Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

NRO’s Corner:

Ron Kelly, a 59-year-old retired U.S Army soldier, made the front page of the Houston Chronicle Wednesday after he was denied permission to purchase a .22 caliber rifle at a Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas. The veteran failed the FBI’s background check because he was charged with marijuana possession — in 1971.

Under the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a person can be prevented from buying a gun if they have been convicted of a misdemeanor for which they could serve two or more years in prison. While in high school, Kelly was busted with a small amount of marijuana and spent one night behind bars before he was sentenced to a year of probation. Such a record, under the federal law, prohibits him from exercising his Second Amendment rights.

Kelly, a native of Durham, North Carolina, enlisted as an infantryman two years after the incident that is currently keeping him from keeping a gun in his own home. “I went on to serve 20 years,” said Kelly. He finds it “amazing” that after firing two decades worth of government ammunition, “they won’t let me buy a gun for a misdemeanor 42 years ago.”

I too find this ridiculous, and I couldn’t care less about a conviction for marijuana 42 years ago.  But let’s pause a moment and ask why it’s important to the story that he is retired from the U.S. Army?  It shouldn’t have anything to do with experience handling firearms.  That can be learned.  Does it have to do with the idea that members of the armed forces have served their country?

I have a son who is a former Marine.  I am sympathetic to that idea, and while America owes him everything they promised on a contractual basis, we don’t owe him a mansion on Emerald Isle with free food for the rest of his life.  Besides, appreciation for service shouldn’t be conflated with legal approval for owning weapons.

When retiring California police officers wanted to keep their “assault weapons” after leaving work, I opposed this exemption from the new California law.  If Californians want to be communists, then “special people” shouldn’t be exempted from their onerous laws and regulations.  Similarly, if it’s okay for someone who was charged with having marijuana 42 years ago to own a weapon, it shouldn’t matter whether he is a former Soldier or not.  What’s good for one is good for all.

David Codrea:

“U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton last night dismissed a National Rifle Association (NRA)-backed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality on Second Amendment grounds of Washington, DC’s ban on the sale and possession of handguns,” the Violence Policy Center crowed back in 2004, before the historic Heller decision. “Judge Walton’s 68-page ruling in Seegars v. Ashcroft upholds the ban, which was adopted by the City Council in 1976.

“In his opinion, Judge Walton … wrote: ‘[T]he Court must conclude that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to possess firearms. Rather, the Amendment’s objective is to ensure the vitality of state militias,’” the VPC release continued.

David has a discussion of the secret authority wielded by judge Walton that’s well worth the time.  Another from Kurt Hofmann.

The problem with that argument is that the distinction between soldiers and “peace officers” (don’t hear that term much anymore, do you?) is rapidly disappearing. Can anyone look at the massive abuses perpetrated by “peace officers” in Boston in pursuit of the surviving alleged Marathon bomber, and dispute that “law enforcement” is becoming an occupying army?

To the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, that’s just fine, with executive director Josh Horwitz cautioning us to “not pile too much on the militarization of law enforcement,” because “they have a tough job.”

Besides, none of the forcible citizen disarmament advocates object to the police being armed with so-called “assault weapons” (although in that context, they might call them “patrol rifles,” or “personal defense weapons“), which we are told are “weapons of war, that belong on the battlefield, not on our streets,” and are thus not suitable for civilian ownership. Does that not make the police who are issued them soldiers?

Read Kurt’s setup for the situation and the argument for the following comments to make any sense.

Kurt is commenting on what we discussed in And Now They Trample The Third Amendment (which WRSA picked up and linked).  Kurt makes an interesting point of logic.  If the gun controllers and collectivists argue that AR-15s are weapons of war, then they cannot rationally and consistently object to the application of the third amendment to law enforcement – that is, for collectivists who want at least the pretext of being consistent and rational.

Bob Owens has a wonderful takedown of the argument that the founders didn’t imagine weapons of war in the hands of civilians, entitled  ‘ … but the founders couldn’t have imagined more than muskets.” (I had asked Bob to give me the URL for this article several weeks ago and he couldn’t produce it, which means that I know more about what Bob is writing than he does, or something like that).

Bob’s piece is masterful and necessary reading.  Using Kurt’s syllogism and Bob’s article, it means that there is no distinction (which also means that the Hughes amendment is obscene), and both that the police are guilty of a constitutional violation and we should have access to these “weapons of war” since the founders envisioned that we would.

Turning back to David, I don’t really find it surprising that this collectivist judge doesn’t believe in the second amendment, even though it is troubling.  What I find most interesting is how he expressed his demurral: ” … the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to possess firearms.”

Dear readers, listen to me carefully and pay close attention.  Might does not make right.  If it did the Nazis were justified in killing Jews.  The fact that you have guns and are willing to perish to keep them (like me) doesn’t mean that it’s your right to own them.  Furthermore, the government – voters, rulers, policy, pieces of paper including even the constitution – does not confer rights.  The government is not in a position of justifiably conferring anything on you.

Listen again, dear reader.  If you believe that the constitution confers the right to own a gun, you will always be subject to the vicissitudes of constitutional interpretation and the latest hermeneutic fashions.

I rarely press my religious beliefs, but there is a time and occasion for it.  This is one of those times.  Your rights are conferred by your creator, and that’s why they are unalienable.  The constitution merely recognizes and acknowledges those rights.

You have rights to your “weapons of war,” and so do I.  And the police have no right to invade your castle.  And we have a right to demand better of those who would adjudicate our laws than we have in judge Walton.

Read David and Kurt at Examiner.

John Richardson (via David Codrea).

Judge Winston Kidd extended his Temporary Restraining Order against HB 2 until Friday according to “Jackson Jambalaya” who attended the proceedings this afternoon. The state argues that HB 2 only clarified the definition of concealed and that open carry is allowed under the MS Constitution of 1891.

Rep. Andy Gipson (R-Rankin) who authored HB 2 released this statement earlier today before the beginning of the hearing.

“The Amended Complaint filed with the Hinds County Circuit Court on July 1, 2013 alleges that House Bill 2 (which defined the term “concealed”) is unconstitutional on three grounds:

1) “Unconstitutionally vague” …

2) “Overbroad” …

3) “Arbitrary and Capricious.” This is where it gets most interesting. The complaint alleges that the definition “is arbitrary and capricious in excusing persons who wish to openly-carry firearms from the license requirements imposed on persons who wish to carry concealed firearms.” TRANSLATION: HINDS COUNTY OFFICIALS WANT TO REQUIRE GUN LICENSING AND REGISTRATION OF ALL GUNS BEING CARRIED BY MISSISSIPPIANS. THIS IS THE SAME LINE OF THINKING BEING PUSHED IN WASHINGTON D.C. AND NEW YORK CITY, RIGHT HERE IN OUR OWN BACKYARD.”

Vagueness has no bearing whatsoever on the latitude given to a judge, or in other words, this isn’t a good justification for barring a law, and the judge has no right under the rubric of “vagueness” to do such a thing.

Same with “overbroad.”  But it is indeed most interesting that arbitrary and capricious is included, and it makes the case for judge Kidd doing what he did laughable.  Many laws are arbitrary and capricious – the legal drinking age, speed limits, most traffic laws, zoning regulations, etc.  My point isn’t that we should change the legal drinking age or amend the speed limit to 100 MPH.

The point is that if judge Kidd were going to use arbitrary and capricious as a justification for throwing a law out (rather than the more classic reason that a law does not comport with the constitution), he’s got a lot of work to do and most laws would disappear from the books.

No, judge Kidd has another agenda, and it is this agenda that does not comport with the constitution.

Prior:

Mississippi Supreme Court Denies Petition To Undo Open Carry Block

Mississippi Judge Blocks Open Carry Law

David Codrea:

A three-judge panel of the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled yesterday against the state attorney general’s petition to undo an injunction blocking a firearms open carry law from going into effect.

“After due consideration, we find that the State’s Combined Petition should be denied for procedural reasons,” the order signed by Justice James W. Kitchens declared. “In denying the Petition, the panel expresses no opinion respecting the merits of the matters pending before the circuit court.”

We had previously discussed the new Mississippi open carry law and how an activist judge blocked implementation of the law for what appears to be illegitimate reasons.

With this move, the supreme court has weighed in by not weighing in.  In other words, there is no one left in the judiciary who will stop judicial activism in Mississippi.

The proper way to deal with this kind of judicial activism is to implement the constitutional law anyway and impeach the judge in an emergency meeting of the Mississippi Senate.  It’s called balance of power, and at least in part, America is built upon this precept.

Read it at Examiner.

We’ve previously discussed the Mississippi open carry law, and how LEOs in particular don’t approve of the new law.  And yet, it is still new law, and the LEOs must honor the rights of citizens.  When progressives said Mississippi would turn into the Wild, Wild West, I demurred and pointed out that my own home state of North Carolina was a traditional open carry state.  Everything would turn out fine, I admonished.  But rather than accept the new law, progressives found themselves an activist judge who would side with them.

A Hinds County circuit court judge, initially appointed to the bench by a Democrat governor, granted the wishes of a Democrat prosecutor on Friday in an “emergency hearing” to halt implementation of a gun bill opposed by Democrat lawmakers, the Associated Press reported . Judge Winston Kidd issued a temporary injunction after Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith requested that he block a new law from going into effect.

[ … ]

“For the purposes of this section, ‘concealed’ … shall not include … a loaded or unloaded pistol carried upon the person in a sheath, belt holster or shoulder holster that is wholly or partially visible, or carried upon the person in a scabbard or case for carrying the weapon that is wholly or partially visible,” the bill states, essentially clarifying that open carrying of firearms by non-prohibited persons in non-prohibited locations is lawful activity.

In an unabashed feat of judicial and linguistic contortion, Kidd ruled that specific language is “vague,” and justified his injunction on the grounds that allowing the bill to take effect would cause “irreparable harm.”

“We’re looking at a Wild West scenario,” Jody Owens, Managing Attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center charged … repeating the meme again.  The judge should now be seen as a lawbreaker himself, because there is nothing in the Mississippi constitution that allows a judge to override the legislature and Governor just because he doesn’t read as clearly as we do.

The judge should be impeached, and as for the claim that Mississippi would turn into the Wild, Wild West, I think that the fear is exactly the opposite.  I think that everyone knows that nothing untoward will occur, and thus Mississippi will become an example to the rest of the states (e.g., Texas, South Carolina, etc.) that have not been traditional open carry states but choose to change that.

As for the LEOs, it’s difficult to change, even when facing the inevitable.  Thus we have scenes like this.

Biloxi Police Chief John Miller holds up a sign he has made to help business owners who wish to keep people from entering their establishments while carrying guns.

But it isn’t within their charge to ensure that weapons aren’t carried in and through Mississippi, concealed or openly.  LEOs and politics don’t mix, and police chiefs can be replaced.

In the end, this stolid judge’s day in the sun will soon go away, guns will be openly carried in Mississippi, the Wild, Wild West will not obtain, and LEOs like Chief John Miller will be ridiculed for their fear mongering.

And everything will be made right.

NBC:

The U.S. Park Police, the law enforcement agency responsible for safeguarding the National Mall and critical American landmarks, has lost track of a large supply of handguns, rifles and shotguns, according to a harshly critical report issued Thursday.

In the report, the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Interior faults staff at the agency for having no idea how many weapons they control and says the department has no clear policies or procedures for investigating missing weapons. The office says top managers, including the police chief, have shown a “lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management.”

While surveying Park Police field office armories, investigators found more than 1,400 extra and unassigned weapons that were intended to be destroyed. They also found 198 handguns that were transferred from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and stored in an operations facility firearms room without being recorded in an inventory system.

There are also instances of officers storing service weapons at their homes, according to the report.

“We found credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing,” deputy inspector general Mary Kendall wrote to Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, in a letter that accompanies the report.

I’ve said before that I could be blindfolded and allowed to start at my door, and I could walk to every one of my guns in the house, put my hands on each of them, and tell you whether a round is chambered before I ever get there.  If you cannot do that, then you shouldn’t have guns.  It’s sort of like knowing where your medications are, whether the stove is on, or whether your doors are locked.

The only gun control I support is knowing everything about your guns, including how many you have.  This is the most basic of all responsibilities, and if the federal government cannot do this then they should be treated like children and shouldn’t have any guns.  In fact, given their history and tendency towards totalitarianism, maybe they shouldn’t have guns anyway.

Slate:

Handguns are the problem. Despite being outnumbered by long guns, “Handguns are used in more than 87 percent of violent crimes,” the report notes. In 2011, “handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and non-negligent manslaughter incidents.” Why do criminals prefer handguns? One reason, according to surveys of felons, is that they’re “easily concealable.”

Mass shootings aren’t the problem. “The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths,” says the report. “Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” Compare that with the 335,000 gun deaths between 2000 and 2010 alone.

The author, William Saletan, stops short of calling for confiscation, but does want the CDC empowered to collect and analyze more information about gun owners, as well as heavier court involvement in the process of owning guns.  But on the whole, the author does better than many articles concerning at least feigning neutrality.

Communist China does not.

During the dispute, Fan grabbed a tool and bludgeoned his colleague to death. Fan then returned to the factory’s staff dormitory where he had stashed a hunting gun, retrieved the weapon and fled to Shanghai’s Pudong area in an illegal taxi. Fan then killed the vehicle’s driver and used the vehicle to drive back to Baoshan, where the factory is located, killing a soldier in front of a military unit’s barracks and thus obtaining an additional gun. With both weapons, Fan made his way back to the factory and killed another three employees, including the factory’s supervisor, before being subdued by a police officer who was patrolling the area. Four other people were shot and sustained injuries.

Gun control laws in China are some of the strictest in the world, making it difficult for most civilians to legally own firearms.  According to the South China Morning Post, an emergency meeting was held on Sunday by the Ministry of Public Security, which said it was planning to launch a more comprehensive campaign on gun management across the country.

Gun control is what communists do.  They do it reflexively, and it isn’t so much a response to violent incidents as it is refusing to let a crisis go to waste.  It’s all about ensuring a government monopoly on violence.

It’s the same for the very strange Richard Nixon, who, according to reports, was very anti-gun.

“I don’t know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house,” Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. “The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth.” He asked why “can’t we go after handguns, period?”

Nixon went on: “I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it.” But “people should not have handguns.” He laced his comments with obscenities, as was typical.

Of course, Nixon didn’t seek to disarm his security staff, just the common folk.  As we’ve discussed before, it’s what the progressives (like the folks at Daily Kos) really want.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

Back to the Slate article, the author advocates a continuation of the national conversation on guns.  So be it.  But I think this has been a valuable installment.  Slate admitted that mass killings, while a media event, aren’t the “real problem” with guns.  The “real problem” is ownership of handguns at all.

Or in other words, gun control – making laws that only upstanding citizens obey – is the solution of all good social planners to ameliorate the sinfulness of mankind.  It’s what the communists do.

And the horrible Richard Nixon, a statist by nature, advocated exactly the same thing.  Concerning the recent gun control efforts, Senators Manchin and Toomey have seen the “bottom fall out of their approval ratings.”  We ate them for lunch.  It’s always a good palate cleanser to see progressives confess to the truth that in spite of the posturing, it was really all about government control.

I think that the court jester is lying when he says that there are five Senators who want to change their vote on guns.  But if he can round them up, we’ll eat them for dinner.  As for the continued national conversation, bring it.  But I know your real intentions, and I’ll keep my guns.

Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that “at least five senators” have called him looking for a way to change their votes to support expanded background checks.

Speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Las Vegas, Biden said the 45 senators who voted to block the background checks deal brokered by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) have seen “the bottom fall out” of their approval ratings.

Biden said, as he did Tuesday during a gun violence event at the White House, that he has been fielding calls from senators interested in signing on to some kind of gun control measure. On Friday he offered slightly more specific detail about the number of senators and the difficult path ahead for gun control legislation.

“I’ve had at least five senators call me and say, ‘Can’t we do something about this?’” Biden said. “The calculus has changed, and so we’re in an effort to try to work out how we can provide another opportunity for those who voted no to change their vote. We all know that’s the hardest thing in politics, to change your vote. That’s why we’ve got to get a rationale, another reason why this could be done by changing the specifics of the legislation.”

Biden hasn’t conveyed which senators he’s spoken with or how the background checks bill might be altered.

Just like myth that 90% or more of all Americans wanted the Senate to enact more gun laws, this is the latest make-believe story.  The fairy tale du jour is that five Senators want to change their vote on gun control and see “the bottom fall out of their approval ratings.”

Here’s what I think.  The court jester is becoming increasingly delusional.  There aren’t five Senators who want to change their vote, and Biden never fielded any such phone call.

The Kansas City Star:

Some 30,000 people in the U.S. die each year by gunshot, and one reason there aren’t more effective efforts to stop the carnage is that “the faith community has been asleep — fast asleep,” says a pastor who has worked for decades to reduce gun violence.

PTR Industries released a statement not long ago that read in part:

With a heavy heart but a clear mind, we have been forced to decide that our business can no longer survive in Connecticut – the former Constitution state.

Furthermore, we feel that our industry as a whole will continue to be threatened so long as it remains in a state where its elected leaders have no regard for the rights of those who produce and manufacture its wealth. We are making a call to all involved in our industry to leave this state, close your doors and show our politicians the true consequences of their hasty and uninformed actions. We encourage those in our industry to abandon this state as its leaders have abandoned the proud heritage that forged our freedom.

This is a strong statement, and pertains not only to what PTR Industries intends to do with their own business, but their admonition to other manufacturers in Connecticut (are you listening, Colt and Mossberg?).  But now we know where they are headed.