A New York trial court rules that there’s not Second Amendment protection for air guns because they are not “arms,” within the meaning of the Second Amendment. It seems to me, however, that the right to keep and bear arms necessarily has to include some right to practice with and become proficient in the use of arms. Since air guns are of high utility for practicing and honing skills with arms, their possession and use ought to be protected as readily as powder firearms. Dave Kopel has, I think, successfully argued this point previously.
Category: Guns
New Jersey AG on That Whole “Bear Arms” Thing
From an ANJRPC alert, we have the text of the Attorney General’s brief in the lawsuit over New Jersey’s carry laws:
New Jersey’s carefully conceived and long-standing regulatory scheme is rooted in an appreciation that a permit to carry may not afford any measure of self-protection to a particular applicant and would instead increase the risk of the applicant being involved in “the known and serious dangers of misuse and accidental use.†When a handgun is carried in public, the serious risks and dangers of misuse and accidental use are borne by the public.
New Jersey has not merely a significant interest but a compelling interest in combating handgun violence and combating the dangers and risks associated with the accidental and misuse of handguns, which are inherent in carrying a handgun. It also has a compelling interest in reducing the use of handguns in crimes. A government’s foremost function is to ensure the safety of all of its citizenry. When handguns are permitted to be carried beyond one’s home, the dangers and risks necessarily increase and are borne by the public.
Generally speaking, one cannot know whether crime against an individual will occur at all, much less know when, where, or how. Neither then can one know whether a handgun would provide an effective measure of self-defense and be safe to use as to other victims or bystanders. Further, the “need†for a handgun for self-defense outside of the home does not stand alone. The carrying of a handgun inherently comes with the dangers and risks of its misuse or accidental use. These dangers and risks are borne by everyone with whom the person encounters.
That’s kind of funny, considering 40 or so other states seem to manage some kind of shall-issue policy without blood running in the streets. This would also seem to be the kind of policy argument, advocated by Justice Breyer, that the Heller and McDonald majorities rejected. In addition to this statement, she’s’ trying to get ANJRPC and SAF thrown off the lawsuit.
More on the White House and Gun Control
But in the next two weeks, the White House will unveil a new gun-control effort in which it will urge Congress to strengthen current laws, which now allow some mentally unstable people, such as alleged Arizona shooter Jared Loughner, to obtain certain assault weapons, in some cases without even a background check.
What’s shaping up, it would seem, is that we’re going to get some kind of NICS bill out of this, like we did after Virginia Tech. The risk is, what else are we going to get with it?
Thanks to read Mike and Red Five X for the pointer.
Jilted Again?
“I wouldn’t rule out that at some point the president talks about the issues surrounding gun violence,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said aboard Air Force One on the way to an event with Obama in Wisconsin. “I don’t have a timetable or, obviously, what he would say.”
That sounds committed. Maybe he’ll say something about puppies and kittens too, at some point of the future. Maybe. Yeah. I’m pretty sure there will be a puppy and kitchen speech in there somewhere. Even the Washington Post reporter notes:
Obama’s silence is hardly surprising. Former president Bill Clinton attributes some of the party’s defeat in 1994 to gun control. After 2000, when then-Vice President Al Gore lost states such as Tennessee as he espoused his support for gun control, Democrats completely abandoned the issue.
Fortunately for the the other side, they have the GOP to pick up the slack.
State Gun?
Well, considering it’s Utah, and considering the gun, and who designed it, it makes sense. Unfortunately, this was controversial for some lawmakers. Personally, I think they should be happy to be known for something other than giving the world the Osmonds.
“Lost” Guns
Pretty clearly our opponents are hoping people think all 62,000 lost guns ended up in the hands of criminals. ATF considers the gun lost if there’s no paperwork for it. A lot of times it’s just carelessness rather than deliberate malfeasance on the part of the dealer. Currently, the only method ATF has to enforce the paperwork requirements is license revocation. The ATF reform bill would change this.
Also interesting is Brady is hoping no one bothers to look up the number of guns sold during that three year period. The answer for that figure is about 40 million, according to NICS records for the past three years. If you do the math, this means the firearms industry loses track of about one tenth of one percent of inventory a year. That’s a pretty good track record. I’ll bet the postal service loses more mail than this. I’m also amused Paul feels the need to bring up Switzerland:
“We always hear from the other side that Switzerland has lots of guns and they’re safe,” Helmke said. “But in Switzerland you have to account for them — individuals even have to account for the number of bullets they have at the end of each month.”
Hey, if the government gives me a fully automatic M16 to keep at home, I’d promise to account for it too. But Switzerland only accounts for government owned weapons and ammunition. You can still buy and use both firearms and ammunition fairly freely, though forces are at work doing their best to change that.
So it would seem that misleading the public about our gun laws is no long sufficient. Now it appears they have to mislead the public about other country’s gun laws too.
Dave Hardy on FOPA
This appears in this month’s First Freedom. It’s a fairly comprehensive article on FOPA:
When the struggle started in 1979, Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. Peter Rodino of New Jersey controlled the two judiciary committees that would have to approve the bill. And when the long haul was ending some seven years later, the measure had passed through the Senate, but Rodino still chaired the House Judiciary Committee and was proclaiming the bill “dead on arrival.†At the outset, NRA was a fraction of its current size, rejoicing in having grown from 600,000 members to a full 1 million. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action was barely four years old. The Internet was still far in the future, and anti-gunners had a solid lock on the mass media, where gun owners were depicted as demonic and the NRA as the prince of darkness—all images perpetuated by what is today known as the Brady Campaign, the American Bar Association and the u.s. Conference of Mayors.
The fight seemed impossible, yet we won. FOPA, as it became known, didn’t just change the restrictive Gun Control Act of 1968, it overruled no fewer than six anti-gun Supreme Court decisions and about one-third of the hundreds of lower court rulings interpreting the Gun Control Act.
Read the whole thing. It goes into detail ordinary people having their lives ruined by an overly aggressive ATF. I’ve said before, our opponents like the hew and haw that we’ve cropped enforcement, but that’s largely a creature of their own making. They’ve created an environment where there can be no common sense, but common sense to them involves no one having guns. You can’t negotiate when that’s the starting point.
Dave ends the article with talk about the Hughes Amendment, but think it was probably necessary to pass FOPA, even despite it:
In 2011, we seem to be at the beginning of a new stage in the American gun culture. Firearm sales are at record levels, many anti-gun politicians fear to touch the issue and the courts are recognizing the constitutional right of gun ownership. Would we have survived this far if, for the last 25 years, gun dealers had been subject to arrest on paperwork errors and their entire inventories confiscated even if they were found not guilty; and gun shows had regularly seen half a dozen honest collectors hauled away in handcuffs? It’s safe to say that the entire picture of gun ownership would be different. 1986 was the last, best shot at getting these protections. To kill the bill, lose seven years of development and alienate the majority of representatives who had rebelled against their leadership by signing the discharge petition would have ended hopes for stopping the many abuses.
The truth is we lost the battle for machine guns in 1934. It’s a shame people back then didn’t fight for them, but they didn’t, and that’s what we’re stuck with today.
Stolen Guns
Arizona Rifleman had a gun stolen:
However, they also stole my Glock 19 pistol (9mm, serial MLV023). It had a full magazine of Federal HST JHPs.
I normally take both the computer and gun inside at night, but I was going to have a drink or two with friends last night so I left it in the car to be responsible. That seems to have been not a good idea in this particular case.
I’m not sure what Arizona law in particular is on this matter, but in Pennsylvania there’s no legal limit or restrictions on drinking while carrying, short of what a sheriff will revoke your LTC for. The best place for the gun is on your person, or in a safe. While not mixing guns and alcohol is probably the best bet, if you’re sober enough to drive a car, you’re sober enough to keep the gun on you rather than leave it in a vehicle.
Leaving guns in cars is a bad idea, and our opponents never realize what happens when the laws they advocate promote that habit. They’d prefer people not carry a gun at all, but people can and do carry guns legally. What is going to happen when the law bans guns from certain places, is guns are going to get stolen from cars and end up on the black market.
Arizona Rifleman thought he was doing the responsible thing, but the truth is I’d rather someone have a few drinks and have a gun on them, than to leave the gun in the car. The risk of the gun getting stolen out of the car is a lot higher than the risk of an accidental shooting. We’ve been conditioned into believing that somehow people under 0.08 BAC are sober enough to drive a 2 ton bludgeon down the road at 60 miles an hour, but too irresponsible to keep a gun on their side. This is nonsense.
Our opponents need to accept they have irrevocably lost the guns in public argument, and start thinking about how we can keep people from leaving guns in cars.
(Oh, and PS, banning guns in cars is not the answer)
UPDATE: I should note that the circumstances here were a bit different than I had assumed. See Arizona Rifleman’s comment below. Arizona law here was not an issue, and under the circumstances, I think he made the correct decision, except for hindsight.
Left Trying to Make Hay out of NRA Board Members
John Richardson has reported what I’ve been meaning to cover, but haven’t had time to. A few lefty groups are giving three NRA board members a hard time for selling guns or gun accessories, claiming this is proof that NRA is in it for gun profits. Even though NRA has 76 board members, and they are all, each and every one of them, elected by the votes of NRA members.
If our opponents think these three board members means NRA is in bed with the interests of the gun industry, what does it mean that at least seven NRA board members (off the top of my head, there are probably more) are current or former law enforcement officers? What does that imply to the anti-gun movement?
I Lend this Some Credence
SayUncle notes that there’s a rumor circulating that ATF is going to eliminate the CLEO signoff requirement for Title II firearms. He’s skeptical it will happen. I’d also say it’s unlikely, but I’ll lend the idea some credence. In NRA’s Firearms Law Seminar last year, one of ATF’s lawyers mentioned that they are overwhelmed by the number of NFA trusts they need to review and check up on, to make sure they are all proper, and were looking for ways to alleviate the problem. It’s quite possible, in an attempt to reduce the amount of trusts they have to review, ATF is looking to ease the conventional transfer process, so fewer NFA owners resort to using trusts.
Trusts make a lot of sense in some circumstances, but they are often resorted to because CLEO sign-off is unavailable, in circumstances where a standard transfer would suffice. I would suspect the vast majority of trusts are for items like suppressors and short barreled rifles, rather than machine guns. I would love to help ATF eliminate this backlog by deregulating both of these items, but that’s something only Congress can do.