Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

An interesting exchange occurred between David Kopel, Joyce Malcolm, et. al., and another professor on carry of guns in England.  The first volley appeared at The Washington Post, and while I won’t quote in its entirety, I will quote at length and send you to the article for the conclusion.

Should D.C. residents have the same right to the licensed carry of defensive handguns as the people in most states? That is the issue currently before the D.C. Circuit, in Wrenn v. District of Columbia. The D.C. government lost on this issue in federal district court. D.C.’s brief to the D.C. Circuit argues that “For as long as citizens have owned firearms, English and American law has restricted any right to carry in populated public places.” According to the brief, the pre-existing right to arms, which was protected by the Second Amendment, “did not encompass carrying in densely populated cities.” Further, D.C. says that in the 19th century, carry prohibitions were widespread in the United States. An amicus brief on behalf of Michael Bloomberg’s organization “Everytown” makes similar claims.

In an amicus brief filed this week, several legal historians, including me, dispute the D.C. and Bloomberg claims. Besides me, the amici are Joyce Malcolm (George Mason Law; the leading historian on the history of English gun control and gun rights), Robert Cottrol (co-appointment at George Washington in Law and in History; a specialist in the history of race, including the racial aspects of gun laws),  Clayton Cramer (author of three books and many articles on the history of firearms law in Early America and the 19th century) and Nicholas Johnson (Fordham Law; most recent book is Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms). Our attorneys were Stephen Halbrook and Dan Peterson. Halbrook has a 5-0 record in the U.S. Supreme Court, all on firearms law cases, and is himself a leading scholar on the legal history of the right to arms.

The claim that there was a general prohibition on the carrying of arms is based on the 1328 Statute of Northampton, which D.C. characterizes as a public carrying ban. As our brief explains, the case law is contrary to such a broad interpretation of the 1328 Statute.  For example,  Sir John Knight’s Case (1686) said that the statute applies only to “people who go armed to terrify the King’s subjects.” There was a lot of weapons-carrying in England, partly because of public duties, such as keeping “watch and ward,” as well as required target practice (in longbows and muskets) at the target ranges that every village was required to maintain. The peaceable carrying of arms was an ordinary thing to see, not a terrifying one.

In the American colonies, nobody appears to have thought that they could not carry arms because of a 1328 English statute. Rather, the colonies mandated gun carrying in certain situations, such as when traveling or when going to church. To the extent that a few early states (and later, D.C.) enacted statutes expressing common law restrictions on arms carrying, the statutes (like the common law) only applied when a person did so “in terror of the country.” (D.C. 1818 statute; similar language in the states). In the colonial period, and in the first 37 years of independence, there were no restrictions on concealed carry. Several states enacted concealed carry bans thereafter, but of course these did not limit open carry. Moreover, our first “four Presidents openly carried firearms.” The notion that they, or anyone else, thought Americans were prohibited from doing so by a 1328 English statute is implausible.

To this, Priya Satia responds at Slate.

Doing so is crucial in a gun case now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals: Wrenn v. D.C. The case is critical for Washington residents but also more broadly as the pro-gun lobby challenges laws in cities across the country. The District of Columbia argues that English and American law has always permitted restrictions on the right to carry guns in populated public places, tracing this tradition to the 1328 Statute of Northampton, which generally prohibited carrying guns in public. The District argues that the Second Amendment and its English precursors did not allow unfettered public carrying in densely populated cities, and thus the District may restrict it.

A group of legal historians has disputed this interpretation in an amicus brief filed this month, followed by an essay in the Washington Post by David Kopel, adjunct professor at Denver University’s law school. They claim the English Bill of Rights of 1689 superseded the 1328 statute and that, “There was a lot of weapons-carrying in England.” Thus, they conclude, D.C. residents have the right to carry guns in public. But their English history is wrong, as are their conclusions about public carry in the nation’s capital.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 established a Protestant monarchy in England under William and Mary, ending the reign of the Stuarts. The Bill of Rights codified the constitutional limits on the new monarchy, including a provision guaranteeing Protestants (but not Catholics or Jews) the right to bear arms. But political realities overrode this provision. The new monarchy remained vulnerable to “Jacobites” seeking to restore the Stuart dynasty, with French and Spanish backing. This danger meant the British state could not permit widespread gun ownership.

The new monarchy’s disarmament laws built on laws passed after the Restoration of 1660, when the Stuarts returned to power after 11 years of republican rule and were similarly concerned with political stability. A 1670 statute had limited firearms possession to the noble and rich, although even their arsenals were subject to search and seizure at sensitive moments. A series of game laws from 1671 through 1831 dramatically reduced the number of people permitted to hunt, empowering gamekeepers to search for and seize unauthorized firearms. Smuggling laws also made carrying arms grounds for arrest. An armed militia was active through the 1680s, but not the 80 years that followed. Through the 1740s, its arms were locked in royal arsenals and distributed only at assembly. The government’s success at disarming the population made the militia superfluous, since its entire purpose was to prevent an armed rising against the government.

And I think you see where this argument is going, i.e., justifying law enforcement use of weapons to the exclusion of everyone else, even the military.  I wrote to Dave Kopel for a rejoinder, and he declined saying he had too many “irons in the fire,” but that “among its errors are conflating anti-hunting laws (which continued after 1689) with laws against defensive gun ownership.”

He also sent me to Joyce Malcolm, who is also busy but reminded me of her piece in Financial Times (I cannot locate the URL except at Free Republic).

Self-defence, William Blackstone, the 18th century English jurist, wrote, is a natural right that no government can deprive people of, since no government can protect the individual in his moment of need. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 affirmed the right of individuals “to have arms for their defence”. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous, and ineffective. Government is perilously close to denying people the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society.

I won’t rehearse the details of the debate.  But one thing stands out to me in this exchange, and it’s Kopel’s statement that “The notion that they, or anyone else, thought Americans were prohibited from doing so by a 1328 English statute is implausible.”  This is an important observation, so let’s unpack it a bit.

From my pedestrian point of view (from my coursework in philosophy, history and apologetics in seminary), I’ve always claimed that the best way to understand what the founders intended was to observe their lives and understand what they did or didn’t think their words meant.  Look to the culture, context and milieu which created these men and their views.  I have cited the public and open carry of weapons to which Kopel refers.

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.

And further:

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.”

The ownership and carry of weapons was virtually ubiquitous in colonial America.  It was so for the purposes of hunting, defense against animals, and defense against men.  As my own professor C. Gregg Singer has pointed out, news reports, primary source literature and eyewitness accounts are the best information on colonial America.  All information and data points to the expectation of the duty of self defense, rather than a prohibition of such.

Moreover, while I concede that it’s interesting what English law had to say about ownership and carry of weapons, it isn’t determinative.  We follow the constitution, and in particular, I have asserted before that rights to ownership and carry of weapons follows God-given stipulations, the constitution flowing from it’s basis in this moral history.

If Satia’s goal was to persuade me that I could look to England to find basis to reject ownership and carry of weapons, the goal wasn’t met.  The attempt was an abject failure.

NJ.com:

Gov. Chris Christie’s gradual pivot away from the gun control policies he had advocated as New Jersey governor took its sharpest turn yet Sunday evening on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

The governor and Republican presidential candidate, while fielding questions from a town hall meeting, took sole credit for keeping the Second Amendment “alive” in New Jersey, which is he said is home to “some of the worst gun laws in America” despite his office voicing support for the state’s firearm laws well before he launched his presidential bid.

“The problem with guns in this country are criminals. Everything we need to make you safer is already on the books and then some,” Christie said.

“If you go to the person that’s in charge of the New Jersey Pistol and Gun Club, what he’ll tell you is the only reason that the Second Amendment is still alive in New Jersey is because I’ve been governor for the last six years,” he said.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight you collectivist windbag.  No one is safer because of your laws because you won’t allow anyone to be legally armed in their own self defense.  God gives us the right to self defense, not the second amendment.  The second amendment applies to everyone and everywhere whether you exist or not.  Therefore, you can’t take credit for anything of the sort.  You will only answer for your own refusal to acknowledge men’s rights before God.  You have everything backwards.

But as for this notion of asking the “person in charge of the New Jersey Pistol and Gun Club” about this, I don’t believe you.  I think you’re a liar.  So I’ve taken it upon myself to contact them myself and I will publish any response I get.

I think you’re a liar and you never really talked to the “person in charge” of anything pertaining to gun rights.  And I don’t think that’s what they will say at all.

Prior: Chris Christie And Guns

Bob Unruh at WND:

I don’t go where Bob Owens does on this.  This isn’t about the second amendment to me.  I took a strong stand against illegal aliens and bearing arms before (I cannot recall where, perhaps in a comment at reddit/guns, or at Say Uncle), and was savaged, as if I was anti-gun.

There is a libertarian case against the ownership of weapons by illegal aliens.  It’s simple.  You cannot do things to take actions that adversely affect others, and the mere presence of illegal aliens on my home soil adversely affects me.

Libertarians notwithstanding, you do not have a right to do anything you want any time you want.  Your rights are circumscribed by God.  God gives me the right to own weapons.  God does not give illegal aliens the right to be in my country.  The discussion about weapons for illegal aliens shouldn’t even come up.  Let central and South America figure it out.

I don’t have to turn to the founding fathers to figure this out.  But what’s so rich about this – and Bob Unruh points this out – is that judges who would otherwise vomit at the notion of God-given rights and bearing arms, suddenly find it necessary to expand this right to people who have no right to be on this soil.  It must suck to be a progressive and face logical problems like this.  Being impaled on the horns of a dilemma is the sort of thing that sticks to your innards.

Yahoo:

Ottawa (AFP) – Canada’s high court struck a blow against gun control on Friday, with a decision that clears the way for the federal government to destroy data on owners of rifles and shotguns.

Ottawa ordered the database destroyed in 2012, but Quebec went to court to try to stop it, hoping to use the names of Quebecers on the list to build its own firearms registry.

The Supreme Court’s decision means that while Canadians must still obtain a license to own a gun, most will not have to disclose that they own a long gun.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a longtime advocate for the gun rights of hunters and farmers, said he was “happy” with this outcome.

But in Quebec, which also fought to maintain the national firearms registry created by parliament in 1995, there was disappointment.

The province pressed Ottawa to hand over parts of the database relevant to Quebec after the federal government shut down the national firearms registry three years ago.

But Harper’s Tory government refused, citing critics of the registry who complained the original had been an expensive intrusion on gun owners and should not be repeated.

Furthermore, the Tories argued, the registry did not help to stem crime.

With both sides refusing to yield and Quebec vowing to create its own registry from scratch, firearms regulations are sure to become a hot campaign issue in upcoming elections.

In a five-four split decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Quebec had simply failed to establish a legal basis for its claim to the data.

The court added that the disagreement over the fate of the information in the registry should have been negotiated in a political process, rather than adjudicated.

So here’s the scene.  The firearms registry is being done away.  Quebec wants the information, and this court case decided the issue.  Quebec doesn’t get it.  In the process, the Canadian supreme court looks a lot like the U.S. supreme court and other morons, and stipulated that in the future, the political process must be used to restrict God-given rights.  But it gets better.

Quebec Public Safety Minister Lise Theriault said the province would move ahead with its plans for a database of its own, allocating Can$30 million (US$24 million) for the project.

If the centralized government won’t help, they’ll do it themselves.  Sounds like New York or Connecticut, no?  But wait.  It gets even better than this.

Earlier this month, Harper earned widespread scorn over comments he made which seemed to wrongfully imply that Canadians have the right to shoot intruders.

“My wife’s from a rural area, gun ownership wasn’t just for the farm, it was also for a certain level of security when you’re ways away from police, immediate police assistance,” he’d told the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities on March 12.

Legal experts and the opposition pounced on the comments to suggest Harper had urged Canadians to take the law into their own hands.

“It’s vigilantism,” former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant was widely quoted as saying.

“People are going to find themselves facing the criminal justice system and being charged with serious crimes if they decide to follow what the prime minister is suggesting.”

Rather than being a God-ordained duty, self defense is “vigilantism” according to Bryant.  The former attorney general of Ontario is a damn communist.  And the damn communists (and Harper’s Tories) notwithstanding, the reasons for ownership and bearing of arms goes beyond hunting and self defense (American “Fudds” also notwithstanding).  It also enables us to kill people just like them.  The extent to which Americans get that will be directly proportional to the liberties we retain in the face of men just … like … the … rulers … of … Quebec in the U.S., federal, state and local.

MSNBC:

Asked about the Second Amendment at a town-hall meeting yesterday, the governor told voters, “Send me a Republican legislature. And with a Republican legislature you’ll have a governor who will respect, appropriately, the rights of law-abiding citizens to be able to protect ourselves…. No rights are given to you by government. All our rights are given to you by God.”

The theological reference was a bit odd under the circumstances. Even if Christie genuinely believes the Second Amendment creates a God-given entitlement to firearm ownership, it’s up to policymakers – humans, in positions of governmental authority – to shape and place limits on this right.

First of all, Chris Christie’s campaign is over.  It’s far too late to convince any legitimate gun owner that Christie would be good for gun rights.  Now that this point is out of the way, consider the way the reporter, Steve Benen, worded this objection.  “Even if Christie genuinely believes the Second Amendment creates a God-given entitlement to firearm ownership …”  How on earth could a man-made document create a God-given right?  What kind of ignorance and sophomoric thinking leads someone to make such intellectual missteps?

As I have stated, “The basis [for bearing arms] comes not from the constitution or any other founding document, but from God Himself, and he answers to no one.  His laws have a deontological flavor (see Divine Command Theory).  He refers to no one outside Himself for notions of right and wrong, and when He speaks, it is right because He has spoken it and it follows the nature of His character, which is itself good.  Simply said, God doesn’t need the constitution, and neither do we need it to tell us it is okay to seek and employ means of self defense.”

For the grand finale of embarrassing brain freezes, Steve believes that it’s up to humans to “shape and place limits on this right.”  God, to whom man answers and who is in need of no one and nothing (see the “Aseity of God”), and who demands obedience rather than demurral, apparently hasn’t spoken clearly enough for Steve, who believes that creatures have the right to amend the word of the creator!

And there you have it.  The much heralded main stream media, who wouldn’t be able to perform good analysis work if their lives depended on it.

Blackwatch2:

Communities Digital News:

The Blaze:

A sheriff in Washington state responded Monday to a controversial comment made by one of his deputies two weeks ago during a charity event.

Jerry Moffett, a deputy in Spokane County, Washington, was caught on tape at the Holiday and Heroes event during which some officers took underprivileged children shopping while others stood outside meeting and greeting those attending. But one woman who spoke to Moffett decided to record the interaction. In the video, the woman asks Moffett about the department’s Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) military-style vehicles.

“I’m thinking that is totally appropriate in Iraq but what kind of a situation in the U.S. would you see that happening?” the woman asked Moffett.

The deputy responded by saying, “We’ve got a lot of Constitutionalists and a lot of people that stockpile weapons, a lot of ammunition. They have weapons here locally.”

The Sheriff made a followup comment.

Knezovich said there is “no way” the equipment will be used on any law-abiding citizen. ”It will never be used to take your guns away,” he told the outlet. The outlet noted Moffett is a 20-year veteran of the force and an Army veteran … KXLY reported that Knezovich has since admitted that Moffett’s word choice could have been better, suggesting “extremist” would have been more appropriate than “Constitutionalist

Far from being shocked, disappointed or aghast at the comment by Moffett, I’m pleasantly surprised at his honesty.  It’s always a good thing when the truth comes out.  There is no reason for such equipment on police forces across the nation except for use on the people of America.  Moffett’s candid response reminds us of this truth.

I’m also pleasantly surprised that the Sheriff brought up his time in grade on the police force and his military background.  My own son believes that former military should try to avoid law enforcement if possible.  There are good men who are former military, and there are bad men who are former military.  Moffett is a bad one, and there is no justification for worship of the military.  I know what my own son answers to the question, ‘Son, will you fire on American citizens?’  He would sooner fire on his commanding officers who issued such an order.

Mike Vanderboegh was called a radical right-winger.  Hey, radical right-winger, constitutionalist or extremist.  It’s six one way and half a dozen the other.  As for Moffett, we know where he stands, and it’s because of people like him that we are constitutionalists and stockpile weapons.  Bring it, Moffett.

Timothy Carney:

Naturally, Democrats and the Left have tried to pry Southerners away from their guns and religion. Gun control has largely been a culture war effort for Democrats. “Some of the southern areas have cultures that we have to overcome,” was Congressman Charles Rangel’s explanation for why gun control was both needed and difficult.

The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten cursed the Second Amendment as “the refuge of bumpkins and yeehaws who like to think they are protecting their homes against imagined swarthy marauders desperate to steal their flea-bitten sofas from their rotting front porches.”

So let’s deal with the second amendment yet again.  To be sure, the second amendment was written within a certain cultural context of unorganized militia who used their own weapons, weapons they had to defend themselves and their families against both animals and men, as well as provide for themselves.  So one might argue for the notion that the presupposition necessary for the second amendment to make any sense at all is private ownership and use of guns.  But this requires deductive thought, and progressives aren’t big on that.  So in legal debating terms, I will stipulate, and I won’t press the issue because I want to make another more important point.

Progressives have yet to pick up on the fact that we don’t believe the second amendment gives us rights to defend ourselves or homes.  They would be much more aghast at the truth, but their blindness keeps them from seeing the truth.  God gives us rights, the state only recognizes those rights.

But more importantly, the second amendment says nothing about defense of persons or the home during the normal course of life.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with that.  I have a right anyway to defend myself and my family with any weapon I choose, so says God.  The second amendment says something different.  It says that the state recognizes that God gives me the right to shoot people who would take away our guns – like Gene Weingarten – through the skull, even if their taking is approved by the state.

Guns.com:

With the stroke of a pen Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) turned a controversial bill into law that will allow third parties to sue municipalities over local gun codes stronger than the state’s.

The measure, added as an amendment to a metal theft bill, had passed the state legislature earlier this month by wide margins. It allows groups such as the National Rifle Association to stand in for local citizens in challenging gun city and county control ordinances stronger than the state’s own laws in court.

With Corbett’s signature, the new law will take effect in 60 days, potentially dozens of strict city and county firearms laws under the gaze of gun rights groups such as the NRA, who called the bill Tuesday, “the strongest firearms preemption statute in the country.”

Now for federal threats:

Members of Congress who want to infringe on your right to keep and bear arms will never give up. Fortunately, through our states we can effectively render any new federal gun laws powerless by using a legal doctrine upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

This is done by depriving the feds of any enforcement assistance by local law enforcement agencies in their state, a doctrine known as “anti-commandeering.”

Essentially, it provides that state legislation can prohibit state law enforcement from aiding the federal agencies attempting to enforce federal gun laws.

In other words, the federal government cannot require a state to carry out federal acts. The federal government can pass a law and try to enforce it, but the state isn’t required to help them.

Is this legal?

It is according to the US Supreme Court. For 150 years it has repeatedly affirmed the constitutionality of anti-commandeering laws.

Relevant court cases include:

* 1842 Prigg v. Pennslvania: The court held that states weren’t required to enforce federal slave rendition laws.

* 1992 New York v. US: The court held that Congress couldn’t require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.

* 1997 Printz v. US: The court held that “the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”

* 2012 Independent Business v. Sebelius: The Court held that the federal government can not compel states to expand Medicaid by threatening to withhold funding for Medicaid programs already in place.

What do you notice to be common between these articles concerning advocacy for state’s rights?  Answer: turning to the courts for moral and legal justification.

The new law in Pennsylvania would be impressive if only it had prepared the infrastructure to send state law enforcement after local authorities if they didn’t observe our rights.  Nullification of local regulations combined with spending some quality time in the hoosegow for the local politicians would send a strong signal to those who would ignore the law.  Frankly, I cannot imagine a weaker state government than one which passes a law only to have cities and townships ignore it, and then have to turn to the courts to tell the local authorities to obey the state laws.  It’s embarrassing and scandalous.

And turning to the federal courts to tell ourselves that it’s okay to ignore the federal authorities when their edicts violate the covenant upon which they are supposed to labor and lead is equally embarrassing.  More than simply not aiding federal authorities in their totalitarian measures, state law enforcement ought to be sent to arrest said federal authorities, throw them in the state penitentiary, and throw away the key.