Snowflakes in Hell

Michael Bane also has some coverage over at Downrange TV.  You can hear oral arguments here.  It’s a little better than the C-SPAN feed that NRA links to.  Also see here for commentary by John Lott, Jim Shepherd, Michael Bane, and Dave Kopel.  There’s also coverage of the press conferences behind that link too.

I received the following from the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs:

The House debated the “Reporting Lost & Stolen” amendment till 11:00 last night. It was mostly a speech by Rep. Parker (Phila.) about why this was needed and how it was not an infringement on our rights to buy a firearm. A few other representatives spoke against it, then Rep. Cutler asked to have the amendment withdrawn saying it was unconstitutional based on court rulings that said a convicted felon could not be charged for not reporting, because he would be incriminating himself.

Before Rep. Cutler finished, and any votes could be taken, discussion was cut off because of their rule to end session by 11:00pm.

They were to pick up where they left off at 11:00am this morning. (7 more amendments were filed on the bill last night.) However, when they got to the floor at 11:00, the Democrats were short by about 8 legislators, as they were all in Philly for the Obama rally this morning. When the Republicans made a motion to bring a bill up for vote, the Democrats had to quickly recess for some emergency. They kept everyone waiting around all day to give the 8 missing members a chance to return. When that didn’t happen, they eventually recessed for the day.

They do not return for session until March 31st.

Rumor was that they didn’t have the votes to pass their amendments, so they were going to try to table any further votes on amendments so we couldn’t get any of our amendments voted on either. We’ll have to wait till they return to see what develops.

Thanks to the NRA and John Hohenwarter for working with us on these issues!  And thanks to everyone who took the time to contact their legislators on these issues.

It’s good news they don’t think they have enough to get the amendment passed, but it sucks we have to wait until March 31st.

From Professor Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy.  Go check it out.  Also be sure to check out Bob Liebowitz’s commentary here.

Bob Ricker of AHSA is back haunting Bitter’s blog in the comments here.

Word on the street is that Paul Helmke and Peter Hamm of The Brady Campaign were paling around with Ray Schoenke from American Hunters and Shooters Assocation outside of Heller oral arguments.  Nope, they aren’t even trying anymore to hide it.

Maybe Schoenke was just making sure that 5 grand he gave them when they were HCI had been well spent.

Anyone who missed the oral arguments can access the transcript and the audio over at NRA’s Heller page.

I’m paraphrasing here, but as best as I can from memory [Thanks to Uncle for finding the exact quote], when Justice Scalia Roberts was asking Dellinger about trigger locks, and Dellinger claimed they could be removed quickly, since it was an easy three digit combination.  Scalia Roberts quipped back:

“So then you turn on the lamp, you pick up your reading glasses…”

Everyone in the room chuckled.  I’m thinking Justice Scalia Roberts is not a fan of trigger locks.

Anyone notice in the oral arguments that Roberts took a swipe at having standards of review like “strict scrutiny” “lesser scrutiny” etc?  He indicated that since we’re starting with a fresh slate, why don’t we just define the scope of the right, and not worry about what level of scrutiny to apply.  I’m thinking he’s setting up to uphold the lower court, punt on the standard of scrutiny, and just have a ruling that says the DC statutes in question violate the second amendment.

That would be the ideal outcome, in my opinion.  Leave it to the lower courts to decide how to implement the ruling in regards to restructuring The District’s gun laws.

I actually didn’t think they were all that damaging to our case.  Countertop had this to say:

For all the NRA hating GOAers out there - god bless the NRA’s ability to influence the Bush Administration and Paul Clement, cause his oral arguments today were much better than I was worrying about and he seemed far more willing to limit the ability of governments to restrict guns like machine guns than Allan Gura would.

Clement spent most of the time defending the individual rights position, and considerably less time defending an intermediate standard of scrutiny.  He was actually quite good, I thought, at arguing for the individual rights interpretation, and stated that he actually believed there was no way to distinguish machine guns from arms protected by the second amendment.

Now for those of you who are ready to ding Gura for accepting that the government could limit machine guns, that was a tactical move to make The Court more comfortable with issuing an individual rights ruling.  I am not happy with the amount of time spend arguing in this case about machine guns, because they aren’t at issue here, but it’s where a lot of the justices wanted to go.  You can’t fault Gura for that.

Interpreting oral arguments is always a lot like reading tea leaves, and I’m not even an expert for doing this kind of tea leaf readings.  I’d say it’s going to be close.  I think we’ll win on the individual rights argument, but I wouldn’t care to venture the standard that will be applied.  The most hostile to our position would appear to be Bryer, Souter, and Stevens.  Not sure about Ginsburg.  Kennedy I think is mostly on board with our arguments, except I have no idea what standard he would choose to apply.

As for Gura’s performance, I thought he did OK given that the justices focused almost exclusively on matters not directly related to the questions being bought before the court, like machine gun bans, and bans on firearms on college campuses.   It was some tough questioning, but I admit to not paying much attention to oral arguments normally, so it might not have been inordinarily difficult.

Your guess on how this turns out is as good as mine.

There was more talk about machine guns in oral arguments than I had hoped for in a case that had nothing to do with it.   We are a long way from machine gun rights if oral arguments are any indication.  We may never get there.

Souter, Stevens and Ginsburg seem to be pretty focused on the English Bill of Rights in terms of how to interpret its limitations.  Why?  I thought we had this little thing known as the American Revolution?  To me the English Bill of Rights is only tangentuilly important in terms of the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Bitter’s report from the people coming out seem to indicate that some folks are optimistic about the outcome, while others are more guarded.  I will update with more information as I can get it.

According to Bitter there was a verbal scuffle between the two sides of the debate, that ended up involving Peter Hamm.  Her take on this is negative since it will likely get all the media attention, diverting attention away from the actual debate.

In the Washington Post.  This is a concerted effort on the part of the gun control groups to neutralize NRA’s electoral power in 2008.   Of course, the Republicans already gave them a head start by nominating John McCain.

Overall, I think the WaPo did a reasonable job of keeping the article balanced and objective.  Andrew bringing up Schoenke’s $5000 donation to Handgun Control Inc is a great thing to get in there.  The real killer is Paul Helmke saying nice things about AHSA:

“I see our issues as complementary to theirs,” Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, says about Schoenke’s association. “They’re a positive group.”

That’s all anyone needs to know right there.  AHSA is an organization for gun owners who hate the second amendment.

Well, it could be the title of a really atrocious movie, or Plan ‘B’ could be a new contraceptive pill, or it could be DC’s plans if they lose.

Go here.

A pro-Heller editorial by Ellis Washington of the Christian Science Monitor.

From Professor Randy Barnett:

To shrink from enforcing a clear mandate of the Constitution — as, sadly, the Supreme Court has often done in the past — would create a new precedent that would be far more dangerous to liberty than any weapon in the hands of a citizen.

This case is about a lot more than guns.  If the federal courts are unwilling to give an honest reading of a very clear portion of the Bill of Rights that the majority of Americans and their elected representatives say means exactly what it says, then they can no longer be depended up for ensuring the United States remains a Constitutional Republic.  The meaning of the document will have been reduced to a fad, and we’ll all be the losers.

According to Bitter the anti-gun folks outside are passing law professors around to the media [Apparently I misinterpreted what Bitter told me.  She said our activists were passing law professors around, changing the entire premise of the post].  NRA is apparently nowhere to be found.

UPDATE: Apparently Ginny Simone of NRANews has arrived on the scene.  But she’s media, really.  They need people there talking to the media and getting our point of view across.

UPDATE: Bitter says the media frenzy and crowd is fairly large, so it’s possible there’s activity going on that she’s not seeing.

UPDATE: NRA is reporting they have people both inside and outside.  Quite possible Bitter just hasn’t run into them yet.

UPDATE: Wayne LaPierre, Chris Cox, and Steve Halbrook are among the people inside.   Bitter is outside with Bob Cottrol and Clayton Cramer.

UPDATE: For those of you who don’t know Bob Cottrol, he’s a law professor at GW.  So we at least have one law professor of our own on the scene!

UPDATE: Bitter is pitching Clayton and Bob to the media.  This is what Bitter does for a living, and she’s good at it.  She says she’s gotten a few bites, so hopefully we’ll get some eyeballs on some folks who can intelligently advocate for our side.

SCOTUSBlog will live blog the results.  Talked to Bitter who is outside.  She said pro-gun representation is pretty low outside, but that’s not too surprising considering that no one asked anyone to show up.  The line, I’m told, consisted mostly of law students.  A few people we know would appear to have gotten in, including Countertop, from what I’m hearing.  So that is good news.

Paul Helmke and Peter Hamm were there from what Bitter said.  They went in.  I told Bitter if she sees them coming out to get a picture of herself with them.  I want the look on their faces as they come out to be forever preserved.  According to Bitter, their talking points this morning have been very down; they are already acting as if they’ve lost this one.