Fairfax, VA -(AmmoLand.com)-
At a time when it’s more important than ever to maintain the right of
the American people to keep and bear arms for self-defense, law
professor David S. Cohen is calling for repeal of the Second Amendment.
“Americans’
rights are in mortal danger,” he says, unless Hillary Clinton is
elected president and stacks the Supreme Court with progressive judges.
In the repeatedly discredited rag, Rolling Stone, Cohen writes,
“sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the
Constitution are wrong. This is one of those times. . . . The Second
Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to
liberty and a suicide pact.”
By “outdated,” Cohen means that the Framers of the Bill of Rights were unable to conceive of 19th
century semi-automatic firearm technology. “When the Second Amendment
was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the
AR-15 assault rifle (sic),” he said.
However, as the late, great
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the Supreme Court’s decision in District
of Columbia v. Heller, “Just as the First Amendment protects modern
forms of communications and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms
of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all
instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in
existence at the time of the founding.”
And in any case, there is
nothing outdated about the underlying principle of the Second Amendment:
to prohibit the government from interfering with the ability of people
to acquire, possess and develop proficiency with arms they might one day
need to defend themselves and their loved ones.
Cohen’s rant is
just one example of an astonishing amount of sheer nonsense that has
filled the Internet since the terrorist attack in Orlando. Anti-gun
politicians, and so-called opinion columnists and TV talking heads – who
pretend to be “experts” on every topic under the sun, but who in
reality know virtually nothing about even one topic – are confidently
calling the AR-15 an “automatic” weapon, a “military” weapon,” and a
“weapon of war,” and telling everyone that the most popular rifle in
America should be banned.
Of course, the First Amendment protects
the right of pundits to demonstrate that the size of their egos are only
matched by the depth of their ignorance on firearms and the Second
Amendment. And so it should be.
If history repeats itself, the
recent slew of half-baked, culture-war-based, ideologically-motivated,
attention-seeking statements against guns will only increase support for
the right to arms, and additional support may develop as people
increasingly realize that President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are
urging gun bans, are the very politicians most responsible for the rise
of overseas terrorist groups who inspire and possibly direct evildoers
within our midst.
All the more reason for the American people to protect their right to protect themselves.
Showing posts with label anti-gun asshattery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-gun asshattery. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
'Fast and Furious' becomes 'Slow and Tedious'
Since
December 2010 the government program known as Operation Fast and
Furious has morphed into a program that could be accurately labeled as
Operation Slow and Tedious. The objective is to delay exposure of the
truth until that exposure has no political or personal impact on the
various players involved.
Efforts to get at the truth of the scandal got a boost in January when an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that thousands of documents subpoenaed by congressional investigators could not be withheld under claims of executive privilege. In keeping with the Slow and Tedious strategy, the Department of Justice finally released a large block of the documents three months later on a Friday afternoon in April but continues to withhold many others.
The recent document dump supports speculation that then-Attorney General Eric Holder knew more about the ill-conceived gunwalking operation than he has claimed, and that he and other high-level DOJ officials actively worked to conceal details of the operation from Congress and the public. Emails released earlier in the investigation indicate that White House adviser Valerie Jarrett gave guidance in the coverup, but so far, none of the recent documents provide a direct link to the White House. What they do show is a concerted effort to keep the details of the operation under wraps for political purposes.
Had these documents been made public when they were originally subpoenaed, they could have had a serious negative impact on Obama’s re-election campaign and might have prevented implementation of new regulations requiring gun dealers in border states to report information about purchasers of semi-auto rifles. By delaying the release until now, those political consequences have been avoided, but there are other potential consequences the administration is continuing to try and avoid. Recent criminal charges filed against government officials in the Flint, Michigan, water scandal are a reminder that politicians and bureaucrats might not be beyond the reach of the law. So far, no one has paid a significant price for their roles in Fast and Furious, and the administration clearly wants to keep it that way.
It has been more than five years since the tragic death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits. The bandits were armed with guns acquired with the assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives – the agency tasked with enforcement of federal gun control laws. In January of 2011, just one month after Agent Terry’s death, I asked the question in this column whether the Obama administration had intentionally allowed guns to be smuggled to Mexican drug gangs as a way of boosting the administration’s gun control agenda. That column was based on the investigative reporting of citizen-journalists David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh, who developed the story from sources within the BATF and worked tirelessly to bring it to the attention of Congress and “mainstream” reporters. The WND column was the first mention of the scandal in a major national media outlet. That was followed in late February with a report by Cheryl Atkisson on CBS News in which she interviewed one of Codrea and Vanderboegh’s BATF sources. After that, other reporters slowly started mentioning the growing scandal, and Congress intensified its investigation.
Fast and Furious was the codename given to a still-unexplained program under which the BATF instructed certain gun dealers to go ahead with firearm and ammunition sales to suspected Mexican arms traffickers. Once the sales were made, BATF agents were ordered to break off surveillance of the suspects, and no effort of any kind was made to track the suspects or the guns they possessed. BATF officials – and the media – continue to refer to the program as a “botched sting,” or a “failed attempt to track guns to Mexican drug cartels,” but those labels don’t come close to fitting the program. The only monitoring that was done – or even possible under the plan – was to trace serial numbers of guns found at crime scenes.
That information provides no actionable intelligence, and only marginally enhances the prosecution of low-level, straw buyers. When Agent Terry was killed, both guns recovered at the scene turned out to have come from the Fast and Furious program. That resulted in the program being quickly shut down and swept under the rug. Had it not been for Vanderboegh noticing an off-hand comment on a BATF employee gripe site, and following up on the comment, the whole Fast and Furious debacle might have never been made public.
Codrea and Vanderboegh never got the credit they deserved for breaking the story, but they weren’t in it for the notoriety; they just wanted the truth to be known. Vanderboegh, a prolific blogger and rabble-rouser, is currently dealing with serious health issues and is sadly not expected to be with us much longer. As cantankerous and disagreeable as he can be, he has done the republic a great service by challenging authority and exposing the threads of truth in this case. Readers are encouraged to remember him and his family in their current struggles.
After the story started gaining legs in 2011, the administration, the Department of Justice and the BATF hierarchy disavowed any knowledge of the program. They pointed fingers at local agents and made some superficial changes. The acting head of BATF was laterally transferred to a new position, as were the supervisory agents in charge of the operation. A politically connected federal prosecutor in Arizona and a DOJ deputy resigned, and the agents who blew the whistle on the operation faced career-ending retribution. No other consequences have resulted from the ill-conceived program except hundreds of dead and injured in Mexico.
For now, Operation Slow and Tedious drags on. Attorneys for Congress continue to battle attorneys for the administration over release of the remaining documents, but the public’s interest is waning, and the trail is growing cold. Slow and tedious is once again proving to be a successful strategy for consequence avoidance in Washington.
©2016 The Firearms Coalition, all rights reserved. Reprinting, posting, and distributing permitted with inclusion of this copyright statement. www.FirearmsCoalition.org.
Efforts to get at the truth of the scandal got a boost in January when an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that thousands of documents subpoenaed by congressional investigators could not be withheld under claims of executive privilege. In keeping with the Slow and Tedious strategy, the Department of Justice finally released a large block of the documents three months later on a Friday afternoon in April but continues to withhold many others.
The recent document dump supports speculation that then-Attorney General Eric Holder knew more about the ill-conceived gunwalking operation than he has claimed, and that he and other high-level DOJ officials actively worked to conceal details of the operation from Congress and the public. Emails released earlier in the investigation indicate that White House adviser Valerie Jarrett gave guidance in the coverup, but so far, none of the recent documents provide a direct link to the White House. What they do show is a concerted effort to keep the details of the operation under wraps for political purposes.
Had these documents been made public when they were originally subpoenaed, they could have had a serious negative impact on Obama’s re-election campaign and might have prevented implementation of new regulations requiring gun dealers in border states to report information about purchasers of semi-auto rifles. By delaying the release until now, those political consequences have been avoided, but there are other potential consequences the administration is continuing to try and avoid. Recent criminal charges filed against government officials in the Flint, Michigan, water scandal are a reminder that politicians and bureaucrats might not be beyond the reach of the law. So far, no one has paid a significant price for their roles in Fast and Furious, and the administration clearly wants to keep it that way.
It has been more than five years since the tragic death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits. The bandits were armed with guns acquired with the assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives – the agency tasked with enforcement of federal gun control laws. In January of 2011, just one month after Agent Terry’s death, I asked the question in this column whether the Obama administration had intentionally allowed guns to be smuggled to Mexican drug gangs as a way of boosting the administration’s gun control agenda. That column was based on the investigative reporting of citizen-journalists David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh, who developed the story from sources within the BATF and worked tirelessly to bring it to the attention of Congress and “mainstream” reporters. The WND column was the first mention of the scandal in a major national media outlet. That was followed in late February with a report by Cheryl Atkisson on CBS News in which she interviewed one of Codrea and Vanderboegh’s BATF sources. After that, other reporters slowly started mentioning the growing scandal, and Congress intensified its investigation.
Fast and Furious was the codename given to a still-unexplained program under which the BATF instructed certain gun dealers to go ahead with firearm and ammunition sales to suspected Mexican arms traffickers. Once the sales were made, BATF agents were ordered to break off surveillance of the suspects, and no effort of any kind was made to track the suspects or the guns they possessed. BATF officials – and the media – continue to refer to the program as a “botched sting,” or a “failed attempt to track guns to Mexican drug cartels,” but those labels don’t come close to fitting the program. The only monitoring that was done – or even possible under the plan – was to trace serial numbers of guns found at crime scenes.
That information provides no actionable intelligence, and only marginally enhances the prosecution of low-level, straw buyers. When Agent Terry was killed, both guns recovered at the scene turned out to have come from the Fast and Furious program. That resulted in the program being quickly shut down and swept under the rug. Had it not been for Vanderboegh noticing an off-hand comment on a BATF employee gripe site, and following up on the comment, the whole Fast and Furious debacle might have never been made public.
Codrea and Vanderboegh never got the credit they deserved for breaking the story, but they weren’t in it for the notoriety; they just wanted the truth to be known. Vanderboegh, a prolific blogger and rabble-rouser, is currently dealing with serious health issues and is sadly not expected to be with us much longer. As cantankerous and disagreeable as he can be, he has done the republic a great service by challenging authority and exposing the threads of truth in this case. Readers are encouraged to remember him and his family in their current struggles.
After the story started gaining legs in 2011, the administration, the Department of Justice and the BATF hierarchy disavowed any knowledge of the program. They pointed fingers at local agents and made some superficial changes. The acting head of BATF was laterally transferred to a new position, as were the supervisory agents in charge of the operation. A politically connected federal prosecutor in Arizona and a DOJ deputy resigned, and the agents who blew the whistle on the operation faced career-ending retribution. No other consequences have resulted from the ill-conceived program except hundreds of dead and injured in Mexico.
For now, Operation Slow and Tedious drags on. Attorneys for Congress continue to battle attorneys for the administration over release of the remaining documents, but the public’s interest is waning, and the trail is growing cold. Slow and tedious is once again proving to be a successful strategy for consequence avoidance in Washington.
©2016 The Firearms Coalition, all rights reserved. Reprinting, posting, and distributing permitted with inclusion of this copyright statement. www.FirearmsCoalition.org.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
General David Petraeus is forming a gun control group with Gabby Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly.
The goal of the group will be to push national adoption of the same
universal background checks that have failed in California, Colorado,
Washington state, and Paris. In fact, Petraeus will be pushing the same
background checks that Giffords’ attacker passed in order to acquire the
gun he used to wound her on January 8, 2011.
According to The Hill, Kelly announced the launch of the group by talking about military members’ commitment to “protect our constitution and homeland.” He suggested political leaders now need to step up and “do more to protect our rights and save lives.”
Kelly did not mention that more lives are lost in parts of the country where gun control is most stringent–places like Chicago–nor did he explain how passing more laws that interfere with the exercise of Second Amendment rights is somehow akin to protecting those rights.
In addition to Petraeus, former CIA director Michael Hayden and retired Admiral Thad Allen have pledged to push for more gun laws with Mark Kelly.
source
According to The Hill, Kelly announced the launch of the group by talking about military members’ commitment to “protect our constitution and homeland.” He suggested political leaders now need to step up and “do more to protect our rights and save lives.”
Kelly did not mention that more lives are lost in parts of the country where gun control is most stringent–places like Chicago–nor did he explain how passing more laws that interfere with the exercise of Second Amendment rights is somehow akin to protecting those rights.
In addition to Petraeus, former CIA director Michael Hayden and retired Admiral Thad Allen have pledged to push for more gun laws with Mark Kelly.
source
Monday, February 8, 2016
Another Cook County attack on gun rights
Via Chicago Sun-Times
A letter to the editor...
The Cook County Board has a proposed ordinance before it which will attempt to restrict the 2nd Amendment rights of all law-abiding citizens in Cook County. The ordinance calls for the “prohibitions on the sale of firearm to, and purchase of firearm by, a person not covered by appropriate liability insurance.”
This means Cook County residents would not be able to purchase and own a firearm without first acquiring firearm liability insurance.
The sponsor and others would like to compare firearm
liability insurance to having car insurance, which is like comparing
apples to oranges. A right granted by the 2nd
Amendment allows United States citizens to possess and own a firearm.
Driving a motor vehicle is a privilege granted by state law, not a right
covered under the United States Constitution.
The intention of the ordinance’s sponsor is to have a major
impact on gun violence. An admirable thought, however you must ask how
will this ordinance have any impact on gun-wielding criminals? The
truthful answer is it won’t. It’s a false notion to think that violent
criminals who are already breaking the law will stop and contemplate the
purchase of firearm liability insurance before committing their next
crime. Moreover, nearly all insurance policy coverage excludes criminal
acts from their coverage obligation.
If this ordinance were passed, litigation would certainly
follow in opposition to its constitutionality, which would mean a long
and costly legal defense for Cook County taxpayers. There is a reason
why this type of legislation has failed nearly everywhere it has been
introduced across the country.
This ordinance would not address violent criminal behavior,
but would instead restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding
citizens. I believe this is an unconstitutional overreach by government
which I strongly oppose.
We need to focus our efforts on preventative measures that
are truly substantive in nature and that will deter individuals away
from crime. We can do so by beginning to promote strong family
structure, by supporting the concept of community members turning in
known criminals and through increasing educational and employment
opportunities. Preventing criminal behavior must be the driving force to
addressing violent crime, rather than ineffective legislation placed
upon the citizen taxpayer without regard to consequence.
Sean M. Morrison
Cook County Commissioner
17th District
Cook County Commissioner
17th District
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Tell the Truth About 'Gun Violence' Numbers
One would get the impression listening to gun control advocates or,
indeed, to President Obama and those Democrats vying to succeed him that
the United States is in the midst of an epidemic of violence; awash in
blood with murderers and mass killers roaming the streets carrying guns
they've bought at gun shows, over the Internet or from crazed neighbors.
In fact, many Americans share this view. A recent Pew poll asked
respondents if they believe the U.S. homicide rate has gone up or down
over the last twenty years. Fifty-six percent of those polled said it
has gone up and only twelve percent believed we are safer today than two
decades ago.
The perception here and abroad has little to do with reality and a lot to do with political grandstanding. In fact, over the last twenty years or so the U.S. homicide rate has not just receded, but has been cut in half. The United States does indeed have a higher homicide rate than some industrialized nations in Europe and Japan, but is very, very different in size and complexity to those nations usually cited by those who wish to blame guns for the differences.
Here is one simple fact for those who blame firearms ownership and availability in this country for the murder and violent crime rate that plagues some of our major cities: while crime and violence were being cut in half, gun ownership was doubling.
It is too simple to claim that there is less violence in the United States today because more of our citizens are armed, but it is clear that there is no correlation between the number of guns in private hands with either the murder or violent crime rates as claimed by most gun control advocates.
The president likes to talk about ‘gun violence’ which is something that includes firearms accidents, suicides and those killed with guns. There are statistically very few firearms accidents in this country thanks to safety training and common sense. Two-thirds of all gun deaths are suicides and while some claim that making it more difficult for potential suicides to get guns would decrease the total number of suicides, international data suggest otherwise. That leaves two additional categories although former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's groups lump those killed by police and even the death of the Boston Marathon Bomber as a firearms homicide. They are criminal gun violence and so-called mass shootings.
Criminals using firearms are the biggest problem, but it is a problem we as a society know how to handle. If a thug walks into a convenience store with a gun and robs it, he has committed both a state and federal crime. Robbery is a state crime, but committing a felony with a firearm is a federal crime and prosecutable as such with a five year minimum sentence. A felon in possession of a gun is also prosecutable and can get five to ten years for having one in his possession.
Back in the nineties, the NRA partnered with law enforcement officials and prosecutors in Richmond, Virginia, which was at that time listed as America's murder capital. The message was simple. Use a gun to commit a crime and you will get five years in a federal penitentiary with no possibility of a plea bargain. The murder rate dropped 32 percent the first year and another 20 percent the next, but the U.S. attorney who participated in what came to be known as “Project Exile” was criticized by Eric Holder, then Deputy Attorney General, for wasting prosecutorial resources.
Today felons or criminals using firearms are rarely prosecuted by the federal government. In fact, today's U.S. murder capital is Chicago, the jurisdiction with the lowest rate of such prosecutions. Before President Obama issued his recent series of “Executive Orders” on gun violence, it was suggested that they would include instructions to U.S. prosecutors to begin charging gun criminals under existing law. That idea was dropped in favor of actions that don't target criminals, but will make it harder for non-criminals to buy firearms.
The final category involves mass shootings such as the killing at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Washington Navy Yard. These tragedies rarely if ever involve criminals. They are invariably perpetrated by the severely and dangerously mentally ill. This category of violence is the most difficult to deter or prevent, but beefed up school security, getting the states to put the most potentially dangerous into the background check system and rebuilding the U.S. mental health system are the keys to dealing with them.
The American people are lucky in that the nation's founders wrote the age old right of self defense into our Bill of Rights. Many nations don't recognize such a right, but Americans do. It is estimated, in fact, that as many as 200,000 crimes are deterred in a typical year by armed potential victims. It's why in every jurisdiction that has legalized what we call ‘concealed carry’ has seen a drop in violent crime. Burglars don't break into a house with a Rottweiler in the yard and are reluctant to use violence against a man or woman who just might be able to fight back.
source
The perception here and abroad has little to do with reality and a lot to do with political grandstanding. In fact, over the last twenty years or so the U.S. homicide rate has not just receded, but has been cut in half. The United States does indeed have a higher homicide rate than some industrialized nations in Europe and Japan, but is very, very different in size and complexity to those nations usually cited by those who wish to blame guns for the differences.
Here is one simple fact for those who blame firearms ownership and availability in this country for the murder and violent crime rate that plagues some of our major cities: while crime and violence were being cut in half, gun ownership was doubling.
It is too simple to claim that there is less violence in the United States today because more of our citizens are armed, but it is clear that there is no correlation between the number of guns in private hands with either the murder or violent crime rates as claimed by most gun control advocates.
The president likes to talk about ‘gun violence’ which is something that includes firearms accidents, suicides and those killed with guns. There are statistically very few firearms accidents in this country thanks to safety training and common sense. Two-thirds of all gun deaths are suicides and while some claim that making it more difficult for potential suicides to get guns would decrease the total number of suicides, international data suggest otherwise. That leaves two additional categories although former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's groups lump those killed by police and even the death of the Boston Marathon Bomber as a firearms homicide. They are criminal gun violence and so-called mass shootings.
Criminals using firearms are the biggest problem, but it is a problem we as a society know how to handle. If a thug walks into a convenience store with a gun and robs it, he has committed both a state and federal crime. Robbery is a state crime, but committing a felony with a firearm is a federal crime and prosecutable as such with a five year minimum sentence. A felon in possession of a gun is also prosecutable and can get five to ten years for having one in his possession.
Back in the nineties, the NRA partnered with law enforcement officials and prosecutors in Richmond, Virginia, which was at that time listed as America's murder capital. The message was simple. Use a gun to commit a crime and you will get five years in a federal penitentiary with no possibility of a plea bargain. The murder rate dropped 32 percent the first year and another 20 percent the next, but the U.S. attorney who participated in what came to be known as “Project Exile” was criticized by Eric Holder, then Deputy Attorney General, for wasting prosecutorial resources.
Today felons or criminals using firearms are rarely prosecuted by the federal government. In fact, today's U.S. murder capital is Chicago, the jurisdiction with the lowest rate of such prosecutions. Before President Obama issued his recent series of “Executive Orders” on gun violence, it was suggested that they would include instructions to U.S. prosecutors to begin charging gun criminals under existing law. That idea was dropped in favor of actions that don't target criminals, but will make it harder for non-criminals to buy firearms.
The final category involves mass shootings such as the killing at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Washington Navy Yard. These tragedies rarely if ever involve criminals. They are invariably perpetrated by the severely and dangerously mentally ill. This category of violence is the most difficult to deter or prevent, but beefed up school security, getting the states to put the most potentially dangerous into the background check system and rebuilding the U.S. mental health system are the keys to dealing with them.
The American people are lucky in that the nation's founders wrote the age old right of self defense into our Bill of Rights. Many nations don't recognize such a right, but Americans do. It is estimated, in fact, that as many as 200,000 crimes are deterred in a typical year by armed potential victims. It's why in every jurisdiction that has legalized what we call ‘concealed carry’ has seen a drop in violent crime. Burglars don't break into a house with a Rottweiler in the yard and are reluctant to use violence against a man or woman who just might be able to fight back.
source
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
FBI official: 'Perfect storm' imperiling gun background checks
Via USA Today here
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — The surge of criminal background checks required of new gun purchasers has been so unrelenting in recent months that the FBI had been forced to temporarily halt the processing of thousands of appeals from prospective buyers whose firearm purchase attempts have been denied.
Since October, the bureau’s entire cadre of appeal examiners— about 70 analysts — was redeployed here to help keep pace with waves of incoming background investigations that continued through December when a record 3.3 million firearm sales were processed.
The transfer of examiners, which had left a backlog of 7,100 appeals, is only part of a makeshift reorganization that FBI Assistant Director Stephen Morris said has become necessary to handle a burgeoning workload that expands in the wake of every mass shooting and call for increased gun control that invariably prompt firearms sales binges across the country.
“The last several months, we've kind of found ourselves in a perfect storm,’’ Morris said in an interview with USA TODAY. In each of the last six months, the number of background checks has risen steadily, according to FBI records, ending with December's record with more than a half-million over the previous monthly high posted in the aftermath of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school massacre.
Since before Thanksgiving weekend, all annual leave for the more than 400 employees of the bureau’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been canceled. That Black Friday, the system was swamped with 185,345 background check requests on new firearm sales, a new single-day record. Morris said temporary background check examiners also are being pulled from internal construction projects and bureau divisions that oversee the gathering of crime statistics across the nation.
The near-constant frenzy of activity within the FBI’s sprawling complex, four hours away from the nation’s capital, may represent the most compelling argument in favor of at least part of President Obama’s recent executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence: the addition of 230 examiners to the NICS operation and 200 more agents for nation's chief gun enforcement agency, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms.
The new positions are desperately needed, authorities said, to support the seriously stressed NICS system and to prepare for an even heavier workload as a consequence of the central provision of the administration's executive actions. That directive would require an increasing number of private firearms dealers to be licensed, subjecting their customers to scrutiny under the federal background check system.
Some of the administration's most vocal opponents on gun policy, including those who offered initial skepticism or outright opposition when the executive actions were unveiled earlier this month, now appear open to potentially adding the hundreds of requested positions that would require congressional approval.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, acknowledged in a written statement to USA TODAY that more NICS examiners “might be necessary.’’
Even the National Rifle Association, which assailed the administration's overall gun plan as "political exploitation,'' said that they would "have no objection'' to proposals that would both bolster the ranks of the ATF and the NICS system.
The group, however, remained critical of the plan's call for private gun sellers to obtain federal licenses so that buyers would go through background checks.
"If
the addition of these agents are used to apprehend criminals — not to
harass law-abiding gun owners — and (the examiners are used) to improve
the broken NICS system, we would have no objection,'' NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told USA TODAY.
The NICS system, mandated by Congress as part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, has for nearly 20 years been a centerpiece of the government's effort to block criminals from obtaining firearms. Yet the operation has largely struggled to keep pace with a steadily increasing number of firearm transfers, while maintaining databases of criminal and mental health records that rely solely on voluntary contributions from state and local authorities. Those records are crucial to determining whether prospective gun buyers are eligible to purchase firearms.
"We live off those records,'' Morris said. "That is our bread and butter. ...The misnomer is that FBI has everything that exists on criminal history records in some big repository, and that's simply not true. A lot of data sits out in state and local systems. Being able to reach out and get that information can be very, very challenging.''
Morris said it is impossible to estimate how many records could be missing from the system.
"You don't know what you don't know, right?''
Earlier this month, Attorney General Loretta Lynch,
in letters to the nation's governors as part of the administration's
executive actions, urged states to provide additional information,
saying the existing NICS databases were "far from complete.'' The
letters also contained subtle warnings that the FBI intended to publish
each state's contribution in the coming months.
"The NICS is a critical tool in keeping firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons,'' Lynch wrote, "but it is only as effective as the information entered into the databases upon which it relies.''
While slightly more than 70% of firearms transactions are allowed to proceed within minutes after buyers appear at the counters of licensed dealers, according to the FBI, the records are especially key to quickly reconciling the remaining transfers that require deeper reviews of state and local data before decisions can be issued on whether guns can be sold.
Depending on the volume of gun sales, at any one time the queue of pending cases — which by law must be resolved within three business days — generally ranges in the several thousand. Recently, those numbers have ballooned as high as 13,000. If the cases, some of which depend on local law enforcement agencies finding paper records to satisfy an examiner's search, cannot be resolved within the three-day period, gun dealers are generally free to complete the sales.
"Some (cases) aren't being looked at until the third day,'' Morris said, referring to the increasing volume and limited staffing.
"That delay queue has grown ... that meter is running.''
Morris said that he would like to limit examiners' caseloads to two reviews per hour to ensure accuracy. But that number has nearly doubled to nearly four cases per hour.
No one recent case underscores the sobering nature of the work here more, officials said, more than an April transaction in South Carolina, reviewed by a veteran examiner at the West Virginia facility.
In that case, which could not be resolved within the three-day period, Dylann Roof was mistakenly allowed to walk away with the .45-caliber handgun allegedly used two months later to kill nine people during an evening Bible study session at the iconic Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston.
During the background check, Roof's March arrest on felony drug charges was mistakenly attributed to the Lexington County, S.C., Sheriff's Department, not the Columbia, S.C., Police Department, which actually made the arrest. The sheriff's department operates the jail where Roof had been detained.
The Columbia police report included information that Roof admitted to drug possession, which would have triggered an immediate denial by NICS, according to bureau guidelines. But that information was never seen by the reviewer because the FBI's database did not include Columbia police contacts in its list of agency contacts for Lexington County purchase reviews. The reviewer did attempt to reach the Lexington County prosecutor's office, which was handling the drug case at the time, but received no response.
"We are all sick about what happened,'' FBI Director James Comey said during a July briefing when the error was disclosed.
Morris said the Roof case continually "humanizes the process,'' which mostly churns on far outside the public spotlight.
"These are people who are making life-and-death decisions,'' Morris said, adding that analyst in the Roof case remains on the job working new cases every day. Given the information available at the time, authorities have said the examiner did everything possible to appropriately vet the purchase.
"She's a great examiner, too. I'd love to have 230 more of them.''
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — The surge of criminal background checks required of new gun purchasers has been so unrelenting in recent months that the FBI had been forced to temporarily halt the processing of thousands of appeals from prospective buyers whose firearm purchase attempts have been denied.
Since October, the bureau’s entire cadre of appeal examiners— about 70 analysts — was redeployed here to help keep pace with waves of incoming background investigations that continued through December when a record 3.3 million firearm sales were processed.
The transfer of examiners, which had left a backlog of 7,100 appeals, is only part of a makeshift reorganization that FBI Assistant Director Stephen Morris said has become necessary to handle a burgeoning workload that expands in the wake of every mass shooting and call for increased gun control that invariably prompt firearms sales binges across the country.
“The last several months, we've kind of found ourselves in a perfect storm,’’ Morris said in an interview with USA TODAY. In each of the last six months, the number of background checks has risen steadily, according to FBI records, ending with December's record with more than a half-million over the previous monthly high posted in the aftermath of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school massacre.
Since before Thanksgiving weekend, all annual leave for the more than 400 employees of the bureau’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been canceled. That Black Friday, the system was swamped with 185,345 background check requests on new firearm sales, a new single-day record. Morris said temporary background check examiners also are being pulled from internal construction projects and bureau divisions that oversee the gathering of crime statistics across the nation.
The near-constant frenzy of activity within the FBI’s sprawling complex, four hours away from the nation’s capital, may represent the most compelling argument in favor of at least part of President Obama’s recent executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence: the addition of 230 examiners to the NICS operation and 200 more agents for nation's chief gun enforcement agency, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms.
The new positions are desperately needed, authorities said, to support the seriously stressed NICS system and to prepare for an even heavier workload as a consequence of the central provision of the administration's executive actions. That directive would require an increasing number of private firearms dealers to be licensed, subjecting their customers to scrutiny under the federal background check system.
Some of the administration's most vocal opponents on gun policy, including those who offered initial skepticism or outright opposition when the executive actions were unveiled earlier this month, now appear open to potentially adding the hundreds of requested positions that would require congressional approval.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, acknowledged in a written statement to USA TODAY that more NICS examiners “might be necessary.’’
Even the National Rifle Association, which assailed the administration's overall gun plan as "political exploitation,'' said that they would "have no objection'' to proposals that would both bolster the ranks of the ATF and the NICS system.
The group, however, remained critical of the plan's call for private gun sellers to obtain federal licenses so that buyers would go through background checks.
'Delay queue is growing'
Burrowed in the rolling hills of the West Virginia countryside, the idyllic setting for the NICS operation masks the fraught, politically charged debate that has engulfed national gun policy.The NICS system, mandated by Congress as part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, has for nearly 20 years been a centerpiece of the government's effort to block criminals from obtaining firearms. Yet the operation has largely struggled to keep pace with a steadily increasing number of firearm transfers, while maintaining databases of criminal and mental health records that rely solely on voluntary contributions from state and local authorities. Those records are crucial to determining whether prospective gun buyers are eligible to purchase firearms.
"We live off those records,'' Morris said. "That is our bread and butter. ...The misnomer is that FBI has everything that exists on criminal history records in some big repository, and that's simply not true. A lot of data sits out in state and local systems. Being able to reach out and get that information can be very, very challenging.''
Morris said it is impossible to estimate how many records could be missing from the system.
"You don't know what you don't know, right?''
"The NICS is a critical tool in keeping firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons,'' Lynch wrote, "but it is only as effective as the information entered into the databases upon which it relies.''
While slightly more than 70% of firearms transactions are allowed to proceed within minutes after buyers appear at the counters of licensed dealers, according to the FBI, the records are especially key to quickly reconciling the remaining transfers that require deeper reviews of state and local data before decisions can be issued on whether guns can be sold.
Depending on the volume of gun sales, at any one time the queue of pending cases — which by law must be resolved within three business days — generally ranges in the several thousand. Recently, those numbers have ballooned as high as 13,000. If the cases, some of which depend on local law enforcement agencies finding paper records to satisfy an examiner's search, cannot be resolved within the three-day period, gun dealers are generally free to complete the sales.
"Some (cases) aren't being looked at until the third day,'' Morris said, referring to the increasing volume and limited staffing.
"That delay queue has grown ... that meter is running.''
Morris said that he would like to limit examiners' caseloads to two reviews per hour to ensure accuracy. But that number has nearly doubled to nearly four cases per hour.
Roof serves as cautionary tale
The enormous stakes are not always apparent, until the first reports of a new mass shooting echo across social media or cable television.No one recent case underscores the sobering nature of the work here more, officials said, more than an April transaction in South Carolina, reviewed by a veteran examiner at the West Virginia facility.
In that case, which could not be resolved within the three-day period, Dylann Roof was mistakenly allowed to walk away with the .45-caliber handgun allegedly used two months later to kill nine people during an evening Bible study session at the iconic Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston.
The Columbia police report included information that Roof admitted to drug possession, which would have triggered an immediate denial by NICS, according to bureau guidelines. But that information was never seen by the reviewer because the FBI's database did not include Columbia police contacts in its list of agency contacts for Lexington County purchase reviews. The reviewer did attempt to reach the Lexington County prosecutor's office, which was handling the drug case at the time, but received no response.
"We are all sick about what happened,'' FBI Director James Comey said during a July briefing when the error was disclosed.
Morris said the Roof case continually "humanizes the process,'' which mostly churns on far outside the public spotlight.
"These are people who are making life-and-death decisions,'' Morris said, adding that analyst in the Roof case remains on the job working new cases every day. Given the information available at the time, authorities have said the examiner did everything possible to appropriately vet the purchase.
"She's a great examiner, too. I'd love to have 230 more of them.''
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
NRA Statement on President Obama’s Proposed Executive Actions on Gun Control
Fairfax, Va. – The executive director of
the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, Chris
W. Cox, released the following statement on Tuesday regarding President
Barack Obama’s Executive Gun Control Order:
Once again, President Obama has chosen to engage in
political rhetoric, instead of offering meaningful solutions to our
nation’s pressing problems. Today’s
event also represents an ongoing attempt to distract attention away
from his lack of a coherent strategy to keep the American people safe
from terrorist attack.
The American people do not need more emotional, condescending lectures that are completely devoid of facts. The men and women of the National Rifle Association take a back seat to no one when it comes to keeping our communities safe. But the fact is that President Obama’s proposals would not have prevented any of the horrific events he mentioned. The
timing of this announcement, in the eighth and final year of his
presidency, demonstrates not only political exploitation but a
fundamental lack of
seriousness.
The proposed executive actions are ripe for abuse by the
Obama Administration, which has made no secret of its contempt for the
Second Amendment. The NRA will continue to fight to protect the
fundamental, individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms as guaranteed under
our Constitution. We will
not allow law-abiding gun owners to be harassed or intimidated for
engaging in lawful, constitutionally-protected activity – nor will we
allow them to become scapegoats for President Obama’s failed policies.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Stand Your Ground: Science and Science Fiction
Andrew Branca, the author of the “Law of Self Defense,” recently reviewed a study on racial bias and Florida’s Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws published in the Elsevier Social Science & Medicine. The study, “Race, law, and health: Examination of ‘Stand Your Ground’ (SYG) and defendant convictions in Florida” (Social Science & Medicine, Volume 142, October 2015, pages 194-201; pay-walled) makes troubling claims about racial bias and convictions.
The study’s authors conclude that a defendant was two times more likely to be convicted in a case that involved a white victim than a non-white victim; that the race of the victim was “a predictor of conviction of the defendant,” and that Florida’s SYG legislation “has a quantifiable racial bias.” The study’s abstract exhorts other states with SYG laws “to carry out similar analyses to see if their manifestations are the same as those in Florida, and all should remediate any injustices found.”
Are these “manifestations” of racial bias a matter of settled science? Does this study really provide evidence of unequal treatment under the law? Pulling back the curtain, Mr. Branca examined the underlying data used – a listing of cases compiled by the Tampa Bay Times, a Florida newspaper, “supplemented with available online court documents and/or news reports.” The study itself was based on a subset of 204 cases out of the newspaper’s entire dataset of 237. After a close analysis of every one of the 237 cases, Mr. Branca found that 181 (over 76 percent) did not qualify as SYG cases at all, based on the legal definition of the term. It follows that even if all of the 56 remaining cases were included in the study’s subset of 204, the vast majority of the subset (148 cases, over 70 percent) were not actually SYG cases. Accordingly, research conclusions drawn from the 204 cases as if they were all SYG cases arguably lack factual integrity and scientific reliability.
In response to these observations, the authors advised that they opted to use a definition of SYG – a legal concept – “as it has been used in the media around highly publicized cases (e.g., Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman) and not the legal definition” provided by Mr. Branca. Instead of evaluating SYG cases using the relevant definition applied by the Florida courts in determining guilt and convictions, the study employed a “definition” of cases “related to SYG” because, presumably, that’s how the newspaper staff decided to structure the original dataset. It’s helpful at this point to include a quote from Mr. Branca:
Surely it must be self-evident that whatever the impact of SYG on conviction rates, it can only be the “legal definition” as actually applied by the criminal justice system that could possibly have an effect, and that the “media definition” that is not applied by the criminal justice system (because it is not law) cannot have had any effect on conviction rates.
(His full response is expected to be published as a dissenting commentary regarding the study in a future issue of the Social Science & Medicine publication.)
Alleging a racial bias in the administration of justice is a grave charge and deserves a thoughtful, scrupulous and responsible analysis – particularly if the results are being used to justify efforts to “remediate any injustices” found to exist. We can hope for more objective analysis in the future.
© 2015 National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
New York: Legislators Propose Outrageous Ammunition Restriction Legislation
Via NRA-ILA
Two New York legislators have announced that they are introducing legislation in 2016 that would severely limit ammunition purchases. State Senator Roxanne Persaud (D-19) and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon (D-52) want to pass a law that would limit ammo purchases to twice the capacity of the firearm during a 90-day period (3 months)!
Undeterred by the failed SAFE Act, anti-gun lawmakers in Albany seem determined to pursue the same failed policies and will not stop until the Second Amendment is completely dismantled. The SAFE Act has done nothing to lower crime in New York and has turned law-abiding citizens into criminals. The SAFE Act had its own ammunition restrictions and required ammunition background checks which were suspended after Governor Cuomo embarrassingly realized that such a system was impractical. In addition, the last attempt to regulate how many rounds a person could load into a gun was overturned by a Federal District Court in New York and ruled unconstitutional. Persaud and Simon are justifying this bill by pointing to terrorism, as if terrorists are going to voluntarily ration ammunition. There are so many problems with this legislation that it would be impossible to highlight them all herein. Again, for the sake of New York citizens, we would hope legislators start focusing on the serious issues facing the state and stop introducing these embarrassing ideas.
It’s readily evident that the two lawmakers know next to nothing about the subject of firearms and ammunition. Manufacturers don’t even package ammunition with such a random number of cartridges in many cases. This is one of the most absurd bills being introduced in the entire country. However, because anti-gun legislators in New York have a history of defying logic, we will treat this legislation as another serious attempt to infringe on your constitutional right to self-defense.
Two New York legislators have announced that they are introducing legislation in 2016 that would severely limit ammunition purchases. State Senator Roxanne Persaud (D-19) and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon (D-52) want to pass a law that would limit ammo purchases to twice the capacity of the firearm during a 90-day period (3 months)!
Undeterred by the failed SAFE Act, anti-gun lawmakers in Albany seem determined to pursue the same failed policies and will not stop until the Second Amendment is completely dismantled. The SAFE Act has done nothing to lower crime in New York and has turned law-abiding citizens into criminals. The SAFE Act had its own ammunition restrictions and required ammunition background checks which were suspended after Governor Cuomo embarrassingly realized that such a system was impractical. In addition, the last attempt to regulate how many rounds a person could load into a gun was overturned by a Federal District Court in New York and ruled unconstitutional. Persaud and Simon are justifying this bill by pointing to terrorism, as if terrorists are going to voluntarily ration ammunition. There are so many problems with this legislation that it would be impossible to highlight them all herein. Again, for the sake of New York citizens, we would hope legislators start focusing on the serious issues facing the state and stop introducing these embarrassing ideas.
It’s readily evident that the two lawmakers know next to nothing about the subject of firearms and ammunition. Manufacturers don’t even package ammunition with such a random number of cartridges in many cases. This is one of the most absurd bills being introduced in the entire country. However, because anti-gun legislators in New York have a history of defying logic, we will treat this legislation as another serious attempt to infringe on your constitutional right to self-defense.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
NBA’s Anti-Gun Propaganda
Bloomberg sponsored anti-gun bullshit to air 5 times during NBA Christmas day games…
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/curry--cp3--melo--noah-call-for-end-to-gun-violence-in-new-nba-ad-165043760.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/curry--cp3--melo--noah-call-for-end-to-gun-violence-in-new-nba-ad-165043760.html
Monday, December 21, 2015
Huff Po Goes Full Retard on Second Amendment
Samantha Paige Rosen
Stop Hiding Behind the Second Amendment
The Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to own a firearm. This narrative was developed by the National Rifle Association in the late 1970s, out of fear that further gun control laws would eliminate private ownership of firearms altogether.
For 200 years following the ratification of the Second Amendment, federal judges understood that the Second Amendment safeguarded the right to keep and bear arms when serving in a state militia. This view was widely held until the 1980s when pro-gun organizations began claiming that federal regulation of the individual use of firearms violated Americans' Second Amendment rights.
Initially, the National Rifle Association dealt more with sport than politics. "I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns," said Former NRA President Karl Frederick in 1934. "I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses."
In response to increasing crime, a 1968 federal law prohibited interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. The NRA became scared that more restrictions would ultimately result in government seizure of all personal guns. That's when, in 1977, the group reorganized to launch an aggressive anti-gun control movement based on a fabricated understanding of the Second Amendment. Those who invoke the Second Amendment as an absolute reason why the United States can't act like Great Britain, Australia, Japan and other countries to reduce staggering gun violence don't understand the amendment at all.
When the thirteen colonies broke away from tyrannical Great Britain to form the United States of America, the concern that this new government would become corrupt was very real. The ultimate check on a tyrannical government, the Framers of the Constitution believed, was an armed population.
The Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Since militias are made up of citizens bearing arms, gun proponents argue that the right to keep and bear arms naturally extends to each citizen, who may use a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
For the first time in history, this perspective was supported in the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller. A civilian, the Court ruled, has a constitutional right to keep a handgun in his or her home for purposes of self-defense.
Nowhere in the text, however, is it stated that an individual right to keep and bear arms is preserved. More overtly, the text refers to the collection of people who would make up a militia if the federal government were to abuse its power.
More collectivist nonsense @ Huff Po here
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
USA Today Editorial Board-Using a secret and sloppy list to take away a constitutional right is a bad idea.
In his speech Sunday after last week’s gun massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., President Obama demanded
that Congress “make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun.
What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to
buy a semiautomatic weapon?”
On the surface, the issue does seem like a no-brainer. Delve deeper than the sound bites, however, and it's a lot more complicated.
Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, should know that. Of course allowing a terrorist to buy a gun is crazy. The real question, though, is whether the no-fly list is the right tool. Until the federal government cleans up the list and the process, the answer is no.
The list was an understandable way to try to prevent more terrorists from getting on planes after 9/11, but the way it worked should have made Americans deeply uneasy. The list presumes you’re guilty until proven innocent, which gets one of the nation’s most important constitutional guarantees exactly backwards.
Last year, a federal judge found government management of the list unconstitutional, ruling that the way people get put on the list with no notice, and no meaningful way to get off if they're on by mistake, violated the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. That forced the administration to begin changing things.
As far as is known, the process remains imprecise. People whose names are the same as someone on the list have been subject to extra checking at airports — as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., learned repeatedly at airports because there was someone on the list named “T. Kennedy.” Journalists, entertainers, U.S. military veterans and others have been wrongly put on the list, or confused for people on it. The ACLU represented 13 people who claimed they should never have been on the list, and the government had to admit that at least seven of them should be taken off, and promise to change the process for challenging inclusion.
As if all this weren’t enough, it’s not even clear what list supporters are talking about. The government has several. Obama mentioned the no-fly list, but a House bill doesn’t mention a list at all. Backers say they expect the attorney general to rely on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, which includes more than 800,000 people, though about 95% are foreign nationals and can't buy guns anyway.
As with just about everything else involving guns, the watch-list fight is dividing along party lines. Last week, the Senate’s Republican majority rejected legislation to bar gun sales to people on the list. On Thursday, however, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, announced that his state would put the ban in place by executive order, a move likely to face legal challenges.
Like it or not, the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a Second Amendment right to buy and own guns, subject to reasonable regulation. Such regulation should include universal background checks and bans on sales of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But denying a constitutional right for certain citizens, based on a secret government list, just doesn’t meet the test of American values.
On the surface, the issue does seem like a no-brainer. Delve deeper than the sound bites, however, and it's a lot more complicated.
Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, should know that. Of course allowing a terrorist to buy a gun is crazy. The real question, though, is whether the no-fly list is the right tool. Until the federal government cleans up the list and the process, the answer is no.
The list was an understandable way to try to prevent more terrorists from getting on planes after 9/11, but the way it worked should have made Americans deeply uneasy. The list presumes you’re guilty until proven innocent, which gets one of the nation’s most important constitutional guarantees exactly backwards.
Last year, a federal judge found government management of the list unconstitutional, ruling that the way people get put on the list with no notice, and no meaningful way to get off if they're on by mistake, violated the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. That forced the administration to begin changing things.
As far as is known, the process remains imprecise. People whose names are the same as someone on the list have been subject to extra checking at airports — as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., learned repeatedly at airports because there was someone on the list named “T. Kennedy.” Journalists, entertainers, U.S. military veterans and others have been wrongly put on the list, or confused for people on it. The ACLU represented 13 people who claimed they should never have been on the list, and the government had to admit that at least seven of them should be taken off, and promise to change the process for challenging inclusion.
As if all this weren’t enough, it’s not even clear what list supporters are talking about. The government has several. Obama mentioned the no-fly list, but a House bill doesn’t mention a list at all. Backers say they expect the attorney general to rely on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, which includes more than 800,000 people, though about 95% are foreign nationals and can't buy guns anyway.
As with just about everything else involving guns, the watch-list fight is dividing along party lines. Last week, the Senate’s Republican majority rejected legislation to bar gun sales to people on the list. On Thursday, however, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, announced that his state would put the ban in place by executive order, a move likely to face legal challenges.
Like it or not, the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a Second Amendment right to buy and own guns, subject to reasonable regulation. Such regulation should include universal background checks and bans on sales of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But denying a constitutional right for certain citizens, based on a secret government list, just doesn’t meet the test of American values.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
HuffPo Academic Invites Civil War with American Gun Owners
That’s usually followed by ridiculing those suggesting that’s the case with accusations of being “paranoids.” A Huffington Post article, posted on Pearl Harbor Day of all days, takes the mask off and reveals the end game, and why not one inch can be ceded to the totalitarian lobby under the deception of “compromise.”
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
The Volokh Conspiracy-The costs and consequences of gun control
Today the Cato Institute published my monograph “The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control.”
The policy analysis examines several gun control proposals which have
been promoted by the Obama administration and the gun control lobby:
bans on so-called assault weapons; bans on standard magazines;
confiscation; and the prohibition of all private sales, loans and
returns, except when processed by a gun store. After explaining why each
of these proposals is likely to do little good and much harm, the paper
discusses realistic alternatives which really can save lives. The most
important of these is providing a much broader safety net for people
seeking help for severe mental illness. In addition, respecting the
right to bear arms has been demonstrated to be successful in thwarting
would-be mass murderers.
Prohibiting certain guns or magazines will be futile without confiscation of such arms currently owned by citizens; so said a 2013 memo by Greg Ridgeway, acting director of the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Justice Department). Likewise, the NIJ memo explained that “universal” background checks are useless without comprehensive registration of all guns and all gun owners. Yet Americans have historically resisted gun registration, precisely because of concerns about confiscation. These concerns are not unfounded; registration lists have been used to enforce confiscation in New York City, in Australia and in Great Britain. In Australia, the confiscation was euphemistically called a “buy back,” although it was in fact involuntary confiscation, with only partial compensation paid for the confiscated items.
Read more @ The Volokh Conspiracy here
Prohibiting certain guns or magazines will be futile without confiscation of such arms currently owned by citizens; so said a 2013 memo by Greg Ridgeway, acting director of the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Justice Department). Likewise, the NIJ memo explained that “universal” background checks are useless without comprehensive registration of all guns and all gun owners. Yet Americans have historically resisted gun registration, precisely because of concerns about confiscation. These concerns are not unfounded; registration lists have been used to enforce confiscation in New York City, in Australia and in Great Britain. In Australia, the confiscation was euphemistically called a “buy back,” although it was in fact involuntary confiscation, with only partial compensation paid for the confiscated items.
Read more @ The Volokh Conspiracy here
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
As Paris and Brussels reel, London’s Met Police say: Hand over your BB guns
UK Shooting News
There are no restrictions on owning imitation firearms or BB guns, though you must be 18 to buy them. Airguns are subject to some of the controls on firearms, mainly on having a clean criminal record.
Coming on the heels of the EU gun ban proposals, the recent attack on Paris and the seemingly thwarted attack on Brussels, demanding that innocent people hand over lawfully owned toys is a pathetic response.
The Met insists that people handing over firearms (or, indeed, children’s plastic toys, which if coloured black or grey now fall under the classification ‘realistic imitation firearm’) “may not face prosecution for illegal possession and can remain anonymous”, though immediately continues its statement by saying “some weapons [will be] forensically checked for evidence”.
Actual firearms can also be handed in to local police stations during the surrender.
The term ‘surrender’ is used in order to allow police to mount prosecutions against people who hand in firearms or toys. Previously such initiatives were labelled ‘amnesties’, which UK Shooting News understands implied immunity from prosecution.
Detective Superintendent Stephen Clayman of the Trident and Area Crime Command said, in a canned press release: “We are asking Londoners to hand in firearms and imitation weapons to avoid them falling into the wrong hands. In an inappropriate setting, imitation weapons will cause fear and panic, and could lead to a police response involving the deployment of armed police officers, with potentially tragic results.”
UKSN’s standard advice if you have an unwanted firearm or come into possession of one, for example through an elderly relative’s death, is to contact your local gun shop immediately. Registered Firearms Dealers will in most cases be quite happy to help you safely and lawfully dispose of firearms without exposing you to the risk of overzealous police employees trying to make you into their next arrest and conviction statistic.
In 2009 Surrey Police arrested a man who found a shotgun in his garden and took it to his local police station for unlawful possession of a firearm. He was later convicted of the offence, which carries up to 5 years in prison – but escaped with a suspended sentence. Unlawful possession is a strict liability offence, meaning your intentions count for nothing in court.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Maryland spent millions on gun database that solved no crimes. – Baltimore Sun
Maryland spent millions on gun database that solved no crimes. – Baltimore Sun
November 8, 2015
RM
Five million dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the “fingerprints” of thousands of handguns was a failure.
Source: Maryland spent millions on gun database that solved no crimes. – Baltimore Sun
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Virginia Democrats conspired against gun store, emails show
Democratic elected officials in Northern Virginia
worked together to engineer a campaign against a Fairfax County
firearms store in a bid to politicize gun violence and drum up support
for a Democrat in an election Tuesday, an exchange of emails shows.
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms, opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen. Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr. Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’ versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
Bearing Drift, a gun rights blog, obtained the officials’ emails via a Freedom of Information Act request and made them available to The Washington Times.
Ms. Murphy and Ms. Favola did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the emails. Mr. Foust declined to comment on the messages.
On Sept. 26, when Mr. Gates held the grand opening of his McLean gun shop, protesters picketed outside.
That same day, an online petition was created to thank the protesters and demand a boycott of the McLean Service Center, Mr. Gates’ new landlord.
Online forums on the Fairfax Underground public message board posted the landlord’s personal cellphone and home address and encouraged protesters to demand he break his lease with Mr. Gates.
“We’re not leaving, and our new landlords are backing us 100 percent,” Mr. Gates told The Times. “Our customers who live in the area have asked us not to back down and stay, and a lot of our customers are from McLean.
“They protested us the day we opened, had about 115 people there. But, to be honest, that helped us more than it hurt us,” he said. “[The protesters] put us on the map. I have people statewide, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, D.C., all the way down to Florida, saying they saw us on the news and want to support us. Business is good.”
Still, Mr. Gates is perturbed by the politicizing of the issue. His shop is less than two blocks from his previous location but is closer to a school, which Democrats have cited in efforts to pique voter turnout Tuesday.
Mr. Foust issued campaign handbills saying his Republican opponent, Jennifer Chronis, is “wrong on guns” and defends Mr. Gates’ shop.
“There have been 47 school shootings this year alone,” the Foust handbill reads. “Don’t let Jennifer Chronis become Supervisor. Because it’s not right to sell guns next to a school.”
However, Virginia county supervisors have no jurisdiction over gun stores that are established in accordance with national and state laws.
Mr. Foust acknowledged as much to his Democratic comrades, noting in an email that “State law pretty much prohibits the county from regulating guns.” He attached a verbatim copy of the law.
“They’re turning my store, my livelihood, into a political debate,” Mr. Gates said. “You have this guy running for supervisor, saying without a doubt he’s going to shut us down and equating our gun shop with the reason there’s gun violence. For one thing, he can’t shut us down because we operate within Virginia state and federal laws.
“It’s just insensitive and unwise. He is using it for political gain,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Foust sees things differently.
“Chronis remained silent while I and other McLean area elected officials were publicly condemning the gun store owner’s decision to locate next to an elementary school,” Mr. Foust said in an email to The Times. “It appears that the pro-gun shop people were and are supporting her.”
He cited a Nova Firearms Facebook post Oct. 6 — long after the store’s grand opening and subsequent protest — that displayed Ms. Chronis’ campaign banner and said, “Make the Second Amendment an Issue in the Local Election. By now you’ve learned about the efforts of NOVA Firearms, and the threats they’ve received from their local county Supervisor.”
Mr. Foust emailed The Times a screen shot of the post, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Gates blamed Mr. Foust for publicly agitating the issue of his store’s closure and helping to organize the protest, but he said Ms. Chronis has remained largely silent on the issue.
Ms. Chronis did make a statement at the McLean Citizens Association debate in October
“I know John [Foust] has already addressed that there are very few things really that can be done at the county level, other than addressing potentially some zoning changes,” she said at the forum, according to a transcript posted on her campaign website. “So here’s where I disagree with the way that my opponent has handled the situation. I believe it is the role of elected officials to do something about solving the problem, to de-escalate the situation and work with both parties to come to resolution.
“It is not the role of our elected leaders to publicly insult law-abiding business owners, and in my opinion, to fan the flames of an issue and only make worse the fears of the parents for political gain,” Ms. Chronis said.
Mr. Gates said Mr. Foust has yet to sit down with him to discuss the issue.
source
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms, opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen. Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr. Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’ versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
Bearing Drift, a gun rights blog, obtained the officials’ emails via a Freedom of Information Act request and made them available to The Washington Times.
Ms. Murphy and Ms. Favola did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the emails. Mr. Foust declined to comment on the messages.
On Sept. 26, when Mr. Gates held the grand opening of his McLean gun shop, protesters picketed outside.
That same day, an online petition was created to thank the protesters and demand a boycott of the McLean Service Center, Mr. Gates’ new landlord.
Online forums on the Fairfax Underground public message board posted the landlord’s personal cellphone and home address and encouraged protesters to demand he break his lease with Mr. Gates.
“We’re not leaving, and our new landlords are backing us 100 percent,” Mr. Gates told The Times. “Our customers who live in the area have asked us not to back down and stay, and a lot of our customers are from McLean.
“They protested us the day we opened, had about 115 people there. But, to be honest, that helped us more than it hurt us,” he said. “[The protesters] put us on the map. I have people statewide, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, D.C., all the way down to Florida, saying they saw us on the news and want to support us. Business is good.”
Still, Mr. Gates is perturbed by the politicizing of the issue. His shop is less than two blocks from his previous location but is closer to a school, which Democrats have cited in efforts to pique voter turnout Tuesday.
Mr. Foust issued campaign handbills saying his Republican opponent, Jennifer Chronis, is “wrong on guns” and defends Mr. Gates’ shop.
“There have been 47 school shootings this year alone,” the Foust handbill reads. “Don’t let Jennifer Chronis become Supervisor. Because it’s not right to sell guns next to a school.”
However, Virginia county supervisors have no jurisdiction over gun stores that are established in accordance with national and state laws.
Mr. Foust acknowledged as much to his Democratic comrades, noting in an email that “State law pretty much prohibits the county from regulating guns.” He attached a verbatim copy of the law.
“They’re turning my store, my livelihood, into a political debate,” Mr. Gates said. “You have this guy running for supervisor, saying without a doubt he’s going to shut us down and equating our gun shop with the reason there’s gun violence. For one thing, he can’t shut us down because we operate within Virginia state and federal laws.
“It’s just insensitive and unwise. He is using it for political gain,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Foust sees things differently.
“Chronis remained silent while I and other McLean area elected officials were publicly condemning the gun store owner’s decision to locate next to an elementary school,” Mr. Foust said in an email to The Times. “It appears that the pro-gun shop people were and are supporting her.”
He cited a Nova Firearms Facebook post Oct. 6 — long after the store’s grand opening and subsequent protest — that displayed Ms. Chronis’ campaign banner and said, “Make the Second Amendment an Issue in the Local Election. By now you’ve learned about the efforts of NOVA Firearms, and the threats they’ve received from their local county Supervisor.”
Mr. Foust emailed The Times a screen shot of the post, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Gates blamed Mr. Foust for publicly agitating the issue of his store’s closure and helping to organize the protest, but he said Ms. Chronis has remained largely silent on the issue.
Ms. Chronis did make a statement at the McLean Citizens Association debate in October
“I know John [Foust] has already addressed that there are very few things really that can be done at the county level, other than addressing potentially some zoning changes,” she said at the forum, according to a transcript posted on her campaign website. “So here’s where I disagree with the way that my opponent has handled the situation. I believe it is the role of elected officials to do something about solving the problem, to de-escalate the situation and work with both parties to come to resolution.
“It is not the role of our elected leaders to publicly insult law-abiding business owners, and in my opinion, to fan the flames of an issue and only make worse the fears of the parents for political gain,” Ms. Chronis said.
Mr. Gates said Mr. Foust has yet to sit down with him to discuss the issue.
source
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Third Time's the Charm: Federal Appeals Court Voids Provisions of D.C. Gun Control in Heller III
Via NRA-ILA Here
Dick Anthony Heller, the lead plaintiff in the historic 2008 Supreme Court case that invalidated D.C.’s handgun ban, has once again successfully challenged D.C.’s oppressive gun control regime. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling in the NRA-supported case of Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller III), bringing further relief to the beleaguered law-abiding gun owners of the nation’s capital. While the court did not totally invalidate D.C.’s onerous registration regime, today’s ruling is an important step in bringing gun ownership within reach to more of D.C.’s upstanding residents.
Following the Supreme Court’s rebuke in the original Heller case, an unrepentant D.C. Council immediately set out to make the lawful keeping and bearing of arms in the District as expensive, time-consuming, and difficult as possible. Intrepid reporter Emily Miller chronicled her own experience negotiating D.C.’s firearm registration process between 2011 and 2012 in a series of reports for the Washington Times that later formed the basis for a book. At the time, registration involved a 17-step process, $465 in fees (not including the price of the gun), five hours of mandatory training that had to be completed outside the District, and multiple trips to D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) headquarters during business hours.
Thanks to a combination of political advocacy, media exposé, and litigation, the hurdles and expense of D.C.’s firearm registration process have been whittled down over the years. Nevertheless, the District has consistently remained one of the most difficult places in the U.S. to acquire a firearm lawfully. The plaintiffs in Heller III challenged numerous aspects of the remaining law, including its application to long guns; the requirement for applicants to appear at police headquarters to be fingerprinted, photographed, and to submit their registration paperwork; the requirement that registrants bring their firearms into police headquarters; the expiration of the registration after three years; various fees; the mandatory training requirements; the requirement of passing a test on D.C. law; and a prohibition on the same person registering more than one handgun during any 30-day period.
District officials attempted to justify these requirements on the basis of “protecting police officers” and “promoting public safety.” Significantly, the court of appeals found that “the District has not offered substantial evidence from which one could draw a reasonable conclusion that the challenged requirements will protect police officers ….”
Citing the testimony the of one of the District’s own witnesses, the court noted that police are trained to account for the possible presence of dangerous weapons in any situation where they might encounter a crime in progress, a domestic dispute, or any other potentially violent environment. This is so, the expert acknowledged, even when responding to calls at locations without registered weapons. In any event, the evidence in the case revealed that MPD officers very rarely even bother to check the firearm registry when responding to a call, conducting an investigation, or executing a search warrant.
The court also determined that several of the challenged registration requirements did not promote public safety, including the requirement that applicants bring the firearms they wish to register to MPD headquarters; the three-year expiration and re-registration requirement; the required test of legal knowledge; and the limitation of registering one handgun per person during any 30 day period.
Accordingly, it held that all of these requirements offended the Second Amendment and are unenforceable.
The court rejected the premise that limiting the number of firearms lawfully present in a home is a valid argument for gun control, even if it could reduce the harm that could be caused by firearms generally. “Accepting that as true,” the court wrote, “it does not justify restricting an individual’s undoubted constitutional right to keep arms (plural) in his or her home, whether for self-defense or hunting or just collecting, because, taken to its logical conclusion, that reasoning would justify a total ban on firearms kept in the home.” This may be one of the most significant aspects of the decision, as discouraging lawful gun ownership has been the cornerstone of D.C.’s approach to gun control.
While these developments will bring substantial benefits to those who wish to lawfully own guns in D.C., the court still upheld the balance of the registration procedure. If history is any guide, moreover, the District may seek further review of the court’s decision, or it may simply enact other impediments to firearm ownership, which will require further court testing at taxpayer expense. Thus, while pro-gun advocates should cheer the court’s ruling, it also merely underscores the ongoing necessity of the D.C. Second Amendment Enforcement Act, which would comprehensively reform D.C.’s gun control laws and prohibit future abuses by the D.C. Council.
Dick Anthony Heller, the lead plaintiff in the historic 2008 Supreme Court case that invalidated D.C.’s handgun ban, has once again successfully challenged D.C.’s oppressive gun control regime. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling in the NRA-supported case of Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller III), bringing further relief to the beleaguered law-abiding gun owners of the nation’s capital. While the court did not totally invalidate D.C.’s onerous registration regime, today’s ruling is an important step in bringing gun ownership within reach to more of D.C.’s upstanding residents.
Following the Supreme Court’s rebuke in the original Heller case, an unrepentant D.C. Council immediately set out to make the lawful keeping and bearing of arms in the District as expensive, time-consuming, and difficult as possible. Intrepid reporter Emily Miller chronicled her own experience negotiating D.C.’s firearm registration process between 2011 and 2012 in a series of reports for the Washington Times that later formed the basis for a book. At the time, registration involved a 17-step process, $465 in fees (not including the price of the gun), five hours of mandatory training that had to be completed outside the District, and multiple trips to D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) headquarters during business hours.
Thanks to a combination of political advocacy, media exposé, and litigation, the hurdles and expense of D.C.’s firearm registration process have been whittled down over the years. Nevertheless, the District has consistently remained one of the most difficult places in the U.S. to acquire a firearm lawfully. The plaintiffs in Heller III challenged numerous aspects of the remaining law, including its application to long guns; the requirement for applicants to appear at police headquarters to be fingerprinted, photographed, and to submit their registration paperwork; the requirement that registrants bring their firearms into police headquarters; the expiration of the registration after three years; various fees; the mandatory training requirements; the requirement of passing a test on D.C. law; and a prohibition on the same person registering more than one handgun during any 30-day period.
District officials attempted to justify these requirements on the basis of “protecting police officers” and “promoting public safety.” Significantly, the court of appeals found that “the District has not offered substantial evidence from which one could draw a reasonable conclusion that the challenged requirements will protect police officers ….”
Citing the testimony the of one of the District’s own witnesses, the court noted that police are trained to account for the possible presence of dangerous weapons in any situation where they might encounter a crime in progress, a domestic dispute, or any other potentially violent environment. This is so, the expert acknowledged, even when responding to calls at locations without registered weapons. In any event, the evidence in the case revealed that MPD officers very rarely even bother to check the firearm registry when responding to a call, conducting an investigation, or executing a search warrant.
The court also determined that several of the challenged registration requirements did not promote public safety, including the requirement that applicants bring the firearms they wish to register to MPD headquarters; the three-year expiration and re-registration requirement; the required test of legal knowledge; and the limitation of registering one handgun per person during any 30 day period.
Accordingly, it held that all of these requirements offended the Second Amendment and are unenforceable.
The court rejected the premise that limiting the number of firearms lawfully present in a home is a valid argument for gun control, even if it could reduce the harm that could be caused by firearms generally. “Accepting that as true,” the court wrote, “it does not justify restricting an individual’s undoubted constitutional right to keep arms (plural) in his or her home, whether for self-defense or hunting or just collecting, because, taken to its logical conclusion, that reasoning would justify a total ban on firearms kept in the home.” This may be one of the most significant aspects of the decision, as discouraging lawful gun ownership has been the cornerstone of D.C.’s approach to gun control.
While these developments will bring substantial benefits to those who wish to lawfully own guns in D.C., the court still upheld the balance of the registration procedure. If history is any guide, moreover, the District may seek further review of the court’s decision, or it may simply enact other impediments to firearm ownership, which will require further court testing at taxpayer expense. Thus, while pro-gun advocates should cheer the court’s ruling, it also merely underscores the ongoing necessity of the D.C. Second Amendment Enforcement Act, which would comprehensively reform D.C.’s gun control laws and prohibit future abuses by the D.C. Council.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Washington: Seattle City Council Unanimously Passes Anti-Gun Ordinances
On Monday, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed two anti-gun ordinances. As previously reported, these ordinances disregard Washington’s preemption law and victimize law-abiding gun owners and licensed firearm dealers.
The first ordinance seeks to levy reparations from those who lawfully engage in the expression of their Second Amendment rights by imposing a tax on each firearm and round of ammunition that is legally sold in Seattle. The proposal would take the paid taxes and use it to pay for crimes committed by others. Such an ordinance would simply force the law-abiding to pay for the actions of criminals.
The second ordinance would mandate that gun owners who have become the victim of a burglary or other such theft report that a firearm has become lost or stolen within 24 hours. Notwithstanding the unreasonable requirement for individuals to have an immediate inventory of all items that are lost during such a traumatic event, this ordinance would further punish victims of these occurrences by fining them upwards of $500.
Your NRA-ILA is currently exploring legal options to combat these anti-gun ordinances. Please stay tuned to your inbox and www.NRAILA.org for more updates on this and other Second Amendment issues in Washington
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Freedom Advocates, Pro-Gun Senators Unite to Oppose the Obama Administration’s Attempt to Censor Information about Firearms Technology
Via NRA-ILA
Freedom Advocates, Pro-Gun Senators Unite to
Oppose the Obama Administration’s Attempt to Censor Information about
Firearms Technology
As we reported in June,
the Obama Administration’s State Department (DOS) proposed a revision
of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) on June 3 that
would require anyone seeking to make certain types of information about
firearms publicly available to first obtain government approval. Prior
restraints of the sort contemplated by the proposal are among the most
disfavored regulations of speech under First Amendment case law. Our
original alert encouraged gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, serious
hobbyists, and others who rely on design, development, production or
manufacturing information about firearms to file comments with the State
Department opposing the rule and explaining its problems.
The response was overwhelming. By the time the comment
period ended on Monday, nearly 10,000 comments had been posted to the
Regulations.gov website, the vast majority of them adamantly opposed to
the law. A DOS official put the actual number of comments (which can
also be submitted by other means) at some 12,000. Those opposing the
rule include police officers, engineers, research universities,
scholastic rifle teams, defense contractors, gunsmiths, firearm
instructors, professors, IT professionals, and thousands of gun owners
who enjoy fabricating or working on firearms for their lawful personal
use. Their input illustrates not only the proposal’s restraints on free
speech but the numerous practical problems it would pose for a variety
of professionals, students, researchers, and other law-abiding
Americans.
NRA’s own comments
were submitted on Monday. The comments begin by emphasizing that the
larger Export Control Reform effort of which the June 3 proposal is a
part has always intended to move firearms off ITAR’s list of controlled
items (the U.S. Munitions List) to a list subject to more flexible
controls administered by the Commerce Department. The
whole point of having dual systems of control is to recognize that
especially sensitive or sophisticated military technology (like that
used in nuclear subs or ballistic missiles) requires a different level
of regulation than items like firearms that have both military and
civilian applications. Yet the Obama Administration, solely for
political reasons, continues to treat the same sorts of firearms that
some 100 million Americans (and countless foreigners) already have in
their homes as if they are as militarily sensitive and consequential as
aircraft carriers or strategic bombers.
Our comments also note that a proposed definition of
“defense service” is so far-reaching that it could hinder efforts by NRA
and NRA certified instructors to provide firearm education and safety
training within the U.S. Under the proposal, a foreign person lawfully
present in the U.S. could not participate even in “basic” operational
training with a firearm unless the person had been approved to receive
that firearm as an export in another country. This means, for example,
that a foreign exchange student living with an American host family
could not lawfully obtain the necessary training to safely use and
handle a borrowed bolt action rifle to accompany the family on a deer
hunt. Obviously, this is too restrictive and does nothing to further
America’s national security.
The bulk of NRA’s comments, however, are devoted to
explaining how the proposal would impose an unconstitutional prior
restraint on firearm-related speech protected by the First Amendment. We
also expose DOS’s falsehood that the proposed requirement for
“preauthorization” to discuss technical aspects of firearms and
ammunition is merely a “more explicit statement” of current practice and
policy. The comments quote extensively from case law and Department of
Justice memorandums dating back to the 1970s which warn DOS that it
cannot constitutionally impose a broad requirement that Americans first
obtain government approval before speaking publicly about unclassified
military technology. We also
show how DOS, under prior administrations, removed a similar
preauthorization requirement in response to these concerns. “Not only is
the preauthorization requirement a radical departure from DOS practice
as it existed immediately prior to the proposal’s publication date,” our
comments state, “it is a return to policy DOS had abandoned in the
1980s as incompatible with the First Amendment.”
Finally, our comments expose how another supposed
clarification is actually a massive power grab by DOS, with the
proposal’s insistence that speech published online must be treated as an
“export,” because of its presumed availability to foreign persons. Not
only is DOS’ attempt to seize control of Internet content futile from a
practical standpoint, it was never authorized by the Congress that
original passed ITAR’s enabling legislation, the Arms Export Control Act
(AECA). The Internet had yet to be developed at the time of the AECA’s
passage, so it authors could hardly have appointed DOS the government’s
official Internet censor. More to the point, even if they had tried, the
First Amendment would have stopped them.
Surprisingly (or maybe not), the media has been
surprisingly silent on the government’s attempt to censor speech about
constitutionally-protected firearms owned by millions of Americans.
NRA’s comments quote statements from a press conference in which a DOS
official sets up a strawman by insisting the proposal would not ban
“general descriptions” or “imagery” of firearms. What the official fails
to mention, however, is that more detailed information about firearm
technology would be seriously curtailed. Worse, because the proposal is
so awkwardly and confusingly drafted, even unregulated speech would
likely be chilled because of the inability of individuals and media
outlets (like Internet service providers) to determine when the
regulatory line was crossed. Is the mass media so hypocritical that it’s
willing to sacrifice a whole category of legitimate,
constitutionally-protected speech, simply because it supports a gun
culture the media detests? So far, that seems to be the case.
Fortunately, pro-gun representatives in the Senate have been more conscientious in protecting the public trust on this issue. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) led an effort that resulted in a 28 senators signing on to a letter
to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, opposing the June 3 proposal.
According to the letter, “certain definitions within the proposal are so
broad as to capture actions essential to the exercise of a citizen’s
Second Amendment rights.” It goes on to state that the new definitions
could capture “information such as how to legally modify or assemble a
generally available firearm, such as a hunting rifle or self-defense
handgun, or information on the development of new loading information
for existing firearm ammunition.” “These types of activities,” the
letter warns, “are part and parcel of how many Americans exercise their
Second Amendment rights.” The signatories accordingly “urge the State
Department to modify or delay these misguided changes to the ITAR in
order to ensure they do not violate the First and Second Amendments or
until commonly owned firearms and ammunition are not adversely
impacted.”
Once again, America’s gun owners, and their elected
officials, with the backing and support of your NRA, have risen to the
challenge of opposing an attempt from the Obama Administration to use
executive authority to limit Second Amendment rights. Whether the
proposal will be enacted as written, in a modified form, or will be
scrapped, remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, DOS has received
a clear message that America’s gun owners will not stand by to let
either their First or Second Amendment rights be trampled.
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