gun control

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Washington State Appellate Court Upholds Ruling Saying Seattle Can’t Ban Guns In Parks

November 1, 2011 by

The Second Amendment Foundation was handed another win today in the Washington State Court of Appeals for District 1. The court unanimously upheld a King County Superior Court ruling that said a City of Seattle ban on guns in city parks was invalid.

The Second Amendment Foundation continues to secure gun rights one lawsuit at a time!

Their release on the win is below.

APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS SAF VICTORY IN LAWSUIT V. SEATTLE PARKS GUN BAN

For Immediate Release: 10/31/2011

BELLEVUE, WA – The Washington State Court of Appeals for Division 1 today unanimously upheld a 2010 King County Superior Court ruling against the City of Seattle’s ban on firearms in city parks in a lawsuit originally brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, other gun rights groups and five individual plaintiffs.

SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said he had always been confident that the Appeals Court would rule “in favor of the law and against the attempt by Seattle to dance around it.”

“We told former Mayor Greg Nickels he was wrong,” Gottlieb said, “and we have reminded the city under Mayor Mike McGinn that it was wrong, and now the Appeals Court has confirmed our position.”

SAF was joined in the lawsuit by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the National Rifle Association and Washington Arms Collectors.

Writing for the Court, Presiding Chief Judge Ann Schindler noted, “We hold that under the plain language of RCW 9.41.290 and RCW 9.41.300, the city’s attempt to regulate the possession of firearms at designated park areas and park facilities open to the public by adopting the Firearms Rule is preempted by state law.”

“This is not only a victory for the citizens of Washington State,” he said, “but also for the State Legislature, which had the wisdom in 1983 and 1985 to pass and strengthen our preemption statute. This law has become the model for other state statutes across the country.

“The ruling is also an affirmation of Judge Catherine Shaffer’s original trial court ruling last year,” he continued. “She had the foresight to include observations about our state constitutional right to bear arms but also the Second Amendment.

“Now that the Second Amendment has been incorporated to the states through our victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago,” Gottlieb concluded, “it is going to be impossible for anti-gun politicians in the Evergreen State to defy our preemption statute and our constitutional rights. Such local rules and ordinances are illegal, and now they know it for sure.”

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Meanwhile, The Anti’s Are Spinning

October 27, 2011 by 1 Comment

Joyce Foundation funded Media Matters for America is desperately trying to spin the recent Gallup Poll as support for gun control. After attacking the question on handgun bans as outdated, they try to say that most people support “reasonable gun control”.

In other words, the vast majority of Americans support reasonable gun control measures; only a small fraction is actually opposed to gun control.

This finding is confirmed by other recent polling that shows that Americans support measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. According to one poll, 89 percent of respondents support requiring all gun buyers to pass a background check at gun shows, 94 percent support requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen, and 69 percent support requiring those buying ammunition to pass a criminal background check. Another poll showed 86 percent of respondents supported background checks for every gun buyer.

And what are the polls that they use to “confirm” this? None other than the discredited push polls commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg and his Illegal Mayors. I think that says about everything.

UPDATE: Thirdpower has more on this and examines some of the comments made supporting the Media Matters’ spin on gun control.

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SAF On Recent Gallup Poll

October 27, 2011 by

The Second Amendment Foundation released this in response to the recent Gallup poll showing support for more gun control at an all-time low.

SAF SAYS NEW GALLUP DATA SHOWS AMERICANS VALUE THEIR GUN RIGHTS
For Immediate Release: 10/26/2011

BELLEVUE, WA – Today’s revelation by Gallup that a record low number of Americans support a legal ban on handgun possession by private citizens demonstrates a positive change in the public attitude about personal protection and the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment Foundation said.

According to Gallup, only 26 percent of Americans favor a handgun ban. The annual Gallup Crime poll was conducted Oct. 6-9.

“American citizens have become increasingly aware that they are the true ‘first responders’ when a crime happens in their presence,” noted SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “The public’s attitude about gun ownership has changed dramatically in the last decade, and especially since the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling in 2008 and our victory in the 2010 McDonald ruling, affirming the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right.

“The public has also realized that all the doom and gloom rhetoric from gun prohibitionists about more crime and violence associated with increased gun ownership has been wrong,” he continued. “More Americans today own firearms than they did a generation ago, yet violent crime rates are at their lowest levels in many years.”

According to Gallup, there is also greater opposition to a ban on semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, often wrongly identified as “assault weapons.” Only 43 percent of those polled think these guns should be banned, down ten percent from the 2001 poll. Support for stricter gun laws has also declined, with 44 percent believing laws should be left as they are, and 11 percent favoring less strict laws.

“The pendulum has definitely been swinging in favor of expanded gun rights,” Gottlieb observed. “For too long, people were fooled by hysteria and misinformation from gun prohibitionists and their cheerleaders in the press. But their alarmist rhetoric has failed the test of time, and now Americans by greater percentages than we’ve seen in generations are realizing that gun rights are important, to our security as a nation and to public safety in our own neighborhoods.”

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Emily Gets Her Gun Series

October 13, 2011 by 1 Comment

Emily Miller is a senior editor at the Washington Times. She also lives within the District of Columbia and wants to have a handgun for self-protection. In a series of articles, Ms. Miller is finding out just how hard it is to obtain a handgun in the District of Columbia. If it is this hard for someone who presumably is well connected, just imagine how hard it is for ordinary people to obtain the tools for self-defense in the District of Columbia.

Beginning of the quest.

Inside DC’s Gun Registry Office.

Interview with Charles Sykes – DC’s only gun dealer.

In this interview with Cam Edwards of NRA News, Ms. Miller describes her encounter with the Gun Registry Office.

Below is Cam Edwards’ interview on Tuesday with Ms. Miller for NRA News in which she describes meeting Mr. Sykes.

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Quote Of The Day No. 1

October 8, 2011 by

Thirdpower at Days of our Trailers has this observation about the City of Chicago laws on guns after noting the number of dead and wounded killed there over the past couple of days:

And the city will continue to spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to ensure that women are more likely to be raped and strangled than defend themselves w/ a firearm. Remember, it’s law abiding citizens w/ firearms that are a danger to society.

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The Result Of Chicago Dragging Its Feet

August 20, 2011 by

Chicago resident Jesus Duenas has a FOID card and after the New Chicago Gun Law was enacted in response to the city’s loss in McDonald v. Chicago, he purchased a handgun legally. (As an aside, my guess is that his handgun was a Taurus Judge as the story mentions it fired a .410 shotgun shell.) However, at the time because he couldn’t find a range in the City of Chicago to get the required training, he didn’t get a Chicago permit nor did he register the handgun with the city. Of course he couldn’t find a range in the city because they were forbidden by law at the time!

Fast forward to March of this year. After neighbors called the police because of a party at his house, he was arrested when the police entered his home without a warrant in search of a firearm. When they asked him where his gun was, he showed them where it was in the bedroom in a locked case. His arrest was for being in violation of Chicago’s gun laws.

Yesterday, a judge in Chicago dismissed the charges against him. While he now has his Chicago registration card, the police are now trying to revoke it because he purchased the gun before he got the permit.

While the story doesn’t say anything about this, it is my impression that many in Chicago purchased handguns as soon as the city lost McDonald and enacted the New Chicago Gun Law. All they heard in media reports from the time was that the city now had to allow handguns and the onerous requirements to get a permit were glossed over. Of course, ignorance is no excuse but neither is creating so many impediments to lawful compliance that virtually no one could own a handgun legally within Chicago.

Man Wins Handgun Lawsuit Against Chicago: MyFoxCHICAGO.com

H/T Josh

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Text Of Maloney-Cummings-McCarthy Gun Control Bill

July 15, 2011 by 2 Comments

The text of the Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act of 2011 is below. This is the newest gambit by certain Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee to use Operation Fast and Furious as a means to push for more – and superflous – gun control laws. As I noted about in my post about their press release, every illegal act that they are trying to cover is already covered by other Federal laws. Having this law in place would not stop the smuggling of arms and certainly wouldn’t have prevented the ATF from engaging in gunwalking.

The bill does not yet have an assigned number that I can find in the Library of Congress’s Thomas system.

A BILL
To prohibit firearms trafficking.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act of 2011’’.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON FIREARMS TRAFFICKING.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
§ 932. Trafficking in firearms
“(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for any per3on, regardless of whether anything of value is exchanged, to receive, or to transfer or otherwise dispose of to 1 or more individuals, 2 or more firearms that have been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such conduct will result in the disposing of 1 or more such firearms to an individual—
‘‘(1) whose possession or receipt of the firearm would be unlawful; or
‘‘(2) who intends to or will use, carry, possess, or dispose of the firearm unlawfully.
“(b) ORGANIZER.—It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly direct, promote, or facilitate conduct that violates subsection (a).
‘‘(c) CONSPIRACY.—It shall be unlawful for any person to conspire to violate subsection (a).
‘‘(d) DEFINITIONS.—In subsection (a):
‘‘(1) The term ‘individual whose possession or receipt of the firearm would be unlawful’ means an individual—
‘‘(A) who is under indictment or has a prior conviction for a violent felony or a felony drug offense;
‘‘(B) who at the time of the offense was under a criminal sentence, including on probation, parole, supervised release, or work release, or in escape status;
‘‘(C) whose possession of the firearm violates or would violate section 922(x)(2); or
‘‘(D) whose possession of the firearm violates or would violate paragraph (2), (3), (4), (5), (8), or (9) of section 922(g).
‘‘(2) The term ‘violent felony’ has the meaning given in section 924(e)(2)(B).
‘‘(3) The term ‘felony drug offense’ has the meaning given in section 102(44) of the Controlled Substances Act, and includes a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 924(c)).’’.

(b) PENALTIES.—Section 924(a) of such title is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘(8)(A) Whoever violates subsection (a) or (b) of section 932 shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, subject to subparagraph (B).
‘‘(B) The term of imprisonment imposed on a person who violates section 932 in concert with 5 or more other persons with respect to whom the person occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management, shall be not more than 25 years.
‘‘(C) Whoever violates section 932(c) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.’’.

(c) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.—The table of sections for such chapter is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘932. Trafficking in firearms.

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Memo On Talking Points For New Gun Control Bill

July 15, 2011 by 3 Comments

Below is the point-by-point “explanation” of the Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act. What makes this more interesting is that the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have included their talking points as well. By doing so, they are explicitly telling the world – and those of us in the gun community – how they plan to push this bill. They are also essentially writing the editorials for their supporters in media.

STOP GUN TRAFFICKING AND STRENGTHEN LAW ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 2011
Section-by-Section

Section 1. Short Title

Section 2. Prohibition on Firearms Trafficking

• Amends Chapter 44 of title 18 to create a new Section 932 to address firearms trafficking.
• Prohibits the transfer of a gun to another where the individual knows the gun will be transferred to a person who is prohibited by law from carrying a gun or to a person who intends to use or actually uses the gun illegally.
• Covers organizers as well as conspiracies.
• A violation carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. Conspiracies receive a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.
• Trafficking kingpins who work in concert with five or more individuals are eligible for up to 25 years imprisonment.

Talking Points

• International drug cartels are trafficking tens of thousands of military-grade assault weapons from the United States to Mexico every year.
• To move guns across our southern border, the cartels have set up a patchwork network of straw purchasers throughout the United States in which the cartels pay individuals to purchase guns on their behalf.
• These guns have fueled the massive outbreak of violence in Mexico that has led to the death of over 40,000 people since 2007.
• In hearings and interviews before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, law enforcement agents said they are hamstrung in their attempts to stop illegal gun trafficking by the lack of a federal gun trafficking bill.
• Under current law, prosecutors are forced to charge straw purchasers and traffickers with mere paperwork violations.
• This bill fills that void by creating a federal firearms law that criminalizes the intentional act of moving a gun out of lawful commerce and into unlawful commerce.
• The bill is narrowly tailored to get the “worst of the worst” gun traffickers, and will have no effect on lawful gun ownership.

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NRA-ILA Gives CPD Superintendent A History Lesson

July 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

Chicago Police Department Superintendent Gerry McCarthy said that Federal gun laws were tantamount to “government sponsored racism” in a speech at St. Sabina’s Catholic Church in Chicago. Recognizing that McCarthy had a poor education in history growing up in New York, the NRA-ILA gives him a history lesson on where the real connections between racism and gun control lie.

Chicago’s Top Cop: The Racist Roots of Gun Rights?

Friday, July 01, 2011

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, newly appointed by anti-gun Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has wasted no time in sharing his views on Chicagoans’ individual right to keep and bear arms. Less than a month after his approval by the City Council, McCarthy attended a service at St. Sabina’s Church (a parish led by anti-gun extremist Father Michael Pfleger) and made a speech claiming that a lack of restrictive gun control laws is “government sponsored racism.”

Those with a better understanding of history will find themselves confused trying to interpret McCarthy’s logic, as decades of scholarship have proven just the opposite; that gun control, rather than its absence, has often been used as a means of government sponsored racism.

In his 1995 Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy article, “The Racist Roots of Gun Control,” Second Amendment scholar Clayton E. Cramer outlines the historical case that “racism underlies gun control laws.” Cramer notes that racist gun control in America stretches as far back as 1751 with a French law in the Louisiana territory that required colonists to “‘[i]f necessary,’ beat ‘any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane.’”

Though Superintendent McCarthy might be excused for not looking that far back, he should certainly be aware of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the case of McDonald v. Chicago. In a concurring opinion in that case, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that in the years preceding the Civil War, “Many legislatures amended their laws prohibiting slaves from carrying firearms to apply the prohibition to free blacks as well.” After the Civil War, little improved. Justice Thomas writes: “Some States formally prohibited blacks from possessing firearms… Others enacted legislation prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms without a license, a restriction not imposed on whites.”

Other Reconstruction Era (and later) laws were less candid. For example, an 1870 Tennessee law barred the sale of all but the most expensive pistols, effectively disarming newly freed blacks and the poor. New York’s Sullivan Law of 1911, requiring a permit for handgun possession, was largely targeted at Italians and other disfavored immigrant groups. (That law is still on the books.) And the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a concealed carry permit in Alabama under a similar discretionary permitting law—even after his house had been bombed.

We suggest that in the future, Superintendent McCarthy might do a little more research before conflating respect for a fundamental individual right with its antithesis, government-sponsored racism.

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Feinstein’s No Guns For Gulag Survivors Act of 2011

July 1, 2011 by

If one goes by the press release sent out the esteemed senior Senator from California, then any person convicted of a felony overseas for a crime that would also be a felony in the United States would not be eligible to own a firearm.

Opposition to an authoritarian state and agitating for democratic reforms is probably considered treason in countries like Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and others of their ilk. Treason is most definitely a crime in United States courts. So by Senator Feinsten’s reasoning, if you were convicted of treason and sent to the gulag for opposing a Communist state (and somehow survived), you were convicted of a felony in a foreign court thus are ineligible to own a firearm if you make it here as a political refugee.

I’m sure she and her fellow travelers would object to this example but unless she carves out an exception for political crimes then it would apply. Of course, what you have to do to be convicted of treason in the United States is not the same as what it would take in Cuba.

Feinstein: Prevent Foreign Felons From Obtaining Firearms

“Cannot continue to give foreign-convicted murderers, rapists and terrorists the right to buy firearms in the United States”

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today introduced legislation to close a loophole in current law to ensure that individuals convicted of foreign felonies and crimes—including domestic violence—cannot possess firearms in the United States.

Under current federal law, people who are convicted in the United States of violent felonies like rape, murder and terrorism are prohibited from possessing firearms. However, the law does not currently prohibit criminals convicted of these same violent crimes in foreign courts from possessing guns.

“America cannot continue to give foreign-convicted murderers, rapists and even terrorists the right to buy firearms in the United States,” said Senator Feinstein. “It makes no sense to have a law that forbids convicted Americans from possessing a firearm, but leaves the door wide open for foreign convicts to possess a firearm in our country. We must close this loophole before it is exploited by terrorists, drug gangs, and other dangerous criminals who threaten our communities.”

The No Firearms for Foreign Felons Act of 2011 would make it clear that if someone was convicted in a foreign court of an offense that would have disqualified them from possessing a gun in the United States, then they will be similarly disqualified from gun possession under American law.

This loophole for foreign convicts is the result of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Small v. United States. In that case, the Court analyzed the 1968 Gun Control Act, which states that anyone who has been convicted of a felony “in any court” cannot possess firearms. The Court concluded the phrase only applied to American courts, despite the fact the Gun Control Act had routinely been applied to foreign felonies since 1968, the year it took effect.

As it is, many criminal offenses committed overseas including the ones that Sen. Feinstein specifies in her press release are a bar from even entering the United States legally. You cannot be given a visa for a whole host of reasons including having engaged in any terrorist activity, having been convicted of prostitution, and, of course, murder and rape. And that is just for visitors. Immigration requires an even higher bar to jump over.

Since this is the case, why introduce a bill that applies to virtually no one who is here legally? Could it be that Senator Feinstein is trying get more publicity for one of her pet causes, i.e, gun control? The multitudes of illegal aliens in her home state of California are already precluded from purchasing a firearm. In case she doesn’t realize it, that is one of the questions on the ATF Form 4473.

Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has more on Feinstein and “the foreign felon loophole hobby horse”.