Yesterday, in his remarks on the two shootings that took place in less than 24 hours on Saturday, President Trump again came out in support of so-called "Red Flag" laws. South Carolina U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham later announced that he had "bi-partisan" agreement on legislation that would create a federal program to assist states in crafting such laws. But as former NRATV host and now Bearingarms.com editor Cam Edwards noted, the red flag laws we have seen so far are just a way to take guns without due process:
The red flag laws we’ve seen introduced around the country don’t respect due process and do nothing to ensure any sort of mental health treatment for the person deemed to be a danger. It’s a gun control solution to a mental health issue. https://t.co/Q9s1Z3KNrA
Cam delved into this on his new BearingArms.com Cam and Co. program:
No one wants an individual who is in crisis to have access to a firearm but laws that do not respect due process are riddled with opportunities for abuse. According to Independence Institute Director of Research Dave Kopel, Vermont's law is a good model if we are going to have a law that protects public safety while respecting constitutional rights.
The gun ban lobby is already giddy that there is a "window for bipartisan action" on this piece of the gun ban agenda. You can expect Virginia Democrats in the General Assembly to be pushing this even harder in their campaigns this fall and using President Trump's support to challenge pro-rights candidates who want constitutional protections in any such laws. Be armed with the facts about these laws. A good primer is Kopel's video above. More in-depth information can be found here.
Earlier this year, Independence Institute Director of Research Dave Kopel appeared at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Red Flag laws. In that testimony, Kopel laid out what should be included in such laws to protect the due process rights of the individual subject to a so-called "Gun Violence Protection Order". He also took questions from the panel. The total video is about 26 minutes long but it is a valuable use of time if you want to be able to explain why such laws pushed by the gun ban lobby are unconstitutional and what would need to be included to make them constitutional.
Dave Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute, and Joseph Greenlee, a fellow at the Millennial Policy Center in Denver, had this op/ed at www.TheHill.com yesterday making the case that banning 18-20 year-olds from buying rifles and shotguns is unconstitutional. Beyond laying out why such proposals are unconstitutional, Kopel and Greenlee profer this question:
Some young adults 18 to 20 are married with children. These families deserve to protect themselves as much as any family does. If these adults are not mature enough to be trusted with firearms, then logic would suggest that they are not mature enough to marry in the first place.
For that matter, perhaps they are not mature enough to vote If they cannot be trusted with a squirrel rifle, how can they be trusted to elect leaders who wield nuclear weapons?
Kopel was on NRATV's Cam and Company yesterday and talked in more detail about the article. Read it at the above link. It makes some great points. We'll see if those points come up in the NRA lawsuit against Florida's new law.
The answer is no and Kopel did a great job in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece yesterday explaining why that is an incorrect statement.
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut responded to last week’s Las Vegas massacre by issuing a statement in which he claimed: “Already this year there have been more mass shootings than days in the year.” That was last Monday, the 275th day of 2017. Can Mr. Murphy possibly be right?
Certainly not by the ordinary definition of “mass shootings,” which includes attacks such as the one in Las Vegas this month, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016, and at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. Of late such infamous crimes have hit the national news several times a year—nowhere near a daily basis. Gun-control advocates like Mr. Murphy seek to alarm the public by exaggerating the scale of the problem.
The FBI defines “mass murder” as “four or more victims slain, in one event, in one location.” Starting with the FBI’s definition of four or more fatalities, the Congressional Research Service reported that from 1999 through 2013 there were an average of 20 to 22 mass shootings in the U.S. annually. In an average year, four of these would be “mass public shootings”—the kind that often get national media attention. Of the rest, about half were “familicides”—killings within a family or estranged family, usually taking place in a private residence. The other half were “attributable to an underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance,” such as armed robbery, gang activity, insurance fraud or romantic triangles.
The website Mass Shooting Tracker, by contrast, counted 340 mass shootings in the U.S. between New Year’s Day and last Monday—consistent with Mr. Murphy’s claim of more than one a day. The site uses a much broader definition of mass shooting: “an incident where four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree. This may include the gunman himself, or police shootings of civilians around the gunman.” Under this definition, the shootings needn’t be fatal.
But that's what gun ban groups do, they use inflated numbers to press their case in the hope of confusing the public and to push restrictions on legal gun owners. As Kopel noted later in the op/ed, it's a major reason why a 2013 Pew Research survey found that 56% of Americans thought that crime was higher then than it was 20 years earlier.
Kopel noted that over the last 25 years, homicide involving firearms has declined by half nationwide. Additionally, overall crime involving firearms is down by three-fourths. In this same period, the American gun ownership grew by 80 million resulting in there being slightly more than one gun per person in the U.S.
Update: Kopel was on NRATV's Cam and Company Tuesday afternoon to discuss his article.
The Independence Institute has filed an amicus brief in the case of Kolbe v. Hogan (VSSA has also joined a State Association Amicus opposing the 4th Circuit ruling). It's an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Fourth Circuit's ruling supporting Maryland's "assault weapons" ban. In the ruling, the majority opinion said so-called "assault weapons" can be banned because they are like "M-16s" and are "weapons of war", made for "mass carnage".
Independence Institute Research director Dave Kopel was on NRATV's Cam and Company yesterday and said the Fourth Circuit used a shred of the Heller decision to claim that semi-automatic rifles are "weapons of war." It is not only unconstitutional, it is a danger to law enforcement. Police officers are not carrying weapons designed for "mass carnage." They are using appropriate firearms for lawful defense of their lives and the lives of law-abiding citizens.
Kopel also talked about his latest article in The Hill on the racist roots of gun control laws. Guns protect Americans from white supremacists, while gun control laws protect white supremacists.
Independence Institute Director of Research Dave Kopel and attorney Joseph Greenlee had this op/ed in The Hill earlier this week that makes the case for allowing people to carry firearms. They use what happened in the recent London Bridge attacks and several mass shootings in the U.S. to make their point:
Mass killers often select targets because of the absence of armed defenders at the scene. The Aurora theater murderer selected a “gun-free” theater, which forbade licensed handgun carry by its patrons. He had chosen not to attack an airport because of “substantial security.” The Santa Barbara murderer decided against attempting a massacre at a public Halloween party because “there were too many cops” and “one gunshot from a cop will end everything.” The Charleston church murderer abandoned his original target, the College of Charleston, “because of the security.” The Los Angeles Jewish Community Center murderer passed on three other Jewish institutions because the “security was too tight.” In Detroit, a would-be ISIS murderer, who was stopped before he could execute his plan, targeted a large church since “people are not allowed to carry guns in church.”
The United Kingdom could reduce the toll of terrorist attacks by arming and training all police officers, instead of just a select few. The result would be more jihadis stopped after 80 seconds instead of 480 seconds—a life or death difference.
Kopel was on NRATV.com to discuss the piece in more detail after it was published.
On Monday, The New York Times opened up it's editorial space to four guest commentators to "debate" the topic of campus carry. It was less a debate than it was each writer stating the reasons for their position. One was rape victim Amanda Collins who wrote why she would have liked to have had her firearm on campus and there was a professor at the University of Texas who wrote that allowing firearms on campus will make them less safe and restrict academic freedom. There was a recent college graduate who wrote opposing campus carry, and there was George Mason University Law Professor Nelson Lund who wrote in support of campus carry noting that campus police cannot prevent violent crimes.
You may have heard one of Ms. Collins' appearances on NRANews.com where she has discussed what happened to her and how campus rules disarmed her and left her defenseless. She freely admits that she does not know what would have happened that night had she had her firearm; all she wanted was the chance to defend herself.
The Texas professor, Javier Auyero, uses the same tired reasons for opposing campus carry, namely that not only will it make campuses less safe but will "stifle classroom debate." He claims that if the legislature had cared about basing their decision on "logical evidence based arguments" they would have listened to people like William H. McRaven, the chancellor of the University of Texas and a former Navy SEAL, and Art Acevedo, chief of the Austin Police Department because they both know "when there are more guns around, there is more risk – it’s as simple as that." What Professor Auyero does not put forth is the "evidence" found in the state of Colorado from Colorado State University, where campus carry has been legal for years with no issues related to academic freedom. Independence Institute Director of Research wrote in 2009:
Yet, if one drives just a few hours north on Interstate 25 to Colorado State University, where licensed carry is allowed in classrooms, there has been no evidence of any diminution of academic freedom. Nor are there reports of any impairment of academic freedom at the nine public colleges and universities in Utah, at the three Blue Ridge campuses in Virginia, or in Israel, Thailand, or Norway.
In fact, Kopel continues, the only evidence of restrictions on academic freedom related to campus carry are on advocates of campus carry.
We know where the New York Times stands when it comes to the right to bear arms but they at least offered a balanced forum for advocates on both sides of this issue to state their case. I recommend reading all four Op/Eds.
Independence Institute Director of Research Dave Kopel had a great piece at the Volokh Conspiracy this week on former Interpol Secretary-general Ron Noble's new video examining the Westgate Mall mass shooting in Nairobi and how armed citizens saved hundreds of lives. In the post, Kopel says in Noble's video, we see the difference between a "moderate" gun control advocate and folks like Katie Couric, who is making the rounds with a new gun ban film:
As Noble explains, his 14 years of close involvement in global counterterrorism changed his perspective on gun control. This week, he has published a video about the 2013 mass shootings at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The video, “Armed Citizens Can Help Stop Terrorist Massacres Like Nairobi and Paris,” shows graphic footage of the attack and of the response of armed citizens. During the lengthy and well-planned attack, more than 60 innocent people were murdered. As Noble explains, the death count would have been hundreds more if not for the armed citizens who intervened. As Noble puts it, “This is not an American argument, nor a political argument. In these horrific situations, law-abiding armed citizens have helped protect others and literally saved lives, and the world should be made aware of this reality. . . . In the hands of law-abiding citizens, guns can and do save lives.”
Noble still favors a variety of non-prohibitory gun regulations that I do not. Yet the global question is not about the exact scope of Second Amendment rights in the United States. In Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the United States, mass shootings have become all too common. The perpetrators may be terrorists, gangs or people with mental illness. (The last category overlaps significantly with the first two categories.) The global question is about reducing the number of innocent people who are murdered. Among the important steps in saving lives is acknowledging that victims of mass attacks are necessarily their own first responders. As Westgate Mall demonstrated, when innocent victims have the tools of defense, innocent lives are saved.
On Tuesday, Kopel appeared on NRANews.com's Cam and Company and discussed his post at the Volokh Conspiracy as well as the new video Noble has posted on Vimeo.
This morning, Bloomberg's anti-gun mouthpiece The Trace asks the "Is Merrick Garland Anti-Gun" then sets out to tell us that everything that we heard from pro-rights groups after President Obama announced his new Supreme Court pick doesn't really mean anything:
This critique, foreshadowed by gun rights proponents over the past few weeks as Garland’s name surfaced as a possible candidate to replace Antonin Scalia, is largely premised on a procedural vote Garland made in a 2007 case that centered on whether Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban was unconstitutional. But those who denounce Garland in the name of gun rights might be misreading that 2007 vote, which was in favor of allowing more judges on his court to review a decision made by a three-judge panel, says Joseph Blocher, a constitutional law professor at Duke University.
Rather than definitive evidence that Garland would like to curtail gun rights, the vote may simply be an indication that he is a jurist who is especially deferential to rulings made by previous courts, Blocher says. “It is impossible to tell” what Garland meant by voting for rehearing, Blocher tells The Trace. “It may well be that he just wanted the whole court to weigh in on such a major decision. That would not be particularly unusual.”
With all due respect to Professor Blocher, I'll take VSSA Life Member Steve Halbrook and Dave Kopel's insight on the issue. Halbrook appeared on NRANews yesterday to discuss the nomination.
Kopel wrote back in 2008 in America's First Freedom:
Merrick Garland is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He could be counted on not only to oppose Second Amendment rights in general, but even to nullify explicit congressional statutes that protect those rights.
In 2007, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled against the D.C. handgun ban in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia (which was the name of the case that eventually became District of Columbia v. Heller when it went before the Supreme Court). The D.C. government asked for a rehearing of the case, before all 10 judges of the D.C. Circuit.
Six judges voted not to rehear the case, while four judges voted for a rehearing, presumably because they disagreed with the three-judge panel that had ruled against the handgun ban. Garland was one of the four judges who wanted a chance to validate the handgun ban.
In 2000, Garland was on a three-judge panel that heard the case of NRA v. Reno. In that case, the Janet Reno Department of Justice had flouted the congressional statutes that prohibit the federal government from compiling a registration list of gun owners, and which required the destruction of national instant check (NICS) records of lawful, approved gun purchases.
Judge Garland voted to let Reno get away with it. He said that registering all the people who were approved by NICS was permissible because Reno was not registering every gun owner in the country. And he said it was fine for Reno to keep gun buyer records for six months because although Congress had said the records must be destroyed, it did not say “immediately.”
It is expected that Virginia's Senators Warner and Kaine will stay in lock step with Obama on this nominee but it won't hurt for gun owners to register their opposition and point out the above as reasons that anyone who claims to support the 2nd Amendment, as both Warner and Kaine do, should oppose Garland for the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, Dave Kopel, Research Director of the Independence Institute, spoke with Cam Edwards of NRANews' Cam and Company and discussed the impact of the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court and our right to keep and bear arms.
Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, acknowledging the individual right to keep and bear arms. Besides the essential gun rights decision in Heller and McDonald, Kopel said that Scalia brought two important things to the law: originalism, the Constitution’s meaning at the time of its enactment, and textualism, looking at the words on the paper, not some other outside intent. Kopel told Cam that if President Obama or his successor are able to change the balance of the court, Heller is likely to be overturned or so diminished that it will only allow a handgun in the home.
As if the direction of the Supreme Court wasn't already going to be a focus of this year's election with so many justices in their upper 70's or older, Scalia's death makes it even more so. National Review's Jim Geraghty shares some sobering numbers via this morning's Morning Jolt on the subject:
Strangely, the percentage of people who said they had “never heard of” Antonin Scalia increased from 29 percent in 2001 to 39 percent in 2005. Was that the Greatest Generation, who read newspapers, dying off and the Millennials, who never look up from their cell phones, entering the polling sample?
This is a free country, and you’re free to not care, and free to not pay any attention to, say, one-third and arguably our most powerful branch of government. I understand the sense that it would be a better world if we could spend more time thinking less about what government is doing about more pleasant things -- food, sports, movies, home furnishings, how awesome the finale of Gravity Falls was, etc.
But if you choose to pay no attention to these things, and refuse to read anything about them, watch anything about them, or learn anything about them . . . then I’d rather you left the voting to those of us who do care.
(This is also a key data point for those who think the next Supreme Court justice will be a pivotal issue in the 2016 elections. This matters to the bases of each party, but not the less-engaged, less-interested voters.)
It is our task over the next 8 months to make even the most apolitical gun owner understand what this election means to their right to buy and own firearms.
Today, the Cato Institute published a monograph by Dave Kopel titled "The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control." It is a very thorough look at three of the so-called "common-sense" measures that President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and groups like Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety point to as a remedy for mass shootings. Kopel looks at "universal" background checks, a ban on so-called high-capacity magazines, and a ban on the equally misnamed assault weapons. He describes why all three are misguided and explains why none of them will prevent mass shootings. Kopel notes in his introduction to the paper that policymakers instead can take some steps to incapacitate certain mentally ill persons who are potentially violent. He also reminds us that "it would be wrong not to acknowledge that gun laws often cannot stop a person bent on murder", and it is futile for policymakers to pretend otherwise. The monograph is a must read for pro-rights advocates who wish to counter the claims of the gun ban crowd.
Update: On Wednesday, Kopel spoke with Cam Edwards of NRANews.com about the monograph.
Last week, Dave Kopel wrote two columns on the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy that lays bare the real intentions behind the call for "expanded" or "universal" background checks that Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety pushes. VAGunRights.com wrote about the first piece that discussed the impact the proposal has on firearm safety training, something you would think Everytown would support. The second piece dealt with how "universal" background checks is a de facto handgun ban for people under the age of 21. Federal law prohibits those people from purchasing a handgun from a dealer. But those individuals are not banned from possessing a handgun under federal law. They can use a family's gun at the range or receive them as a gift from a family member. But under so-called universal background checks, they would not be able to even do that as those checks have to go through a dealer and dealers cannot transfer a handgun to someone under the age of 21. Kopel calls "universal background checks as proposed by Everytown (and implemented in Washington State) a classic bait-and-switch, presenting one thing, but doing another. He appeared on NRANews' Cam and Company to discuss both articles.
Over on the Volokh Conspiracy, Dave Kopel runs down a comprehensive list of bills passed in state legislatures in 2015. His list includes both pro-gun and pro-hunting bills.
In the new America's First Freedom, Independence Institute research director Dave Kopel writes about the growing practice of physicians asking their patients about gun ownership and gun storage practices. In the article, Kopel shares the stories of patients who have answered these questions and then been subjected to visits from Child Protective Services.
In San Francisco, a man honestly answered his doctor’s questions about whether there were guns in the home. A short time later, Child Protective Services arrived at the residence, and demanded to be let inside so that they could inspect whether the guns were locked up.
There are also instances when patients refused to answer, and had their doctors end their doctor-patient relationship.
In Ocala, Fla., Amber Ullman took her 4-month-old baby to a pediatrician for shots and a checkup. When she refused to answer the gun question, the doctor terminated the relationship and the mother was given 30 days to find a new pediatrician.
There is an individual who runs two groups, one state and one national, who fashions himself as the true champion of our rights. In reality, he is a huckster who has never done anything constructive for the movement legislatively or electorally but takes self-promotion to new heights all in the name of raising money. The individual's name is Dudley Brown and his groups are the Colorado group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and the national group is National Association for Gun Rights. You probably have seen his emails or fundraising efforts disguised as gun giveaways.
To show you just how dishonest this individual is, in 2013, at the height of the battle to defeat President Obama's gun control proposals, Brown came into Virginia attacking NRA "A" rated U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Brown sent our an email announcing a press conference to roll out a television ad against Cantor that claimed he was supporting Obama's gun control. The email also invited pro-gun supporters to the event. Unfortunately for Brown, no press showed up although a handful of gun rights supporters did attend. Brown spoke briefly, showed the attack ad, introduced his staff (which out numbered those in attendance) and ended the event. That afternoon, he sent a follow-up email complete with a photo that made it appear media representatives were asking questions. In reality it was a staged photo using the staff that was taken after the event had ended and everyone else left. Brown later claimed credit for the defeat of Cantor in the 2014 primary, though his little seen ad played absolutely no role in the race.
Now, Brown has turned his attention on someone who has impeccable pro-rights credentials, Dave Kopel. Earlier this month, the Colorado legislature was trying to repeal the 15 round limit on ammunition magazines that was passed in 2013. Last week, the battle came to a head. This from the Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board:
Many leading Democrats, since passing the laws, have conceded they went too far.
"A lot of people, if they'd known how much commotion was going to come out of the high-capacity magazines would've, probably would've looked for something different, looked for a different approach," Hickenlooper told Colorado sheriffs in 2014.
More recently, Rep. Joe Salazar extended an olive branch to Second Amendment defenders. The most controversial of the gun laws forbids magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. As vice chairman of the powerful House Veterans and Military Affairs Committee — where the majority party typically kills minority bills — Salazar has committed to supporting a bill that would increase the limit to 30 rounds. It signifies a potential big victory for Republicans and gun rights in a House controlled by Democrats. It represents the kind of bipartisanship Colorado has seldom witnessed in the past decade.
The compromise would resolve 99 percent of concerns about the magazine ban.
Salazar's cooperative attitude has received applause from Colorado's most tireless and successful Second Amendment defenders. Among them is attorney David Kopel, who helped win D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago in the U.S. Supreme Court — the most important gun-rights victories of the 21st century. Kopel represented Colorado sheriffs in a lawsuit that challenged Colorado's new gun laws. But in the view of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Kopel is a problem. The group is distributing an ad that features Kopel's photo and the words: "Oppose the Kopel Kompromise."
Moving the limit from 15 to 30 rounds would be considered a victory by most people as many rifle models come standard with magazines over 15 but less than or equal to 30. But not Brown. With people like him, it's all or nothing because that's how he can continue to raise money.
The Independence Institute, with which Kopel is affiliated, fired back.
In Virginia, we would not have passed the repeal of the restaurant ban if we had not compromised. In the early days of the repeal effort, there were groups that wanted a straight repeal with no prohibition on consuming alcohol. Those bills went nowhere. They finally understood the only way to get the repeal was to include a prohibition on consuming alcohol. The repeal finally passed, and was vetoed by Tim Kaine, but was finally signed by Bob McDonnell a couple years later.
People like Brown do more harm than they do good for our cause. Thankfully, he has no influence in Virginia.
Fastcompany.com has this article about NRA's marketing and suggests they are targeting moms as a response to the supposed success of Moms Demand Action:
The National Rifle Association doesn't make its demographic makeup public, although you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn't concede it is overwhelmingly white, conservative, and male. (Gun ownership data published by Pew Research seems to support this.) But lately, it seems like the NRA's leadership is especially interested in courting a new and very vocal demographic with considerable household influence: moms.
I don't know that NRA is specifically targeting moms, but with female gun ownership at all time highs, it only makes sense that the NRA would reach out to women.
It's probably no accident that this attention to NRA's marketing comes on the heels of NRA unveiling a new membership campaign which features a number of women, one of which is below.
I've seen blog posts, Twitter posts, and news reports that make Saturday's ruling in Parker all roses for non D.C. residents when it comes to carrying handguns in the District. Dave Kopel wrote this morning on the Volokh Conspiracy. As usual he provides some thorough analysis but also adds some cautionary comments about the ruling:
Taking into account the summaries from the WaPo and from Fox31, it is clear that one should not read them as if they were legal codes. For example, the WaPo article indicates that non-residents “without felony records” can carry in D.C. It is possible that Chief Lanier said this, but it seems more likely that the D.C. Attorney advice which she transmitted to the D.C. Police was more restrictive than the article’s text would literally mean. Federal law (18 U.S.C. 922(g)) sets up 9 categories of persons who are prohibited from possessing firearms. A felony conviction is the best-known of the “prohibited persons” classes, but not the only one. It seems doubtful that the new D.C. order allows gun carrying by persons dishonorably discharged by the military, persons convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor against an intimate partner, and so on, who are prohibited by federal law from gun possession.
And Kopel notes other things to consider:
Nothing in the District Court’s opinion invalidates the D.C. ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds. Nothing in the opinion addresses the numerous federal and D.C. laws which prohibit carry in a huge number of locations within the District–such as most federal buildings, lots of federal property, as well as schools and colleges. (The D.C. “school” ban even encompasses a school of cosmetology whose students are all adults.) Under a 2009 federal statute, National Parks must follow the arms-carrying policies of their host state. The National Park Service regulation implementing this statute includes the following exemption to a general ban on weapons in National Parks. “(h) Notwithstanding any other provision in this Chapter, a person may possess, carry, and transport concealed, loaded, and operable firearms within a national park area in accordance with the laws of the state in which the national park area, or that portion thereof, is located, except as otherwise prohibited by applicable Federal law.” 36 C.F.R. § 2.4. Thus, it might arguably be lawful to carry a concealed handgun at the Jefferson Memorial, if you have a handgun carry permit from your home state (or if you are a D.C. resident with a registered handgun).
The order provided to Metropolitan Police Officers by Chief Cathy Lanier can be found here.
A debate between Adam Winkler and Dave Kopel. As usual, Kopel provides us with good information to respond to those who advocate for criminalizing the private transfer of firearms. You can find part one here and part two here. The closing arguments will be posted soon.
Over the weekend a split emerged in the pro-rights community on the Manchin/Toomey/Schumer background check amendment. Alan Gottlieb announced that the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms not only was supporting Manchin/Toomey/Schumer, but that they had a hand writing it and making the claim that the amendment has far more goodies for gun owners than bad measures. Bitter at Shall Not Be Questionedposted about this yesterday complete with video of Gottlieb talking about CCRKBA's role in the "compromise." Shortly after her post, Gottlieb appeared on Tom Gresham's Gun Talk Radio program to discuss it further. You can hear that discussion below.
In short, Gottlieb claims that we are only giving up private checks at gun shows and those advertized over the internet, but we are getting all these pro-rights pieces including:
Interstate sales of handguns,
Veteran gun rights restoration,
Travel with firearms protection,
Divil and criminal immunity lawsuit protection,
The guarantee that people, including federal officers, will go to federal prison for up to 15 years if they attempt to use any gun sales records to set up a gun registry.”
Dave Kopel address the travel with firearms and gun registry here:
The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.
Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.
Then Kopel address the travel provision that Gottlieb promotes:
But notice part (2) of the new definition: a new exclusion for any firearms crime punishable by more than year of imprisonment. In some states, such a crime includes merely not having a state-issued gun permit. So now let’s suppose that the Pennsylvanian is going to Maine. On the way, he travels through Massachusetts. Under current law, FOPA protects him. Under Manchin-Toomey, Massachusetts can arrest and imprison him, and he will have no federal defense. In Massachusetts, possession of a firearm without a state permit is punishable by imprisonment up to to 2 years. Possession outside one’s home or business is a sentence of 2.5 to 5 years, with a mandatory minimum of 18 months. New Jersey and New York City also have penalties of over one year for simple possession without a local permit.
Maybe the Pennsylvanian might qualify for some exemption under the laws of Mass., NYC, or NJ. Or perhaps not. What we know for sure is that today the Pennsylvanian is protected by FOPA, and if Manchin-Toomey passes, he will not be.
On a related note, Larry Keene addressed the issue on Bill Bennett's program this morning. As the trade association for manufacturers and retailers, he is looking at Manchin-Toomey from that perspective and sees a lot to not like in it.
Finally, the editors of National Review had this to say about the "compromise" amendment:
The provision would create new hurdles for law-abiding gun owners, requiring two private parties to seek out — and pay — a federally licensed intermediary before they could carry out a simple transaction. Worse, the vagueness of the legislative language would make it difficult for private sellers to determine if a given sale requires a check. The new regime would make even the most innocently intentioned of firearms transfers significantly more risky for the average American.
In addition to being difficult to comply with, the provision is likely to prove difficult to enforce. Because it would exclude a broad class of transfers, unscrupulous sellers would quickly establish methods of advertising their wares that hid in the lacunae of the legislative language, and adequate enforcement of the law would require police and prosecutors to devote considerable resources to the parsing of close cases and the ferreting out of intent. This mess would likely lead to the reappraisal of today’s legitimate and noncontroversial exclusions as tomorrow’s unacceptable loopholes. Indeed, the very same “gun-show loophole” Toomey/Manchin attempts to close was once a perfectly respectable member of the class of private sales the bill makes a show of protecting.
VSSA stands firm in opposition to Manchin/Toomey/Schumer.
And this one from Dave Kopel on National Review Online that explains how Chuck Schumer's "Fix Gun Checks Act" is based on "model language" that the Bloomberg gun-ban lobby is pushing all over the country:
To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms “transfers.” She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.
While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.
One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.
Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.
And finally, talk show host Mark Levin spent a great deal of time on his program in each hour talking about the background check issue and the 2nd Amendment in general. It is worth the hour and fifty two minutes to listen to the podcast.
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