News is kind of slow, so I figure I should point out instances where our opponents display all the seething mouth foaming they accuse us of, and let their extremism show.
From eduardo16, on the comments on this news piece:
This is an insult to Niles progressive community. The Mayor and trustees are scared and afraid of the gun lobby lawsuits and ignored the popular clamor to stop guns in Niles. They caved in to the gun lobby and showed zero leadership. The American society needs to be disarmed, secularized and educated otherwise it will continue becoming an affluent version of the Taliban.
Disarmed, stripped of religion and re-educated? That sounds familiar. Yes, congratulations Eduardo, people like you are the reason I own guns, and advocate others do the same! You’re dangerous, and your ideas are dangerous. They lead to dark places. I don’t intend to go with you.
Here’s a comment by hughjames46:
Who would want this filth in their community? It’s a dirty, loud business. Not to mention quite ridiculous, grown people knocking off paper targets and paying for the privilege and then getting all excited about it. (You have to admit they do seem sexually repressed.)
These stores are no better than adult book stores. Their clientele is likely to be lower class and no better than drug addicts. Gun nuts need a fix and these stores are like having a pusher right on the corner.
Sometimes you have to wonder if some of these comments aren’t trolls. But to be fair, I’ve seen hate and pearl clutching of this magnitude coming from the other side before. This mentality blows my mind. I don’t really get the point of soccer either, grown adults kicking a ball around a field and hardly scoring, but that doesn’t mean I think no one ought to enjoy it.
The proper response to people like eduardo & co. is just to say “go fuck yourself”.
With this being a zoning issue related to an incorporated Constitutional right some required reading would of course be Ezell v. Chicago (http://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ezelldecision.pdf). Especially when factoring in what is being referred to as the Ezell Doctrine where by the 7th Circuit stated “we and other circuits have already begun to adapt First Amendment doctrine to the Second Amendment context”.
An important non-2nd Amendment case to look at out of the 9th Circuit. Andersen v. Hermosa Beach (http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/09/09/08-56914.pdf) which deals with zoning limits based on “health and safety concerns”. Similar to the arguments made be some of those who opposed the range in Niles for the exact same reason.
Of interest, the Ninth Circuit held that:
The principal difference between a tattoo and, for example, a pen-and-ink drawing, is that a tattoo is engrafted onto a person’s skin rather than drawn on paper. This distinction has no significance in terms of the constitutional protection afforded the tattoo; a form of speech does not lose First Amendment protection based on the kind of surface it is applied to. It is true that the nature of the surface to which a tattoo is applied and the procedure by which the tattoo is created implicate important health and safety concerns that may not be present in other visual arts, but this consideration is relevant to the governmental interest potentially justifying a restriction on protected speech, not to whether the speech is constitutionally protected.
. . . .
Tattooing is a process like writing words down or drawing a picture except that it is performed on a person’s skin. As with putting a pen to paper, the process of tattooing is not intended to “symbolize” anything. Rather, the entire purpose of tattooing is to produce the tattoo, and the tattoo cannot be created without the tattooing process any more than the Declaration of Independence could have been created without a goose quill, foolscap, and ink. Thus, as with writing or painting, the tattooing process is inextricably intertwined with the purely expressive product (the tattoo), and is itself entitled to full First Amendment protection.
Ruling:
In sum, we hold that the tattoo itself, the process of tattooing, and the business of tattooing are forms of pure expression fully protected by the First Amendment. We further hold that the City’s total ban on tattoo parlors in Hermosa Beach is not a reasonable “time, place, or manner†restriction because it is substantially broader than necessary to achieve the City’s significant health and safety interests and because it entirely forecloses a unique and important method of expression. Moreover, no genuine issue of material fact exists with respect to the constitutionality of the regulation.
Thus,we hold that Hermosa Beach Municipal Code § 17.06.070 is facially unconstitutional to the extent that it excludes tattoo parlors, and we reverse the district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the City and remand with instructions to grant Anderson’s motion for summary judgment and
enjoin the City to include tattoo parlors in its zoning regulations.
So with the Federal Courts applying 1st Amendment doctrine to 2nd Amendment context, these 1st Amendment rulings provide to be very useful.
If only we could get Prior Restraint applied!
It’s just the petty desire to control others for basically no good reason; nothing less, nothing more. Turns out to be a very common mindset when you start to touch sensitive issues.
Ah gotta love that the same people who want to ban silencers also complain about the noise.
And then we see the puritanical streak of “How DARE someone have fun!” / “How DARE the proles enjoy something ‘sinful’.”
“Scared and afraid of gun-lobby lawsuits”?
Well, that and the US District Court.
Don’t they realize that they really, really, really can’t just effectively ban guns in Chicago?
(Or, perhaps, it’s just that they don’t know [though I doubt it] that the way Chicago’s stupid gun permit laws work requires ranges?
I suspect, though, from what they wrote, that they don’t care – and don’t care about any human rights they don’t enjoy.
I’d be shocked, naturally, if either of them had ever actually fired a gun [especially lawfully!], or knew that they knew anyone who was a shooter.
It takes carefully isolating yourself from real counterexamples to get so wrong.)
“Or, perhaps, it’s just that they don’t know [though I doubt it] that the way Chicago’s stupid gun permit laws work requires ranges?”
Oh, they know it. That’s why they’re trying so dang hard.
Permits require range work. No ranges == no range work == no permits.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
eduardo16: “The Mayor and trustees are scared and afraid of the gun lobby lawsuits….”
And they darn well should be. I mean, the City of Chicago has had to write, what? Two six-figure checks to SAF and one to NRA? All for being on the wrong side of a simple issue. But I contend that’s not necessarily fear, but prudence. “Common sense”, if you will.
eduardo16 again: “… and ignored the popular clamor to stop guns in Niles.”
Leaving aside the whole “guns are inanimate objects and don’t need to be ‘stopped'” thing: it makes no difference how popular the clamor was. I doubt it was as popular as “eduardo” thinks, but in the end it doesn’t matter. It’s totally irrelevant. The Bill of Rights — the whole Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment — isn’t subject to a popularity contest. The rights people like “eduardo” find distasteful are the ones that most need to be protected from people like “eduardo.”
These people may be trolls, but I have been present when people expressed similar ideas. One common theme is they want to ban arms socially by demonizing gun owners. One method that gets heads nodding is to conflate lawful use with criminal use of weapons. This trick works wonders since many agreeing are thinking of criminal use only; who can disagree with that?
If you are a gun owner, a member of the NRA or any Pro-gun rights origination and/or are against gun control or believe in defending your family or yourself or believe in the Constitution, Freedom, civil rights for all or proud to be an American or believe in God or being Christian or don’t agree with Liberals or the Obama administration and their propaganda you are a terrorist, a racist or both and are probably on a terrorist watch list! I’m there!
You scratch a shiny progressive and underneath you will find a dark totalitarian.
ALWAYS.