NRA Strategy for Wisconsin Includes Constitutional Carry

NRA announced today they are shooting for the moon in Wisconsin, and going for constitutional carry:

Past legislative efforts to secure the Right to Carry always assumed that a veto override would be necessary.  Attempting to secure two-thirds majorities required the NRA and other proponents to accept amendments during the legislative process that sought to place additional restrictions on the good citizens of Wisconsin and would have impeded their ability to protect themselves.  With the makeup of the incoming legislature, these unnecessary concessions should no longer be necessary.

The NRA will strive to make Wisconsin’s 2011 Right to Carry law one of the strongest in the country.  The experience of 40 other Right to Carry states has eliminated any question as to whether citizens can be trusted to act safely and responsibly.  The laws of Vermont, Alaska and Arizona will be used as the model.  The latter two, in particular, will set the standard with systems that recognize the citizens’ constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense along with a provision that will provide for the streamlined issuance of a state permit that can be used for reciprocity purposes in other states while traveling.

This is good news. The Courts appeared to be ready to toss the carry law anyway, and it would be a shame not to help that process along. Also, I think this puts to rest any of the accusations that NRA was never committed to constitutional carry.

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Motion for Summary Judgement Filed in New Jersey Case

From ANJRPC, the motion can be found here. Reading through it with my layman’s eyes, it looks very well done and thorough. They go to great length to distinguish New Jersey’s law from California’s (which was upheld by a District Court earlier) and I think deal quite effectively with existing precedent in the Circuit on obliterated serial numbers, which applied intermediate scrutiny. Obviously the plaintiffs in this case are calling for strict scrutiny to be applied. It also hits to the heart of the issue here, if I may quote from the motion:

The additional articulated components of the “need” requirement are similarly overbroad and impermissible. The requirement that citizens “corroborate the existence of any specific threats or previous attacks by reference to reports of such incidents to the appropriate law enforcement agencies” is entirely irrational. Individuals victimized once may never be victimized again, and an individual’s first encounter with a violent criminal may well lead to death or seriously bodily harm – before he or she can even articulate the “need.” The right to self-defense at the core of the Second Amendment does not depend for its existence on a history of previous victimization. The Second Amendment provides that individuals – not the State – retain the ability to decide whether their own “necessity for self-protection” necessitates being armed.

We’ll see how this goes. We should know soon how the judge will rule on this motion. Obviously, the State of New Jersey will be filing a motion for summary judgement from the other point of view.

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Welcome to the Party

Apparently Colin Goddard and his father are going to start blogging. I look forward to thoughtful and engaging debate in the comments section.

UPDATE: His Twitter page here:

CAC ’03 & VT ’08 Alum, born in Nairobi, Kenya, currently working at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in D.C. as an advocate for sensible gun laws.

Born in Kenya. That’s going to be a hoot for the tin foil hat crowd. Just like Obama! We haven’t seen Colin’s birth certificate either!

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Guns Captured off Drug Cartels

We’re more familiar with the fight in Mexico, but the same fight is also happening in Brazil. The Firearms Blog has pictures of some of the captured weapons, which no doubt came from US gun shows. It couldn’t be all this was obtained on the international black market. No way. They are drug cartels! What do they know about trafficking in contraband?

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Joe Grace Looking To Run for City Council

Apparently he’s no longer heading up CeaseFire PA, apparently running against Councilman DiCicco’s record, which includes taking of a nearly half a million dollar retirement package and then not retiring. Gotta love Philly politicians. I’m glad Grace is done with CeaseFire PA. He was an effective leader for them, and a good spokesman, and with him moving on I suspect they will go back to being rudderless and impotent.

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Wishful Thinking

At least one MIT history professor thinks Breyer and Stevens’ dissent was correct. Unfortunately for her, Stevens’ dissent has been thoroughly discredited, and just based on this article, Professor Maier has only superficial knowledge of the scholarship in this area. What she does know she’s obviously using to bolster her pre-conceivded notions, rather than looking at what the founders really had to say about the topic.

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Bryan Miller on Aitken’s Pardon

Bryan Miller, who never met a gun owner he didn’t hate, has this to say about Brian Aitken’s clemency:

Bryan Miller, project director for the anti-gun violence group Ceasefire NJ, said only a “tiny majority” of people actually want to loosen the state’s gun laws. He hopes others don’t see the governor’s decision on Aitken as a precendent for “a get-out-of-jail free card for breaking our gun laws.”

Interesting that he didn’t have anything bad to say about the commutation of Aitken’s sentence. That goes to show Miller isn’t blinded by ideology to the point of stupidity. He’s hoping this doesn’t have greater implications for New Jersey’s gun laws, rather than trying to fight the media tide in favor of Governor Christie’s clemency.

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