470 N.E.2nd 266 (Ill. 1984) (upholding a municipal ban on handguns), which was repudiated by Heller and McDonald.
The same grave omission undermines Dawson, as well as the Maryland decision relied upon by the court below, Williams v. State, 10 A.3d 1167 (Md. 2011). None of these opinions engages with historical evidence or with right to bear arms cases decided prior to 2008. That is an extraordinary way to respond to a pair of landmark decisions as drenched in history and tradition as were Heller and McDonald. This omission is sufficient in itself to raise a presumption that the application of the Second Amendment in these opinions has gone seriously astray.
The Williams case, by the way, has a cert petition before the US Supreme Court. The Maryland Supreme Court, in that case, essentially ruled there was no right to bear arms outside of the home, and that the Heller ruling confined the right to having a handgun in the home. This interpretation is intellectually and historically dishonest. It’ll be interesting to see what the Illinois Supreme Court does in this case.
3D Printed AR Magazine
It’s only a five rounder, but it would seem other people are getting the idea. In our project to make a 30 round magazine for an M11 submachine gun, we found that the ABS plastic the Makerbot uses to be a bit too flexible for a 30 round magazine. At some point, Jason and I will get around to test firing the design we worked on. But this is pretty neat, considering this 5 round AR mag uses a plastic spring also made on the 3D printer. Our magazine used a metal spring that was from a broken magazine.
HR822 Lies and Distortions Continue
Our opponents are continuing to distort the National Recprocity Bill. This editorial out of Eugene Oregon note opposition groups suggesting the bill is setting federal standards for permits, which is does not:
But opponents of the legislation, which includes a coalition of 600 U.S. mayors, the American Bar Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, say, if enacted into law, the measure would “dumb down†gun laws all across the country, requiring states, cities and counties with more stringent concealed weapons laws — including gun safety training requirements — to loosen their standards. And that, opponents say, would create a threat to public safety.
The way MAIG and the other gun control organizations are putting it, it makes it sound as if HR822 weakens established state issuance standards. It does not. It just forces each state to recognize permits from each other state. This is a clever way of putting it, which is not technically a lie, since some states, like Ohio, will only sign reciprocity agreements with other states that mandate training. This bill would indeed take that power away from the State of Ohio, and other states that have similar reciprocity standards. But by distorting it this way, they make the bill sound worse, from their point of view, than it really is.
Not on their Agenda
It would seem there are ideas that are so bad that even the gun control stalwarts in this state won’t get behind them. Such is the case with bar coding bullets, which is an issue being highlighted in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is even dumber than microstamping. Of course, I’m not being very sensitive to victims of gun violence, who are floating this proposal. Our people, you see, have a problem with that. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? They make public policy proposals, and we don’t dare question them, because they are victims. They have absolute moral authority, and we’re just scum of the earth for questioning them.