Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Literally, if they have their way.

The Washington Times:

An 86-year-old Illinois man with a concealed carry permit fired his weapon at an armed robbery suspect fleeing police last month, stopping the man in his tracks and allowing the police to make an arrest.

Law enforcement authorities described the man as “a model citizen” who “helped others avoid being victims” at an AT&T store outside Chicago where he witnessed the holdup. The man, whose identity was withheld from the press, prevented others from entering the store during the theft.

Police said the robber harassed customers and pistol-whipped one.

Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low.

[ … ]

The Chicago Police Department has credited better police work as a reason for the lower crime rates this year. Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy noted the confiscation of more than 1,300 illegal guns in the first three months of the year, better police training and “intelligent policing strategies.”

Of course the police account this to better policing.  What else would a collectivist do?

I have made it clear here and here that I do not support making innate rights contingent upon favorable statistical outcomes.  But the two interesting things about this report are (a) we are discussing a precipitous drop in crime rather than the bloodbath predicted by the statists when more weapons are present in the city, and (b) the police will ascribe it to literally any reason to avoid saying that it has to do with an increase in the ability for self defense.

When policing Chicago has failed for decades, suddenly they have gotten smarter and applied more intelligent policing strategies in order to precipitate this drop in crime – so they would have us believe.

This is a narrative fail of mammoth proportions, leaving the police to scramble and look for excuses, even claiming the credit.  And it’s fun to watch.

Matt Valentine writing at The Atlantic:

These new, high-capacity guns were hitting the street at the height of the crack epidemic and the era of the drive-by shooting, in a newly deregulated market—in 1986, Congress had passed the Firearms Owners Protection Act. “There was in essence a perfect storm,” Daniel Webster told me. “That legislation greatly decreased risks for people who were diverting guns to criminals. The standards for convicting someone of violating federal firearms sales laws were increased substantially, at the same time that the penalties for those gun sales violations decreased. [Congress] decreased the budget for the ATF. They decreased the number of compliance inspections that they could do. They also rewrote the criteria for needing to have a federal license to sell firearms. So all those things were at play, including the type of guns that were being made.”

Annual gun deaths peaked in 1993. The following year, Congress adopted an assault-weapons ban that capped magazines at 10 rounds. Since the ban expired in 2004, handguns with 15-round capacity or greater have been used in several mass shootings …

First of all, there is no difference between “military” weapons and “civilian” weapons.  Semiautomatics have been around for a very long time, just as have magazines that could hold more than just a few rounds.  Bolt action rifles are in common use for deer hunting, and among snipers in the Army and Marines.  Shotguns are used for turkey hunting, and for room clearing operations and CQB by the Army and Marines.  This is entirely a false distinction.

Second, I am unmoved and completely unpersuaded and unimpressed by the discussion of statistics, whatever they happen to say, whether accidents, deaths, or crime.  Statistics have nothing whatsoever to do with my rights (see also Kurt Hofmann’s wonderful article).

Finally, this is what the gun controllers do.  When the facts don’t suit them, they change the subject.  Matt moves from crime at its peak just before the so-called assault weapons ban, to removal of the ban, to [here Matt cannot say an increase in crime, so he turns the subject to] mass shootings.  Matt wanted to say that crime increased and the assault weapons ban had something to do with it.

But he couldn’t, he knew his readers would call him out on lies.  So he did the next best thing.  He changed the subject and hoped that the reader would read what Matt really wanted to say.

And that is how you lie about guns.  You make it all up when the facts don’t support your conclusions.

David Codrea:

That black gun rights activists are treated differently than white ones over the same advocacy issue is racist, pure and simple. But then again, what do I know, being what an official representative of a national gun ban group dismissed as “a white gun nut”?

Yea, it is, and you know what else is racist?  All Jim Crow laws regarding gun purchase and ownership.  So when you hear CLEOs oppose shall issue laws and talk about how they really have their finger on the pulse of the community and can tell if someone is a potential danger when the NICS can’t … blah blah blah … they’re really saying, “We don’t want those horrible black folk to have guns, do we?”  They’re bigots, pure and simple.

Kurt Hofmann:

Johnson accuses the NRA of “falsely arguing that .50 caliber weapons pose no threat to the general public,” despite there being not a single documented case of a person in the U.S. having been killed with a rifle chambered for the .50 BMG cartridge, and despite the rifles having been on the civilian market ever since Ronnie Barrett sold his first “Barrett Light Fifty” forty-two years ago.

Kurt goes on to explain the artificial use of sources – that is, making things up because you think the reader won’t actually go there and find out for himself.  I find Media Matters amusing, but note that I didn’t say interesting.  Kurt is known (by me at least) for his use of logic.  David Codrea is no mean analyst himself, but one thing you also get with David is clever post titles, clever prose, and illustrative commentary that invokes memories that most people share in common in order to explain a point.  When you read Media Matters, their title lines aren’t even interesting.  They go like this: “Someone said thus-and-such when he really should have said so-and-so, and he’s not sorry about it.”  It’s awful, really.  Media Matters is the most boring, dull, dreary, dry, and annoying site on the web, and there are a lot of dreary sites on the web.

Kurt Hofmann:

A Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual, and these people demand the power to take it away without a conviction, without an indictment, without an arrest or formal charges, and now without “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence.” They seem more than a little confused as to who the “terrorists” here are–perhaps a mirror would help.

And there is an increasing willingness to affect the lives of good people based on whether they might in the future pose some sort of undefined risk, as if it’s possible to prove a universal negative.

Kurt Hofmann:

… there is perhaps an even more glaring contradiction in this proposed amendment to the Missouri constitution. The language of the amendment, while providing an explicit statement that the right to keep and bear arms is “unalienable,” also contains a provision granting the state explicit permission to “alien” that right …

Well, first of all, I’m quick to say I don’t believe in the second amendment, I believe in God, and He gives me my rights, not the state.  However, it is  helpful for the state to recognize that fact and make it explicit for everyone, and in this case it sounds like they are making matters worse.  Best to leave it alone until they really believe in unalienable rights – and in God.

Via David Codrea, Liston Matthews puts some tough questions to Ben Carson.  David will be watching.  So will I.  I consider Allen West a much better man all around, although not electable.  In fact, it doesn’t appear that anyone I like is electable.  Why even vote?  If the GOP fields someone like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, I’ll stay at home and laugh.

Sharia Law In America:

“Two leaders of a mosque tried to cut off the hand of a man they allege stole jars of money from the house of worship, Philadelphia police said … Investigators say the two males accused the victim of stealing jars of money from the Masjid … The males, police say, dragged the victim to the rear of the property and attempted to cut off his hand with a machete.”

You are buying guns and ammunition, right?

ZeroHedge: The American Economy is a Ponzi Scheme: “Financial bubbles are what economist Robert Shiller calls “naturally occurring Ponzis” because the psychology of ever-rising prices and profits fuels an inflow of greater fools that sustains the bubble until all available greater fools have sunk their cash and credit into the bubble.”  Then the ponzi paint peels away to show the rotten wood of the economy.

WRSA: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You A Terrorist.

And via Mike, the comment of the week: “A system built upon debt must eventually reach a debt saturation point. We are already there as world wide assets are dwarfed by world wide debt and the inability to paythe interest. Thus central banks have already resorted to their last hope – money printing. That inevitably leads to currency destruction, chaos, and the breakdown of society.”

And speaking of honesty and clarity, Mike says it short and sweet.  As for me, I don’t care if you wear a uniform or not.  If you’re the enemy, you’re the enemy.  And anyone who tries to take my weapons is the enemy.

Finally, Guns.com gives us the ultimate home defense handgun guide.  Meh.  There’s nothing ultimate about it.  He doesn’t even discuss Springfield Armory XDms, and no 1911s in the mix.  Too much Glock love for me.  Just insufferable.  I admit I would like to have me some of that Ruger GP100.  We’ll see how it stacks up against my S&W R8.

Is that what this is?

A state law that exempts firearms manufactured in Kansas from all federal regulations has drawn a lot of attention recently — from both supporters and critics.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has filed a lawsuit about the 2013 law that declares the federal government has no authority to regulate guns, ammunition and accessories manufactured, sold and kept in Kansas. The Brady Center said the law is an unconstitutional attempt to nullify federal gun laws.

Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign used the lawsuit as a springboard to send out a fundraising email saying the Brady Center was suing the governor “for protecting the Second Amendment rights of Kansans.”

Regardless of which side of this debate you’re on, the “Second Amendment Protection Act” certainly raises some interesting issues.

The statute makes it a felony for any federal employee to enforce federal gun regulations on Kansas only-weapons. It also says no state or local officials can attempt to enforce any federal gun regulations on Kansas-only weapons.

The Brady Center lawsuit already guarantees that this state law is headed to federal court. What will happen if the state tries to charge a federal official with a felony for trying to enforce a federal law?

The law declares that Kansas-only guns are exempt from any federal regulations. So what, if any, regulations will those firearms be subject to? Will Kansas manufacturers now be allowed to make guns without serial numbers, making it difficult to trace any gun involved in a crime? Can they legally make guns that can elude mental detectors or other security devices? Can such guns be sold without the background checks required by federal law? …

It’s pretty obvious that the Second Amendment Protection Act was intended more as a political protest than as a practical benefit for Kansans. Only time will tell how many tax dollars the state will spend to defend a law that has little chance of standing up to constitutional scrutiny.

I don’t know if the fine people of Kansas have the brawn to take this to its logical conclusion or not.  If it’s political grandstanding as the editorial says, then they wasted their time and made a mockery of themselves and the legislative process.  If they intend to fold like a cheap tent at the first sign of a federal judge who has become indignant over this, then they should have stayed home.  Their laws are worthless, and that means that the folks in Kansas have no reason to respect the other laws any more than the feds respect this one.  It’s one sure way to lose the mandate of heaven.

But … if they intend to press the issue, then this will stand out as a great case study in nullification.  Nullification could be interpreted as state nullification of onerous federal laws, or jury nullification of prosecutor’s cases in federal court by turning their heads.  After all, federal laws are meaningless if not enforced, and actual, real people must enforce them.

What will happen “if the state tries to charge a federal official with a felony for trying to enforce a federal law?”  The federal official should be put in the state penitentiary with the general prison population for breaking state laws, and state law enforcement shouldn’t cower to federal LEOs while they’re doing this.

The answer to all of the questions about what will happen if, when and how, is that state laws, whatever they are at the time, will be enforced and federal laws will be ignored.  Question(s) posed, question(s) answered without fuss.  But there is the dark possibility that the editorial page has the politicians’ number.  Will they show themselves to be all bark and no bite?  The folks in Kansas might want to frame the issue for their representatives, if you know what I mean.

As I’ve pointed out before concerning deployment of the National Guard to the Southern U.S. border, there is a huge difference between deployed and deployed and under arming orders.  We’ve all seen the videos and read the reports of forcible gun confiscation by the Louisiana National Guard in the aftermath of Katrina.

In an age where no Governor or President has the courage to deploy the National Guard under arming orders to the Southern Border, it’s important to understand how the confiscation of guns occurred in Louisiana.  If the National Guard was actually under arming orders, it marks a significant point in American history.  No National Guard unit has ever deployed to the Southern border to stop the flood of illegal immigrants, but they will go armed against their own countrymen in order to confiscate personal property.

It’s important to know if they were armed (rounds in magazines and chambered, with orders to shoot and under very specific rules for the use of force), and if so, who signed the arming orders and under what pretext it was done.  Additional questions might include under whose authority did they operate, to whom did they directly report, and who issued the order to confiscate weapons?  In fact, the last question may very well be the most important one.

To this end I have begun a request for this information with the Louisiana National Guard, but as of this writing my e-mails have been bounced by the e-mail servers and summarily ignored by the recipients (when not bounced).  Not even the FOIA e-mail functions properly.  I have sent the following e-mails to the LNG and state officials.

June 23, 2014:to:         webmaster@geauxguard.com
date:         Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 11:02 PM
subject:    Contact Concerning Arming Orders

Sir,

I see no other way on your web site to contact command of Louisiana National Guard concerning my questions, so I am reaching out to you to forward this note to your superiors.  This is the first of several questions I have concerning Lousiana National Guard actions during Katrina, but we may as well start with the first one.  I would like to have a traceable paper trail for all of my communications, and if necessary I will fill out the requisite paperwork for FOI request.  Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

My first question concerns whether LNG soldiers were armed (with rounds in magazines and/or chambered) during your response to Katrina.  I would like a PDF copy of your arming orders for this if so.  Your CO will know what I refer to when I say “arming orders.”

Thank you,

Herschel Smith
http://www.captainsjournal.com/

On June 26 and 27 I forwarded the note to the same e-mail address.  Having then located the FOIA e-mail address, I then sent this note on June 28.

to:         LA.FOIA.PA@ng.army.mil
date:         Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 1:13 AM
subject:     Fwd: Contact Concerning Arming Orders

To whom it may concern,

Please see the note below concerning my request for historical documentation viz. arming orders for the LNG actions during hurricane Katrina.  Let me know if there is other paperwork you would like for me to fill out.  If I am not mistaken this should be fairly easy documentation to produce and thus not very costly to the LNG.

This e-mail bounced until July 1.  On July 8 I sent the following note to a LNG PAO.

to:     denis.ricou@us.army.mil
date:     Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 12:08 AMAs you can see below, my FOIA request is being bounced by your servers for some reason, and ignored by your webmaster for some other reason.  Please forward my request to the appropriate person for resolution.

I forwarded the same note on July 15.  Only July 18 I sent the following note.

to:     Public.Request2@la.gov, denis.ricou@us.army.mil
date:     Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 10:47 PM

Please see below the request for information concerning arming orders for the LNG during Katrina.  As you can see, my request(s) have been summarily ignored thus far.  I will also be sending a note directly to the governor.

I followed this up with an e-mail to the governor’s office, as follows.

I have sent multiple requests both the the PAO and the FOIA officer at the Louisiana National Guard for information concerning arming orders during Katrina.  Thus far my request(s) have been summarily ignored, if I am not mistaken contrary to the stipulations of federal law.  Please ensure that your NG officers meet my reasonable requests for information.

Herschel Smith, Editor
www.captainsjournal.com

In the interest of openness I am informing my readers as to the difficulty of this project, but I’m not surprised given the subject matter.

David Codrea:

While the dangers of appearing anti-gun are evident to “true champion of the Second Amendment” Harry Reid, who recently tried and failed in his cynical manipulation to divide and conquer gun voters by appealing to the sporting crowd, to guys like Jon Tester, who put on a good front before showing gun owners what he really thinks of the right to bear arms, and to Democrats pressuring Michael Bloomberg to back off from his gun obsession lest he drag them down at the polls, those unable to control their “progressive” impulses are nonetheless itching for a showdown.

Why not encourage it?

I have, and I do.  I’ll say it again.  Bring it!  The fact that so many progs are running from this issue let’s you know just what it means to their constituents.  And by the way, the progs know they’re losing, and they’re looking for alternative tactics to fill the gap.

David Codrea:

How come you embrace the same monopoly of violence philosophy espoused by CSGV’s Josh Horwitz and his ideological hero, Max Weber, that allowed it all to happen?

Uh oh.  Progs don’t like it when you force them to confront the fact that they espouse the very catalyst of the holocaust they that find repugnant, and David is doing exactly that.  See my conversation with the Rabbi on gun control, to which he responded, “The title of your latest post in no way reflects the conversation that we have had. I hope you continue to read the column, but I see no point in any further replies to your email.”

Kurt Hofmann:

Not a bad strategy, really–push laws to try to make guns as useless as possible, then justify further infringements by arguing that guns are already so useless that the new restrictions don’t really affect us much.

The self-fulfilling prophesy (a prediction about the future that ensures its own validity) is actually a formal logical fallacy.  This isn’t the only formal logical fallacy the progs make.  Their full of them, and we hear them every day.  Jay Rockefeller shows us his non sequitur of the day with this bit about engineer-immigrants: “I’m not for throwing people out,” Rockefeller tells National Review Online. “I’ve got a huge interest in science, engineering and math, etc., and those are the folks who are trained in other countries and they come here and we cut their funding. We’ve all benefited from immigrants.”

See Mike Vanderboegh on The Illuminati Did It.  Good grief!  This is why I spam conspiracy theory comments – that is, they are mostly stupid and from mostly gullible men.  And that goes for the notion that the fight in the Ukraine is all about banksters and rivers of money and undercover U.S. operations by the CIA and weapons sales.  Good grief.  The fight in the Ukraine is about a communist trying to rebuild a communist empire because he is evil and communism is evil.  And communism is evil whether in the U.S. or Russia.  And banksters are usually very bad men who leech off of the wealth of others, and God hates nations and men who survive off the largesse of debt and usury, like we do.  He will not bless us as long as we enshrine debt and usury.  But none of that has anything to do with the fight in the Ukraine and it pays to be able to “rightly divide” and properly discern.  Pay attention folks, and keep your eye on the ball.

Field & Stream on ARs chambered for big game hunting.  I’ll eventually have an AR-10 (or in RRA lingo, LAR-8), chambered for .308.  But I wish they would build one in .270.

ABC News on the Southern border.

The federal government is so overwhelmed by the current tide of migrants crossing the border it can’t provide basic medical screening to all of the children before transporting them – often by air – to longer-term holding facilities across the country, ABC News has learned.

The director of refugee health in the federal Health and Human Services Department “has identified a breakdown of the medical screening processes at the Nogales, Arizona, facility,” according to an internal Department of Defense memo reviewed by ABC News.

Finally, John Jay has one up entitled The Burrito That Roared.

scene:

mexican mud hut.

the family scraps over a moldy tortilla, and muddy water, for breakfast.  the extended family of 30, huddled around a meager open campfire, dressed in rags and an occasional serape.  the light flickers on their faces, …. ,  much like the encampment the night before battle, with good king hal speaking to them.

juan:  (a mysterious, ethereal light focuses on his little beatific brown face.) mommy-cita, i am going to america, to be a yankee, and to play in the nba.

mother:  but, juan, you are only 4 years old.

juan:   never mind, blessed little mother, load the packard w/ my things, my good pair of shorts, and a peanut butter sandwich, i am driving to nogales.

mother:  but, juan, you are only 4 years old, you cannot drive, and you don’t know the way.

juan:   hush, blessed mother, quit your puerile mutterings, and point me the right way.  god will provide.

scene:

mexican service station.

a puzzled attendant.

juan:   you there, you vacant eyed nit wit, fill ‘er up.

attendant:  you got some money, you scraggly-assed whelp?

juan:   impudent one, cannot you tell that i am on a mission from god …

To finish, visit John’s place.

Stephen Halbrook:

Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in April about an idea he had directed the Department of Justice to investigate: a requirement that gun owners wear electronic bracelets that would enable only registered owners to activate their firearms. Some critics, focusing on abusive surveillance powers, have called it Orwellian.

But one needn’t look to fiction to be wary: History offers numerous examples of well-intentioned policies to control crime that have had disastrous consequences. In my new book, “Gun Control in the Third Reich,” one particularly horrific case study begins in Germany during the tumultuous early 1930s.

In 1932, Alfred Flatow, the three-time gold medalist in gymnastics at the 1896 Olympics, complied with a gun-registration requirement that Weimar officials hoped would reduce the threat posed by extremist groups. The former athlete dutifully registered three handguns, but this didn’t spare him. The government warned that gun-ownership records must be stored securely so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. It failed to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, whereas political extremists and criminals would not.

In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and immediately set about using gun-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state,” a euphemism for all political opponents. Police conducted search-and-seizure operations for guns and “subversive” literature in Jewish communities and working-class neighborhoods.

And you know the rest of the historical account.  Holbrook’s piece is good right up until this.

None of this is to claim that Eric Holder or today’s proponents of gun control are totalitarians in waiting. But this frightening saga is a reminder of good intentions gone horribly wrong. And unless we let the lessons sink in, we will dishonor honorable people such as Alfred Flatow – and millions more whose suffering we should never forget.

I argue – and have many times – that there is nothing good about the intention behind a universal background check or national gun registration.  And Obama and Holder are indeed totalitarians, not just in waiting, but in realitatem.  All gun control is totalitarian, and as I’ve pointed out before, gun control is a sign of wicked rulers.

Nonetheless, Holbrook has written a very good piece worthy of the few minutes it takes to read it.  It’s good to see him back in the public eye.

Self defense against criminals or self defense against — criminals?  Kurt Hofmann asks the question:

But as a practical matter, does that really make much difference? When you defend yourself against an assailant who happens to be a common criminal, after all, you’re defending your rights from violation, no less than if your attacker–and aspiring rights violator–draws a government paycheck, carries a tax revenue-supplied firearm, and is acting on government orders. Likewise, in resisting a tyrannical government, you are defending yourself from that government–and the hired muscle of said government, from whom you are defending yourself, is no less criminal than the common street thug or rapist.

To claim a difference, other than one of scale, between a thug who rapes a woman, and a tyrant who rapes a nation, is to elevate the tyrant to something greater than the thug-writ-large he is.

Great point.  Consider for a moment gun control in Nazi Germany and what it did to the Jews.  It matters little (or not at all) whether the home invader is uniformed or not.  We must all ponder these difficult things.

Remember when you do ponder that we’re not the first to do so.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided – albeit a little late to the game – that he had to speak and act.  “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  I claim that God has very specific requirements of us when we act.

So as to the question, the answer is not “either-or.”  It is “both-and.”

The Supreme Court has decided the Abramski case with a 5-4 vote.  The reaction thus far has been fairly muted, but the implications of the decision are potentially far reaching.  Kagan, writing for the majority, spends a significant amount of painful time [painful for those of us who have filled it out many times] in the nuts and bolts of Form 4473 and what she believes must have been the intent of Congress when they crafted the Gun Control Act of 1968.  Scalia wrote a spirited dissent, and anticipating the objections, Kagan writes:

But Abramski and the dissent draw the wrong conclu­sion from their observations about resales and gifts. Yes, Congress decided to regulate dealers’ sales, while leaving the secondary market for guns largely untouched. As we noted in Huddleston, Congress chose to make the dealer the “principal agent of federal enforcement” in “restricting [criminals’] access to firearms.” 415 U. S., at 824. And yes, that choice (like pretty much everything Congress does) was surely a result of compromise. But no, straw arrangements are not a part of the secondary market, separate and apart from the dealer’s sale. In claiming as much, Abramski merely repeats his mistaken assumption that the “person” who acquires a gun from a dealer in a case like this one is the straw, rather than the individual who has made a prior arrangement to pay for, take pos­session of, own, and use that part of the dealer’s stock. For all the reasons we have already given, that is not a plausible construction of a statute mandating that the dealer identify and run a background check on the person to whom it is (really, not fictitiously) selling a gun. See supra, at 9–15. The individual who sends a straw to a gun store to buy a firearm is transacting with the dealer, in every way but the most formal; and that distinguishes such a person from one who buys a gun, or receives a gun as a gift, from a private party.⁹ The line Congress drew between those who acquire guns from dealers and those who get them as gifts or on the secondary market, we suspect, reflects a host of things, including administrative simplicity and a view about where the most problematic firearm transactions—like criminal organizations’ bulk gun purchases—typically occur. But whatever the reason, the scarcity of controls in the secondary market provides no reason to gut the robust measures Congress enacted at the point of sale.

If it seems that Kagan is making the judgment of a legislator here, you are not mistaken, and it isn’t a mistake that she spends so much time in her decision on the federal code.

Via David Codrea, attorney Joshua Prince says of the decision:

There is NO law enacted by the Congress regarding straw purchasers! This was made up in whole cloth by the ATF! This is a FAR worse decision than anyone is comprehending. NOW, administrative agencies can enact criminal laws, which have NOT been enacted by the Congress!

David Workman also weighs in at Examiner:

Nelson Lund, a constitutional scholar and Second Amendment expert at George Mason School of Law, had this to say: “Five members of the Supreme Court have decided to make it a federal crime for a lawful gun owner to buy a firearm for another lawful gun owner. No federal statute says any such thing. The Justices are once again legislating from the bench, which violates the Constitution, and enacting a retroactive criminal law, which is even worse.” His comment came via e-mail.

In his dissent, Scalia notes that there is evolving history in how the ATF has applied and enforced the Gun Control Act.

After Congress passed the Act in 1968, ATF’s initial position was that the Act did not prohibit the sale of a gun to an eligible buyer acting on behalf of a third party (even an ineligible one). See Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, 118 (1975). A few years later, ATF modified its position and asserted that the Act did not “prohibit a dealer from making a sale to a person who is actually purchasing the firearm for another person” unless the other person was “prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm,” in which case the dealer could be guilty of “unlawfully aiding the prohibited person’s own violation.” ATF, Industry Circular 79–10 (1979), in (Your Guide To) Federal Firearms Regulation 1988–89 (1988), p. 78. The agency appears not to have adopted its current position until the early 1990’s.

Then Scalia offers up this zinger.

In the majority’s view, if the bureaucrats responsible for creating Form 4473 decided to ask about the buyer’s favorite color, a false response would be a federal crime.

He has put his finger on a core problem with this decision [and other such rule-making inside the beltway].  As I’ve noted before:

Laws are passed by the Senate and Congress.  But after laws pass, thousands of lawyers inside the beltway go to work writing regulations based on those laws, or not, using the law as a pretext for further regulation that Congress didn’t specifically intend.  At times, Congress has even had to pass laws undoing regulations because the regulations don’t meet the intent of the law, and yet the executive branch won’t stop enforcing that regulation (or class of regulations).

Regulation is passed merely by entering them into the federal register, allowing a waiting time for public comments (which are nothing but a chance afforded to the authors of the regulations to ignore them or write sarcastic rebuttals), and then after the waiting period, it takes on the force of law including prosecution, fines and imprisonment for failure to follow them.

This happens every day, all over the nation, and in the DOT, NRC, EPA, DOJ, ATF, DHS, and other departments and agencies that the reader cannot even name and didn’t know existed.  Any law giving the executive branch the authority to further regulate firearms will be an opportunity for abuse, overreach and exploitation.

I’ve seen it in my own line of work.  Regulations take on the force of law after comments responding to entries in the Federal Register are summarily ignored by the agency doing the regulating.  It makes little sense to respond with comments when the regulator’s mind is made up.  These regulations frequently far surpass the law in breadth, scope, depth and magnitude.

One such example on Form 4473 might be the following.  My own son was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, but knew of one poor soul who became inebriated the eve of his discharge and was caught for DUI on base.  This Marine was dishonorably discharged.  According to the wording on Form 4473, he will never be able to legally purchase a gun even if a judge agrees with him because the USMC won’t revisit its discharge and thus he won’t be able to answer – truthfully – on Form 4473 about discharge from a branch of the service.

[I don’t mean here to exonerate the ridiculous GCA for its requirement that gun transfers across state lines go through an FFL.  I have gifted a firearm to one of my sons this way, and in order to fulfill this part of the law (he couldn’t legally carry it with him on the airline even by following TSA regulations since he didn’t own it), we had to pay the exorbitant cost of shipping the gun air express to an FFL and then a transfer fee in his home state.  It had the effect of escalating the cost of the whole affair, and I’m convinced that this was part of the intended effect by Congress.]

To me, this kind of regulation seems onerous compared to what Congress wrote, but it is latitude given (and taken) by the federal regulators.  If there is a problem with legislating from the bench, there is even a worse problem with regulating by the executive branch from inside the beltway.  The problem will continue (and grow) as long as the public abides the abuse.