The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
A very good discussion going on at Volokh on the DC ruling. It gets into the comments a bit about whether guns painted a certain color could be ban. It’s argued that could be a first amendment issue. Someone in the comments brings in the funny with:
What we need is for someone to come up with a “Bong hits 4 Jesus†durocoat.
I’m sure that the folks at Lauer will get right on that. Oh, if you don’t get that reference, just click here. Unfortunately that argument lost :)
I demand the arrest of Thomas William Heyck, professor of History at Northwestern University for this vicious and seditious attack on the Second Amendment. Because clearly the right to free speech only applies to goose quill and parchment! None of this newfangled Internets.
In US District Court in the D.C. Circuit, DC’s restrictions on guns as they currently are have been upheld. You can find the opinion here. I think this is wrong, but it’s worth noting that the original Heller case, then known as Parker v. DC failed at the District Court level too, but won on appeal. No guarantee this happens here, however.
For a lot of reasons, I’m not too enthusiastic about proceeding forward at this point with challenges to assault weapons bans. Let’s get the court to say a bit more about the right first, before opening that whole can of worms. I agree the common use test here should easily protect them, but just because it’s correct doesn’t mean that’s what the courts will do.
UPDATE: Just skimming, this is an awful ruling. No attempt was made to determine whether DC’s state public safety goals with their ridiculous gun control scheme could be achieved with a lesser level of infringement. It’s hard to see what gun control law would fail this level of scrutiny applied by the District Court.
Steve at the Firearms Blog covers what appears to be the firearms bubble bursting. In any bubble you will tend to have speculators. If many of the people buying up AR-15s were doing it in anticipation of selling at higher post-ban prices, then the industry will go through some very tough times as those speculators sell their inventory and cut their losses. If they were mostly new shooters, well, one thing about AR-15s is they are like Lays Potato Chips. You can’t just have one. If I were betting money (also known as investing) I would probably err on the side of believing there were speculators, and there will be a lot of guns and ammo on the market as people cut their losses. I think the firearms industry will be in for some tough times, though I expect parts of it to continue doing well.
Apparently now all’s left is a formal roll call vote and approval by Governor Brewer. Here’s hoping to see this as law soon.
The Second Circuit has ruled that a person has a clear liberty interest in carrying a firearm, and that there are due process interests within the permitting process. At issue would seem to be the claim that the permitting process couldn’t repeatedly demand proof of citizenship (you had to do it to get the permit, so what’s the need to do it repeatedly?). Also it would appear to hinge that the delays are unnecessary and don’t serve any compelling state interest.
Dave Hardy adds, “Amazing how this legal field has turned around in a year or two.” This is a big deal, because this is going to play very much against the City of New York’s entire system of licensing even ownership of firearms, and New York State is part of the Second Circuit. It might be that the courts will allow licensing of the right to own a gun, much like they’ve done with the right to marry, but with significant judicial oversight as to what’s allowed and what’s not. They will only be able to do what is needed to determine your qualification, and nothing more. They won’t be able to put in requirements intended to frustrate the ownership or carrying of firearms.
Ideally, I’d like there to be no licensing, and that’s entirely possible to achieve, but even the allowing of a relatively easy and unobtrusive licensing provision would be a major weakening of the licensing regime for the most restrictive states, to the point where I’m not sure how many jurisdictions are going to bother with them. The entire point of licensing was to frustrate people from exercising their rights. If they can no longer do that, I wouldn’t be shocked to see the requirement start to become viewed as arcane, and for it to be politically easier to remove them entirely. That’s actually been able to happen in a few states that had relatively meaningless permit requirements, namely Missouri and Nebraska. North Carolina also has such a permit, but we’ve not gotten much traction on that issue there, largely because North Carolina has been swelling with population fleeing the northeast and maintaining their voting habits from back home. But the precedent is there.
Is the Sullivan Act appealing once its primary purpose of frustrating the right is no longer served? We might find out.
The Belmont Club has an interesting piece covering how Chicago political elites game the public education system, and how Daley uses this as a means of consolidating power.
Daly discovered the great rule of demagoguery. Convince those who’ve never eatenpâté de foie gras that the swill they are eating is it. Serve the real pate to those who already know what it tastes like. It was a system that would have been instantly familiar to former Soviets. World class academies for the nomenklatura, shacks on the banks of the Volga for those on the outs. Mayor Daley has indignantly denied the special list was used for playing favorites. He argued that just because there was a VIP entrance doesn’t mean anyone actually used it. The Chicago Sun Times reported that “Daley said there was nothing wrong with former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan’s office maintaining such a log because ‘no favoritism’ resulted from it.†One official, Office of Compliance Chief Anthony Boswell, whose children qualified for a magnet school after moving in from Denver said that while it made him look bad, he didn’t actually know if he received preferential treatment.
As Richard Fernandez points out, these are the same people who just took over our Health Care System. God Help us! All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
First the bad news. The Democrat controlled house in New Hampshire appears to have defeated an initiative to repeal the ban on firearms in the State Capitol. The headline is “House sends gun ban repeal packing.” I say gun owners in New Hampshire ought to send the Democrats packing in November.
Good news, though, is that Kansas is moving a relaxation of carry laws along:
The House voted 65-57 in support of a bill that would allow the carrying of concealed weapons in municipal and state agency buildings unless the facility has enough security measures in place to ensure no weapons are permitted in the building. The bill would exclude school districts and would require that the carrier have a concealed-carry permit.
Sounds a lot like my “Three S” strategy.
It looks like poor hysterical Abby Spangler and her stuck CAPS LOCK key pulled the Brady Campaign into a fight they could not win with Starbucks. And so now, their campaign against the company, for their own sake, should be considered toast.
I subscribe to some food industry news sites, and yesterday I kept a close eye on anything related to the Starbucks shareholder meeting coming across those wires. Not a peep about guns. No one who cares about the bottom line cared about the fact that Starbucks wasn’t caving to the Brady Campaign. I didn’t even see a mention of it any industry news source or business article on the meeting.
If you want to know what investors are most excited about, it’s their instant coffee brand Via, the drastic expense cutting, and another brand of coffee they acquired in 2003, Seattle’s Best Coffee. In fact, the retailer is going to start growing again, this time being a little smarter about the process. Several analysts were quoted saying they expect very good outcomes for Starbucks based on all of the news coming out of this meeting. This year, their stock was upgraded to Buy from neutral. In other words, people just don’t care about their carry policies.
Pew just released a poll on gun control, and it shows support for restricting gun ownership keeps dropping, and is dropping precipitously among women. Support among blacks and hispanics continues to be high, but those groups are dropping as well. Half of Americans believe that local communities should not be able to ban handguns. The number of supporters of that is under half. Other good news is Independents are with us on the general issue, and Democrats are increasingly coming around as well. In fact, across the political spectrum, you notice a sharp spike post-Heller.