2011 – Page 47 – Shall Not Be Questioned

NRA Age Suit Lost in District Court

NRA’s lawsuit to overturn the law barring 18-21 year olds from purchasing handguns has been lost in the a district court, I believe in the same district court that decided Emerson back a half decade ago:

â€œThe Court is of the opinion that the ban does not run afoul of the Second Amendment to the Constitution,â€ the ruling states. â€œThe right to bear arms is enjoyed only by those not disqualified from the exercise of the Second Amendment rights.

â€œIt is within the purview of Congress, not the courts, to weigh the relative policy considerations and to make decisions as to the age of the customer to whom those licensed by the federal government may sell handguns and handgun ammunition.â€

So Congress could say no one who has not yet attained the age of 90 is permitted to own a firearm, and that is completely within Congress’ purview? The Courts should have nothing to say about it? What other right do we treat that way?

It continues to amaze me how little regard lower courts have for Heller and McDonald. Maybe there’s sound legal reasoning involved here. I have not seen the opinion. But punting to Congress strikes me as awfully weak.

UPDATE: The opinion is here. To make a relatively short opinion even shorter, he essentially grabbed on to the following passage in Heller:

[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Emphasis added by the District Court. Judge Cummings essentially argued that this was “a condition and qualification on the commercial sale of arms,” and thus was placed outside of the purview of the Court, leaving in the purview of Congress. But surely the Court did not mean that any condition or qualifications on the commercial sale of arms was presumptively constitutional? What if the qualification was never having received so much as a parking ticket? What if the condition was that each state could only have only FFL that was open 9AM to 11AM on the first Sunday after the first Saturday of each month? Does Judge Cummings really believe the Court meant that was entirely within the purview of Congress? That’s an absurd conclusion that renders a right a privilege.

Application for old Floppy Drives

I guess they are still useful for something.

More on the New Professionalism

Just a follow up on Bitter’s post on how far the Brady Campaign’s messaging has fallen even since relatively recently when Helmke left. One thing I’ve noticed lately is that Colin Goddard doesn’t seem to be getting the media exposure he once got. Much of that could be because with summer recesses in a lot of state capitals, there just aren’t as many campus carry bills to attract attention from the media, but it’s also occurred to me that perhaps their PR people are falling down on the job in putting him out there. A quick Google search confirms his media exposure is dropping, at least as far as being held out as a face of the Brady Campaign. The latest story on Colin shows this:

Goddard is working part time the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, lobbying Congress for better gun laws.

I can’t seem to find the press release form when Colin Goddard was hired, but he was Assistant Director of Legislative Affairs, a position that does not sound like it was part time. This makes me wonder if the Brady Campaign had to partially cut Colin loose, which might explain why they aren’t pushing him so hard in the media. The headliner for Living for 32 notes:

And he grew a fire in his heart to do something about keeping dangerous people from having easy access to deadly weapons. He now works full-time at the Brady Campaign, lobbying on the Hill and speaking around the country to college audiences and others about how all Americans can help prevent gun violence. “Living for 32” is his story.

If they chopped Colin, even back to part time, they were either supreme fools, or their financial situation is more precarious than I would have imagined. It’s quite possible for either to be the case. Legislative lobbying would be done under the auspices of the Brady Campaign, and as we’ve noted previously, the Bradys seem to be shifting more of their operations to the Brady Center, which has greater funds. Legislative activity would not be among those functions that would be easily shifted.

But we have more evidence that the Brady Campaign is in total disarray. This makes me wonder if whoever ends up heading up the Campaign won’t have to be a good fundraiser just to be able to cover his own salary. As for Colin Goddard, he got himself into the DC scene after graduation, and has made a favorable impression on a number of Congressional offices. I would imagine a position as a Congressional staffer is not out of reach for him. If he has indeed been partially let go, or let go, we hope he manages to find something along those lines.

Brady is Looking for a New CEO – Again

The Brady Campaign appeared to have found a new leader when they removed the job listing from their website early last week. It turns out that they reposted it later that week.

Maybe I should submit Sebastian’s resume on his behalf. I’ll even help him meet one of their key objectives for the position: Build the movement to insure that all guns in our nation are childproofed by 2015.

We can lobby for Obama to use the stimulus money he loves so much to buy every gun owner a gun safe – with plenty of room for more guns than they currently own just so we make sure every gun can be stored if the owner chooses to do so. It would create jobs (delivery guys who have the skills to move safes, safe manufacturers, safe salesmen, government workers to process all of the receipts) and help create a movement for safe storage options.

The New Professionalism – Hiring High Schoolers?

It’s no secret that I’m mystified by the current efforts by the Brady Campaign to retweet various people in favor of gun control while ignoring their other bizarre or hateful recent tweets. Regardless, none of that holds a candle to what has come out of the Brady headquarters in the last few days.

Rick Perry Report
I complained about it on Twitter. I struggled to read it without beating my head against a desk. Finally, I had to take the red “pen” to it. If a Brady staffer were to tell me that they actually bothered editing this thing before they released it, I would say it’s time to fire everyone. There’s no excuse for something riddled with so many errors and inconsistencies coming out of any organization with paid staff, especially since a number of those staff are paid to do nothing but produce professional materials.

I do realize that even professionals make mistakes. Lord knows that I’ve made my share. Given that this blog is something we do casually, you’ll find plenty on here if you look closely. Regardless, if someone handed me this as even a rough draft in a professional setting, they would likely find a bunch of red marks on a paper with a note for them to start over before I even attempt to do anything with it.

The most common mistake is a lack of consistency in style. Inconsistent Oxford comma usage, improper titles, and formatting issues are abuses one can find on every page except the front cover and table of contents. Well, even the table of contents has formatting problems. In addition, there are random sentence fragments, redundant phrases, and grammatical errors. (Yes, the image of the report is impossible to read for a reason. First, fair use. Go visit the Brady website to read their train wreck of a report. Secondly, I won’t do the job they are paid to do for free and let them benefit.)

Can We Not Agree on the Basics?
There is one area where I feel we should be able to reach out to the Brady Campaign and agree. It’s about the fundamental ~~meaning~~ spelling of amendment.

Alas, no. We cannot even find common ground in spelling rules. Call me a radical if you must, but I will not simply agree to disagree on this important component of our Bill of Rights.

It’s Not Just the Typos
I think the most startling changes to the Brady Campaign public relations efforts since Peter Hamm left are just how childish they have become when it comes to issues they should be taking seriously.

You don’t exactly see us as the largest advocates of open carry for activism purposes, but even I find this tweet by the organization to fall somewhere below sticking our your tongue on the maturity scale. If they are offering legal support services to cities who want to enforce their gun laws, then it shouldn’t be sarcastic or condescending. In fact, I know some city officials have questioned the Brady’s sincerity in being willing to fund legal issues that may arise from passing local gun control laws. This kind of message reiterates that those pledges aren’t to be taken seriously.

Conclusion
I realize that I shouldn’t try to step in and help out our opponents. That’s not what I’m trying to do at all. I just can’t help but point out how bad it has truly gotten for them that they have been reduced making to more mistakes in a week than most of the top unpaid, unedited bloggers produce in a month. While I wish they would stop exposing me to these glaring errors that I find painful to read, I can’t complain about the fact that they are most likely driving away any middle-of-the-road or undecided folks who simply won’t continue to read such unprofessional work.

Media Matters Struggles to Come up with NRA Smear Material

As a blogger, I can sympathize with the difficulty of coming up with fresh material on a daily basis. It’s has to be especially hard when your masters are paying you to smear gun rights, and you don’t really know much about the subject.

Reaching as far out there as they can to find something bad to smear NRA with, the latest attempt by Media Matters is to suggest NRA is clearly not a single issue organization, because sometimes Cam has Jim Geraghty on Cam and Company and they sometimes talk about topics other than guns. Ooooh. Real scandal brewing there.

Maybe I’m just not as smart as the enlightened lefties, but I don’t really have too much of a problem distinguishing between “Cam’s Opinion” and and “Official Statement of the National Rifle Association.”

White House Petition for HR822

Apparently the White House has a petition site, and one of the petition pages is for HR822, the National Right-to-Carry Recprocity Act of 2011. The goal is to hit 5000 signatures by October 22, 2011. We’re at 1065 so far. Unfortunately, you have to register to sign the petition, which makes me surprised we’re 1/5th the way there, considering those in our cause with thicker, more luxurious varieties of Wookie Suits might not be too keen on getting their names on a White House list of gun owners.

In contrast, the petition created by one of our opponents to re-institute the assault weapons ban isn’t doing so well.

UPDATE: From Bitter, in response to how the e-mails would be used:

Actually, you can’t be solicited for a DNC donation from the White House list. However, what people have speculated the petition function’s end goal is to build a list of sympathetic emails with issues that they have specified they care about. A petition like this won’t see any actual action, nor will they really have anything to do with reaching out to pro-gun people. However, it will make some White House staff nervous and annoyed, so that is worth it. It also can serve as a reminder to those in Congress that we want it done.

No Guns for Medical Marijuana Users

ATF has ruled that people with medical marijuana cards are ineligible to purchase firearms, and have sent a letter to dealers outlining such. As a matter of federal law, their determination in this case is quite correct. Whether the federal law is proper or constitutional, I think is open for debate.

Gun Rights Policy Conference

John Richardson has his impressions of his first GRPC, which is an annual event put on by SAF and CCRKBA. I’ve never been to one, but it’s on my list to get to one of these years. Obviously, considering our employment situation, this was not going to be the year.

New York City Air Defenses

I was interested to see this post over at Extrano’s Alley that the NYPD commish was bragging that they had the ability to take down aircraft. I’m thinking unless they picked up an SA-7, or some cheap and only likely marginally effective Soviet or Chicom AAA armored vehicle, that a Stinger or some other such MANPAD was awfully expensive for even a city as large as New York. Nonetheless, you never know, given enough budget and reckless abandon, what city officials will purchase. So I at least gave them the benefit of doubt that perhaps the NYPD got their hands on the mother of all toys.

Turns out that the NYPD commish bought his own bullshit, and was referred to the Barrett .50 cals in his department’s inventories. If they had a couple of Ma Deuces strapped to an SUV, or even a mini gun, I might concede that perhaps they have the ability to take out a rogue aircraft with the right kind of gunner, if it’s moving slowly enough, and they don’t mind raining lead down on large parts of the city when they miss (which will be most of the rounds). But if the M82A1Â is what the commish thinks is his anti-aircraft kit, he’s a lot dumber than I thought.