Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Arkansas CopWatch gets stopped for open carry.  I thought this was a settled issue in Arkansas?  Anyway, it’s good to see folks conducting 2A audits, and more specifically, open carry audits.

It’s an odd case, but interesting.

Dawsonville attorney John Monroe—a founder, board member and corporate officer of GeorgiaCarry who represents Evans—said he is confident that a careful review of the garden’s lease with the city will make it clear that the garden is prohibited by state law from banning guns on its premises.

“We never argued it as a Second-Amendment issue,” said Monroe, who said he helped to write the 2014 amendment that forms the basis for the high court’s reversal. “It was really about an interpretation of state law. … The idea was, if you are going to lease public property, you should not have the same right that private property owners have to exclude firearms.”

Monroe said the 2014 amendment is in keeping with a separate state law barring cities and counties from introducing or enforcing their own gun regulations.

GeorgiaCarry sued the botanical garden five years ago after one of its members twice visited the venue in 2014 while openly carrying a gun in a holster on his waistband. On his second visit, police escorted member Phillip Evans from the premises. GeorgiaCarry subsequently filed suit challenging the garden’s gun ban. A Fulton County judge dismissed the case, but the high court reversed, claiming the dismissal was improper.

I’d never thought about this before, but it makes perfect sense.  Someone who leases property doesn’t own the property, and therefore doesn’t have the right to forbid perfectly constitutional and legal activities on that property.  Only the owner does.

News from Oklahoma.

Gun control advocates say they’ll spend October distributing “firearms prohibited” window stickers to Oklahoma business owners who don’t want untrained and unlicensed consumers carrying guns into their establishments.

The effort marks gun-control advocates’ next effort to thwart the new controversial gun law, which takes effect Nov. 1.

“We know that our businesses are allowed to prohibit guns on their property,” said Kay Malan, of Tulsa, who volunteers with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

In recent weeks, the gun-control group also participated in a citizen-led ballot initiative that sought give voters a say on whether to accept or reject the legislation. The effort failed to garner enough signatures to get the issue before voters.

The legislative measure allows anyone at least 21 years old without a felony conviction or other criminal records to carry with no permitting, licensing or training. The bill does not allow people to brandish firearms nor does it change where Oklahomans can legally carry. For instance, people would still be prohibited from carrying on college campuses.

So let’s make a prediction and see how accurate it was later on, say, a year from now.

There will be blood running in the streets because of this.  Or not.

The Cornell Daily Sun.

Charles’s Duke biography states he joined the Center for Firearms Law as executive director after practicing in the appellate group at McGuireWoods LLP, where he briefed cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits as well as in numerous state intermediate and high courts.

“I am here to convince you that an assault weapons ban would not violate the Second Amendment,” Charles said. “This is a fraught and contentious debate, and the people and their representatives — not lawyers in robes — should be the ones to decide whether an assault weapon ban best serves the public interest.”

Charles gave three reasons as to why an assault weapon ban would not violate the Second Amendment: history does not support the right to own an assault weapon, current constitutional doctrine does not impede an assault weapons ban and there are no good normative reasons to suppose that there is a constitutional right to own assault weapons.

In the title of the article, he’s called a “firearms expert.”  Very well, Jacob.  Can you supply us with a lecture on the controlling mathematical models and formulae for ballistics coefficient and sectional density?

I didn’t think so.  Some expert.

Note how in a speech on the constitutionality, he defers to the will of the people rather than whether ownership of weapons is constitutional.  This isn’t by mistake.  His philosophy is one of instrumentalism (Dewey), utilitarianism (Mills), or something else, but he would recoil in horror is you suggested that we pass a law that requires sacrificing someone named Jacob to Baal on alternating Thursdays.  So Jacob is an inconsistent philosopher at best, or perhaps he’s never really thought about any of this.

But his main arguments are all deeply flawed.  His training has all been without philosophical foundation, and thus he would defer to the rule of the majority for notion of rights rather than immutable law.

As we’ve discussed many times before, God is the author of rights and obligations, and the Almighty decides how to deal with His creatures and how they must live.  The constitution is a covenant between men, not a source document for rights.  Obedience to the covenant brings blessings and peace, while disobedience brings curses, both from men and God.  Just as God will never bless a spouse who cheats on covenant marriage vows, He will never bless a stiff-necked people who refuse to honor agreements they have made to live together.

The constitution clearly stipulates not that we may posses firearms of our own choosing, but rather that the government may not interfere with our choices.  As for that silly, juvenile notion that history doesn’t support this (e.g., the founders couldn’t possibly have imagined semi-automatic firepower), we’ve also seen how clearly incorrect that is.

We’ve also studied the obligations that the Almighty places on us for protection of home and hearth.  Little more needs to be said, because while feigning independence and scholarship, one thing is clear.  The Duke University Center for Firearms Law is biased, bigoted and certainly not scholarly.

These folks will never be Dave Hardy, Dave Koppel or Stephen Halbrook.  They’ll always play second fiddle to the real scholars.

Oh, one more thing, Jacob.  I’ll be happy to engage in a written debate with you any time over these pages.

American Thinker.

Since 2015, residents of the state of Maine have been allowed to carry a concealed firearm without any special permit, and now the results are in: crime has fallen to the point where the state is now rated the safest in the nation from the threat of crime. The Maine Examiner reports:

When Maine passed a “Constitutional Carry” law allowing Maine residents to carry a concealed firearm without any special permit in 2015, opponents of the law forecast a dangerous future for the state. They said the new law would hurt public safety and put Maine kids at risk.

One state representative who opposed the bill went so far as to say it would give Mainers a reason to be afraid every time they went out in public or to work.

Another state representative suggested the law would lead to violent criminals with recent arrests and convictions legally carrying handguns.

The controllers always say things like that.  They’re all liars and thieves.  The controllers said open carry would lead to blood running in the streets in Texas.  It didn’t happen.  They said that open carry would lead to blood running in the streets in Oklahoma.  It didn’t happen.

And on we could go.  You know the drill.

GOA has sent out an urgent request to call senators, saying this.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting on Chuck Canterbury, who is the President’ pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

Canterbury headed the Fraternal Order of Police and articulated several anti-gun positions during his tenure there.

Go here to add your name to the pre-written letter (above) which urges Republican Senators to vote against Canterbury as the new ATF head.

This pick to lead the ATF represents another troubling nominee, who has been selected to fill an important position in the administration.

Earlier this year, we warned Republicans Senators that Attorney General nominee William Barr had a long history of supporting gun control, including semi-auto bans.

Apparently, the GOP senators, at least some of them, can do something right for a change.

Chuck Canterbury, President Trump’s nominee to serve as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, is likely to see his nomination withdrawn due to stringent opposition from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Free Beacon learned on Thursday.

“Chuck Canterbury does NOT have sufficient support in the Judiciary Committee and is now expected to be held up instead of getting a vote today,” a GOP Senate aide told the Free Beacon on Thursday morning. “Republican members are (1) Concerned about his stances on gun control, and (2) there is still some bad blood for him flipping the Fraternal Order of Police in support of the First Step Act (after opposing the more moderate version), allegedly in exchange for the ATF Director nomination.”

“His 2A views are bad and he’d lose a lot of votes in committee,” a second Senate source told the Free Beacon. “We expect the White House will pull him given lack of support from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.”

At least one Republican senator, Utah’s Mike Lee, seemed to agree with this assessment when reached for comment.

“Sen. Lee has concerns about Canterbury’s Second Amendment views and is pleased the markup has been delayed,” Lee’s office told the Free Beacon.

We’ll see what Trump does with this.  I hope this is the end for Canterbury.

Prior:

FOP President Chuck Canterbury Picked To Head The ATF

Further Fisking Of Chuck Canterbury’s Second Amendment Credentials

As background for his paper, this makes good listening.

It couldn’t ever have been any other way, really.  As I’ve pointed out before so many times, guns were ubiquitous in colonial America, a tool, a means to survive, a means of defense of home and hearth.  The right was seen as God-given, because it is so.

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.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

When the British government began to increase its military presence in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, Massachusetts responded by calling upon its citizens to arm themselves in defense. One colonial newspaper argued that it was impossible to complain that this act was illegal since they were “British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights” while another argued that this “is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defense”. The newspaper cited Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England, which had listed the “having and using arms for self preservation and defense” among the “absolute rights of individuals.” The colonists felt they had an absolute right at common law to own firearms.

Their laws about children and guns were strict: every family was required to own a gun, to carry it in public places (especially when going to church) and to train children in firearms proficiency. On the first Thanksgiving Day, in 1621, the colonists and the Indians joined together for target practice; the colonist Edward Winslow wrote back to England that “amongst other recreations we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us.”

In fact, when congregants showed up to worship without weaponry, it was most often the pastor who collected the tax for going unarmed.  The notion that the founders would have made sure to prohibit the FedGov from interfering with state militias and fail to incorporate that into protection of individuals is preposterous on its face.

In order to understand the second amendment, you must first understand the milieu in which it was written. An understanding of unvarnished and unbiased history is what most “scholars” today lack.

Dave Hardy.

On SSRN: The Janus-faced Second Amendment: Looking Backward to the Renaissance, Forward to the Enlightenment. I’ve just started circulating it to law reviews. It has two themes:

1. The 2A has two clauses because it had two independent purposes, each with a different constituency. Classical Republicans wanted a guarantee against the militia, as a system, being neglected. Jeffersonians want a guarantee of an individual right to arms. For most of the Framing period, a person, group, or State chose one of the other. With the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788, someone finally realized they could do both and please both groups. To construe the right to arms as limited to militia service (as the Heller dissenters did) is to misconstrue the history. They were separate ideas, and to the extent we can assign importance, the right to arms was universally seen as more important.

Good.  This is the right answer.  I look forward to reading the whole article.

Via David Codrea, this bit of interesting prose.

… by requiring that every member of the militia … must own at least one long gun, one handgun, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition for each, or pay an annual $1,000 tax for failing to do so.

To which David observes, “I do have to wrestle with the coercive nature of that and wonder if things couldn’t be worked out more along the lines of if you don’t help, you don’t get helped.”

Um … hmm …, well, I don’t know.  I’d have to think about that some.  Not, by the way, that I have a problem being someone member of a militia.

My main point has always been that while I understand (and have no problem with) the invocation of the militia in the 2A, it was the closest thing the founders grabbed at the time.  All they needed was one good reason, and that happened to be the one they wrote down at the time.  The point wasn’t to write a treatise.

The right of amelioration of tyranny (whether a member of the militia or not), the right of self defense, and the right to feed your family without having to get permission to hunt “the king’s forests,” is God-given, not depending on the constitution, the 2A, or even what the founders wrote or thought.

The constitution is a covenant, an agreement, nothing more, and nothing less.  It doesn’t guarantee anything, it isn’t the foundation for anything, and it isn’t the basis document for anything – except the vows that were taken on the part of the government NOT to interfere with God-given rights.

Ammoland.

Despite the fact that Joseph Belton failed to convince the Continental Congress to outfit colonial soldiers with his repeating rifle, it’s still a very important story. Belton invented his gun in 1777. The Bill of Rights wasn’t ratified until 1791. That means our Founding Fathers not only knew about repeating rifles 14 years before the creation of the Second Amendment, but that they thought highly enough of the idea to pursue further development and implementation of such technology. The fact that it proved to be cost-prohibitive is moot, as it certainly could have been done if Congress and Belton had agreed upon the definition of “reasonable compensation.”

So, the next time someone tells you the Second Amendment was never designed to protect the right to own a repeating rifle, or that it was only meant to apply to flintlock firearms, sit them down and tell them the story of Joseph Belton and his repeating flintlock musket.