The Media – Page 32 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Even More on NRA Terrorist Meme

Noted in Politics Daily, that all these scary guns nuts are coming down for a big rally on April 19th, which happens to be entirely associated with terrorism, and nothing else, of course. It’s just filled with scary Oath Keepers, a group who promises to throw down their government-issued arms and not follow unconstitutional orders. The horror! Because we all know that leads to bombing federal buildings:

Put this all together — saber rattlng, militia fomenting, demonizing government — and you have a brew of far-right paranoia mixed with guns. When have we seen this before? Oh yeah, Timothy McVeigh and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And here’s the kicker: this pro-gun march will happen on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma tragedy. This is not insensitivity; it’s a message.

I’m pretty sure that was paranoia mixed with diesel fuel and fertilizer, but that’s splitting hairs to the nuts on the other side of this issue. I don’t want to detract from theirÂ condescension:

That’s right. When people are blasting the federal government as tyrannical, suggesting that government-imposed concentration camps are around the corner, encouraging people to threaten the government with force, orÂ comparing the president to the Nazis and accusing him of being a secret Kenyan-born Muslim imposing socialism on the United States, they are setting the stage for violence. The Tea Partiers are extreme in their hatred of the Obama administration, but these gun-rights radicals are downright dangerous. They talk of insurrection — and they do have guns.

Except many of us here on this loony right fringe have been debunking and denouncing much of this fear mongering and rumor mongering. And I seem to specifically recall stipulating that we don’t start shooting people because we lose an election. I also haven’t made any secret my low opinion of Larry Pratt, who this article paints as a leader in this issue, and someone associated with neo-Nazis.

The problem I have with so many of these so-called pundits and journalists is they assume the people who believe these things are being manipulated and egged on by leadership on the right, who are clearly the masterminds behind the quackery. I suspect behind that belief is a prejudice that the people who believe these things are probably too stupid to think for themselves. These ideas clearly could not have sprung from an organic social movement of thinking people. The great irony is this kind ofÂ condescensionÂ is what’s partly responsible for a lot of this movement to begin with. If you believe these people are wrong, say why they are wrong. But give them the dignity of being able to come up with their own ideas. I agree that many of them are bad ideas, but there’s a way in our society we fight bad ideas, and it’s not what we see from the VPC or Politics Daily.

Kinder, Gentler Militia

Looks like NPR is discovering the militia movement isn’t so nuts after all. Truth is a good part of the movement has always been kinder and gentler, even in the 1990s. It’s just that the media took all the kooky right groups and melted them all into a single, scary conglomeration that never really existed. There was some good, academic treatment of the movement in the 1990s, that got a lot of the distinctions between the various elements of the movement, but to the media it was always the same kind of right-wingÂ quackery.

VPC Jumping to Conclusions?

Josh Sugarmann, with the taste and class we’ve come to know him for, is smearing permit holders with the loon who threatened Eric Cantor. Except they are relying on a statement from the family, and I think it’s possible the Philly Inquirer jumped to a conclusion that was incorrect:

Peter Leboon was concerned because his brother, who he said began showing signs of mental instability three years ago, had a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

“The last time I tried to get him help, we searched the whole house, six or seven of us, we couldn’t find the gun,” Peter Leboon said. “I found the permit, though, and destroyed it. Whatever happened to that gun, who knows?”

Given that Philadelphia will revoke an LTC if you spit on the sidewalk, I find this difficult to believe. The report says the guy had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. Even in fair jurisdictions, the Sheriffs are liable to revoke in that instance. I’m going to suggest what the family found was the copy of the Application/Record of Sale, which looks very official, and kind of like a permit, and the Inquirer took this to mean he had an LTC. I might be wrong, Maybe he did have an LTC, but this is the problem with Josh’s “Google Research.” He’s relying on reporting by a media who know nothing about this issue, and who very well might have gotten this completely wrong based on a misunderstanding. I sure wish I could get paid what Josh does to compile research by searching on theÂ Internet.

Dozens, Thousands, What’s the Difference?

CNN apparently reported that “dozens” or maybe “hundreds” of people attending the Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nevada, which featured Sarah Palin as the speaker. You can find pictures from the American Border Patrol here, which show just how small the crowd really is. As Bruce notes, “[I]t’s not a lie to describe 10,000+ people as ‘dozens’. Just as its not a lie to say Nome, Alaska is ‘within walking distance’ to Miami – it’s just a shitload of walking.” These people are going to be in for a rude awakening come November.

Time Highlights the Brady Act, and Gets History Wrong

In the wake of ObamaCare passing Congress, Time is highlighting the top ten knockdown congressional battles. One of them they highlighted is the Brady Act, but in typical old media fashion, they get the details wrong:

Once the Brady Bill was signed into law in 1993 â€” instituting a five-working-day waiting period and background check for any gun purchase â€” the NRA funded lawsuits that challenged its constitutionality. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forced federal background checks were unconstitutional; these days, background checks are carried out by state and local officials.

What they are referring to is Printz vs. United States, and in Printz, The Court did rule that forced federal background checks were unconstitutional, but the detail Time gets wrong is that it was state and local government who were being forced by the feds. They assume it to be individual gun shops, and get the remedy completely wrong.

The Printz case said that what was unconstitutional was the federal government forcing the state and local authorities to do the federal background check. The Printz Court ruled that, as separateÂ sovereigns, states were not political subdivisions of the United States, and could not be forced to administer federal programs.

The Printz issue did not rule that the background checks were unconstitutional in and of themselves, just that the local policeÂ couldn’tÂ be forced by federal law to carry them out. This only applied to the period of the Brady Act before the National Instant Check System (NICS) went into effect. During that period, and after the Printz ruling, whether or not there was a background check was completely voluntary on the part of the local police, and many did not perform them. Sales were permitted to proceed, even if the police did nothing, provided the Brady waiting period was complied with.

This issue all went away once the National Instant Check System (NICS) was in place. Once NICS went active, background checks then had to proceed through the federal system, which is administered by the FBI. Under the Brady Act regulations, states can voluntarily act as Points-of-Contacts for NICS, and route background checks through their own systems, but a majority of states have no system, forcing firearms dealers in those states to use the federal system.

It would only have taken a few minutes of googling to get the correct history, but hey, this is probably why Time is in the toilet right now with a dwindling subscriber base.

UPDATE: IIRC, Printz was consolidated on appeal with a similar case, also in the 9th Circuit, called Mack v. United States. Jay Printz is a Sheriff in Montana (an NRA Board member now, BTW), and Mack was a Sheriff in Arizona. The Attorney of Record for Sheriff Mack was none other than Dave Hardy.

Thinking Seriously About the Issue

TheÂ ChattanoogaÂ Times Free Press can’t understand the legal difference between a State Capitol and other public places [Link removed. The Chattanooga Times Free Press is owned by the unethical WEHCO Media, that is suing bloggers. They will get no link love from here].

[Quote removed about how this unethical newspaper company thinks it’s understandable for legislators to disallow guns in the Capitol, considering that gun violence can strike anywhere, thus making the case for restricting guns, well, anywhere.]

First off, someone deranged isn’t going to be stopped by a law or policy. I don’t know much about how Tennessee’s State Capitol works, but ours is similarly off limits because it’s also a courthouse, containing the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. But a courthouse or state capitol is a vastly different type of public place than restaurants, rest stops, parks, or other places where we’ve been demanding our right to carry be respected.

It’s not just different because politicians are there, but is really a distinct kind of public place. The Supreme Court ruling in Heller suggests that state capitols and courthouses are the kinds of government buildings where it’s constitutional to restrict possession of firearms, at least temporarily. Whether you think that was right or wrong isn’t really what I mean to discuss here. The ruling says what it does, and it’s now law, so let’s speak for a minute about which “sensitive places” and “government buildings” might be covered, and why.

A courthouse or state capitol would, under Heller, likely be the kind of government building where firearms could be temporarily restricted. But given that the Second Amendment protects one’s right to self-defense, under what circumstances can this be the case? I think three aspects can make the case, substitution, screening, and storage. Let’s call them the three S’s. Let me explain what they mean.

Substitution. Is there an ample law enforcement presence in the building? In most state capitols and courthouses, the answer to this is clearly yes. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol is staffed by the Capitol Police, and courthouses in PA are staffed by the county Sheriff’s office. In both their presence is ubiquitous. There’s very few circumstances where they aren’t going to more ably to deal with a situation than an individual would be. If a gunfight breaks out in the capitol rotunda, I’m far more likely to leave it to the guys with the submachine guns than try my hand at dealing with the matter. There’s a reasonable substitution for your own side arm with the ubiquitous law enforcement presence.
Is the building screened? In other words, does everyone go through a security checkpoint? This isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty good protection against someone disregarding the rules with intent to shoot the place up. In most courthouses I’ve been in, and in state capitols, there’s a security checkpoint with metal detectors and x-rays.
Storage is the third aspect. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol Police provide for checking your firearm as is required by state law. This means your Second Amendment rights aren’t infringed upon on your way to and from the building.

But how many public places even come close to passing the “Three S” test? Very few. If you believe in the right to self-defense, and believe in the Second Amendment, there might be reasons, as was mentioned in Heller, that you can’t carry a gun just anywhere, but there needs to be a higher level of concern than just “some random nut” as theÂ ChattanoogaÂ Times implies. The random nut is always going to have a gun. If the government is going to disarm citizens, it should be for a damned good reason, and in an environment where the government can provide a reasonable substitute for personal protection. The old adage “I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy” applies. It’s not surprising that media outlets don’t want to go into this issue in that level of detail, but if it’s really a right, it needs to be treated like one. You can’t just declare, “It’s a right, but what about whack jobs?” Â We don’t think of other rights that way, do we? “There’s a right to free press, but what about libel?”

What Remarkable Tolerance

Dan Thomasson of The Reporter says of gun ownership:

Then there are those who are nuts about guns, who collect them and seem almost to consider them affectionate, even sexual objects.

Yes, the sexual objects again. Next thing you know, he’ll say we’re all paranoids:

Present in all three classifications is an element of paranoia, a strong belief that without these weapons one is not likely to survive the truly crazy (like maybe one’s testy neighbor or a disaffected co-worker or student seeking revenge from bullies) or the ubiquitous criminals that use guns as necessary tools in their business.

Maybe we just want to pursue the hobbies that make us happy, and just be left alone rather than being blamed for all the ills of society, or looked down upon by our supposed betters who say we have mental or sexual deficiencies. A lot of gun owners and gun hobbyists are angry people. It’s crap like this that makes them angry people. Everyone is someone else’s weirdo. Time to accept that and move on. Kind of makes you wonder about Mr. Thomasson’s hobbies, doesn’t it?

IGOLD 2010 A Great Success

With six to seven thousand people descending on the Illinois Capitol in Springfield, here’s a round up of all the main stream media coverage of the event:

On Our Side, But Wrong

This article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is on our side, and I’m happy about that, but:

If that indication from oral arguments inÂ McDonald v. Chicago holds true, the court will quash the notion that the Second Amendment somehow is a collective, “militia”-based right. If the rest of the Bill of Rights protects individual rights — and it does — so must the Second Amendment.

We won that argument already, two years ago. This one is just about incorporation.

One-Gun-a-Month Flip Flops

The NJ Star-Ledger is pleading with Virginia not to re-open the “Iron Pipeline” by repealing its gun rationing law, but this previous editorial from the same paper notes that it never really closed, and suggests that most of New Jersey’s guns come from Pennsylvania and Virginia even though Virginia has a one-gun-a-month law. I don’t think the frequency that Virginia is cited as a source state for guns has diminished any as a result of their law.

This study of trafficking from the FBI in 1998 highlights the problem:

The straw purchase serves as another method often employed by an illegal firearms trafficker who cannot legally purchase firearms. Most traffickers use a series of straw purchasers directed to various firearms licensees. A common scenario entails the firearm trafficker accompanying the straw purchaser into the firearms store to pay for the purchase while the straw purchaser completes the paperwork. Store video surveillance can verify this type of purchase.

The problem is that the straw purchase rings, to the extent that they exist, aren’t stupid, and know to how to route around current trafficking detection practices. It’s relatively easy to route around others. Where there’s a high demand for a product, there’s going to be supply to meet that demand. You might be able to drive price higher with interdiction, but only to a point.