Snowflakes in Hell

March 2nd, 2010. I will be there, outside the Supreme Court building. I won’t miss this one like I did Heller.

… is that if you can honestly say given a situation like this, you’d rather be unarmed than armed, you’re either insane, or seriously and delusionally committed to the proposition that guns are just bad all around. Yes, people who carry guns can still end up being victims. Guns are not a magic talisman that wards off all evil. If that were the case, no police officers would ever be shot and killed with guns. But police officers still carry them, because they’d be foolish not to. You have to wonder if these people honestly believe police officers would be better off without firearms for self-protection.

The Obama Administration is taking the position that the now expired “assault weapons” ban can no longer be considered for the purposes of sentencing enhancement.

Rather busy today just coming back from vacation, and we got in really late last night from Virginia, and then my dads, so no time to find things to blog about today. In the mean time, go read what Tam has to say over at The Arms Room, on vintage assault rifles.

It looks like the Joyce Foundation is going to try, and they have some recommendations. The good news is we have the opposition in hearts and minds territory, the bad news is this is ground they’ve traditionally been very good at fighting on. They are laying the groundwork for the next big legislative sweep against us, and if this succeeds it’s going to be ugly. It’s always a situation of winning, until you aren’t.

Heading back up to Pennsylvania on I81 we passed the presidential birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. I wouldn’t stop there except to piss on it, but it got me thinking about predidential birthplaces in general. We’re pretty much out of the era where people were typically born at home, which makes me ponder whether or not we’ll start renaming hospitals after the Presidents who were born there. We could, for example, have the George W. Bush Medical Center and Birthplace, or the Barack “We Swear He Was Born Here” Obama Memorial Hospital in Honolulu. The king of all birthplaces is the Bill Clinton birthplace in Hope, Arkansas, but that’s only because there’s a great BBQ shack right off the exit — only fitting for the nations first fast food president. If there was a strip joint next door it would be the most fitting monument to Bill Clinton there could be.

In Dave Kopel’s Aiming for Liberty: The Past, Present, And Future of Freedom and Self-Defense, Chapter Five, “Religious Perspectives on Freedom from the Ancient World,” is closely related to Chapter Six, entitled “Religious Perspectives on Freedom From the West.” Some excerpts from Chapter Five:

Although there is a widespread myth that Jews in the Holocaust were passive, they were actually more active than any other conquered people. In 1942-43, Jews constituted half of  all the partisans in Poland. Overall, about thirty thousand Jewish partisans fought in Eastern Europe. There were armed revolts in over forty different ghettos, mostly in Eastern Poland. [...]

One of the great centers of resistance was Vilna, Lithuania, which before the Nazi conquest had been an outstanding center of Jewish learning, compared by some to Jerusalem.

Plans for resistance began in January 1942. The Jews’ only weapons were smuggled in from nearby German arms factories where the Jews performed slave labor. Hopeful of liberation by the Russian army, many of the Vilna Jews did not support the partisans. Partisan resistance postponed by three weeks the German plans to transport all the inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto to death camps[...]

Most of us have heard about the uprising in the Warsaw Ghettos, but it’s not widely known just how broad the Jewish resistance to the Nazi’s “Final Solution” really was. This story is at least now being told in a small part by Hollywood, but it’s not a part of history most people know about, and that’s a shame.

This is one “oops” I can relate to, after my TSA experience in Phoenix. Apparently there’s about 902 firearms found at security checkpoints each year. Although I was a lot more careful with the guns themselves, I can easily see how someone in a rush can forget a pistol in a tote bag until it runs through the system. It’s one big problem with off-body carry, and one reason I don’t often practice it.

From the Washington Post today:

During the Clinton administration, the FBI had access to records of gun background checks for up to 180 days. But in 2003, Congress began requiring that the records be destroyed within 24 hours. This requirement, one of the many restrictions on gun data sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), meant that Hasan’s investigators were blocked from searching records to determine whether he or other terrorist suspects had purchased guns. When Hasan walked out of Guns Galore in Killeen, Tex., the FBI had only 24 hours to recognize and flag the record — and then it was gone, forever.

The idea that Tiahrt Amendment restricts this is utter nonsense. You can find the language of the actual Tiahrt Amendment on the Congressman’s web site here. MAIG might be slick compared to other gun control groups, but they would appear to carry over the tactic of using outright deception to promote their agenda. The language that calls for NICS records to be destroyed is in the United States Code, and has been ever since the system was established in 1994. From the 1994 Brady Act, which is the signature piece of legislation passed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (then Handgun Control Inc.), and which created the National Instant Check System:

(2) If receipt of a firearm would not violate section 922 (g) or (n) or State law, the system shall—(A) assign a unique identification number to the transfer; (B) provide the licensee with the number; and (C) destroy all records of the system with respect to the call (other than the identifying number and the date the number was assigned) and all records of the system relating to the person or the transfer.

Sorry, Bloomberg, it’s in the signature piece of gun control legislation, you know, the one that was rammed down our throats in 1993 and partly resulted in the Democrats losing Congress in 1994? Suddenly now it’s inadequate and is responsible for arming terrorists? Perhaps they need to complain to the Brady Campaign for pushing their signature legislation.

The problem for Bloomberg is that the truth is inconvenient. If a lie helps discredit the Tiahrt Amendment, which thwarted the City of New York from continuing its lawsuits against firearms manufacturers to hold them responsible for criminals using guns, so much the better. I’m only sorry a paper like the Washington Post is only so willing to play along. It’s not hard to fact check these claims, but it appears helping with the agenda is more important.

UPDATE: I would also point out there was nothing in the Tiahrt Amendment language that prevented law enforcement from tracing the firearms used in the Ft. Hood shooting. That’s how we know he acquired them through legal channels, since he was not convicted of anything prior.

UPDATE: Here’s the original appropriations bill that the Tiahrt language appears in. It does contain this language:

SEC. 617. (a) None of the funds appropriated pursuant to this Act or any other provision of law may be used for—

(1) the implementation of any tax or fee in connection with the implementation of subsection 922(t) of title 18, United States Code; and

(2) any system to implement subsection 922(t) of title 18, United States Code, that does not require and result in the destruction of any identifying information submitted by or on behalf of any person who has been determined not to be prohibited from possessing or receiving a firearm no more than 24 hours after the system advises a Federal firearms licensee that possession or receipt of a firearm by the prospective transferee would not violate subsection (g) or (n) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code, or State law. (b) Subsection (a)(2) shall take effect not later than 180 days after enactment of this Act.

I should note that the current appropriations bill also contains this language (See Sec. 512). This language was necessary because the Clinton Administration had implemented a rule that allowed the records to be kept, despite what the Brady Act called for. Apparently this was upheld by the courts when challenged. So it would seem I was wrong, and Bloomberg isn’t lying about Tiahrt. Bloomberg merely wants the federal government to return to the previous practice of ignoring the Brady Act, and thus federal law.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also notes that concealed carry is utterly dangerous, because VPC’s highly scientific Google research shows that concealed carry license holders across he whole country over a two years murder at a rate considerably less than your average Philadelphian. Maybe that’s because the city just lets murder suspects walk out of jail. Maybe one day Philadelphia newspapers like the Daily News and Inquirer will actually start holding city leaders responsible for the real causes of the city’s crime problem, which have precisely nothing to do with the state’s gun laws.

Apparently outsiders moving into Montana heard “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” as “When in Rome, sneer at them and try to frustrate their backwards ways.” Maybe when I retire, I need to buy a house in this neighborhood, do the ariel surveys for the hunters, and put out word in the community that if they want to come on my land and hunt, and annoy my neighbors, they are welcome. I really hate this kind of attitude among people who are recently relocated to an area, and think everything should be as it was in the place they left. Montana is a lot more than pretty scenery.

From Dave Kopel’s book, Aiming for Liberty: The Past, Present, And Future of Freedom and Self-Defense, Chapter Four, “Some Deceptions and Errors Used to Promote Anti-Gun Laws”:

The story of the nonexistent “cop-killer” bullet begins in 1976 in Massachusetts, when a handgun-confiscation initiative was defeated in a landslide. Then in 1982 in California, a handgun “Freeze” initiative also lost overwhelmingly. The gun-pohibitiation lobbies began to realize that they wold have to work more incrementally, rather than pushing for prohibition outright.

The prohibition lobbies also realized that the police were one of their worst problems. Wile a few police chiefs or sheriffs could always be found to support prohibition, the vast majority of police — both commanders and line officers — were extremely skeptical of gun control. Something had to be done to turn the police (or at least their Washington lobbyists) against the National Rifle Association.

The something, ironically, was an obscure type of ammunition invented by police officers two decades before. These bullets were known as KTW bullets, after the initials of the three persons who invented them: Dr. Paul Kopsch, and police officers Daniel Turcus and Don Ward.

The chapter goes on to describe what these so-called cop-killer bullets were actually created for, which was shooting through barriers. It also mentions their appearance in the Lethal Weapon series of movies, which is probably responsible for driving public misconceptions about guns during the late 80s and early 90s than a lot of others.

The problem with this gambit is that it worked, at least for a while. The anti-gun groups’ ability to drive misconceptions and public opinion on the gun issue used to be a powerful weapon against us, but it’s diminished quite a bit in the past decade. As much as I’d like to give new media the credit, I think it comes down to a lot of factors, one of which is changes in the shooting culture from the sporting orientation of older generations, to a more self-defense oriented mindset that started with the baby boomers in the 80s and 90s. There was a lot of changes in policing in the 80s and 90s as well, which may have helped the gun prohibition movement to drive divisions there as well.

Apparently food donations go to waste in New York City because of the trans-fat ban. It continues to amaze me that 150 or so mayors in Pennsylvania think it’s just peachy to associate with this power hungry monster.

Obama’s record of appointing cabinet members with private sector experience is the lowest of any President in recent memory.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s got some factual issues. The original source is J.P. Morgan, so they will need to clarify methodology.

Remember the case of that guy who got caught at LAX because he was picking up a friend to go shooting with a trunk for of so-called “assault weapons?” He plead guilty to Misdemeanor CCW and had his guns returned. Good work on the part of his attorneys. It’s a travesty that he was guilty of anything, but at least this lets him go on with life, and he won’t be a prohibited person. You’ll notice in the memo that the LAPD were trying to consider multiple firearms, including a Broomhandle Mauser, “assault weapons”, when they were no such thing according to the legal definition.

Bitter just got herself a Droid. Playing with it, I think it is in many ways inferior to the iPhone, but there are a few very key things about the Droid that have the potential to make it more useful:

• It’s on Verizon’s network instead of AT&T. It’s amazing how fast browsing was compared to my iPhone.
• It’s an open-source platform without the crazy control freakishness of the Apple platform.

I’m relatively happy to see Adobe is developing a flash plugin for the Droid browser. Although I really hate Flash, there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet that doesn’t work without it. In theory, I’ll be able to use Bitter’s Droid to watch Cam & Company on the road. I figure if I find myself having to keep borrowing Bitter’s Droid because it’s more functional, that’ll be my signal to ditch the iPhone and move to Verizon.

Bitter and I are on our way down to Virginia, but I will leave you with this bit of humor courtesy of Dave Markowitz:

Apologies to Tommy James, but that’s pretty funny holiday humor, no matter who’s hockey stick you worship. Maybe I’ll get to some blog posts as we’re enhancing our carbon footprint all the way down I-81 down to Roanoke.

One of the organizations who signed onto the Brady Brief in McDonald is one I hadn’t heard of before, which is the International Brotherhood of Police Officers. If you click on the link, you will see who they are affiliated with. Surprised?

Saul Cornell’s Joyce funded center is no more. Apparently Professor Joe Olson got a rather hilarious e-mail about the same. We continue to rack up victory while detractors among us continue to claim Heller was really a defeat. Their prattle gets more and more ridiculous by the day.

From a chapter two in Dave Kopel’s book Aiming for Liberty: The Past, Present, And Future of Freedom and Self-Defense, called the same as my title:

Michigan’s law requiring a government permit in order to buy a handgun was enacted after Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black man, shot and killed a person in a mob that was attacking his house because he had just moved into an all-white neighborhood. The Detroit Police stood nearby, refusing to restrain the angry crowd.

Indicted for first degree murder, Sweet was acquitted after a lengthy trial at which Clarence Darrow served as his attorney. Black newspapers such as the Amsterdam News and the Baltimore Herald vigorously defended blacks’ right to use deadly force in self-defense against a mob.

Darrow summed up for the jury: “eleven of them go into a house, gentlemen, with no police protection, in the face of a mob, and the hatred of a community, and take guns and ammunition and fight for their rights, and for your rights and for mine, and for the rights of every being that lives. They went in and faced a mob seeking to tear them to bits. Call them something besides cowards.”

The name Clarence Darrow should ring a bell. Even progressives have historically supported the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense. The opposition it received from the modern left for the latter part of the 20th century is largely an anomaly, quite possibly a result of history largely ignoring the role the right to keep and bear arms had in the Civil Rights movement. Kopel’s chapter continues:

Black and civil rights workers armed for self-defense. Daisy Bates, the leader of the Arkansas NAACP and publisher of the Arkansas State Press during the Little Rock High School desegregation case, recalls that three crosses were burned on her lawn and gunshots fired into her home. Her husband, L.C. Bates, stayed up to guard their house with a .45 semi-automatic pistol. Some of their friends organized a volunteer patrol.

After the Bates’s front lawn was bombed, Mrs. Bates telegrammed Attorney General Herbert Brownell in Washington. He replied there was no federal jurisdiction, and told them to go to the local police. “Of course that wasn’t going to protect us,” Mrs. Bates remembered.

State or federal assistance sometimes did come — not when disorder began, but when blacks reacted by arming themselves. In North Carolina, Governor Terry Sanford (who later served as an anti-gun US Senator) refused to command state police to protect a civil rights march from Klan attacks — until he was warned that if there were no police, the marchers would be armed for self-defense.

There was a time when even the NAACP recognized the importance of the right to bear arms in protecting other civil rights. I will continue to bring other choice quotes from Dave Kopel’s book as I make my way through it.

Utah is warning that it needs more funding for its state background check system or “it could be forced to cut off all background checks next year unless lawmakers prop up its anemic budget.” The problem with this is you have a constitutional right hinging on the smooth operation of the system. I can’t think of any better way to get background checks thrown out than states messing with the system and causing real infringements on the exercise of the right.

Utah is among the states that are Points-of-Contact for the purposes of the Brady Act, meaning their state system serves as a substitute for the NICS check. One way Utah, and other states, could save money during these difficult times is by eliminating their state systems and relying solely on the federal NICS system. Most states rely on the federal system.

We haven’t heard much about the bill banning pigeon shoots, but I suspect now we will begin hearing about it once again. That Philadelphia Club is going to end up being the reason why we end up with a ban. I am not a fan of the sport, but I think a ban is improper, and I don’t trust HSUS not to try to get more. Pigeons are disease carrying vermin, and I don’t have much love for them either. For that matter, so is Wayne Pacelle :)

Lautenberg is claiming that the MAIG ad favoring denying Second Amendment rights without any due process shows “Show Srong Support for Lautenberg Measure to Prevent Gun Sales to Terror Suspects” The danger of this group is growing by the day.

Cemetery reports that Steve Sweeney will start his term come January. Sweeney was one of the Dem Senators that held the line on one-gun-a-month, unlike Fred Madden, who caved.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence brief was put online today, and can be read here. Joe Huffman already notes a serious contradiction within its fundamental argument. There are a few things that stood out to me as well.  Note that my criticisms here are a layman’s criticism, and can’t be taken as a serious view of the brief’s legal merit. But I will have a go. From the Brady Center brief:

Such firearms regulations are paradigmatic examples of the exercise of state “police powers to legislate as to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort, and quiet of all persons.” Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243, 270 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because of the gravity of the states’ responsibility to protect public safety and welfare, they are generally afforded “great latitude” in exercising those police powers. Id. Firearm regulations are clearly an appropriate exercise of those powers, for the “promotion of safety of persons and property is unquestionably at the core of the State’s police power.” Kelley v. Johnson, 425 U.S. 238, 247 (1976).

Gonzalez v. Oregon was a case that involved the applicability of the Controlled Substances Act to Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law. The context of the case had nothing to do with fundamental rights, and everything to do with the powers delegated to the Attorney General under the CSA vs. the state police power. Additionally, Kelley v. Johnson is a case from 1976 that had to do with whether a police officer had a fourteenth amendment right not to cut his hair per the regulations of his department. Forgive me if these cases don’t seem to shed any light over what kind of deference the state police power ought to be given when it comes to Second Amendment rights under the 14th Amendment.

The forceful governmental interests in protecting public safety and welfare that justify the states’ exer- cise of their police powers can also justify limitations on the exercise of constitutional rights. This is particu- larly true when the exercise of the right at issue in- volves conduct that affects the welfare of the commu- nity. See, e.g., Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303-304, 308 (1940) (Although the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause protects both the “freedom to believe and freedom to act,” “[t]he first is absolute but … the second cannot be.”)

Cantwell was the case that incorporated the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion under the Fourteenth Amendment. But what’s really amusing is that the statute at question was whether the State of Connecticut could require a license for those soliciting for religious or charitable purposes. Get that? Whether they could license a fundamental right, and the answer was no. The Brady’s are even cherry picking the quote. The full quote from the ruling is:

The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus the Amendment embraces two concepts,-freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the  second cannot be. Conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society. The freedom to act must have appropriate definition to preserve the enforcement of that protection. In every case the power to regulate must be so exercised as not, in attaining a permissible end, unduly to infringe the protected freedom.

Emphasis mine. Give a bit of a clearer picture as to what the court was saying? So clearly, applicable to the Second Amendment, one doesn’t have the right to rob, brandish, or threaten with a firearm, just because one has a right to keep and bear. But the power to regulate this “freedom to act” must not “unduly infringe on the protected freedom.” The Cantwell Court goes further to say:

Without doubt a state may protect its citizens from fraudulent solicitation by requiring a stranger in the community, before permitting him publicly to solicit funds for any purpose, to establish his identity and his authority to act for the cause which he purports to represent. The state is likewise free to regulate the time  and manner of solicitation generally, in the interest of public safety, peace, comfort or convenience. But to condition the solicitation of aid for the perpetuation of religious views or systems upon a license, the grant of which rests in the exercise of a determination by state authority as to what is a religious cause, is to lay a forbidden burden upon the exercise of liberty protected by the Constitution.

That contrasts sharply with the Brady claim that regulations “such as licensing for gun dealers and owners” are among the types that should be upheld by the Courts in their quest to establish how we are to protect this important fundamental and enumerated right. This is just one brief aspect of the brief, but there is no doubt much more that could be picked apart. I will leave that for others who are more skilled an qualified on legal matters than I am.