Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

From a Reddit/Firearms post.

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

“As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” – Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778

“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785.

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824

“I enclose you a list of the killed, wounded, and captives of the enemy from the commencement of hostilities at Lexington in April, 1775, until November, 1777, since which there has been no event of any consequence … I think that upon the whole it has been about one half the number lost by them, in some instances more, but in others less. This difference is ascribed to our superiority in taking aim when we fire; every soldier in our army having been intimate with his gun from his infancy.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Giovanni Fabbroni, June 8, 1778

“To disarm the people…is the most effectual way to enslave them.” – George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adooption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.” – Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787.

“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves…and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms…  “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” – Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer No. 18, January 25, 1788

“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” – St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803.

History is on our side.  More important, God is on our side, which means the truth is on our side.

Sometimes my choice of focus may seem odd to readers.  But I try to focus on the things worthy of that focus, and on important trends.  There’s almost always a video to link on somebody shooting yet another rifle into a pile of bricks.  That’s not important.

Recall that we covered the Missouri 2A preservation act in gory detail – the political machinations, the law enforcement resistance to it and desire to buddy up with the federal government, the “sky is falling” predictions of the opponents, and most important, the staunch opposition to it by the federal government and the corollary legal actions to try to stop it.

The federal government hates 2A preservation acts, and for very good reason.  I told you this movement would grow, and it is.  I’ll also predict that what we see in Missouri is only the beginning.  This is Version 1.  There will be a Version 2, and 3, until they achieve the separation they want.  The movement is also growing as I said, and this time the play is being set up for us in NH.

News from NH.

Gov. Chris Sununu will soon need to decide whether to sign a bill to prevent New Hampshire law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal agencies over enforcement of federal firearms laws. But exactly how the law might be applied – and how it might affect a firearms regulation package being negotiated in Washington – has been hotly debated in recent weeks.

Gun safety advocates and Democrats say the bill could undermine New Hampshire efforts to provide information to federal agencies determining who can purchase a firearm. And some, including the New Hampshire State Police, raised concerns that it could interfere with domestic violence protective orders.

Firearms advocates have praised the bill as a first step toward pushing back at perceived federal encroachment. But some of them say the bill does not go far enough and includes too many exceptions.

And few know how New Hampshire law enforcement would respond to the proposed law in practice.

House Bill 1178 prevents any state or local government from using resources to take action “to enforce, administer, or cooperate with” federal firearms laws that don’t exist in New Hampshire law. The bill applies to any “law, act, rule, order, or regulation” of the U.S. government and applies to any federal laws or rules relating to firearms, ammunition, magazines, ammunition feeding devices, firearms components, firearms supplies, or knives.

The bill, which cites Part II, Article 5 of the New Hampshire Constitution – the state’s’s right to bear arms – would apply that prohibition to “any person acting under the color of state, county, or municipal law.”

[ … ]

But the bill also contains exceptions. Under the bill, state or local law enforcement agents are allowed to cooperate in federal firearms investigations or arrests as long as there is a “reasonable suspicion” that that person has committed or is about to commit an additional offense not tied to a federal firearms rule or law. That exception includes any state law or a federal law that does not apply to firearms.

The exception means that New Hampshire State Police could assist in an operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives or the FBI against a New Hampshire resident with an illegal modification to their firearm, provided that they were suspected of doing something else illegal in the state, such as trespassing or firearms trafficking.

Firearms rights groups argue that that caveat is broad, and means that State Police and other agencies would be able to participate in many federal investigations or arrests.

NH isn’t willing to take anything but baby steps at the moment, those steps rendering the bill all but useless.  It isn’t necessary for state law enforcement to “cooperate” with the federal government – they can always do the investigative work themselves and effect the arrests they need under state law.

“There are very rarely going to be circumstances where there is a federal law enforcement activity occurring, criminal law enforcement activity occurring, where state and local officials are going to be prevented from cooperating,” said Sean List, an attorney with Lehmann Major List, PLLC and a firearms rights advocate.

“If someone is illegally selling machine guns … we don’t have a state law that says you can’t sell machine guns, but that’s probably a pretty bad dude,” he added. “And we can very easily figure out an articulable suspicion that this individual is also violating state law.”

Instead, supporters of the legislation say the law would more likely limit state officials from helping the enforcement of federal rules from the ATF or presidential executive orders.

One example is a rule passed by the Trump administration’s ATF in 2018 that would ban “bump stocks,” the devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire continuously, like a machine gun. That component was used during a deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people in 2017. The ATF and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office used the federal statute banning machine guns and applied it to bump stocks; that rule has been upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court after legal challenges.

Under HB 1178, state law enforcement agencies would not be able to help the ATF or FBI arrest someone who had modified their firearm with a bump stock, unless other laws were broken.

The shootings in Las Vegas weren’t perpetrated by a gun with a bump stock.  The event was a running gun fight down main street for miles based on 911 calls.  What you’ve been told is a lie.

Furthermore, one side says this, the other side says that.  This will cause confusion in the legal system, confusion to be exploited by law enforcement who wants to cooperate with the federal government, and confusion among the folks of NH.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  They could make it clear.  No cooperation.  Period.

You can read the rest of the article, but while I hope this gets signed by the governor, I consider it to be weak tea.  This should be considered Version 1 and needs to be modified as soon as possible.  Get it signed, make incremental advances, and take the issue on again next session.

I consider this to be bad reporting.  The writer gives us no hint concerning the predilections of the governor.  Is he disposed to sign this bill into law, or not?

Again, keep track of this movement.  This is one of the more important trends in America for gun rights as the Balkanization of America continues apace.

BREAKING: SCOTUS overturns mag bans, assault weapons ban, and carry ban," Go back and redo in light of what we said in Bruen." This means: The 9th Circuit now has to apply text, history, and tradition to those anti-gun laws. pic.twitter.com/LazvjbePQH

— National Association for Gun Rights (@NatlGunRights) June 30, 2022

Via WoG, Bloomberg.

Several challenges to state gun laws were sent back to lower courts in light of the US Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling limiting restrictions on firearm possession outside the home.

Known as a “GVR”—for grant, vacate, and remand—the justices often allow lower courts another shot at cases after a high court decision that could potentially change the analysis or outcome of a case.

The cases sent back Thursday include challenges to bans in New Jersey and California on high-capacity magazines that hold ten rounds or more, Maryland’s assault weapons ban, and Hawaii’s restrictions on open-carry.

In each case, the lower courts had upheld the restrictions.

The justices didn’t explain why they sent the cases back, but presumably it was to apply the new test laid out by Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in New York State & Pistol Association v. Bruen. The ruling was the Supreme Court’s first major Second Amendment case in over a decade and limited the restrictions that states can place on where gun owners can take their firearms.

Courts should look only to the constitutional text and that nation’s history of gun restrictions in determining whether a state has run afoul of the Second Amendment, Thomas wrote, adding that they should not defer to legislative determinations about whether gun restrictions are necessary for public health and safety.

“While that judicial deference to legislative interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropriate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here,” Thomas said.

I talked with Dave Hardy a day or two ago and asked about the status of Young v. Hawaii.  He thought it would be vacated and remanded to be consistent with the findings in Bruen.

These are all the right decisions, and everybody knows it.

I hope Young is handled soon and Hawaii has to begin the process of issuing permits.  Actually, I wish they would legalize open carry, consistent with the what the founders did and how they lived their lives.

But leave it to the controllers in Hawaii.  They apparently want to require that permit holders go through the same qualification that LEOs do.

The upshot is that most LEOs aren’t as good with their weapons as most permit holders I know (including me).

AP.

“If you’re born and raised here, you get into a fistfight, you don’t expect there to be a weapon,” Kau said.

Chris Marvin, a Hawaii resident with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, said road rage dustups, clashes over surf spots and other confrontations are a part of life in Hawaii and are rarely fatal. He’s worried that will change.

“When you introduce guns, it’s so often immediately death,” he said. “Guns and aloha don’t mix.”

Under current law, county police chiefs in Hawaii have the discretion to determine whether to issue a carry permit. Without such a permit, people in Hawaii are only allowed to keep firearms in the home and can transport them — unloaded and locked up — to shooting ranges, hunting areas and other limited locations such as for repairs.

The Supreme Court ruling says local governments can’t require those seeking a license to carry a gun in public to demonstrate a particular need, such as a direct threat to their safety. Hawaii and California are among states with such a requirement.

Hawaii police chiefs have issued only four carry permits in the last 22 years, said attorney Alan Beck, who represents George Young, a Big Island man suing to be able to carry a gun for self-defense.

“It’s a huge deal,” Beck said of the ruling. “Not only does it mean Mr. Young’s case will prevail, it also means the door has been opened to challenging numerous aspects of Hawaii firearms law.”

What a terrible take on life.  Road rage dustups, clashes over surf spots and other confrontations are part of life in Hawaii.  But not to worry.  No guns are involved, so everything is cool.

Except it’s not.  Assault is a sin.  Assault is a felony.  Assault can maim.  Assault can kill.  Assault can cause pain and suffering and massive medical bills.

Maybe the Aloha state needs to see some people guilty of assault get shot in the altercation.  It would go a long ways towards a marked change in how men see other men in Hawaii.

So when some sociologist claims five years from now that Bruen caused more shootings in Hawaii, I’ll respond, so what?  How do you know that’s a bad thing?

Found here.

Held: New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.

Of course I haven’t had time to sus out all of the prose in this decision.  It’s a long one and will take some time.

But Justice Thomas undoes the damage I have always claimed that Heller did to the God-given RKBA.  Heller never explicitly spoke to carry outside the home.

I don’t expect this to end here.  New York will doubtless impede, stall, interfere, hamper, and do everything possible to keep from recognizing these rights.  So will Hawaii, Maryland, and Illinois.

We’ll return to this decision many times in the future, I’m sure.

UPDATE #1: Townhall covers.

Thomas – “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for selfdefense. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

UPDATE #2: PJM covers.

UPDATE #3: Alito – “In light of what we have actually held, it is hard to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served by most of the dissent’s lengthy introductory section. See post, at 1–8 (opinion of BREYER, J.). Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years? Post, at 4–5. Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.”

Editorial comment: Breyer has the thinking of an adolescent.  Alito is trying to use reason to a man who cannot understand it.

Opposed to communism, he is.

And they’ll all ignore his main points – what happened to America?  Because they’re godless communists.

Democrat Representative David Cicilline explains his party’s position on Second Amendment rights: “Spare me the bullshit about constitutional rights.” pic.twitter.com/u6tzPLsyAz

— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) June 3, 2022

He seems like a highly objectionable and horrible person, cantankerous, awful to be around, haughty and loud-mouthed.  And use of obscenity in a place like the Congress proves that he isn’t a thinking man, but rather, a person controlled by his emotions.

But okay, I’ll spare him any discussion of the constitution.  The constitution isn’t the source of my rights.

The source of my rights is the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one to Whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess (that Jesus Christ is Lord).

Townhall.

Congressman Mondaire Jones (D-NY) warned law-abiding gun owners that Democrats will do everything in their power to ensure AR-15s and similar types of firearms are confiscated during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.

The hearing was to consider H.R. 7910, the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which would raise the legal age to purchase “certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles or semiautomatic centerfire shotguns” from 18 to 21 with “exceptions.” The bill will also “modernize the prohibition on untraceable firearms [and] encourage the safe storage of firearms.”

Jones said Congress will pass gun control legislation and nothing, not the fillibuster in the Senate or the Supreme Court, will stop them.

“Enough is enough. Enough of you telling us that school shootings are effective life when every other country like ours has virtually ended. Enough of you blaming mental illness then defunding mental health care in this country. Enough of your thoughts and prayers. Enough. Enough. You will not stop us from advancing the ‘Protecting Our Kids’ Act today,” Jones said. “You will not stop us from passing it in the House next week and you will not stop us. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it. We will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation in our communities.”

Yeah, yeah.  Bluster much, yes?

You go right ahead and queue that one up.  You find yourself 10 senators who don’t want to be reelected next cycle and pass something like that.

And by assault weapons we know you’re going after pistols too.  So let’s make a low estimate of a 400,000,000 such guns in America, 20,000,000 of which are AR-15s.

Then you go and convince 300,000 cops in America, the average age of which is 40 years old, to forcibly confiscate 400,000,000 weapons.

Let me know how that project works out for you.

Views from Florida.

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that tourism has suffered in the 25 states that have enacted constitutional carry. And, as I recall, the policies of deregulation, low taxes and letting free people make their own decisions have actually significantly boosted tourism and permanent migration to places like Texas and our beautiful Florida.

Lastly, just to highlight the popularity of constitutional carry, not one of the 25 states with the policy on its books has even held a hearing, let alone a vote, to repeal its law.

That’s what they argued in South Carolina too.  Tourism around Charleston will be affected.  It wasn’t true.  It was always a lie.

I can assure you, as a resident of an open carry state, no one cares, or if they do, they get used to it.

The Regulatory Review links a paper by Joseph Blocher of Duke University arguing against state preemption laws that prohibit more restrictive gun control statutes by cities and counties than instituted by the state itself.  The paper is entitled “Cities, Preemption, and the Statutory Second Amendment.”

He argues:

As a practical matter, though, nothing has done more to shape contemporary gun regulation than state preemption laws, which fully or partially eliminate cities’ ability to regulate guns at the local level. Although the claim is admittedly hard to prove, it is likely that these preemption laws—nearly all of which were adopted in the past forty years—have kept more gun regulations off the books in the past two decades than has the Second Amendment in more than two centuries (including in the nearly 1,500 cases filed since Heller). In effect, preemption laws restrict gun laws in precisely the places—cities—where they are most viable16 and provide broader protection for the right to keep and bear arms than the Constitution has ever done.

Further, he remarks:

… some states have enacted strict prohibitions. These laws, which Blocher deems “unmistakably partisan,” attach penalties to local attempts to regulate. Republican-controlled legislatures have enacted statutes that threaten local officials with fines, loss of funds, and removal from office. In Florida, for example, local leaders who impermissibly regulate firearms can face a $5,000 fine and personal liability for up to $100,000 in damages.

As long as the law encourages increased liberty, we like state preemption laws.  They are a good thing, and they will continue to expand to other states where they don’t currently exist.  This blog is well known as devoted second amendment absolutists, and so when someone proposes a scholarly fisking of our doctrines, we take notice.  He cites Heller’s “approval of longstanding forms of gun regulation” (page 17) and flatly states that local ordinances are “entitled to some respect, either for its own sake or as a proxy for collective wisdom.”  Collective wisdom has nothing whatsoever to do with God-given rights, nor the rights recognized in the constitution.

To begin with, we have long held that Heller was a weak decision.

Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.

The common formula for absolving Scalia of problems and weakness in Heller is to claim that it was the best he could get out of the court, or otherwise, it was the beginning of a development in legal doctrine, the balance of which had to be developed and applied in lower courts before it could be carried any further.  But it is still noteworthy that neither Heller nor McDonald recognized the right to self defense with weapons outside the home.

Also, note that the term “recognized” is used above.  Rights are God-given, and the constitution on this paradigm is a covenant between government and the people, not a source of rights.  Since Scalia supplies a tip-of-the-hat to some gun control laws (he doesn’t mention which, how many, what locations, or anything else) this has in turn supplied 2A detractors with a never ending fountain of replenishment to attack the 2A any time and everywhere they can.  Even the author made hay of this on page 21 when he stated that “Heller itself indicates that concealed carrying of firearms is not even covered by the Second Amendment.”

But regardless of the fact that we see weakness in Heller, Mr. Blocher’s claims fall short.  The legal community is reading too much Stanley Fish and Jacques Derrida today and not enough history.  They have forgotten how to argue and craft rhetoric.  The best and most defensible way to read the 2A is to remember the lives of the men who wrote it.

“1. John Adams John Adams, as a 9-or-10-year-old schoolboy, carried a gun daily so that he could go hunting after class. 3 DIARY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADAMS 257-59 (1961). 2. Patrick Henry Patrick Henry would “walk to court, his musket slung over his shoulder to pick off small game.” Harlow Giles Unger, LION OF LIBERTY: PATRICK HENRY AND THE CALL TO A NEW NATION 30 (2010). 3. Daniel Boone “When Daniel was almost thirteen he was given his first firearm, a ‘short rifle gun, with which he roamed the nearby Flying Hills, the Oley Hills, and the Neversink Mountains.’ ” Robert Morgan, BOONE 14 (2007). 4. Meriwether Lewis Meriwether Lewis’s neighbor Thomas Jefferson observed that young Lewis “when only eight years of age . . . habitually went out, in the dead of night, alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt the raccoon & opossum.” 8 WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, at 482.  5. Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson himself carried as a lad. “When he was ten he was given a gun by his father and sent into the forest alone in order to develop self-reliance.” 1 Dumas Malone, JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME: JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN 46 (1948). As an adult, Jefferson wrote about a holster he made for one of his Turkish pistols, “having used it daily while I had a horse who would stand fire,” and he noted another holster he made “to hang them [the Turkish pistols] at the side of my carriage for road use.” 10 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, RETIREMENT SERIES 320-21 (2004). Jefferson advised his fifteen-yearold nephew to “[l]et your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.” 8 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 407 (2004). 6. James Monroe Every day, “[w]ell before dawn, James left for school, carrying his books under one arm with his powder horn under the other and his musket slung across his back.” Tim McGrath, JAMES MONROE: A LIFE 9 (2020). 7. Ira and Ethan Allen Ira and Ethan Allen regularly carried multiple arms at once. For example, in 1772 Ira, Ethan, and a cousin went to purchase land near New York’s border “armed with holsters and pistols, a good case [pair] of pistols each in our pockets, with each a good hanger [sword].”

One might argue that John Adams’ school and the local “court” were as sensitive as schools of today, and not only were firearms openly carried, there was no concept of “sensitive places.”  Moreover, “In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.”

Firearms were ubiquitous in Colonial times, and there was no need for an amendment which stated so or justified the right of men to own their “peeces.”  The second amendment was written to address a single issue – that of federal interference with the militia.  It would be quite an absurd proposition to claim that the very men who used their own “peeces” to go to war against their sovereign to ameliorate tyranny would see what they had written any other way than the right of men to live in liberty, and the right of combat to make that happen if necessary.

Hunting, self defense, and defense of home and hearth are certainly rights in God’s economy, but those are assumed as the presupposition, the axiomatic irreducible, for the second amendment to make any sense at all.  Before one even gets to the incorporation doctrine under the 14th amendment, there is no recognition of these facts by the author.

What does the author do then?  He focuses on various and sundry local problems like violence in Chicago.

Still, it is true that some of the regulations which have been held to violate the post-Heller Second Amendment are local and that stringent preemption laws might have kept them off the books in the first place. Chicago’s handgun ban is, of course, an obvious example. The fact that such laws have been struck down in court, however, suggests that preemption laws—if justified as a necessary protection for Heller’s right—are a solution in search of a problem.

Note his twisted logic.  We need local gun control because of violence in the inner city.  Local gun control is good.  State preemption laws prevent this sort of gun control.  Such local gun control has been struck down in court before, so state preemption laws are unnecessary (a “solution in search of a problem”).

That silly train of logic is offered up for a city where firearms carry is still illegal, hasn’t been struck down in court, and that infringement isn’t being prevented by state preemption.  Mr. Blocher needs to find a good course in formal and modal logic at Duke and sit for some training.

Never mind that his focus is on gun control, when he never even asks the question, “How could John Adams carry his “peece” to school with him and there was no violence, and we can’t get a handle on gangland?”  He never asks root cause questions such as, “Have we created this problem ourselves by government programs eviscerating the family unit?  Will we ever end the violence with gun control if access to firearms isn’t the cause of the problems?”

But the biggest leap in legal logic is found on page 17.

One obvious reason for the traditional variation is that the costs and benefits of guns vary by location. In crowded urban areas, the externalities of gun use (and misuse) are higher. In rural areas, there are more opportunities for traditionally lawful purposes like recreation and hunting, and police response times tend to be longer, thus arguably increasing the utility of a gun for self-defense.

And on page 23, he states the following.

One of the ripple effects of broad preemption laws might be to dampen the use of local law to establish a duty of care.

There is no “duty of care” and the author knows this.  This isn’t merely an error – it’s an intended oversight because the consequences of admitting the truth are lethal to his arguments.  Nor is there a duty of police protection, and likewise, the author knows this as well.  See the following.

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

No trained attorney is ignorant of these things.  The courts have repeatedly ruled that the police cannot be there all of the time, are under no legal obligation to respond in any certain time frame, and are under no duty to protect citizens (notwithstanding contractual obligations such as witness protection).

Throughout the paper the author speaks from the perspective of public safety without addressing the overarching concern of individual safety, security and right of self defense.  He also doesn’t address the fundamental basis of the second amendment as the surety against tyranny.

It may be a nit, but it’s worth mentioning.  There are silly remarks cited by the author that significantly detract from the intended seriousness of this paper (page 18).

… as Professor Richard Briffault has noted: if “the fifty states are laboratories for public policy formation, then surely the 3,000 counties and 15,000 municipalities provide logarithmically more opportunities for innovation, experimentation, and reform.”

There is nothing about this that is logarithmic.  Even without granting any validity to the assumption that experimentation with rights is a good thing, we observe that each county or city is an uncorrelated variable.  This isn’t like a deck of cards that can be arranged in many different sequences (52!), or 52 factorial.  This is linear, not logarithmic.

We started saying that we always look up when someone comes along claiming a scholarly analysis of the 2A.  This author apparently thinks he succeeded.  He did not.  He belongs in the department of sociology rather than law.

Finally, the author has turned the ideas of the founders on its head.  Liberty means the right of local tyrants to enact stricter and stricter laws on its people because the smallest locale is the laboratory of democracy.  Experimentation is a good thing, according to him.  It was against such local tyranny that the founders went to war, and it was against such local tyranny that Heller and McDonald were written, however weak we see them.