Second Amendment Extended to Non-Residents by 7th Circuit

Despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment right was a fundamental right, there is still an open question about whether or not it’s a fundamental right of personhood, like freedom of speech, or a citizenship right that can be restricted to non-citizens, like voting. Preexisting Supreme Court precedent essentially made Second Amendment rights for permanent residents a slam dunk after Heller and McDonald, and we’ve seen the courts have been favorable to that idea. For non-resident aliens, it’s a different matter. If it’s a citizenship right, then they can be barred from exercising that right, the same way they can be barred from voting.

Most of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights are fundamental rights of people. The idea of voting being a right at all was an alien concept until very recently. The 7th Circuit recently ruled that non-citizens have the right to bear arms, but that 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5) was a permissible restriction. This makes me question whether or not someone in the country on a non-immigrant visa, but here legally, would have a reasonable chance of challenging 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5)(B). Remember, it is technically illegal (felony illegal, in fact) to take a foreign national who is not here on an immigrant visa shooting. This is not usually enforced, but it is the law.

I would imagine an originalist analysis would have to look at the public understanding of the right at the time of ratification. The issue there is the concept of an illegal immigrant may have been foreign to the population at the time. Prior to about the late 19th century, there was virtually no federal laws controlling immigration, yet as early as 1798, Congress did pass a law that allowed for deportation of aliens that were “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” Of course, it also restricted free speech and was roundly condemned by Thomas Jefferson. We know them as the Alien and Sedition Acts. It wasn’t until the 1870s and 1880s with the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act that Congress asserted a power to control immigration as well as naturalization at the federal level. You had Congress exercise at least some level of control over immigration with the Steerage Act if 1819, but that was just a reporting requirement. Prior to the existence of the United States, many of the colonies had their own immigration laws, most of which encourage immigration from Britain and Germany, but largely excluded Catholics. I’ve read articles arguing that Congress originally had no power to legislate on immigration, which would leave it up to the states. A question is how many states did so. But I’m also not sure that just because Congress didn’t exercise that power until 1875 didn’t mean they weren’t understood to have it.

My feeling is that the founding generation probably understood non-resident immigrants to have full Second Amendment rights, but in today’s political environment that seems untenable.

This Kathleen Kane Drama Couldn’t Get Any Weirder

Apparently Kathleen Kane has an evil twin, who is in some legal trouble of her own:

Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s twin borrowed $200,000 from an FBI agent who was living with her and then kicked him out the door, the agent says in a civil lawsuit filed in Lackawanna County.

Kane’s twin is being sued because apparently that was the guy’s life savings, and he’d like it back. Classy. Meanwhile, apparently Kathleen Kane has used her evil twin to throw off the press. Maybe her next defense will be that it was her evil twin all along!

Surreal Headline of the Day

You can bet the editors were just itching to run this one: “Lawyer Invokes Porn as Pennsylvania AG Is Ordered to Trial.” I wish I could say Bloomberg must be cringing about the 600,000 dollars he donated to her campaign, but the fact is he already got what he wanted out of her, and Kane’s reciprocity take backs are unlikely to be overturned by any future successor, at least until we can have an election. What’s unbelievable to me is that she refuses to resign. Even Governor Wolf is calling on her to resign.

For those of you who haven’t been following, Kathy Kane’s defense has essentially been this whole indictment thing is just a “stealth political weapon” to get back at her for exposing various high-ranking state employees sharing tasteless jokes and porn via state e-mail, including former Democratic Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

Weekend Festivities: Gettysburg Brew Festival

Pardon the late posting today, but I’ve been polishing up a proposal for more business (i.e. paying the mortgage). I didn’t have much time over the weekend, because we were busy attending the Gettysburg Brew Festival. I have never attended a brew festival before, so I was unaware of some of the brew fest cultural items, like wearing pretzels around your neck, beer t-shirts, neckbeards, and in this case at least, field artillery.

They counted off time for the festival with what looks to be a parrot rifle, but I don’t claim to be an expert. It definitely had a rifled barrel. You could see who amongst the crowd wasn’t used to loud noises. Personally, after having fired Civil War era field artillery with live ammunition once, blanks just don’t have the same thrill.

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One thing I noticed at the brew festival is that it was largely composed of what most people would generally regard as the stereotype of NRA members; basically a lot of fat white guys. While I’m pleased to report that NRA conventions are more diverse these days than brew festivals, after running the experience through my trusty Perpetual Outrage Comptabulator, I’m sorry to report the social justice algorithms have concluded that craft beer is racist.

Speaking of NRA, we ran into one of our NRA friends at the brew festival. Sarah Gervase is Assistant General Counsel at the NRA, and puts on the Annual Firearms Law Seminar every year.

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The Gettysburg Brew Festival is located on the grounds of the Lutheran Theological Seminary, and is in fact a fundraiser for it. Behind Bitter & Sarah, you’ll notice Schmucker Hall and its cupola in the background. This is the same cupola from which General John Buford viewed the advancing confederate troops from at the very beginning of the battle.

You can see General Buford (played by Sam Elliott in the movie “Gettysburg“) riding across the same field the brew festival was hosted on.

Confessions of an Ordinary Gun Toter

Summer Time Carry GearIn the comments over on a previous thread, HappyWarrior offers what I’ll call the lament of the non-gun-ninja, regarding the burden of carrying around all the equipment advice on the Internet would have you carry if you took it all seriously. I can sympathize, because I’m no special gun carrying ninja. We all have to make tradeoffs, and it’s OK to make those tradeoffs. It’s your life, not someone else’s.

There are only two things on my belt at all times, and that’s a Leatherman multi-tool and an iPhone. No, I don’t carry a tactical folder anymore. Why? Because I can’t carry it everywhere, and I use the Leatherman enough that grabbing it and one handed opening is quite natural to me. If I’m leaving the house, and it’s winter, and sometimes in summer, there will be a Glock 19 on the belt in a Comp-Tac Infidel holster just behind the iPhone.  Tactical advice is to “dress around the gun,” but realistically, there are times you can’t do that. Tactical advice will dispute this, but it’s your life, not someone else’s.

I’m not carrying the Glock, it’s an LCP in a pocket holster in the strong-side pocket. I’m usually carrying OC spray in the weak side pocket, along with a flashlight clipped to the pocket, and a spare magazine for the LCP. If it’s winter, the OC goes in the weak side coat pocket so my jeans pocket only has the reload and flashlight in it.

Yes, I realize this is not very “tactical,” and I’d be fumbling for a reload if things end up going pear-shaped, but if things end up going that pear-shaped and all I have is an LCP, I’m already figuring I’m pretty well screwed to begin with. It’s all trade-offs, and only you can make them. Sometimes I don’t even carry, which is the biggest tactical sin of all!

And why do I make these tradeoffs? Because I can’t run around looking ridiculous with half a dozen things clipped to my belt in summertime, and having to dress around the gun. Yes, my professional reputation and that of my company are more important than the very unlikely event that I find myself in a situation where a firearm would come in handy. That said, I manage to successfully carry something most of the time I’m out of the house.

But I don’t feel bad about making tradeoffs to accommodate life. You shouldn’t either. As Tam’s original post noted, you should just understand and accept the risk those tradeoffs impose on you.

On Feeling Safe and Self-Delusion

As a community, we often don’t have much patience for people who are just fine with security theater measures, because they want to feel safe. They don’t want to confront the idea that life entails risk, and that bad things can happen regardless of what precautions you take. Tam makes a very excellent point that people in the gun community often exhibit the same behavior.

I still remember the initial hostility I got when I started recommending people who carry a gun also carry a defensive spray. I was initially hostile to the idea myself, because I figured a prosecutor would argue, if I had spray, that I should have used it instead of shooting the bastard.

But I was turned into a believer by a series of articles that disassembled all my assumptions and refuted them. Unfortunately these articles seem to have disappeared from the Internets. A lot of the arguments against defensive spray struck me more as “this makes me uncomfortable, because it threatens the world view I’ve constructed” rather than solid arguments against the practice of carrying defensive sprays. We are all capable of fantastic feats of self-delusion to defend our own world view. No one is immune. The key is to be capable of recognizing self-delusion when someone points it out. Some people will never be convinced.

Pearl Clutching Alert: Range & Restaurant in Daytona Beach

Miguel notes that our opponents are freaking out because a shooting range in Florida is also going to have a license to serve alcohol. He is correct to point out that this is nothing new, and also perfectly safe if done correctly. But since it helps drive the narrative of the reckless gun owner, the media will be happy to run stories on this.

My club has a strict “no alcohol on premises” rule, and it’s against the rules to be intoxicated on club property. But I’ve been to other clubs that have a bar, and even one club that had a pretty decent restaurant on site too. The rule usually is if you come to have a drink, you get flagged and aren’t allowed to use the shooting parts of the facility. Most clubs I’ve ever been to, rules are taken quite seriously and the penalties for serious safety violations are generally ejection from the club.

But Americans have always been a bit puritanical about alcohol to begin with. The Swiss take it even a step further, and it’s not uncommon there to have a glass of wine or beer before hitting the firing line with fully automatic assault rifles. I don’t think anyone would argue the Swiss are irresponsible with firearms. It’s a different culture, and a different set of attitudes. I thought we were supposed to celebrate diversity, and different cultures?

Regardless, there’s absolutely no danger in what this club is doing if it’s done safely, and I’m sure it will be done safely.

Guns Won’t Deter Every Criminal

A man in West Philadelphia was robbed of a gun when the guy behind him in line noticed he was carrying and decided to relieve him of his firearm (warning, news footage will auto-play). You can read Bob Owens’ take here, and Tam’s here. I don’t really have much more to add. My bet, given the neighborhood, and the guy’s apparent age, is that the victim was probably a student living farther out in West Philadelphia than is generally prudent for a naive kid from the ‘burbs. Good on him for thinking enough about his safety to arm himself, but here he paid the price poor concealment, poor holster, and poor training. The 600 block of North 40th Street is not a good neighborhood (at least it wasn’t when I was going to school there).

Still, I feel for the victim. I’ve done more training than your average carrier, which really isn’t saying much, at all, because one thing more training teaches you is that you don’t have nearly enough! I won’t pretend I’m some kind of ninja who would have reacted any better. I am more conscientious about printing than I used to be, because some people know what to look for, and you can’t expect the sight of a carried gun is going to deter every criminal. Most of us get away with a lot of poor choices in self-defense because we live in quiet neighborhoods where, to be honest, you’re more likely to die from a poor diet and bad driving than lose life or limb to a criminal. But that neighborhood? I’d recommend starting with full size pistol and a good holster, and adapt everything else in your wardrobe (and plan) around that.

NY Times Advances Narrative of Brutish Gun Owner

It’s pretty apparent this New York Times article about the impact of shooting on federal land is meant to smear responsible shooters as reckless and irreverent heathen out terrorizing the quiet countryside, but it would do us no good to pretend that every shooter out there is a good steward of the land. Back years ago when I used to shoot at public ranges, I saw a lot of cringe inducing behavior, and I have left a range on an occasion or two because of grossly unsafe behavior. I used to not only pick up my own trash, but would pick up other garbage people left on the range as well. Poor stewardship of public shooting areas makes us all look bad.

But I used to hike too, and I can tell you that not all hikers are good stewards of the land either. Same is true for mountain bikers, ATV operators, snow mobiles — you name it. What bothers me about the Times article is that it paints shooters as being some kind of unique jerks. You’ll find a healthy share of jerks in any recreational activity. The Times is simply working to advance the politically convenient narrative of the dim-witted, reckless, and brutish gun owner.

Flamethrower Company Runs Into Trouble

IonXM42While it’s true that flamethrowers are unregulated, they don’t have a culture surrounding them like firearms do. Which means there’s no preemption law to protect manufacturers, sellers and buyers from the ravages of hysterical local politicians, who are often petty little Napoleons in their own right. Such is the Mayor of the town of Warren Michigan, who is moving to ban flamethrowers. Warren is where Ion Productions makes the XM42. You might think “well, he’ll just have to ban super soakers then too,” but I’m not certain that his proposed legislation doesn’t actually do that:

It describes a flamethrower as “any transportable device that can emit a burning stream of combustible or flammable liquid at a distance of more than two feet.” It doesn’t include open-flame cooking devices as defined by the International Fire Code, torches used for industrial purposes or smaller flame-producing devices, like cigar lighters. It also makes exceptions for any officers, employees or members of the Armed Forces, law enforcement, fire department or local, state or federal government workers on duty and acting within the scope of his or her employment.

I’m not sure how this doesn’t cover a super soaker, since it’s certainly can “emit a burning stream of combustible or flammable liquid at a distance of more than two feet” with a pretty minimal level of creativity. Let me also say how relieved I am that the Mayor decided to make an exception for Law Enforcement, because I guess we never know when we might have to burn people out of their homes, or hose down a rowdy crowd with some napalm — legitimately, and as a function of law, and for their own good, of course.

I like that a lot young people are embracing libertarian ideas and philosophy, but they are coming against the hard reality that most people aren’t libertarian in philosophy or thought, and aren’t going to agree that people can have dangerous things that they themselves don’t see any legitimate use for. I get taking on the man, but without the cultural underpinnings to support a particular freedom, attracting undue attention to it can result in that freedom ending for everyone. At the end of the day, what does it accomplish?

It’s an dilemma I don’t know how to resolve it. I think people should be allowed to have things that aren’t inherently dangerous to others, which a flamethrower is not. You have to do something stupid and/or evil with it in order for someone to get hurt, and the law would be more just to only punish the stupid and/or evil behavior than to ban the instrument that enabled it. Are there places where even using a flamethrower is stupid? I think that’s debatable. But again, that’s restricting use. If I want to take it out to a quarry and have a good old time setting piles of wood chips on fire, it ought to be my freedom to do so.

But most people don’t think this way. They aren’t willing to live in a society where there’s more risk in order to preserve someone’s “strange” idea of fun. These are people who live relatively conventional lives, and don’t exist much outside of convention. For the most part, they run the world. The reason we’ve been successful with guns is because we’ve abandoned the idea of defending firearms rights on the basis of recreation, which doesn’t appeal to anyone who doesn’t engage in the hobby or who lacks any curiosity about it. Instead, we embraced defending it on the basis of self-defense, which a lot more people can relate to. I worry that at the end of the day, preserving people’s right to have fun with flamethrowers, or their right to make guns at home, won’t prove compelling enough to ordinary people to stand against a tide of public hysteria if it were to come this way.

You know, it occurs to me I don’t have a “flamethrower” category. I guess I’ll have to file this under “civil liberties.”