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TV Worth Watching!

July 8, 2011 by

David Codrea just sent out an alert that Mike Vanderboegh will be on FoxNews this evening. Mike will be appearing on Special Report with Bret Baier that airs at 6pm EDT.

From David on his War On Gun blog:

Vanderboegh is on his way to the local Fox News studio, wearing his Sunday boonie hat, to talk Tampa and more.

He called me up and asked how he should refer to me as, and I said I thought “youthful ward” was pretty cool (except I’m actually older than the youngster by a few months)…

It Mike is talking Gunwalker and Tampa it should be very interesting.

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Quote Of The Day

July 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law has an excellent analysis of Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson’s interview with House Oversight Committee investigators and the timing of it. What makes Melson’s actions even more remarkable is this:

I’ve never heard of an agency head defecting, as it were. Closest think I can think of is John Dean, counsel to the President, meeting secretly with investigators during Watergate, and maybe “deep throat,” Mark Felt, who was Associate Director of the FBI, leaking to the press. And Watergate involved quite a bit less than running thousands of guns to the most violent criminals on earth with fatal results.

It is important to remember that both Watergate and Project Gunwalker involved the subversion of constitutional rights. The former involved the subversion of elections and the latter is an attempt to build support for the subversion of the Second Amendment. 

No one died because of Watergate. I wish we could say the same about Project Gunwalker.

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Even Non-Gunnies Can See The Foolishness Of Chicago’s New Range Law

July 8, 2011 by

Eric Zorn is a columnist and blogger for the Chicago Tribune who writes the “Change of Subject” blog for the them. He readily acknowledges that he is not a shooter. He also recognizes that the Range Law passed by the Chicago City Council is an ugly monstrosity.

In a post entitled City misfires in passing new gun-range law Zorn skewers the City Council and the hastily passed ordinance. He calls the law and its passage a “legislative raspberry” that taunts the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just after the city got slapped down in Ezell. It is a taunt because of all the inane burdensome rules contained within it.

In anticipation of Wednesday’s “stop-playing-silly-games” ruling, Ald. James Balcer, 11th, chair of the Public Safety Committee, introduced a 24-page ordinance that, technically, allows for the construction and operation of indoor gun ranges within the city limits.

I say “technically” because the restrictions the law places on those who want to open private gun ranges are so brazenly burdensome experts doubt anyone will even try.

The Chicago Law Department defended the high cost and onerous restrictions for ranges saying they reflect the costs of inspections and background checks. Moreover, they defended the location restrictions as consistent with other “adult-use” businesses. Alderman Balcer says the restrictions are all about safety because “gun ranges are very dangerous.” Zorn’s response?

If so, the city has offered no proof; no statistics or studies that support treating gun ranges as though they were noisy offal-processing plants instead of recreational facilities that simply require a lot of insulation.

I’m not a shooter, so why do I care?

First, because it seems to me like a good idea that those who do own guns are in practice and know how to aim their weapons.

Second, because I hate to see a city facing such huge debts passing laws that so flagrantly attempt to skirt the intent of the Supreme Court that they’re doomed to be overturned after expensive legal challenges.

This ordinance isn’t even too cute by half. It’s just ugly.

Zorn obviously inherited some power of reason from his mathematician grandfather. Too bad the members of the Chicago City Council and Mayor Rahm Emanuel weren’t so fortunate.

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More “Fast And Furious” Guns Found In Arizona

July 7, 2011 by

ABC15 investigative reporter Lori Jean Gliha appears to be a really dogged investigator. That is good for the truth but bad for those in the Obama Administration that just want Project Gunwalker to go away.

By matching serial numbers from weapons on previously disclosed ATF documents with recently unsealed court documents in Federal drug cases in the Phoenix area, she was able to conclusively pin an additional 43 “gunwalked” firearms to arrested drug traffickers in Arizona. ATF Senior Agent John Dodson was correct in his bleak assessment that these guns are going to keep turning up at crime scenes for years.

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SAF Files For Preliminary Injunction Against Illinois In Carry Case

July 7, 2011 by

The Second Amendment Foundation filed for a preliminary injunction today in their case, Moore v. Madigan, challenging the State of Illinois’s ban on all forms of carry. Their release on it is below. Let me say this – no grass grows under their legal feet!

BELLEVUE, WA – Capitalizing on its federal appeals court victory Wednesday in Ezell v. City of Chicago, the Second Amendment Foundation today moved for a preliminary injunction against the State of Illinois to prevent further enforcement of that state’s prohibitions on firearms carry in public by law-abiding citizens.

The motion was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield. Joining SAF in this motion are Illinois Carry and four private citizens, Michael Moore, Charles Hooks, Peggy Fechter and Jon Maier. The underlying case is known as Moore v. Madigan.

Illinois is the only state in the nation with such prohibitions. The state neither allows open carry or concealed carry, which runs afoul of recent U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment rulings, including last year’s landmark ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago, another SAF case. SAF was represented in McDonald and Ezell by attorney Alan Gura, who noted after yesterday’s appeals court win – forcing a temporary injunction against the city’s ban on gun ranges that the city immediately changed after the decision was announced – that “Even Chicago politicians must respect the people’s fundamental civil rights…Gun rights are coming to Chicago. The only question is how much the city’s intransigence will cost taxpayers along the way.”

“Now that the Seventh Circuit has recognized that the deprivation of the right of armed self-defense is an inherently irreparable injury, it is clear that Illinois’ law-abiding gun owners are entitled to a protective injunction,” said attorney David Jensen of New York, who, along with Glen Ellyn, IL attorney David Sigale, is representing SAF and the other plaintiffs.

“Yesterday’s win was a wake-up call to Chicago,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “Today’s motion is a signal to the Illinois Legislature that the state’s total ban on carrying of firearms for personal protection is counter to both Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment, and yesterday’s ruling by the Seventh Circuit appeals panel that shredded Chicago’s gun ordinance. Our victory Wednesday and today’s motion are key components of SAF’s overall mission to win back firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time.”

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The Sounds Of Silence

July 7, 2011 by 2 Comments
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence.
From Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sounds of Silence

Yesterday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rendered an important decision regarding the Second Amendment. In the case of Ezell v. Chicago, the 7th Circuit came down squarely on the side of the Second Amendment and remanded the case back to the District Court for the issuance of a preliminary injunction against the city’s ban on shooting ranges. While the Chicago City Council changed the law to allow ranges at about the same time as the 7th Circuit issued their opinion, it will now will have to conform to the Court’s ruling.

On July 1st, the Brady Campaign issued a report called Hollow Victory? which would have you believe that the Federal courts were rejecting the challenges to gun laws based upon the Heller decision. Their release on the report states that it concludes:

courts continue to protect our communities from gun violence by rejecting lawsuits brought by gun criminals and the gun lobby seeking to strike down common-sense gun laws that protect public safety and stop gun violence, and that for the gun lobby, Heller remains nothing more than a “hollow victory.”

Given this, you might have a reasonable expectation that the Brady Campaign might have something to say about the 7th Circuit’s ruling in Ezell. You would be wrong. Checking their website, their Twitter feed, and Facebook page, they have nothing – absolutely nothing – to say about Judge Syke’s opinion. It is like the Simon and Garfunkel tune says, the sounds of silence.

The Brady Campaign is not the only gun prohibitionist game in town so I decided to check out some of the other groups.

From the Violence Policy Center webpage, Twitter feed, and Facebook page – nothing.

From the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence webpage, Twitter feed, and Facebook page – nothing.

Surely the Legal Coalition Against Violence (LCAV) would have something to say about the ruling as the courts are their bailiwick. Nope, nothing, nada.

You can be sure that if the decision had been gone against Rhonda Ezell and her co-plaintiffs including the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association, they would have had something to say about it. They would have been issuing press releases and giving interviews to their favorite pet journalists.

As it was, the gun prohibitionist groups did not “disturb the sound of silence”.

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ISRA Response To 7th Circuit Win On Ezell

July 7, 2011 by

The Illinois State Rifle Association is obviously pleased with the decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that mandates a preliminary injunction against the City of Chicago’s previous ban on shooting ranges within the city limits. As one of the organizational plaintiffs in Ezell v. Chicago, they not only got the preliminary injunction but their status as an organizational plaintff was reaffirmed by Judge Syke’s opinion.

The official response from ISRA and their in-house counsel Victor Quilici is below.

Firearm Law & Commentary
by Victor D. Quilici, ISRA Attorney

7TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS GRANTS PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION IN EZELL V. CITY OF CHICAGO GUN RANGE CASE

July 6, 2011

One day after the Supreme Court decided McDonald vs. City of Chicago, the City explored a legislative response to the decision and shortly thereafter the ordinance banning handguns was repealed and the City passed its now infamous “Responsible Gun Owners Ordinance.”

The new ordinance contained a sweeping array of firearm restrictions, including a ban on firing ranges within the City, although the ordinance contained a provision requiring aspiring gun owners to complete one hour of range training as a prerequisite to acquiring a Chicago Firearm Permit which is mandated for lawful gun ownership in the City. Immediately, ISRA was joined by three Chicago residents, the Second Amendment foundation, and Action Target Designs, and a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO), a preliminary injunction, and a permanent injunction against the City’s firing range ban.. As the appellate court noted, the lawsuit alleged that the range-ban “impermissibly burdens the core Second Amendment right to possess firearms in the home for self-defense because it prohibits, everywhere in the City, the means of satisfying a condition the City imposes for lawful firearm possession.”

The District Court judge denied the relief sought by the Plaintiffs, and on appeal the appellate court tribunal found that the lower court’s acceptance of the City’s “confused approach to the case” led the District Court to err in failing to recognize “ the scope of the Second Amendment right as recognized in Heller and applied to the states in McDonald, and the standard of review of laws alleged to infringe Second Amendment rights.” The appellate court also noted that the City failed to produce any empirical evidence of any kind, “and rested its entire defense of the range ban on speculation about accidents and theft.”

The appeals court concluded by noting that at this stage of the proceedings “the firing range ban is wholly out of proportion to the public interests the City claims it serves.” Thus, the court determined the plaintiffs showed irreparable harm, no adequate remedy at law, and a strong likelihood of success—all prerequisites to obtaining injunctive relief. The District Court’s decision was reversed and the case remanded (returned) to the lower court with instructions to enter a preliminary injunction consistent with its decision. A First Amendment violation alleged in the lawsuit was not addressed and considered surplusage based on the court’s findings and its decision based on the Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims.

Illinois State Rifle Association members and its friends should keep in mind that this is only round one of a continued fight to protect our fundamental rights to ownership and possession of firearms for self-defense, and other lawful purposes, as our United States Supreme Court clearly pronounced in its ground-breaking decisions in Heller, and McDonald. We owe a big round of applause and “thanks” to the attorneys involved— Alan Gura and David Sigale.

Victor D. Quilici
ISRA Counsel

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Twitter Has Its Uses

July 7, 2011 by

With the White House all atwitter over Twitter yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa took advantage of it. According to The Hill, Issa used Twitter to deliver a letter to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

The tweet was a response to a question about the letter asked in the White House press briefing on Tuesday.

Carney told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that he had not seen the letter. “I’m not aware of it,” he said.

The letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder is signed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). It details their concerns following the testimony of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) acting director Kenneth Melson regarding the ATF operation “Fast and Furious.”

A picture of the tweet in question is below.

It is nice for once to see a Congressman using Twitter for something other than Tweeting pictures of his privates!

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An East Coast Project Gunwalker?

July 7, 2011 by 7 Comments

So far all the attention on the ATF and gunwalking has been confined to the Southwest with the Phoenix Field Division at the epicenter of it all. However, David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh are reporting tonight that the Tampa Field Division may have been involved in gunwalking to Honduras. This project may have been part of “Operation Castaway” which dealt with firearms trafficking in central Florida.

SAC (Virginia) O’Brien was previously the Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division, was later promoted to the Deputy Assistant Director of ATF, but then stepped down to the position in Tampa. Whether the allegations of our source refer to the on-going Operation Castaway remains at this hour unclear, but our source is certain that O’Brien has allowed the “walking” of straw-purchased firearms to Honduras using the same failed strategy as the Phoenix Field Division’s Operation Fast and Furious. That Operation Castaway involved arms smuggling to Honduras is also certain.

“This is confirmed as accurate,” the correspondence continued. “There are emails in existence where O’Brien has advised those involved that Tampa does not have to report their walked guns because Tampa FD is not a part of Southwest Border or Project Gunrunner.”

“From a first person source she is shitting herself trying to cover it up,” the report stated.

David and Mike have published identical reports on both the National Gun Rights Examiner page and Sipsey Street Irregulars.

If this source proves credible and this report is accurate, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will be lucky to survive an additional scandal involving gunwalking.

A news release on Operation Castaway from 2010 can be found here.

UPDATE: Why Honduras? Mike Vanderboegh has a post that explains the expansion of the Mexican drug cartels to this Central American country and the role of the military there in supplying arms.

As to more information on SAC Virginia O’Brien, she has been under the radar for the most part if a Google search is any indication. She had been the SAC of the Phoenix FD prior to William Newell and had been Assistant Deputy Director of ATF under Acting Director Michael Sullivan.

I did find mention of her in regards to former Deputy Director and now New York County Sheriff Edgar Domenach for giving him a mediocre performance evaluation. The only other real mentions of her come in the official press releases sent out by the Tampa Field Division. Unlike Andrew Traver, she doesn’t seem to be one that seeks out the press for personal publicity.