by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was interviewed by Erica Hill on The Early Show this morning. One of the more interesting things that comes out is that he calls out Rep. Elijah Cummings, Ranking Minority Member of the Committee, for trying to obstruct these hearings.
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HB 650 Passes North Carolina Senate
HB 650 which amends various firearms laws and contains the Castle Doctrine passed its 2nd and 3rd Readings last night in the North Carolina State Senate. It is unclear currently whether it was a voice vote or a roll-call vote. This means HB 650 and the Castle Doctrine have passed both houses of the General Assembly. All that remains is reconciling the differences and we in North Carolina will have the Castle Doctrine once the bill is signed by Governor Bev Perdue.
Sean at An NC Gun Blog reports that there is one small amendment dealing with storing firearms in a locked vehicle by a legislator or legislative employee.
Having scanned the entire bill, the repeal of the emergency powers gun ban under Chapter 36A of the General Statutes was not put in this bill as an amendment. As a number of posts since last Thursday have made clear, any such amendment would have mooted Bateman v. Perdue. That case challenged the constitutionality of the ban on off-premises possession of firearms and ammunition during declared States of Emergency.
Citizens Committee Weighs In On S. 594 And Bateman
The open letter sent out this afternoon by Paul Valone has now been slightly rewritten and is joined in by Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (and the head of the Second Amendment Foundation).
The CalGuns Foundation sent out a tweet to it followers this evening stating that Bateman v. Perdue is of national importance.
URGENT ACTION ALERT
ACT NOW TO PASS CASTLE DOCTRINE & PARKS CARRY
In the shell game characterizing the North Carolina legislative process, a modified HB 650 passed the Senate Judiciary II Committee today and heads for the floor for its Second and Third Readings, quite probably tomorrow. With the legislature likely to recess on Friday, time is short. YOU MUST RESPOND IMMEDIATELY.
In its current version, HB 650 contains Castle Doctrine, parks carry, enhanced concealed handgun reciprocity, improvements to our concealed handgun law, and far more.
Sadly, HB 650 – and your rights – face a threat not from legislators, but from the efforts of an organization ostensibly dedicated to defending the Second Amendment. Below is an open letter to North Carolina gun rights supporters – but equally vital to gun rights supporters everywhere – which explains the problem.
OPEN LETTER FROM PAUL VALONE AND ALAN GOTTLIEB:
IS SB 594 THE RIGHT BILL?
To: North Carolina Gun Rights Supporters
From: GRNC President F. Paul Valone
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb
Members of the NRA recently received postcards urging them to call NC Senate leadership in support of Senate Bill 594, described in the postcard as “an emergency powers bill [to] ensure that our Right to Keep and Bear Arms cannot be suspended” during declared states of emergency.
But while North Carolina’s state of emergency law is indeed a problem, SB 594 is the wrong solution. Worse, it seems to be a short-sighted effort by the NRA to grab credit for what some would have you believe to be a victory.
Why? Because it would render moot – and cause the dismissal – of crucial litigation to expand recognition of the Second Amendment in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Bateman v. Perdue. Together with the Michael Bateman, Virgil Green, Forrest Minges, and the Second Amendment Foundation, GRNC is working with Alan Gura – the winner of DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago – the cases which led the Supreme Court to affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Although GRNC has made numerous entreaties to NRA representatives to back the Bateman case, they have apparently fallen on deaf ears. Just as the NRA tried to derail the DC v. Heller decision in its early stages through its attempts to repeal the DC gun ban, now it apparently wants gun owners to regard GRNC – the state’s most vocal and effective gun rights organization – as somehow “anti-gun” for realizing that SB 594 is a short-sighted and misguided vehicle to advance gun rights.
Gun rights supporters have two choices:
Help the NRA achieve a narrow, short-sighted win by amending HB 650 or other gun bills to include language from SB 594, the now-dead “state of emergency” bill; or
Help Gura, SAF and GRNC expand the interpretation of the Second Amendment, which will not only render North Carolina’s state of emergency law unconstitutional, but will advance gun rights for everyone, everywhere.
Don’t support GRNC. Don’t support CCRKBA. Don’t support the NRA. SUPPORT THE SECOND AMENDMENT! And do so by helping Bateman v. Perdue expand your right to keep and bear arms.
Armatissimi e liberissimi,
F. Paul Valone
President, Grass Roots North Carolina
Alan M. Gottlieb
Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
If you agree with this – and I hope you will – and you live in North Carolina, here is what you need to do:
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED
- Immediately all your state senator and tell him to pass HB 650 without amendments of any kind – especially to oppose efforts to add the contents SB 594; and
- Immediately e-mail all members of the NC Senate with the message above.
CONTACT INFORMATION
You may find your NC STATE representative by going here:
http://www.grnc.org/contact_reps.htm
To e-mail all members of the Senate, use the following addresses:
Austin.Allran@ncleg.net, Tom.Apodaca@ncleg.net, Bob.Atwater@ncleg.net, Doug.Berger@ncleg.net, Phil.Berger@ncleg.net, Stan.Bingham@ncleg.net, Harris.Blake@ncleg.net, Dan.Blue@ncleg.net, Andrew.Brock@ncleg.net, Harry.Brown@ncleg.net, Peter.Brunstetter@ncleg.net, Debbie.Clary@ncleg.net, Daniel.Clodfelter@ncleg.net, Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net, Charlie.Dannelly@ncleg.net, Jim.Davis@ncleg.net, Don.East@ncleg.net, James.Forrester@ncleg.net, Linda.Garrou@ncleg.net, Thom.Goolsby@ncleg.net, Malcolm.Graham@ncleg.net, Rick.Gunn@ncleg.net, Kathy.Harrington@ncleg.net, Fletcher.Hartsell@ncleg.net, Ralph.Hise@ncleg.net, Neal.Hunt@ncleg.net, Brent.Jackson@ncleg.net, Clark.Jenkins@ncleg.net, Edward.Jones@ncleg.net, Ellie.Kinnaird@ncleg.net, Eric.Mansfield@ncleg.net, Floyd.McKissick@ncleg.net, Wesley.Meredith@ncleg.net, Martin.Nesbitt@ncleg.net, Buck.Newton@ncleg.net, Louis.Pate@ncleg.net, Jean.Preston@ncleg.net, William.Purcell@ncleg.net, Bill.Rabon@ncleg.net, Gladys.Robinson@ncleg.net, David.Rouzer@ncleg.net, Bob.Rucho@ncleg.net, Dan.Soucek@ncleg.net, Josh.Stein@ncleg.net, Richard.Stevens@ncleg.net, Jerry.Tillman@ncleg.net, Tommy.Tucker@ncleg.net, Don.Vaughan@ncleg.net, Michael.Walters@ncleg.net, Stan.white@ncleg.net
DELIVER THIS MESSAGE
In sending e-mails, use the subject line: “Pass HB 650 without amendments”
Dear Senator:
I strongly urge you to vote for HB 650: “Amend Various Gun Laws/Castle Doctrine” and to oppose ANY AND ALL amendments to the bill, however well-intentioned they may appear. The present contents of HB 650 have been voted on — and passed – in various versions by both the Senate and House. The bill’s passage is long overdue.
Efforts to amend gun-related legislation to include the contents of SB 594: “Firearms/State of Emergency” are misguided and short-sighted. Such an amendment would render moot the Bateman lawsuit filed by numerous plaintiffs, including Grass Roots North Carolina and the Second Amendment Foundation, and argued by famed gun rights lawyer Alan Gura, to expand the US Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment.
As always, I will be monitoring your actions via Grass Roots North Carolina legislative alerts
Respectfully,
“Stunning Report” Expected To Be Released Today By House Oversight Committee
FoxNews is reporting that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to release a report today on Project Gunwalker. I don’t find anything on the Committee’s website yet but will post it when it is available.
Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>
UPDATE: The report is still not available. However, Mike Vanderboegh cites a Wall Street Journal article by Evan Perez who has seen the report. Go to Sipsey Street Irregulars to read the WSJ article as it has disappeared from the Journal’s website. Here is an excerpt.
ATF agents interviewed by congressional investigators described supervisors trying to tamp down agents’ misgivings about the strategy to allow the weapons purchases.
Larry Alt, an ATF agent, told investigators agents opposed the weapons sales as early as December 2009 and wanted to arrest straw purchasers, who are paid to buy guns for others. Mr. Alt said he agreed with a fellow agent who expressed the view that “someone was going to die.”
Supervisors responded by saying the operation was “sanctioned” by higher-ups. They also cited Mexico’s surging drug violence—187 murders in Sinaloa state in one month— as reason for the strategy.
“I believe we are righteous in our plan to dismantle this entire [trafficking] organization and to rush in to arrest any one person without taking into account the entire scope of the conspiracy would be ill advised. …,” wrote David Voth, an ATF supervisor who was leading Fast and Furious, to fellow agents in an April 2010 email cited in the 51-page report scheduled to be released Wednesday.
UPDATE II: If you are looking for the report from the Oversight Committee, I have it as the top post in the blog and will try to keep it at the top throughout the day. You can also just click the link above.
I’d Hate To Have To Shoot Against This Kid!
Bob Mayne of the Handgun World podcast just posted a YouTube video of one of his squad-mates in the recent USPSA Double Tap Championships held in Wichita Falls, TX. Grayson just turned 12 and can out-shoot most adults.
If he is this good now, imagine what he’ll be like at 18!
Sen. Chuck Grassley Interviewed On Project Gunwalker
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was interviewed by Ginny Simone of NRA News yesterday on Operation Fast and Furious. Grassley is the first scheduled witness in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing tomorrow.
An Open Letter From Paul Valone, President Of Grass Roots North Carolina
F. Paul Valone, President of Grass Roots North Carolina, just sent out this open letter regarding SB 594, HB 650, amendments, and the emergency powers gun ban. It shouldn’t come as surprise that I agree 100% with Paul on this if you have read this blog for more than a week.
I am a Life Member of both the National Rifle Association and of the Second Amendment Foundation. I also belong to Grass Roots North Carolina. As Paul says, this isn’t about the NRA or GRNC. I’d also add in the Second Amendment Foundation. It is about being smart and not-short sighted. We are in a Long War to regain our freedom and our God-given rights to protect ourselves and our families. We lost these rights bit by bit and now must win them back bit by bit. Among the tools we need to win are legal precedents. A case that gets mooted never becomes a precedent.
OPEN LETTER FROM PAUL VALONE:
IS SB 594 THE RIGHT BILL?
To: North Carolina Gun Rights Supporters
From: GRNC President F. Paul Valone
Members of the NRA recently received postcards urging them to call NC Senate leadership in support of Senate Bill 594, described in the postcard as “an emergency powers bill [to] ensure that our Right to Keep and Bear Arms cannot be suspended” during declared states of emergency.
But while North Carolina’s state of emergency law is indeed a problem, SB 594 is the wrong solution. Worse, it seems to be a short-sighted effort by the NRA to grab credit for what some would have you believe to be a victory.
Why? Because it would render moot – and cause the dismissal – of crucial litigation to expand recognition of the Second Amendment in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Bateman v. Perdue. Together with the Michael Bateman, Virgil Green, Forrest Minges, and the Second Amendment Foundation, GRNC is working with Alan Gura – the winner of DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago – the cases which led the Supreme Court to affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Although GRNC has made numerous entreaties to NRA representatives to back the Bateman case, they have apparently fallen on deaf ears. Just as the NRA tried to derail the DC v. Heller decision in its early stages through its attempts to repeal the DC gun ban, now it apparently wants gun owners to regard GRNC – the state’s most vocal and effective gun rights organization – as somehow “anti-gun” for realizing that SB 594 is a short-sighted and misguided vehicle to advance gun rights.
Gun rights supporters have two choices:
* Help the NRA achieve a narrow, short-sighted win by amending HB 650 or other gun bills to include language from SB 594, the now-dead “state of emergency” bill; or
* Help Gura, SAF and GRNC expand the interpretation of the Second Amendment, which will not only render North Carolina’s state of emergency law unconstitutional, but will advance gun rights for everyone, everywhere.
Don’t support GRNC. Don’t support the NRA: SUPPORT THE SECOND AMENDMENT! And do so by helping Bateman v. Perdue expand your right to keep and bear arms.
Armatissimi e liberissimi,
F. Paul Valone
President, Grass Roots North Carolina
I would also urge you to read Sean Sorrentino’s post that went up this afternoon entitled More Respectful Disagreement. It is an excellent post and I think his ideas are on the mark.
“Violence Prevention” Researcher Says Gun Owners Are Drunks
The title simplifies it just a bit but Dr. Garen J. Wintermute of the Violence Prevention Research Program, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis does say there is a link between firearms ownership and alcohol-related “risk behaviours” according to an abstract published in Injury Prevention yesterday.
Abstract
Alcohol use and firearm ownership are risk factors for violent injury and death. To determine whether firearm ownership and specific firearm-related behaviours are associated with alcohol-related risk behaviours, the author conducted a cross-sectional study using Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data for eight states in the USA from 1996 to 1997 (the most recent data available). Altogether, 15 474 respondents provided information on firearm exposure. After adjustment for demographics and state of residence, firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to have ≥5 drinks on one occasion (OR 1.32; 95% CI 1.16 to 1.50), to drink and drive (OR 1.79; 95% CI 1.34 to 2.39) and to have ≥60 drinks per month (OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.14 to 1.83). Heavy alcohol use was most common among firearm owners who also engaged in behaviours such as carrying a firearm for protection against other people and keeping a firearm at home that was both loaded and not locked away. The author concludes that firearm ownership and specific firearm-related behaviours are associated with alcohol-related risk behaviours.
I’m sure this must explain why the Brady Campaign ranked the state of Utah dead last with a score of zero. Why it must be full of gun-owning and gun-toting drunks!
Except that Utah is heavily Mormon (about 60%) and the Mormons have a doctrine against alcohol use. Utah also has the lowest alcohol-related fatalities per 100,000 people at 1.93 for 2008.
Cherry-picked data will give you any results you want especially if you start your research with an agenda.
H/T Josh
Coalition Files Amicus Brief In Colorado Carry Case
The Second Amendment Foundation and a coalition of 17 other gun rights organizations have filed an amicus brief with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Peterson v. Garcia. Gray Peterson’s case has been supported in this lawsuit against Denver by the CalGuns Foundations.
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has been joined by 17 other firearms rights groups in an amicus brief filed in a case now before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging laws that prohibit the carrying of firearms by law-abiding non-resident U.S. citizens in Denver, Colorado.
The case, Peterson v. Garcia, was filed by Washington state resident Gray Peterson, who cannot exercise his right to bear arms because Colorado statute prohibits the issuance of a concealed carry permit to non-residents, and does not recognize Peterson’s Washington license or his Florida carry permit because he is not a Florida resident. Denver bans the open carry of firearms, leaving Peterson – who visits Colorado frequently – without any legal means of carrying a firearm for his personal protection.
“This is a case that affects citizens in at least 20 states and the District of Columbia,” noted Miko Tempski, SAF legal affairs director. “We’ve been joined by organizations from 16 of those states in this brief, because they all have members who may travel to Colorado and face the same problem if they enter the City of Denver.”
Joining SAF are the Buckeye Firearms Foundation (Ohio), Citizens’ Rights Action League (Rhode Island), Commonwealth Second Amendment (Massachusetts), Connecticut Citizens Defense League, Calguns Foundation, Inc. (California), Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (Minnesota), Hawaii Defense Foundation, Illinois Carry, Illinois State Rifle Association, Maine Open Carry Association, Maryland Shall Issue, Oregon Firearms Educational Foundation, Wisconsin Carry, Inc., SCOPE, Inc. (New York), Stillwater Firearms Association (Nevada), Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. and West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. All are state-focused non-profit organizations dedicated to preserving, defending and promoting firearms rights.
“The Second Amendment doesn’t only say you have a right to keep arms,” Tempski continued, “it also stipulates that citizens have the right to bear arms. Because of our successful lawsuit in the McDonald case last year, leading to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments, the right to bear arms is very much at issue with Mr. Peterson’s challenge. Any law or ordinance that touches on this right must be held to the strictest of scrutiny.”
Gun Safety The Gunsite Way
The National Shooting Sports Foundation just released a new video today on firearms safety. Mark Thomas of NSSF interviews Bob Whaley, an instructor at Gunsite, about safety.
In my opinion, the videos that NSSF has started to produce are really excellent teaching tools for both the experienced and beginner shooter.