The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Don’t bring a taser to a gunfight. I’d also direct your attention to the 911 call at the bottom, as a good example of reacting well under stress. In a 911 call, you should tell them you need a police officer and ambulance, because someone has been shot. They will ask you if you’re the shooter. Just tell them to get help on the scene quickly. This guy did that. Your next call needs to be to your attorney.
Looks like the kid is going to be OK. Hopefully this turns into a valuable lesson for him.
From a round-up on the election news from Jim Geraghty, we see the Democratic Party is apparently resorting to making the recalls all about the supposed war on women as the recall against Colorado’s Senate President John Morse continues to not look so good for him. Basically, they hope to out single-issue the traditional single-issue voters.
But, perhaps more interesting is the fact that the way the recall is planned may well be unconstitutional. Looking at how election officials have handled this, it is pretty clear that Colorado’s election laws are an absolute mess of conflicting orders and requirements. That is to blame on lawmakers, but you’d think that election officials would have prepared for it.
Is there a middle ground on gun control? I often get annoyed with people who write about “middle ground”, because they often have a poor understanding of what that means. Where we stand right now is the much sought after “middle ground” on gun control, and we arrived here through struggle. But the article linked isn’t one of those simple minded articles on the topic, and makes a good argument that the other side overreached, while our side played the issue fairly pragmatically. I think that’s a correct assessment. But I’m also not sure they could have played it any other way.
The gun control proponents thought Sandy Hook was a bigger game changer than it really was. Within days of it happening it was pretty apparent from their cocky rhetoric many of them believed that happy days were once again upon them, and they would soon sweep us into the dustbin of history. What they weren’t expecting was such a strong mobilization by our grassroots. They got greedy in their demands, and we can be very very thankful for the overreach of our opponents. The prospect of far ranging bans on long guns, considerably more far broader than was achieved in 1994, were a big part of what helped mobilize the troops, and allowed us to stop everything outright.
Even the Toomey-Manchin compromise, which was at best a half-loaf for the other side, wasn’t destained to become the new middle ground on the issue. When people are paying attention, it’s easier to reach them with useful information about what the bills actually do. If the other side were only interested in more background checks, and were willing to give and take in order to get them, they’d be hard to defeat. But background checks are no more than flowery rhetoric to effectively carry a laundry list of other, more draconian regulation. But do the gun control folks have a choice, really?
Ultimately, it all boils down to bodies and dollars. Gun control activists and donors aren’t going to keep campaigning or writing checks to get more background checks. Their activists and donors don’t want to hear that gun bans are off the table. They don’t want to hear that registration is politically unpopular. The last thing they’d want to do is concede their most effective rhetorical tool for what to them is nothing. If background checks can’t be used to carry other restrictions, what good are they?
The suit to defend the Montana Firearms Freedom Act has gone down to defeat in the 9th Circuit. Given the precedent in Gonzales v. Raich, this idea was never really going to fly. It’ll be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether to take the case, but I don’t give that much of a chance. There were several other states that passed laws like this as well. Post Sandy Hook, there was also a movement to do outright nullification, with our state’s introduced legislation being HR357. I’ve also become aware of local efforts at the county level to do the same.
I think it’s important for people to be aware of what these laws do. The Freedom Acts, like Montana’s, really don’t have much more than symbolic value. They aren’t going to stop, and in fact can’t stop the federal government from the execution of federal law and regulations. You won’t be able to manufacture a machine gun, or any gun, in Montana and them wave a state law in their face and suggest they can’t arrest you and prosecute you. You’ll quickly find that is not the case.
The nullification laws, at the state level, could in theory do some good under dire circumstances. This is because states are actual sovereigns, and can pass real laws and control real monies. If the federal government were to pass draconian new gun control, it would be tremendously beneficial for the states to have laws that prevent state authorities from enforcing the federal law. If a state wanted to take nullification farther and actively interfere with federal enforcement, that could also be useful (though dangerous — civil wars can start that way.) I’m far less convinced that local action on this kind of nullification is anything more than empty symbolism, because county and local government typically don’t have the lawmaking power necessary to do anything substantive.
These are just things to consider when judging whether to get behind laws like this with serious resources. I tend to think nullification is more useful than Firearms Freedom Acts, but nullification is something to save for when we actually lose, or loss appears likely. I would suggest that resources are best applied to not losing in the first place.
A few readers have sent me links to this proposal by a few Democratic Congress Critters that proposes to impose a severe tax on handguns and ammunition. There is legislation introduced all the time in Congress to do all kinds of unspeakable thinks to all kinds of rights, including your Second Amendment rights. The vast majority of them are going nowhere.
When a bill gets introduced to Congress, which any Congressman can do, it first gets referred to committee, which is where the vast majority of bills sit ignored until they die when that session of Congress comes to an end. There are a few things to watch. One thing to watch for is the cosponsor count. HR.3018 is currently sitting at a whopping one co-sponsor. Another thing to watch is whether it gets scheduled for any kind of hearing. Generally speaking, the committee won’t waste its time with a bill that only has one co-sponsor. Only 11% of bills ever made it through the committee process, and only 3% of introduced legislation actually gets enacted.
I’d also add that, while this doesn’t mean as much as it should, it’s generally accepted in current court doctrine on treatment of fundamental rights, that you can’t tax the exercise of those rights. Even the Pittsman-Robertson excise tax is questionably constitutional, let alone this. While I don’t really expect the courts to ever save us, this would be stronger ground to fight on in court than the many other things our opponents can do to us.
All this combined means HR.3018 is something to watch, but it’s probably nothing to panic about.
I always build up news stories over the weekend. Then the question is whether I have anything to add, or just put it in the news links. But there’s always the risk I’ll dump it as a link, and then run out of material. Sometimes the cycle is dry. I am, however, working on a series post, that’s a bit more involved. Hopefully that will go this week. Here’s the news otherwise:
Bloomberg fail. Only 15 people show up to a rally. A lot of us worry about gun owners returning to slumber, but the other side has that problem too. They might as well not bother, says Miguel.
Massad Ayoob: Talk at the Scene, Talk on the Stand. More on the Zimmerman case, and whether you should talk to cops or take the stand in your defense.
No special session in Florida on Stand Your Ground laws.
Bug-a-salt gun terminal ballistics. All you ever wanted to know about blasting bugs with salt.
Second Amendment supports thrive on scare tactics. Pot, meet kettle. I think you’ll find it’s also black.
Fellow blogger Wyatt Earp just lost his father, Philadelphia Firefighter and lifetime NRA member. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family at this difficult time.
From research this weekend, I discovered I have a 1st cousin, 4x removed who was one of the 9 sailors that perished when the USS Lavender struck a reef off North Carolina, 12 Jun 1864. My 3rd great grandfather had to swear an affidavit as to the marriage of the cousin’s parents, and the cousin’s birth in Northern Ireland so his family could get the pension, which was the clue that lead me to it.
NRA released this ad in Colorado, so feel free to spread it around if you know some voters who need to get out and vote.
You know that Ohio instructor who shot one of his students in class? Turns out this isn’t the first time he’s shot someone, the last incident being in 1977, and is coming to light now because when the person he accidentally shot read about the latest incident, she spoke up.
“Oh no, he’s done it again,†Hessler, now Cathy Schmelzer, 50, told the paper after she heard of the latest shooting.  “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’†she said, according to the Dispatch.
I’d say if you find yourself at a point in life where you’ve shot two people accidentally, it’s probably a really good idea to seriously examine your relationship with firearms, and decide if maybe you’d be better off taking up a hobby where reckless abandon is considerably less consequential. Chess is a good hobby.
The Daily Caller notes that the outrage Australian politicians are expressing over the shooting death of an Australian national in Oklahoma is not backed by facts. The growth in gun culture that we’ve seen in the United States is also happening in Australia. If you’re an Australian political elite, and want to maintain the integrity of the gun control regime you’ve imposed on the peons, can you find a more tailor made incident?
No country is immune from random, senseless violence. It’s rare here too, which is why things like this make national news. The Australian reaction to this incident is more about Australia than it is about us. The political elites want people to remain happy with their gun control regime. Otherwise we’ll all become like the scary United States. Incidents like this are very convenient for the gun control elites.
A majority are not happy with the magazine restrictions, but most don’t believe the recalls are warranted. This is going to come down to which side has the most energy to get out to the polls, so the GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort is going to be supremely important in this recall.
