Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 1458 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

I’m The Responsible Party

Ahab notes an e-mail he received from the GeorgiaCarry.org folks:

I have been working closely with the NRA trying to get them to join the other groups that have already given their written endorsement to HB 915, including GCO, GSSA (the NRA affiliate in Georgia), SCCC, and GOA. I still hold out hope that the NRA will endorse HB 915 in the near future. If somebody at the NRA with whom I have been working is actively at the same time passing out misinformation, I would like to know about it.

I am probably the person that originated this with my post.Â I also hope that NRA will endorse HB 915, but I suspect that 915 will have to be modified to not pose a threat to HB 89.Â I’m still not convinced by the folks who say there’s no danger there; I think there is.Â I will try to get one of our attorney bloggers to weigh in on this matter.

I’m not in agreement that the parking lot carry bill should be a priority, but this parking lot carry bill is important to a lot of other gun owners.Â The NRA has staked its reputation on the car carry bill, and they aren’t going to abandon it at this point.Â As much as I think that sucks, because carry laws affect me more than a parking lot law would, I’m not the only gun owner out there.Â I think there needs to be a little understanding that sometimes the powers that be will push the interests of other gun owners over yours.

More on HB 915

Ed over at the comments on Jeff’s site responds to my comments on HB 915:

Go back and read the bill again. We have literally been working on this bill for years, and we last worked through this portion some time ago (before the NRA ever dreamed up a parking lots bill for Georgia). Removing that section would change the bill. Here is why. Section 4 of HB 915 is an express authorization for license holders to carry â€œin all areas of this State, except as specifically limited in this Code Section.â€ While this language was also stolen directly from the senate bill that the NRA pushed into law in Colorado, it was good language for Georgia because of the odd case law here pertaining to criminal trespass and government property. This authority to carry â€œin all areas of the Stateâ€ language will ensure that local government officials cannot simply use criminal trespass law to eject lawful firearm carriers or arrest them.

BUT IF SUBSECTION C IS REMOVED, then Section 4 would mean that a person with a firearms license would be authorized to carry in all areas of the state, including any and all private property. That means your private property, Sebastion. Do you think that is a good idea? Would such a bill be likely to pass? If not, then why do you suggest the language be removed?

In other words, the language to which you point is integral to HB 915 and has NOTHING to do with the NRAâ€™s parking lots bill. You need to be more careful in looking at the effects of your suggestions.

GCOâ€™s Secretary informed me that he went through the time stamped drafts of the bill, and that provision appears in every version, INCLUDING THE VERSIONS THAT PREDATE THE NRAâ€™S PARKING LOTS BILL. In light of this evidence, please QUIT claiming that anybody had any designs to â€œscuttleâ€ anything the NRA is doing. You are simply wrong, and I wish you would take affirmative steps to correct the misinformation you have been publishing and distributing.

Please correct your statements on your blog and here.

I do apologize if this was not deliberately intended, and have put this here in its entirety in the interest of fairness on that issue, and I will update the original post with a link here.

But I still don’t see how this section doesn’t interfere with the parking lot bill NRA is pushing.Â Â I am not, however, an expert on Georgia firearms law, but based on my reading of both bills, HB 915 could interfere with HB 89.Â Can some of our attorney types on the blogosphere weigh in with what they think?

Wrong Headed Thinking

I guess if I’m going to criticize Reason Magazine, I should probably link to them when they say thinks that make sense and I can agree with.Â This article by Chris Sprow talks about how the NFL has been strongly discouraging players from keeping or bearing arms.

No doubt we’ve had problems with NBA players doing this illegally, or engaging in illegal activity while armed, which the NFL would be right to discourage, but I agree that it’s wrongheaded to impose a blanket policy on players, especially when they are attractive targets of violent crime.

Reason Magazine

I used to be a subscriber to Reason back in the days when Virginia Postrel ran the show. Hit and Run was actually the first blog I started reading. But sometime in the early part of the decade I just stopped reading. Something had changed. I didn’t know if it was me that changed, the magazine, or a little bit of both.

Either way, I no longer subscribe, because while I still self-identify as a classical liberal, the style just seems to have changed under Nick Gillespie such that it no longer really appeals to me. Maybe it’s meant to appeal to a younger crowd, and I’m just getting old. Anyone else been a reader and think it’s gone downhill?

A New York Year

Tom King has the low down on what he thinks gun owners in The Empire State will be facing in 2008.Â Chief among them is the effort there to close the “musket loophole”, by classifying black powder muzzle loading firearms the same as modern firearms.

2008 is going to be rough sailing folks.Â We have to be ready.

San Francisco Loses Appeal on Gun Ban

The City of San Francisco has lost its appeal to get its gun ban reinstated.

In today’s 3-0 ruling, the appeals court cited its own 1982 decision overturning a San Francisco ordinance that prohibited handgun possession within city limits.

Sponsors of Prop. H had hoped to comply with that ruling by drafting a narrower measure that applied only to San Francisco residents. But the court said the 1982 decision properly interpreted state law as “depriving local entities of any power to regulate handgun possession on private property.”

The court declined San Francisco’s request to allow the city to enforce the ban on the manufacture or sale of rifles and shotguns, saying the city must first rewrite the ordinance to narrow its scope.

Noting the existence of state gun laws, Presiding Justice Ignazio Ruvolo said, “When it comes to regulating firearms, local governments are well advised to tread lightly.”

Take that hippies! It would seem preemption, at least, is alive and well in The Golden State.

UPDATE: NRA has their press release.

UPDATE: The decision can be found here.Â The original San Francisco Superior Court case can be found here.

— Welcome Instapundit Readers —

Thanks for stopping by.Â If you’re interested in second amendment issues, you’ve found the right place.Â 2008 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for us in the gun blogosphere, so I hope you’ll have a look around, and visit some of the fine gun blogs on the blogroll to your right.

Call Me Ahab Roundup

Ahab has a few good things up today. First, apparently FN is giving away free ammo if you buy a Five-Seven. Good, the ammo for that is frigging expensive and hard to find.

Apparently they are considering a lead ammo ban in Arizona too. They said they were going to try a few months ago after it passed in California. As I said previously, let the condors go extinct already. It’s their time.

In the solutions in search of a problem department, apparently you can get a black powder AR-15 upper in .50 caliber. The cartridge is modified to take a shotgun primer.Â Ut’s the cartridge that’s the ignition source, and gets ejected after the shot is fired. A versatile indeed! I suppose you could go out hunting with it, but I would think you’d be spending a lot of time talking to the game wardens if you head out during muzzle loader season with that rifle :)

Op-Ed Placement

Quite often when you read op-eds in the main stream media, they were actually placed by groups that advocate on behalf of that organization. It’s a dirty little secret in the world of issue advocacy. I would not be shocked to discover that this op-ed was written by Violence Policy Center themselves, or some other issue oriented group. It’s about the decline of the American gun culture:

According to Sugarmann, those keeping the culture alive and those most vocal in resisting tighter regulations are white, middle-aged men whose enthusiasm for firearms, hunting and shooting is not shared by younger Americans.

I’m a white guy, last I checked, but I hope not middle aged; I don’t plan to die in my 60s. I’ve been advocating for this issue since I was a teenager in some form or another. In fact, most of my fellow bloggers are my age, or close to my age, and I can name more than a few who are younger than me.Â Oh yeah, and half the bloggers I linked to there are women.

Politicians tend to pander to the NRA, some more shamelessly than others. One of the Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential race, Mitt Romney, went so far as to falsely claim that he was a lifelong hunter and had received an official NRA endorsement in 2002.

Now we get to the heart of this article, the National Rifle Association. Op-eds like this serve one purpose, to forward rhetoric designed to weaken and trivialize the power of the organization. Maybe Bernd Debusmann is a coy political operative, but something about this op-ed just seems too well crafted. If it is Mr. Debusmann, my hats off to him; it’s shrewdly political, but I’d put my money on this being an op-ed placement by an issue group out to damage the NRA.

Dangers of Compromise

Joe has an excellent post that highlights a real danger in making deals with the likes of the Brady Campaign, such as happened on HR2640, which was signed into law yesterday.Â The passage of HR2640 raises the political capital of the Brady Campaign, and other anti-gun forces, because they were able to claim victory.Â They are naturally going to want to spend that capital to push for more gun control.

This was always a legitimate reason for opposing HR2640, but it wasn’t an argument that was sensibly made by certain other pro-gun groups.Â I still think the deal was worth making, because we weren’t going to get those concessions out of this Congress otherwise, and the amount their political capital has been raised is a lot less than their rhetoric is indicating.

There will be no serious move on gun control in Congress until after the elections.Â If the anti-gun Democrats cement their hold on power in 2008, we’re in a lot of trouble, especially if the White House has Obama or Clinton in it.Â We’re in a lot of trouble.Â Â That will have little to do with HR2640 though, and a lot more to do with the fact that elections matter.Â That’s why 2008 is so important for us.

Victory Tears

TD notices that polling shows Hillary’s tears yesterday seems to have really helped her among women, and opines “Why are you people allowed to vote, again?”Â I think he means Democrats rather than women, but I have to tell you, I have no faith in the future of this country if this is what we base our voting decisions on.

What have we become?