gun control

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All Politics Are Local

September 24, 2010 by

To paraphrase the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, all politics are local. When looking at gun politics that is the first place one should look. I say this because both the Heller and McDonald cases stemmed from actions by municipal governments.

And so it was in California two days ago when the Santa Clara City Council had planned to vote on an ordinance that would have prohibited firearms from city parks except for “peace officers”. The ordinance would have deemed city parks “sensitive places” because children, their families, and others gather there. More importantly, this ordinance would have banned both unloaded open carry (it’s a California thing) and licensed concealed carry.

It is not known if this ordinance was proposed by the Legal Community Against Violence (LCAV) but the text of it is very similar to their pamphlet “Address Gun Violence Through Local Ordinances”. LCAV has been very active over the years throughout California pushing local ordinances as a means of gun control. In this case, by a finding that city parks were “sensitive places”, it may have given them some cover in the face of lawsuits.

On Monday, September 20th, attorney Chuck Michel sent a letter to the City Council on behalf of the NRA and the California Rifle and Pistol Association.The letter made two major points: the proposed ordinance was unconstitutional under Heller and McDonald and the proposed ordinance would violate California’s preemption doctrine.

Mr. Michel also discussed three case that are pending in California. The first is Nordyke v. King which is slated for rehearing before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. That case deals with a ban of firearms on county property that had been declared “sensitive”. Even that the Alameda County fairgrounds ban made allowances for concealed carry permit holders unlike the proposed ordinance. The other two cases are Sykes v. McGinnis and Peruta v. County of San Diego. The issue in both of those cases is whether a municipality can prohibit the lawful carrying of firearms in public by generally denying concealed carry permits.

In the face of this letter which did contain an indirect threat of “costly litigation”, City Manager Jennifer Sparacino raised legal concerns about the ordinance and the Santa Clara City Council voted unanimously to withdraw the proposed ordinance from consideration. The City Attorney of Santa Clara will need more time to study the case law cited in the NRA/CRPA letter. While this issue may be brought up again, for the time being it is a win for gun rights at the local level.

Chuck Michel has more on the NRA/CRPA Local Ordinance Project in a post on the CalGuns Forum here.

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A Trifecta in California

September 1, 2010 by

As reported in a release from the California Rifle and Pistol Association, three anti-gun bills in the California Assembly were voted down late last night. There was intense pressure on a few members to change their vote but they didn’t switch.

•AB 1810(Feuer) – Registration of Rifles and Shotguns
•AB 1934 (Saldana) – Handgun Open Carry Prohibition
•AB 2358 (De Leon) – Ammunition Registration

AB 1810 would have registered ALL rifles and shotguns in the same manner that handguns are currently registered in California.

AB 1934 would have prohibited the open carry of handguns whether loaded or unloaded. There is currently a growing movment among California gunowners to participate in unloaded open carry or UOC. The goal is to normalize perceptions of firearms and those who carry them.

AB 2358 would have “required that ammunition vendors transmit records of sale, information on the quantity and type of ammunition purchased, and the personal information of purchasers collected at the time of sale to local law enforcement if required by city or county ordinance.” The sponsor of this bill was the same Assemblyman who was the prime sponsor of AB 962 which requires face-to-face sales of handgun ammunition. The dangerous component of this bill is the last clause – if required by city or county ordinance. This would have allowed politicians in areas such as Oakland, LA, and San Francisco to make life even harder for lawful firearms owners.

Congratulations to our friends in California and to all who worked so hard to defeat these bills including CRPA and CalGuns.

UPDATE: Dirtcrashr at Anthroblogory has more including info on SB250 which mandated spay or neutering of (most) dogs.

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Belle Meade, TN Repeals Racist Gun Control Law

August 27, 2010 by

The city of Belle Meade, TN repealed a city ordinance dating from the Reconstruction Era. It had banned the carry of any firearm “with the intent to go armed” except for an “Army or Navy pistol carried openly in the hand.” At that time, it was primarily white men who owned Army or Navy pistols and the law was intended to restrict recently freed blacks from bearing arms.

SayUncle has the full story here.

Belle Meade is located within Metro Davidson County and is an affluent suburb of Nashville. It is where Al Gore lives when he isn’t staying at his beachfront house in Montecito, California or touring the world spreading “The Gospel of Global Warming According to the Prophet Al”.

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Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn – Ban on Semi-Auto’s OK with Him

August 13, 2010 by

From the Illinois State Rifle Association:

Governor Quinn Steps Up Attacks On Law-Abiding Firearm Owners

CHICAGO, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following was released today by the ISRA Political Victory Fund (ISRA-PVF):

Law-abiding Illinois firearm owners are under a renewed attack by Gov. Pat Quinn’s re-election campaign. After receiving the endorsement of a radical gun control group last week, Quinn’s campaign is now the apparent mastermind of a plan to place a referendum on the November ballot that would call for the banning of a wide variety of popular hunting and target firearms.

Petition documents filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show the title of the proposed referendum as being “Petition to Ban the Sale on Semi-Automatic and Assault Weapons.” Notarized signatures on over 100 pages of petitions show one “Maz Jackson” as being the petition circulator. Maz Jackson is a top field operative for the Quinn gubernatorial re-election campaign.

“It appears that Pat Quinn plans to attack hunters and sportsmen from every angle,” commented ISRA-PVF spokesman, Richard Pearson. “First he throws in with the likes of gun control extremists Jim and Sarah Brady, and now his campaign staff is circulating petitions seeking to ban most of the privately owned firearms in the state. Once again, Pat Quinn has shown himself to be more in step with Mayor Daley and the Chicago power structure than he is with the vast majority of Illinois citizens.”

The ISRA-PVF is a political action committee affiliated with the Illinois State Rifle Association. Donations to the ISRA-PVF are not tax deductible. A copy of our report is available for a fee from the Illinois State Board of Elections, Springfield, IL

Roberta X has good coverage of it on her blog.

As one of those who visits relatives in Illinois, their gun rules are enough to make you want to pound your head on the wall. I remember the first time I went into the local gun store in O’Fallon, Ron & Jo’s, and was told I couldn’t buy ammo because I didn’t have either a FOID card or a hunting license. I was like “WTF?”. They apologized and said it was Illinois law.

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New Joyce Foundation Anti-GunRights Grants

August 9, 2010 by 1 Comment

The Joyce Foundation announced $1,623,401 in grants to anti-gun rights organizations for their summer grant cycle. This is in addition to $484,044 in grants made in the Spring cycle.

The Summer recipients of grants are:

Ceasefire Pennsylvania Education Fund
www.ceasefirepa.org/
Philadelphia, PA
To support the engagement of Pennsylvania citizens at the grassroots level in forty targeted municipalities.
$50,000.00 – 4 months

Legal Community Against Violence
www.lcav.org/
San Francisco, CA
To support its state legislative tracking project.
$33,000.00 – 4 months

Media Matters for America
www.mediamatters.org/
Washington, DC
To support a gun and public safety issue initiative.
$400,000.00 – 24 months

Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence
www.ohioceasefire.org/
To build support for gun violence prevention policy in Ohio.
$55,000.00 – 6 months

Police Executive Research Forum
www.policeforum.org/
Washington, DC
To support a national study of gun enforcement practices among state and local law enforcement agencies.
$70,401.00 – 12 months

President and Fellows of Harvard College
www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/
To conduct and promote firearms research, disseminate research findings, provide technical assistance to advocates, police and others, and to conduct the ‘Means Matter’ campaign.
$600,000.00 – 12 months

States United to Prevent Gun Violence
www.supgv.org/
Chicago, IL
To provide organizational development support and web/tech training and support to strengthen state gun violence prevention organizations.
$100,000.00 – 6 months

WAVE Educational Fund
www.waveedfund.org/
To support the Wisconsin Gun Violence Prevention Project.
$315,000.00 – 12 months

The Spring recipients include:

American College of Preventive Medicine
www.acpm.org/
Washington, DC
To continue its comprehensive education and advocacy campaign aimed at strengthening support for the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) program.
$204,094.00 – 12 months

Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
www.gunfree.org/
To support national and state coalition building and state-based policy development, education, and advocacy in ongoing campaigns to end gun violence.
$125,000 – 12 months

Research Foundation of City University of New York
www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj/
New York, NY
To fund the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to develop in-depth and well-researched journalism on issues related to gun violence.
$79,950.00 – 12 months

The Center for Public Integrity
www.publicintegrity.org/
Washington, DC
To fund a series of investigative reports on the gun industry lobby in America.
$75,000.00 – 12 months

Two things stand out to me in this list of grants. First, the Joyce Foundation is trying to influence journalism in the same manner that they have tried to influence legal studies. That is, by giving grants to sympathetic non-profits and journalists, they hope to have a slew of “gun violence” stories dumped upon a somewhat lazy and sympathetic press. The Joyce Foundation is spending over a half million dollars to do this.

Second,  they are spending even more money – $800,000 – to influence the collection and reporting of medical data through their grants to the Harvard School of Public Health and the American College of Preventive Medicine. I think their feeling is that since Congress has clamped down on misleading epidemiological “research” coming out of the Centers for Disease Control, then they will just go another route. The medical profession is still one of the most respected in America. People listen to their doctors. I think Joyce is trying to tailor the information that is provided to the nation’s primary care physicians so as to promote their gun control efforts.

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Billionaires Giving Away Wealth

August 5, 2010 by 1 Comment

The evening news shows were all abuzz with the story that 40 billionaires had signed a pledge to give away the majority of their wealth to charity. What they do with that money is, of course, entirely their business.

One of the billionaires is NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg is quoted as saying,

“If you want to do something for your children and show how much you love them, the single best thing — by far — is to support organizations that will create a better world for them and their children,” Bloomberg said in his pledge letter, which was posted on the Giving Pledge’s website.

“A better world for them and their children.” Hmm. That sounds suspiciously like “do it for the children” which seems to be one of the more prevalent rallying cries of the gun banners. I would not be surprised to see Bloomberg to use some of his donations to push as much gun control as the courts will let him get away with.

After all, he accused Obama of dragging his feet on gun control earlier this year.

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New Jersey Gun Laws – Ripe for Challenge

August 1, 2010 by

Daniel Schmutter thinks New Jersey’s gun laws are ripe for challenge. He should know. He is the attorney representing the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs in their lawsuit against the State of New Jersey over the state’s one firearm a month rationing law. He also authored amicus briefs in both the Heller and McDonald cases on behalf of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms.


In an op-ed piece in the second-largest newspaper in New Jersey, The Record, he examines what the McDonald decision means for New Jersey’s restrictive firearms laws. First, he says gun control advocates who say most of the state’s gun laws would pass muster because they are “reasonable restrictions” are wrong. He notes that neither Heller nor McDonald said “reasonable” gun laws are valid under the Second Amendment. Furthermore, “reasonable” is not a legal standard that offers any basis for saying a law would survive a challenge or not.

As it turns out, New Jersey gun law offers fertile ground for challenge, not merely because the state has such strict laws but because New Jersey law is exceedingly aggressive toward the law-abiding gun owner.

New Jersey’s regulatory scheme is highly unusual in that it approaches gun control by categorically banning guns and then carving out extremely limited exceptions to the prohibitions.

Thus, for example, possession of handguns is generally prohibited unless the possession falls within certain narrowly defined exemptions, such as possession inside one’s home or place of business.

This has two main effects. First, it shifts the burden of proving lawful possession to the gun owner. Second, it keeps the circumstances under which one may lawfully possess a handgun very narrow.

Schmutter asks what would happen if one were to substitute “book” for “gun” in the law.  It would force readers and book owners to make absurd contortions in order to exercise a fundamental right. By Schmutter’s hypothetical example, you wouldn’t be allowed to have Tolstoy’s War and Peace because it was a long book and had too many pages (think restrictions on standard capacity magazines) unless you were a Russian lit scholar at Princeton or Rutgers.

He concludes,

The New Jersey Legislature must face the reality that the gun owner and the book owner alike must be treated with equal constitutional dignity. After McDonald, we now see that the emperor has no clothes.

New Jersey gun law is upside down, and if the New Jersey Legislature does not fundamentally reform its scheme of regulating guns, the courts will likely do it for them.

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Howler of the Day

July 26, 2010 by

From a FoxNew article on pro-gun Democrats comes the howler of the day courtesy of Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY):

“They’ve been very open about saying… ‘Carolyn, if the NRA comes against a bill, I gotta vote with the NRA.’ They’re not going to take that chance. I understand that,” said McCarthy of her Democratic colleagues. “Does it bother me? Of course, it bothers me because I’m not trying to take away anyone’s right to own a gun.”

And I’m sure she has the check in the mail as well.

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Washington Times Editorial: UN Threatens 1st and 2nd Amendments

July 24, 2010 by

Today’s Washington Times features an editorial about the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty. They call it a threat to both the First and Second Amendments of our Constitution. Of course, they are right. The editorial follows on the heels of a report released by the Heritage Foundation on the UN and “arms control”.

Theodore Bromund, one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation’s report, is quoted as saying that he thinks micro-stamping will be included, that there will be some sort of gun registration and licensing system, that this licensing system will cover both guns and ammo, and that there may even be restrictions on trade between private individuals.

The Washington Times takes a dim view of the whole thing as well as the role of the Obama Administration in it.

Any U.N. Arms Trade Treaty will undermine freedom around the world. The right to bear arms is an individual’s protection against oppression anywhere. It took herculean efforts by George W. Bush’s administration to thwart this U.N. power grab a few years ago. Unfortunately, we now have a left-wing White House working to make this dangerous treaty a reality.