Category: Gun Rights

Dave Hardy has the language, and cuts to the relevant parts for us. The bill will be HR2640. Take a read. As best as I can tell from my reading of it, the key things we get out of this are:

• Clarification of the language of what “adjudicated mental defective” actually means.
• Ability to have mental health related disability removed through a state process
• The ability to appeal decisions of state bodies in regards to mental health related disability removal.

I was hoping for a little more, personally. But this addresses much of the concern we had about state mental health records being put into NICS. I still believe this bill is a net gain for us rather than a loss, so given the current language, I’m still inclined to not oppose passage of this bill.

UPDATE: You can see the bill here on GovTrack.  Still no text yet, but we can see the cosponsors.   I am very sorry to say that the sponsor of this legislation is Carolyn McCarthy.  I’m guessing the Democrats let her introduce the bill so she wouldn’t get snubbed by her own party.  This is a disappointment.  The Democrats would have pulled off more of a public relations coup by having Boucher introduce it.

This Newsday article has Carolyn McCarthy involved in the NICS deal:

“Mentioning the NRA and Carolyn McCarthy in the same breath is like oil and water,” McCarthy said. “They’re certainly nervous about their membership working with me. My side, my groups are nervous about me working wih Dingell and the NRA.”

Dingell’s office helped conduct daily discussions on the bill’s specifics, according to McCarthy spokesman George Burke, and McCarthy’s office signed off on the final agreement. Dingell was a co-sponsor of the first bill in 2002 and a co-sponsor of this year’s version.

I’m not much inclined to give too much credence to statements from McCarthy’s office that she was involved.  Of course they won’t want to paint her as an utter failure, and admit that she was sidelined.

The article also mentions, “McCarthy said the bill could reach the House floor for a vote this week.” which would indicate that it is not her own bill, which is already introduced.   We’ll see though.

There is some more clarity here:

Democrats agreed to allow up to 109,000 armed services veterans, placed into the NICS system for mental health reasons determined by a physician but not adjudicated by law, a chance to remove their names from the system.

Those with minor infractions, such as temporary restraining orders which have since expired, could also petition the state for removal from the system.

The federal government would also be barred from charging gun buyers or sellers for background checks.

I’m hoping such as merely includes that, and doesn’t indicate things like temporary restraining orders are the only thing that can be challenged.   We’ll have to see the bill though.  The NRA also notes that this isn’t yet a done deal, and they will oppose the bill if the deal goes sour.  I’m wondering if perhaps this was leaked to the press before it was really ready in an attempt to force one of the parties hands.

This would all be less nerve wracking if I trusted the Democrats on this issue, which I do not.

Because when it comes to politics:

More details can be found at the linked article. While I think it’s ridiculous an interest group wields such power in Washington that Congressional leadership has to negotiate with them, this is overall a good step and NRA support should ensure its passage.

… it’s far better for liberty and the health of the republic if politicians don’t listen to the interest of constituents and interests groups at all, and rely only on their good and pure instincts on subjects that they, most likely, don’t know much about?

But I suppose what’s really at work with a lot of congressional dems, who just want to stick it to sport shooters and gun owners, is that it really sucks to, you know, actually have to listen to them and take their concerns seriously rather than being able to dismiss them as a bunch of kooks.

We still don’t have a bill yet, so all we have to go on here is the Washington Post’s reporting, which is always a scary prospect when it comes to this issue. We do have some reactions from the blogosphere though, which are interesting.

Jeff Soyer worries about it turning into a bad deal really quickly. This is a real concern. I’m worried about this as well. It’ll be a real litmus test for how serious the Democrats are about ending their habit of screwing gun owners every chance they get.

Joe Huffman says:

If someone is so dangerous they can’t be trusted with a gun then I don’t think they can be trusted with a can of gasoline and a book of matches either. Either they can be trusted in public or they should be locked up.

I agree with this sentiment, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t. NICS, without a doubt, is a feel good measure, to make the public think it’s been made difficult for criminals to get guns, but it’s a feel good measure that there doesn’t seem to be much political traction to get rid of. People that think NICS is useless are very much a political minority. I think Joe’s second point is a good one:

Making the least agreeable portions of the infringement on our rights more palatable just means it will be more difficult to justify getting rid of it entirely later on.

I don’t think there’s any way we’re getting rid of NICS through the legislative process, but I do think this is a good point when it comes to the courts; in that the less infringing the background checks are, the less likely the court may be to throw it out. This is a good argument against the bill, I think.

SayUncle sums it up as “NICS deal – hey, lets’ pay for stuff that’s already law“, which I think is accurate if the WaPo’s reporting is correct on this.  We’re not adding new classes of prohibited person with this bill.  If you’ve been committed, or adjudicated a danger to yourself or others, and you’re not in NICS, that doesn’t change your prohibited status.  If the feds care to look, you’re still a “felon-in-possession”.  If the Democrats hold true to the deal, it would seem that we’ll actually have a recourse for removing prohibited status for some offenses, and getting corrections made to the NICS database.

It looks like the NICS deal with the Democrats has come to light:

Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks.

It looks like we have won some real concession out of this bill. I’m holding final judgment until I can see the language of the bill itself, but it appears what we’ll get is:

• Ability to remove prohibited status for people with minor infractions. Read, Lautenberg crap? I hope so.
• The 83,000 Military veterans screwed in 2000 would be able to challenge their prohibited status for mental health issues.
• Feds may not charge a fee for NICS checks. Federal government will assume 100% of financing for states to get their information up to date and accurate.
• Faulty records must be scrubbed from the system
• Carolyn McCarthy gets handed a gigantic snub politically, since the NRA would not work with her. Her bill will be supplanted by this one.

I know we’ll have folks who will say the NRA has sold us out, but I think we’ve won some real concessions over this bill. The ability to remove prohibited status is a big step in the right direction, and something we’ve not had for years.

NICS will have more records, this is true, but a lack of NICS record doesn’t affect actual prohibited status. The Virginia Tech murderer’s absence from NICS did not make him lawfully able to buy a gun. By ATF’s guidelines, he was a prohibited person. This bill seems to allow people to actually challenge and remove prohibited status for minor infarctions.

Like I said, I will reserve judgment until I see some actual language, but I’m prepared to say OK to this deal. If that makes me a sellout, so be it. I see this deal as half a step backwards and a whole step forward, which to me is better than just getting crapped on.

UPDATE:

Captain Ed likes the deal
Bitter does too.
Joe Huffman doesn’t like the sound of it.

Mayor Daley is out, once again, to bring Chicago style Gun Laws to a state near you, presumably because they haven’t done anything to reduce violence in Chicago.

“When you look at other countries, only 20 here 15 killed here,” Mayor Richard M. Daley observed. “30,000 people here. Unbelievable.”

What he’s not telling you is that the vast majority of those 30,000 people were suicides.

The mayor said he’ll soon appoint a commission to target gun laws and gun makers.

Gun makers that reside in the lower portion of his state, and live in towns that depend on that industry.   I notice the Mayor nor this article make any mention of the death threats against gun shop owner John Riggio by a catholic priest speaking at Jackson’s rally.

Yesterday’s post about about how I got into this issue was getting a bit long, but I did want to touch on the importance of a healthy shooting culture. It’s occurred to me that if I had been raised in New Jersey, while I rather doubt I would have had the personality and upbringing to be in favor of gun control, it’s doubtful I would be involved in shooting or in the gun rights issue in the same way I am now.

The first step in any gun control campaign has to first involve destroying the hunting and shooting culture that exists in that state. New Jersey started on that path in 1968, when it became one of the only states in the nation to require gun owners to be licensed. By the 90s, New Jersey’s shooting community was on life support, and ripe for attack. Under Florio you got the scary semi-auto ban. Under Whitman, who first called for it, and finally McGreevy, New Jersey banned the sale of all guns that aren’t “smart” gun once the AG determines that a gun is “smart” enough. Police, of course, are exempt. Now, under Corzine, they want to ban .50 calibers with a law so broad it’ll cover a lot of muzzle loaders. How many shooting ranges are left in NJ now vs. 1968? How many gun shops?

Today it’s shooting culture is near death. New Jersey can’t really be brought back. Sure, there are still plenty of people there who like to shoot, but the state has done everything it can to drive those people out, and make them give up their sport. New Jersey even regulates air guns as if they were firearms.  It is very difficult to bring new people into shooting in New Jersey, and the climate over there makes ownership rather risky.  The inevitable result is slow decline.

I got into the issue because I had exposure to lawful firearms use as a child. I had exposure to gun shows. I could shoot cans off my Uncle’s deck without fear of being arrested by the police. Hell, we used to shoot cans in front of the state trooper who liked to sit in the church parking lot across the street looking for speeders. I was brought back into the shooting community by a friend who grew up shooting. Culture is important.

We must politically oppose measures which are designed merely to destroy the shooting community. Attacking gun shops, gun ranges, gun shows, and politically weak elements of the shooting community (think .50 cal shooters) are not designed to prevent crime. Anyone who cares to fact check for 10 minutes on google can figure that out. They are designed to chip away at the shooting culture, and eliminate it. Once they do that, gun control becomes easy. Just look at New Jersey.

Hopefully Governor Heineman can be convinced to veto the expansion of  “gun free” zones in Nebraska to include universities and hospitals.  Off limits places in Nebraska are already a mile long, and adding to them seems to be rather pointless.

“I’m not intending to anger the NRA,” the Wilber senator said, “but why on earth would you need a concealed weapon in a hospital?”

Is there a chance Grandma will pull her IV out and try to stab someone with it?

Might there be a doctor lurking about with a sharp scalpel?

Karpisek made his comments as senators voted to add hospitals and college campuses to the list of places at which concealed weapons are banned by law.

Because there’s absolutely no good reason to bar people from carrying in hospitals.  People have to get to and from hospitals too, and how many city hospitals are in atrocious neighborhoods?  Ever visited Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia?  Go visit, and tell me if you wouldn’t feel safer with a gun or an armed escort.  These arguments could be used for any number of places, and they are not serious arguments.  How well did Virginia Tech’s gun ban work for them?   These are feel good measures.  It’s not serious policy.

A little bit about the NRA’s role here.  The NRA has seemingly not produced any alert on the issue.  It looks to me like someone is dropping the ball here.   The NRA state affiliate in Nebraska doesn’t even seem to have a web site, so it’s possible Nebraska isn’t a strong state for them.  The state organizations are important, because the national NRA are often a lumbering bureaucracy, and are slower to act.

It looks like they tried to have the hospital language pulled from the bill, but it doesn’t look like they were successful.   If you read the final version of the bill, the language is still in there.  Some are condeming this deal attempt at selling out.   I certainly understand where this view comes from, because it sucks to lose ground.

Sometimes in the political process you’re just going to lose, and there’s not much you can do.  In that case you have a choice, you can either shout into the wind and have a really awful bill pass, or you can try to cut a deal and have a less awful bill pass.  Sometimes the choice isn’t between winning and losing, but between losing and losing badly.  This, pretty clearly, would be one of those cases.   The NRA tried to broker a deal to get the hospital language removed, and the legislature snubbed them and passed the bill as is.  Even with a deal attempt, we still lost badly.  Maybe it would be better not to do these kinds of things.  It would certainly feel better.   But I’m not sure, from a practical point of view, it makes sense to take two steps backwards when it could be reduced to only one.

I won’t excuse the NRA for failing to rally the grass roots in Nebraska, without so much as even an e-mail alert.  If the Governor does veto this measure, it will be because of the hard work of gun owners and bloggers in Nebraska and out who self-organized to apply pressure to Heineman’s office.  I certainly hope they are successful.

Via David Codrea

You know it’s a slow day when I’m linking to anti-gun blogs, which, I have to say, are few and far between, and as best I can tell, mostly unread.  Let’s start fisking:

The Virginia Tech shooting – 33 dead, 25 wounded – was another spark for the gun control debate in the United States. The National Rifle Association continues its campaign on the erroneous belief that the 2nd Amendment confers individual gun rights, and gun control advocates fight a rearguard action against some of the more heinous assault weapons (the linked gun can empty its 30-round magazine in 3 seconds).

Well, it does protect an individual right.  Even the liberal constitutional scholars think so.  The assault weapon you linked to has been illegal to import into the United States since 1968, as has any other foreign made rifle capable of fully automatic fire.  Domestically made full-autos have been illegal to manufacture for civilian use since 1986.  Possession of fully automatic firearms has been tightly regulated since 1934.  You really don’t have any idea what an “assault weapon” is do you?

1. If gun control doesn’t help reduce violence, then why was the Irish Republican Army asked to destroy its weapon caches as part of the peace process in Northern Ireland?
2. If gun control doesn’t help reduce violence, then why has the United States insisted that the Iraqi Prime Minister disarm the militias?

The IRA is a terrorist organization.   Terrorist organizations agreeing to lay down arms, we all agree, is a good thing.  But the IRA agreed to renounce violence and disarm itself.  If the IRA had wished to keep murdering people and being terrorists, can you explain how they would have been stopped?  The UK has had very strict gun control laws since the 1950s.  How did the IRA get their guns in the first place?

Second, in regards to Iraq, we allow families to keep fully automatic weapons in their homes for self-protection.   Yes, we’re trying to disband the militias who are fighting the elected government of Iraq, but gun control isn’t the primary method we’re using.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that guns are not a social good, lobbying groups like the NRA continue to advocate for “right to carry” or “concealed carry” legislation. While such legislation is unrelated to higher gun ownership rates, it also has no deterrent effect on crime.

What overwhelming evidence?  Studies show that guns are used in self-defense from anywhere from 800,000 to 2 million times a year?  And it’s also shown that concealed carry liberalizaion has had no effect in terms of increasing crime either.   So, living in a free society as we do, the burden is on you to show why the law restricting people’s right to defend themselves is necessary.

The facts show that gun ownership is correlated with gun crime, homicide, suicide, and violent deaths of children.

No, it doesn’t.  Stating it doesn’t make it so.

OK, so it’s a really slow day.  Hopefully I can find some better stuff to blog about.