August 2013 – Page 7 – Shall Not Be Questioned

It’s a Little Thing Called the Bill of Rights

Writing in the Inquirer, area attorney Gregory Sullivan writes about the recent Third Circuit decision in Drake v. Folko, upholding New Jersey’s carry restrictions:

Letting the permit law stand is consequently the best result. But why are federal judges even involved in this area?

Do we question why federal judges are involved in cases like freedom of the press or freedom of religion? No, because it’s a fundamental right guaranteed by our constitution. It doesn’t emanate from penumbras like some recently discovered rights. It’s right there staring you in the face.

Moreover, the Constitution provides no help on how to assess gun regulations.

I don’t think “shall not be infringed” is any less clear than “Congress shall make no law.”

Prior to Heller and McDonald, our gun laws were the subject of frequent and robust debate in state legislatures. They were being revised as needed, and voters maintained ultimate control over them. With the Heller-McDonald catastrophe, that control is almost completely lost. The complex policy questions on gun-carry laws will now be decided, ultimately, by a small group of lawyers in Washington at the Supreme Court.

Yes, that’s generally how enforcement of constitutional rights are supposed to work. Does this guy read the same Constitution the rest of us do? Rights are supposed to be beyond the reach of the political process. That’s the whole point. There are certain debates state legislatures shouldn’t be able to have, like whether or not to allow newspapers to be published freely, what kind of books you can own, and yes, whether or not an ordinary Joe can carry a firearm.

Third Party Opinions are Always Useful

Paul Barrett, the author of “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun” is someone I’d classify as outside the gun culture looking in. He’s been willing to learn and take the subject seriously, which is more than you can say for a lot of journalists. A comment tipped me off to an article in Bloomberg Businesses Week he essentially comes to the same conclusion I did over the weekend in regards to appreciating Starbucks by grabbing your AR and heading out for some coffee.

They have the right in most states to carry firearms openly. But the now-annual Starbucks Appreciation eventÂ is a gratuitous attempt to rile the portion of the populace made uncomfortable by open display of firearms. In a country with sharply divided attitudes toward guns, why purposely provoke oneâ€™s neighbors?

So what do I win here? It’s a reasonable question. Normalizing rifle OC? Well, I don’t OC, and I certainly wouldn’t ever OC a rifle around suburbia for the hell of it. So it’s no real prize for me, or most of us. I’d also note that there are still a few states where OC is illegal, even for pistols, and this kind of display is going to make fixing that more difficult as politicians start debating whether they really want to open this potential can of worms.

What’s interesting in all this is I believe the folks who engage in pistol OC have actually somewhat accomplished their task. Pistol OC won’t grab headlines very much these days, and the police are starting to understand the law better. In that sense, it has become more normalized. It’s now dog bites man as far as the news is concerned. This would be great except, and people will hate me for saying this, OC has always been attractive to attention seekers. I’m not saying everyone is, but it’s hard not to observe that some in the OC crowd really want their 15 minutes. I’ve been wondering if the rifle OC phenomena isn’t driven by a need to up the ante in order to keep the attention coming in.

Dick’s and AR-15

It may be Markley’s Law Monday, but I’m talking about the retail store. You might remember the post-Newtown dustup with Dick’s Sporting Goods at their decision to drop AR-15s from their product line.Â Dick’s and their AR vendor have kissed and made up, as Dick’s prepares to launch a new outdoor themed store that plans to sell them. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, Dick’s making a decision to sell ARs again is a loss for our opponents. Ultimately, a smart company is about the bottom line and the bottom line is ARs sell.

But locally we’ve also had issues with Dick’s stores enforcing New Jersey law in their PA stores, and it’s difficult to feel good about supporting a company that threw us under the bus so quickly after Newtown. Will the “Field and Stream” stores have a backbone? Being in the gun issue means getting blamed and punished for things you didn’t do. Perhaps if Dick’s can’t learn to take the heat, they best stay out of the kitchen.

UPDATE:Â Apparently Troy is denying any kissing and making up with Dick’s. Good for them.

AP Article on Pennsylvania GOP

The AP has an article on the GOP, that I could best sum up as “Tax protesters, tea partiers and creationists, oh my!” Also with a healthy heaping of homophobia and xenophobia, just to round out the article. Pennsylvania has always politically divided more along urban, suburban and rural than by party, which isn’t something this article alludes to. The media will obviously do what they can to scare suburban voters by bringing forth the likes of Metcalfe and Bloom, and it will work. Corbett would be smart to distance himself from the GOPs far-right heading into his re-election campaign.

Beating You With Your Own AR

I don’t generally use my ARs for home defense. Most of the time they stay in the safe. But that’s not because I think they are unsuitable. When I have kept an AR handy for home defense, I’ve generally kept it with a loaded magazine, bolt in battery on an empty chamber. This guy thinks an AR is useless for self-defense, because he’s such a badass he’ll just be able to take your gun and beat you with it:

â€œI need an assault rifle and 20 round clips to defend my homeâ€

Bullshit. First of all who in the hell are you defending your home from? The Taliban? Unless you are sitting in a chair at your front door, magazine in, round chambered and safety off, you are not going to shoot a damn thing. So in reality, if I had broken in, by the time you got up, got the gun out and started loading it, I would have taken it from you and beat you to death with it.

And by some miracle, you got it loaded, and actually shouldered it to fire, you are going to miss because I will be too close for it to be effective unless your plan is to watch in awe as the bullet passes through the wall when you miss me and you kill your neighbors SUV.

We’re often accused of being chest-beating neanderthals, but who is doing the chest beating here? I half expect him to proffer Joe Biden’s advice about double barreled shotguns next. I get tired of these self-proclaimed self-defense “experts” opining on topics they know little about. I sincerely doubt your average SWAT team, which tends to practice entering homes with considerably more equipment and training at their disposal than your average home invader, would feel confident knowing their suspect was sitting inside the house with a loaded AR, ready to shoot whatever comes through the door. Better hope that door goes down on the first strike with the battering ram, and you get extraordinarily lucky and catch him taking a dump on the toilet or something.

I’m fairly certain knowing that, surrounding the house, and convincing the suspect to come out peacefully would be the preferred option over entering the house. I’m definitely sure they would not bet money they could get in the house and beat the suspect with his own AR before he could start launching bullets their way.

We Do Police Our Own

It’s interesting to listen to gun control advocates describe gun shows as largely a Wild West kind of atmosphere where anything goes and no law actually exists. It seems quite at odds with what I have experienced spending many days camped out behind various volunteer tables working at gun shows.

Today, I heard about a dealer who was, on one hand, doing a great job of policing his own sales. On the other hand, he was apparently a jerk about it and just lost future customers over a pretty innocent mistake.

See, it was a father-son team from New Jersey. The father is a longtime gun owner who is fully up-to-date on all required paperwork, and even has a pistol purchase permit waiting to be used. The son just came of age, but is facing usual delays of getting everything he needs processed. Shocking from New Jersey, the state where gun ownership is really only legal under exceptions to the laws.

Anyway, the son found a rifle he wanted at the show, and the father asked him if he wanted it bad enough for the father to buy it and then later sell it to him through another documented transaction once he can finally be a New Jersey-approved gun owner. The dealer over heard this, and apparently got very bitchy about it. He refused the sale. I don’t really understand why he apparently also bitched out the two guys for making a pretty common and honest mistake of assuming that a dealer is really only prohibited from selling to someone who is going to give it away or sell it to a criminally prohibited person. The father made clear to his son that the firearm would not be available to him until they could lawfully sell it between the two of them, so they assumed that the dealer wouldn’t have an issue with it.

The dealer still has the gun and hasn’t lost anything at all in this interaction. Yet, rather than using the opportunity to make it a teachable moment on the law and maybe offering up a business card to the duo in order to encourage future business once the son does have his paperwork, the dealer got an attitude and just blew off the chance to sell guns to two men in the future.

So, good job on the dealer for following the law. Bad job on being polite while educating people who clearly have no criminal intent on their misunderstanding.

One thing to add about today’s show: There were many, many women there buying guns all on their own.

Time to Give Starbucks a Break: 2013 Edition

There’s always a risk when bringing this issue up of summoning the drama llama, but I can’t help but think Starbucks Coffee has shown sufficient resolve to follow the laws of the respective states with regards to carry that dragging the company further into this issue may very well be unproductive. I think that goes double if people start dragging AR-15s into Starbucks to show their appreciation. This kind of stuff is Folsom Street FairÂ for the gun rights movement, in neighborhoods across the country instead of being confined to San Francisco with all the other weird. I am not opposed to showing Starbucks some love, I’ve even encouraged it in the past, and participated myself, along with a lot of other people. I just believe if we’re going to show appreciation, it would behoove us to leave the rifles at home. To be honest, I think even pistol OC, if done to make a point (and not just because you do it) probably isn’t helping Starbucks remain comfortable with their decision.

At this point, I think if Starbucks reverses its policy, we have no one to blame except ourselves. We’re already seeing hints this may be getting pushed too far by our own side. Last year, when this issue heated up again, I thought our side was working too hard to help the antis keep the issue alive. I think the best way we can help Starbucks is not to fan the flames. Keep spending your money there, and when the antis make noise, drop a note to corporate saying you’re a regular customer, and you appreciate their decision to follow state law on firearms.

No Post Friday

Sorry for the lack of posting. I just haven’t had the time due to work, and Bitter is busy working a gun show this weekend trying to sell banquet and raffle tickets for our Friends of the NRA committee. I’m behind with reading and posting. I might get some content up later tonight or tomorrow if there’s time.

Christie Signs Some Gun Bills

Alert from ANJRPC quoted below. Not too surprising considering Christie’s general disdain for civil liberties, as was recently expressed. But if he vetoes the worst of it that’s at least something. I also think there’s a better chance of winning on the terror watch list issue in Court than most other things:

This afternoon, Governor Christie announced that he signed 10 of the gun bills on his desk.Â Â Two of those bills are helpful to gun owners, six are neutral in their impact on gun rights as a result of amendments based on gun owner input, and two were opposed by gun owners.

Three other horrific anti-gun bills – the worst of the bills that made it to the Governor’s desk -have not yet been acted upon by Governor Christie: the Sweeney “centerpiece” FID bill, the fifty caliber ban, and the trace data bill that would require the State Police to violate federal law.

It is critical that the Governor’s office continue to hear from gun owners on the three bills that have not been acted on yet.Â Â Please do your part and keep urging the Governor to veto these bills.Â Â Please call the Governor’s office ASAP atÂ 609-292-6000, write him atP.O. Box 001, Trenton, N.J. 08625, orÂ send an emailÂ using the online contact form.

The 3 anti-gun bills on which the Governor has NOT yet acted are:

S2723Â – the awful Sweeney “omnibus” bill, which throws out existing FID cards and replaces them with either a privacy-invading driver license endorsement or other form of ID; suspends Second Amendment rights without proof of firearms training; ends private sales between background-checked licensed gun owners; effectively creates a registry of ammunition purchases and long gun sales; and imposes a 7-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

A3659Â – the fifty caliber gun ban, which in its final versionÂ bans firearms that shoot centerfire cartridgesÂ of any caliberÂ that attain a muzzle energy of 12,000 ft-lbs. or greater.Â Â Though limited grandfathering has been added in response to gun owner concerns, the firearms must be registered, cannot be passed down to heirs, and owners will be civilly liable for damages if the firearm is used in a crime.Â Â Additionally, the bill has been amended specifically to prevent anyone with a pending order for these firearms from taking possession of them.

A3797Â -Â Mandates that the State Police publicly disclose confidential ATF gun trace data in violation of explicit federal law limiting that data to law enforcement use only. This is an attempt by frustrated gun banners to circumvent the federal Tiarht Amendment, so that idiosyncrasies of the ATF’s trace system can be exploited and manipulated to falsely suggest that law abiding citizens are a source of “crime guns.”Â Â ATF has opposed similar efforts to circumvent confidentiality, which could compromise ongoing investigations. Note: a conditional veto by the Governor removing just the offending parts of A3797 would be sufficient.

The 2 bills that HELP gun owners which the Governor has signed are:

A3788Â – Prevents public disclosure of personal information of licensed firearms owners, including name, address, and phone number.Â The legislation prevents a repeat of what happened in New York State in January, when several newspapers obtained personal information of Empire State gun owners via freedom of information requests and then published that information both in print and on the internet.Â Â Publishing personal information of gun owners jeopardizes their safety and makes them targets for gun theft, in addition to raising significant privacy concerns.

A3796Â – Addresses an anomaly in New Jersey’s “assault” firearms statute that prevents those still in possession of banned firearms from lawfully disposing of them.Â Â This bill reopens a compliance window for a short time during which banned firearms could be lawfully disposed of.Â Â Although the compliance window is too short, and the bill fails to allow for lawful disposition of banned magazines and ammunition, it nonetheless offers a limited compliance opportunity that is a temporary improvement over current law.

The 2 bills opposed by gun owners which the Governor signed are:

A3687Â – Terror Watch List bill.Â Makes it possible toÂ suspendÂ Second Amendment rights without a specified requirement of due process, based on a secret government list compiled by federal bureaucrats with no published standards, no identified procedure to correct errors, and potential for enormous abuse by those in power.Â ProponentsÂ of the bill have argued that due process is available because there is a right to appeal any permit denial under New JerseyÂ law.

A3717Â -Â Requires submission of certain mental health records to NICS without an explicit, stated requirement of due process within the legislation itself.Â Â ANJRPC has no objection to the core purpose of this legislation, but believes that the legislation needed to explicitly state that only records of persons who have had judicial due process (with a right of appeal) should be submitted to NICS. Proponents of the bill have argued that the NICS system itself, as well as New Jersey mental health law, contain independentÂ due process requirements.

The 6 bills signed by the Governor that have been neutralized in their impact on gun rights are:

S1279Â – Upgrades penalty for unlawful transfer of a firearm to a minor (specifically amended to exempt lawful instruction and training, competition and target shooting)

S2720Â – Makes records regarding the total number of FID cards and handgun permits issued subject to public disclosure (does not disclose identity of gun owners)

S2804Â – Upgrades penalty for unlawful firearms possession by felons or those engaged in serious criminal behavior.

S2430Â – Creates a study commission on gun violence.

S2468Â – Permits vehicle impoundment where felons or those engaged in serious criminal behavior are unlawfully in possession of firearms.

S2719Â – Anti-trafficking legislation (amended to prevent numerous unintended consequences to legal gun owners).

Please watch for upcoming alerts and updates, and please keep contacting the Governor’s office!

Gun Magazine Sales Up

It looks like sales of magazines for firearms are on the rise. You might assume that I mean the firearms parts that go into guns, but it’s actually the paper product that lands in your mailbox or on store shelves.

In fact, the double digit increases are pretty much the only bright spot in the publishing world, according to AdWeek.

From the highlights of the research, it looked like Food Network’s magazine was also on the rise. I’m sure the combination of rising popularity of firearms & food magazines is enough to give Mike Bloomberg some heartburn as he chows down on his dinner tonight.