Cook Co. 'out-D.C.-ing' D.C., part III

Time for a bit more on the Cook County ordinance proposed by Commissioner "Hog with Big Nuts" Beavers (see Part I and Part II for background).

There is simply too much that his horrible about this bill for me to possibly cover it all. But here are a few more absurdities, in no particular order:

To register a gun, the person registering must have "vision better than or equal to that required to obtain a valid driver's license under the standards established by the Illinois Vehicle Code of the State of Illinois, as amended"--no word on whether or not a vision screening is part of the registration process.

The registration application must include "Two photographs of the applicant taken within 30 days immediately prior to the date of filing the application equivalent to passport size showing the full face, head and shoulders of the applicant in a clear and distinguishing manner"

When necessary to establish the identity of any applicant or registrant, such applicant or registrant shall be required to submit to fingerprinting in accordance with procedures and regulations prescribed by the Sheriff. Why do I have the sneaky suspicion that fingerprints will always be considered "necessary"?

The above applies for each firearm, by the way, and the term of the registration is only one year, with the entire process repeated for renewal. Missing renewal once makes the firearm "unregisterable."

Registration fees for firearms shall be as follows:

1 firearm . . . $20.00

2--10 firearms . . . $25.00

More than ten firearms . . . $35.00

It will be illegal to own any ammunition that cannot be used in any gun you have registered.

Laser sights are banned, county-wide.

If caught with an unregisterd gun (or a laser sight) in your car, the car is subject to seizure.

Etc., etc.

Some of this, I have to believe, will not pass muster when (inevitably) challenged in court, and I think the board knows this. I think they're just throwing everything they can think of at us, and seeing what sticks.

Fighting it, though, will be expensive, and tie up a huge amount of ISRA's resources. And when any one provision of the law is struck down, its loss doesn't affect the rest, because of this:

If any provision or term of this Division, or any application thereof, is held invalid, the invalidity shall not affect other applications of the provisions or terms of this Division which reasonably can be given effect without the invalid provision or term for the application thereof.

In the meantime, any confiscated firearms are destroyed, so even if they were confiscated on grounds that are later overturned, that gun is gone forever.

Days of Our Trailers has more--pay special attention to the following:

So, along w/ Commissioner Suffredin's attempt to ban all gun shops, are "authorized journalists" from ABC complicit in this to stir up support?

Cook County says there is no Second Amendment. I say it's time they find out how wrong they are.

Oh--almost forgot. Few, if any, of these restrictions apply to police officers--so the only people with guns will be the criminals who ignore the law . . . and Chicago's finest:
$20 million police brutality settlement advances in Chicago City Hall
Sergeant convicted of rape
City settles with family of paralyzed man . . . to name but a few (but all those shootings are justified, right?).

Cook Co. 'out-D.C.-ing' D.C., part II

OK, a bit more on the proposed Cook County Ordinances. I'll deal with Suffredin's proposal first. I've already mentioned this proposed ordinance, and the fact that it would force several Cook County gun shops out of business (although I still have doubts that the county would have the authority to do that). According to ISRA, though, it's much worse that I had thought, in that it would force the closure of all Cook County gun shops, including the brand-new Cabela's "super-store" in Hoffman Estates, with all the loss of jobs and massive tax revenue that entails. I haven't really analyzed ISRA's claims with regard to that, but it seems plausible. As bad as this ordinance would be, it's kind of mild compared to the other one.

Commissioner William "Busy" Beavers' proposed ordinance has so many horrid provisions that I'm not even trying to make a comprehensive summary here--it would take all day. Still, I can come up with plenty of fascist provisions in pretty short order.

First, look at the following provision about what can be registered (and remember that possessing an unregistered gun will be illegal):

No registration certificate shall be issued for any of the following types of firearms:

(b) Firearms other than handguns, owned or possessed by any person in the County prior to the effective date of this Ordinance which are not validly registered prior to the effective date of this Ordinance;

(c) Handguns, except:

(1) Those validly registered to a current owner in the County prior to the effective date of this Ordinance . . .

That seems to be saying that any gun not registered before the effective date of the very law that establishes the registry, cannot be registered. That begs the question of how to register a gun before there is a registry. The obvious answer is that you cannot. Gun owners in Chicago itself, of course, already have to register their guns, so this part would not seem to make their legally owned guns subject to confiscation--but it would seem to treat long guns just like handguns--the only way to have them is if they're "grandfathered." All other Cook County residents (as I don't know of any other municipality within Cook that maintains a gun registry) would seem to be in even worse shape, because even every gun they already own would seem to be impossible to register. To be fair, an Illinois gun rights advocate and blogger for whom I have a great deal of respect doesn't think it would work quite that way (thinks it's basically a grandfather clause)--but I'm not sure I agree. It would certainly seem to ban the registration of guns that aren't already owned in Cook County on the effective date of the ban--basically, no more guns in Cook County.

Let's assume that there is some way for Cook County residents outside of Chicago to register their guns (the ones they already have), to avoid the guns' confiscation and destruction--what else do they have to deal with? Well, for one thing, very few handguns will be possible to register, because of the following provision (in reference to the requirements a handgun must meet to be "registerable"):

(i) A safety mechanism to hinder the use of the handgun by unauthorized users. Such devices shall include, but shall not be limited to, trigger locks, combination handle locks, and solenoid use-limitation devices; and,

(ii) A load indicator device that provides reasonable warning to potential users such that even users unfamiliar with the weapon would be forewarned and would understand the nature of the warning;

As far as I know, no one makes a handgun with a "combination handle lock" (although a fellow Illinois Carry member came up with this prototype), or a "solenoid use-limitation device," so the only way to meet that requirement is with a trigger lock. Several manufacturers do offer guns with those--all recent Smith and Wesson's, I believe, have such a mechanism. Springfield Armory, I believe, still offers their Internal Locking System (ILS) on at least some of their handguns, and I might have read somewhere that Walther has a trigger locking system. There may very well be others.

But there's another requirement--a loaded chamber indicator. I don't think any revolver has one (and I don't know how it could be done), so this would seem to be an outright ban on all revolvers. As for semi-autos, how many have both the trigger lock and the loaded chamber indicator? Very bloody few, I'd guess.

No "assault weapons" can be registered, and remember that Cook passed (last year, I think) a vast expansion of their definition of "assault weapons"--the AWB of '94 was extremely permissive, by comparison. As it turns out, though, it doesn't really matter what is currently defined as an "assault weapon," because both the sheriff (Tom Dart) and the county board president (Todd Stroger) have the authority to unilaterally define any firearm they choose as an assault weapon (from definition of assault weapon):

(3) Any weapon that the President, the Board, or the Sheriff defines by regulation as an assault weapon because the design or operation of such weapon is inappropriate for lawful use.

Don't worry, though--Stroger and Dart are friends of gun owners, as will be their successors. Yeah, right.

That's all I have time for at the moment--more updates to follow.

Cook Co. 'out-D.C.-ing' D.C. Part I

I'll post more on this later, but I wanted to get this out as fast as possible:

ISRA Alert:
TOTAL COOK COUNTY GUN BAN CLEARS FIRST HURDLE

Rabid gun-grabbers on the Cook County Board came one step closer last week to instituting a total ban on firearm ownership in the county – except for police and military personnel.

Introduced by Commissioner William Beavers, the so-called “Safe Streets/Weapons Registration Ordinance” appears on the surface to be some sort of gun registration scheme. However, closer examination reveals that the only people who could comply with the registration requirements would be Chicago residents who had previously registered their guns with the city. Everyone else in Cook County would have to turn in their guns to the police. The ordinance would certainly ban all handguns as the ordinance disallows registration of handguns that do not have a “chamber load” indicator. Few, if any, handguns could comply with this requirement, so they would have to be surrendered to the police.

The full text of Beavers’ proposed ordinance may be found here. To learn more about William Beavers, click this link: http://www.co.cook.il.us/district04.htm .

William Beavers is an enemy to our Constitution and an enemy to all freedom-loving people of the United States. Call him at (312) 603-2065 and also call his other office at (773) 731-1515 and tell them exactly what you think of Beavers and his plan to disarm law-abiding citizens.

Another gun-hater on the Cook County Board is Larry Suffredin. Suffredin has fielded a proposed ordinance that would shut down all gun shops in the county. You may read about that ordinance by clicking here.

Larry Suffredin is an enemy to our Constitution and an enemy to all freedom-loving people of the United States. For full information on Larry Suffredin, click this link: http://www.co.cook.il.us/district13.htm . Call Suffredin at 847-864-1209 and 312-603-6383 and tell them exactly what you think of Larry Suffredin’s plan to punish law-abiding gun owners.

Even if you don’t live in Cook County, or even if you don’t live in Illinois for that matter, call anyway. Freedom is at stake here.

In addition to calling these gun-hating stooges, please do the following:

1. Post this alert to any and all Internet bulletin boards of which you are a member.

2. Send this alert to all your gun owning friends and ask them to call Beavers and Suffredin too!

This, folks, is a treasonous attack on the Constitution. As I understand it, the penalty for treason can be rather harsh.

Updates to follow.

Advice from the land of kangaroos

It seems that some of our friends down under have determined where to place the blame for a psychopathic loser's atrocity in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska. It would be, of course, barbaric and simple-minded to blame this monstrous act on its perpetrator--only someone caught up in America's primitive, brutal gun culture would fail to realize that it was not really his fault. Nope--the real culprit here is . . . Nebraska's concealed carry law.

NEBRASKA, the farming state with the highest per capita gun ownership in the US, began the year with LB-454, a new state law allowing people 21 years and over to carry a concealed handgun pretty much wherever they go.

Applicants must pass a routine police check, complete a basic handgun training course (most are run by ex-cops) and pay $US100 ($115) for a five-year permit. It's as simple as that.

Nebraska marked the end of the year yesterday with a bloodbath at the Westroads shopping mall in Omaha, the state's largest city. Eight people were shot dead and several others are fighting for their lives.

The connection, I'm sure everyone realizes, is obvious. What worries me, though, is that some loudmouth troublemakers will confuse the issue by pointing out trivial little facts, such as:

A) The killer could not even legally buy or possess a gun, much less obtain a concealed carry license;

B) The killer, being on a mission to kill as many people as possible, and then kill himself, would hardly seem to have had much reason to be concerned with concealed carry laws;

C) This is the big one, folks--Westroads Mall policy prohibited concealed carry, even by licensees, and that prohibition carried the force of law.

Never mind all that--concealed carry kills--we know it does, and only a blood thirsty American gun fetishist would demand, you know . . . evidence.

There might be some meaning to this tragic waste of life if all over the Cornhusk state - the only US jurisdiction that still executes prisoners by frying them in the electric chair - the gun-culture penny was to finally drop.

Of course that's the meaning we must draw from this--that makes much more sense than questioning the mall's "No Guns" policy. Oops--too late, it seems.

Sadly, that is unlikely to be the case. Out in the American Midwest tragedies such as Westroads and the Virginia Tech massacre in April, when 32 people were killed, often serve to reinforce the convictions of gun nuts who believe that being armed is not just a constitutional right but goddamn common sense, too.

Hmm--the Midwest would seem an odd place to put Virginia Tech, but who can argue with the assertion that it's nutty to argue that "being armed is a Constitutional right," just because it's . . . listed in the Constitution as a right (of the People, Dennis) that shall not be infringed? And certainly only a gun nut would argue that it's "goddamn common sense" that being the helpless prey of an armed psychopath is more dangerous than being able to return fire.

Thanks, Australia--that should straighten us out.

Looks as if they forgot one

Last Thursday, in the Huffington Post, Paul Helmke (or whoever actually writes "Paul's" material) listed more than two and a half dozen high-profile shootings that have taken place in the U.S. over the last five or so years (listed from most recent to oldest--the list, edited for brevity, is at the bottom of this blog post).

Note that when I say "edited for brevity," I meant only that I abridged the summaries of many of the atrocities--I did not omit any that the Brady Bunch had included.

I mention that because of a rather prominent gap in Helmke's list of high-profile shootings--the murders in Crandon, WI, this October, of six teenagers--by a mentally unhinged law enforcement officer.

I've noticed the Bradys' willingness to overlook that mass-killing before. They list shootings in which the body count was lower (including one in which none of the victims died), and the victims not so young, and they list shootings that are much less recent--but they don't want to talk about these six victims of "gun violence."

As the Bradys did before, they are again expressing "outrage"--this time over the Westroads Mall killings in Omaha, NE.

The horror of the deaths of those six young, innocent victims, though, is apparently not enough to "outrage" the Brady Bunch. I wouldn't want to say that the Brady Campaign places a lower value on the lives of those young people, but . . .

Perhaps that is unworthy on my part. Perhaps it is unfair of me to imply that the Brady Campaign ranks some murders committed with guns as less heinous than others. Perhaps I should acknowledge that the Brady Campaign needs allies, and needs to be able to claim law enforcement among those allies (such support from law enforcement, by the way, is not as widespread as the Brady Campaign would have us believe, as illustrated by the pro-gun rights Law Enforcement Alliance of America, and by the first letter to the editor here). Perhaps they believe that they simply cannot afford to be "outraged" about an atrocity committed by an armed law enforcement officer.

That being the case, I hope the families and friends of the six murdered teenagers in Crandon are not too upset with the Brady Campaign. It is, after all, nothing personal with the Brady Bunch--just politics.

* Omaha, Nebraska. December 2007. Nine are shot to death and five others . . .

* Moscow, Idaho. May 2007. A 36 year-old janitor belonging to the Aryan Nations shoots 200 rounds . . .

* Blacksburg, Virginia. April 2007. In the worst mass shooting in American history . . .

* Salt Lake City, Utah. February 2007. A teen opens fire inside the Trolley Square Mall, killing five, before being shot and killed by police.

* Chicago, Illinois. December 2006. A disgruntled client of attorney Michael McKenna forces his way into a busy downtown office building . . .

* Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. October 2006. A truck driver walks into a one-room Amish schoolhouse . . .

* Lakeland, Florida. September 2006. While attempting to flee after a traffic stop, a man shoots and kills one police officer, wounds another . . .

* Bailey, Colorado. September 2006. A lone gunman holds six female students hostage at a high school . . .

* Hillsborough, North Carolina. August 2006. After shooting his father to death, a student opens fire at his high school, injuring two students . . .

* Essex, Vermont. August 2006. A gunman shoots five people, killing two of them, in a rampage through two houses and an elementary school, before wounding himself.

* Seattle, Washington. July 2006. A man forces his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle by putting a gun . . .

* St. Louis, Missouri. April 2006. A man first kills the mother of his child, then goes to his workplace and shoots three others to death . . .

* Seattle, Washington. March 2006. Kyle Huff walks into a party and kills six people in the Capitol Hill neighborhood before killing himself . . .

* Bellefontaine, Ohio. May 2005. Scott Moody kills his grandparents, his mother, his two friends . . .

* Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota. March 2005. Former high school student kills ten and injures seven in a shooting rampage . . .

* Brookfield, Wisconsin. March 2005. A madman fires 22 rounds during a church service. Seven are killed . . .

* Tyler, Texas. February 2005. A gunman – wearing a bulletproof vest and a military flak jacket – shoots over 50 rounds with an AK-47 . . .

* Columbus, Ohio. December 2004. Man walks onstage and shoots and kills four concertgoers before being killed in shootout with police.

* Birchwood, Wisconsin. November 2004. A hunter opens fire with an SKS assault rifle, killing six other hunters . . .

* Kansas City, Kansas. July 2004. Six people die and two others are wounded when a gunman opens fire at a ConAgra plant and then shoots himself.

* Birmingham, Alabama. June 2004. Three police officers are shot to death as they attempt to carry out an arrest warrant.

* Randallstown, Maryland. May 2004. Four teenagers are injured, one critically, by a drive-by shooter as they leave a charity basketball game at their high school.

* Cold Spring, Minnesota. September 2003. A 15-year-old student opens fire at Rocori High School, killing two students.

* Chicago, Illinois. August 2003. A fired worker shoots and kills six of his former co-workers with a .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol . . .

* Andover, Ohio. August 2003. An angry employee, denied vacation because of a paperwork mix-up, shoots and kills a co-worker . . .

* San Antonio, Texas. July 2003. A man walks into the real estate office where he had worked and opens fire. He fatally shoots two co-workers . . .

* Meridian, Mississippi. July 2003. A retired Lockheed Martin employee enters the plant where he had worked and opens fire . . .

* New Orleans, Louisiana. April 2003. Four boys aged 15-19 open fire in a high school gym with an AK-47 killing one student and injuring three others.

* Huntsville, Alabama. February 2003. Four people are killed and another injured when a gunman opens fire at a temporary employment agency . . .

* Edinburg, Texas. January 2003. Four men armed with assault weapons shoot six people to death in their homes.

* Fall 2002. John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo randomly selected victims in sniper-style shootings . . .

UPDATE: Look who stopped by!
(click to enlarge)

Don't be shy, folks--stick around and chat--we could have some "Reasoned Discourse" (after all, I still allow comments).

A gun law I could support (finally realized there is one)

In my blog post yesterday, I viewed the removal of the "No Guns" signs from the Westroads Mall as a good thing, because without such signs, the mall cannot enforce a "No Guns" policy--cannot mandate defenselessness, in other words.

While I still, of course, see the rescission of the defenselessness mandate as a (tragically belated) positive step, I think I missed the point about what is really going on with the removal of the signs. War on Guns, however, did not.

They probably got a panicked call from their legal department worried about liability. If someone sues, I hope they subpoena not just the removed signs, but also any and all memos, emails, etc., ordering and discussing the removal, as well as obtain depositions from the decisions makers and those who carried out the removals.

This brings me to the gun law I would like to see. This law was proposed in, of all places, Illinois (in 2005). Someone, obviously, felt like tilting at Illinois' anti-gun windmills. Judging by the bills' (there were two of them--one in the House, and an identical one in the Senate) quick (and inevitable) journey to oblivion in committee, the legislators who introduced these bills had about the same chance of success as did Don Quixote.

The bills to which I refer were called the "Gun-free Zone Criminal Conduct Liability Act," and would impose liability upon businesses and units of government (and even individuals) who mandate a gun-free zone, which is then exploited by a criminal to allow him to go about his carnage without resistance.

Here is a summary of HB0477/SB0044:

Synopsis As Introduced
Creates the Gun-free Zone Criminal Conduct Liability Act. Provides that any person, organization, or entity or any agency of government, including any unit of local government, that creates a gun-free zone is liable for all costs, attorney's fees, and treble damages resulting from criminal conduct that occurs against an individual in the gun-free zone, if a reasonable person would believe that possession of a firearm could have helped the individual defend against such conduct. Defines "gun-free zone". Effective immediately.

The NRA has for the last few years tried to raise support for laws that would prevent businesses from prohibiting employees from bringing guns to work (at least as far as the parking lot), and even in fairly "gun-friendly" states have found it very heavy going. As outspoken an advocate of gun rights as I am, I have some reservations about such laws--I think a very light touch needs to be employed, in terms of trying to avoid an infringement of property rights.

It seems to me that a law like the Gun-free Zone Criminal Conduct Liability Act might be a better approach, and might even be more easily passed (although not in Illinois anytime soon), because it still leaves the property owner the option of banning guns--he just assumes more risk in doing so. I do think, though, that it could be improved by borrowing a provision from the NRA-backed bills: a liability shield (for damages due to violence) for the property owner or government agency that does not ban guns.

Some, even among the gun rights advocacy community, will see even this as going too far. That is a position I can respect, because I'm not particularly enthusiastic about placing less than 100% of the responsibility for violent crime on the criminal scum who commits it. Still, for me, the bottom line is that in depriving a person an effective means of self-defense, one assumes the responsibility to provide an effective defense for him. I believe that a failure to do so should carry a cost.

As things stand today, it's the victims who bear that cost. That is wrong.

A vital lesson learned (but at such terrible cost)? Never mind*

As has been pointed out before (well, at least in a couple places), the Westroads Mall mandated that customers and employees be defenseless in the face of psychopaths like the one who struck Wednesday. The ineffable evil of denying people the most fundamental right in all of nature, that of self-defense, claimed yet another rich harvest of victims.

Interestingly, though, a rumor started floating around Thursday about a possible change in the air. I first encountered this rumor at Snowflakes in Hell, who in turn got it at The Michael Bane Blog:

On the Nebraska mall shooting, I'm getting unsubstantiated reports that the mall has removed the "No Guns" signs from their little gun-free zone paradise, lest someone take a picture of them.

Now, an Omaha area gun rights blog (Joe's Crabby Shack) would seem to have provided some substantiation.

Well, Freedom Fiends, I just got back from Westroads and guess what I didn't find?

The rules of conduct signs were gone, leaving only marred paint and screw holes behind.

He then goes on to document several other places in the mall that had recently (certainly through Wednesday, anyway) had such signs, but do no longer.

As I understand the Nebraska concealed carry law, any business has the power to prohibit guns, and that prohibition carries the force of law. However, that policy has to be displayed (even the anti-defense bureaucrats seem to understand that people cannot be expected to know the rules by some kind of telepathy). In other words: no sign, no "gun-free zone."

Is this a true reversal of company policy, a tragically belated realization that defenselessness kills? Or is it a cynical attempt to try to sweep the old, fatal policy under the rug (meaning, possibly, that the signs will go back up when the massacre slips from the front page)? Unfortunately, there seems to be some indication of the latter possibility, as Joe determined by noting that Westroad's "sister mall," across town, and under the same management, still has the signs. It is, I suppose, too early to tell.

I hope defense-minded residents of the Omaha area let mall management know (and Oak View, too) that those signs need to stay gone.

Perhaps mall management needs to study this:

(from CNS News)

War on Guns has more, and makes the excellent point (a point that I had missed, somehow) that by "disappearing" the signs, perhaps mall management is trying to escape civil liability.

*UPDATE (12/20/2007): Westroads Mall has once again been mandated a "Defenseless Victim Zone"

Actually, that's a very good idea

I never thought I'd agree with Paul Helmke, and doing so almost makes me feel the need to take another shower, but when he suggests that presidential candidates should be "quizzed" on "assault weapons," I have to admit I'm on board 100%.

Helmke said voters should demand responses from the campaigning presidential candidates. He said they should ask why Americans are allowed to buy guns designed for the military.

OK--granted, I wouldn't phrase the question that way. As Days of Our Trailers reminds us (in response to the same article), banning "guns designed for the military" would ban a vast number of guns--including many that no one has tried to classify as so-called "assault weapons" (including, in fact, "Brown Bess" muskets, as pointed out by a commenter and blogger). Of course, I oppose bans on any firearms, but the more extensive the list, obviously, the more egregious the ban becomes.

The question I would ask would be more along the lines of "Can freedom-loving Americans count on you to veto any gun ban legislation, and if not, from whence would the Constitutional authority for such a ban be derived?"

Paul, being Paul, also had something to say about the magazines (or "clips," as Helmke insists--erroneously--on calling them).

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Thursday that the 30-round ammunition clips Robert Hawkins reportedly used in Wednesday's shootings in Omaha would have been illegal to purchase under the assault-weapons ban.

Helmke said this because . . . well, because he's a liar, that's why. The ban on so-called "assault weapons" (and full capacity magazines) was not really a "ban," in that such magazines were 100% legal to own, to buy, and to use, as long as they were manufactured/imported before the "ban's" effective date (in September 1994). There were literally millions of legal 30 round AK-type magazines in the U.S. during the "ban," and though the fixed supply pushed the costs up some, they were still readily obtainable.

Then, Paul gets to the gun itself:

He said it was not yet clear if the gun itself, described as an AK-47 style assault rifle, would have been covered by the ban. But it should be illegal, he said.

“If this is something that can take a 30-round clip and fire them off quickly, it should be banned. This is a weapon of mass murder,” he said.

Supposedly, the rifle was a WASR-10, a Romanian-made semi-automatic knock-off of the AK-47, that complied in every way with the now expired "assault weapons" ban. Therefore, it would not have been "covered by the ban" (which, remember, wasn't really a ban, since the guns were legal to own, if manufactured/imported before Sept. '94). But it should be illegal, he says, because it can take a 30-round "clip" (magazine). He doesn't bother to point out that any gun that uses detachable magazines could accept a 30-round (or more) magazine, if such a magazine were made. There's no way to make a gun accept only small detachable magazines.

I find it interesting that his cut-off is apparently 30 rounds--if somehow a way were found to make the gun capable of accepting only 29 rounds, I guess that's OK with him. It's my understanding that most experienced AK shooters load their 30 round magazines with only 29 rounds, because reliability is better that way. I wonder if that would satisfy Paul.

The Des Moines Register (in which the article first appeared) actually did try to get the information Helmke wants.

Earlier this fall, The Des Moines Register surveyed presidential candidates about their stances on gun control.

Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama said they would support reinstating the assault-weapons ban.

Democrat Bill Richardson and Republicans Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo and Fred Thompson said they would not support reinstating the ban.

Not many surprises there, although Romney's answer is a bit hard to reconcile with his record as governor of Massachusetts (where he signed the state ban on so-called "assault weapons") and more recently, with what he said here:

I firmly believe in the importance of responsible gun ownership and sales. As a member of the National Rifle Association, I do not believe that we need any more federal gun control laws. I also recognize that some types of extreme weapons, those which were not meant for hunting, sport, or self-defense, have no business being on the streets.

"Extreme weapons," Mitt? Good grief. Oh--speaking of not many surprises, here's something else that shouldn't surprise anyone:

Republican Rudy Giuliani's campaign declined to specifically answer the question, but he supported the ban when it was enacted in 1994.

Pandering to both sides at the same time getting to be kind of tricky, Rudy?

The article ends with a bit more of Helmke's fancy footwork.

Helmke said it was not yet clear whether other restrictions, such as bans on sales of guns to mentally ill people, would have affected the outcome of Wednesday's shooting.

Since the punk stole the gun from his stepfather, who has never been judged to be mentally ill (at least there has been no such indication in the news), I would say that it is pretty clear that such restrictions would not have made any difference. Still, nice job of working a completely unrelated facet of your tyranny enabling agenda into the picture, Paul.

So I think Paul ought to make himself useful, and nail down Rudy's position, and find out from Mitt what the hell "extreme weapons" are.

Brady Bunch battle cry: 'Run away! Run away!'*

David Hardy has already discussed this (and anyone who reads my stuff without reading his has, to my way of thinking, some odd priorities), but he's not nearly as obnoxiously caustic as I am (I'll never claim to be the gentleman that Mr. Hardy is), so I figure I have something to add.

So, from what do the Bradys "bravely run away"? From their old position, that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right (from the Brady Bunch's 2003 amicus brief at the district court--pdf file), to their new one, that of course the right it protects is individual, but that this right exists only in the context of service in a government sanctioned militia.

Here's an excerpt from the 2003 amicus brief:

By this action, Plaintiffs seek to contest long-settle precedent that construes the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as protecting only the ability of the States to maintain a "well-regulated Militia." (p. 2), "The vast majority of courts have interpeted Miller as a rejection of any individual right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution," (p. 7) and "The Framers of the Constitution did not intend to create an individual right to bear arms." (p. 12)/ They cited pure collective rights cases (pp. 8-10).

I can't hear that argument without thinking of this. The Bradys were so married to that argument that, as recently as May of this year, their legal director (Dennis Henigan) tried to pretend that the words "of the People" were not in the Second Amendment.

That video clip, with accompanying transcript, was until recently available on the Brady Bunch website, but in the finest Brady Bunch tradition of simply ignoring parts of history with which they are uncomfortable, they removed any evidence of having said that (by pulling it from their website, and even pulling the video clip from YouTube)--presumably because of the heat they took when this was pointed out. Luckily, I kept my own copy. Not to boast, by the way, but I'm pretty sure I was one of the first to point out Henigan's "edited" Second Amendment on the blogosphere. My little claim to "fame" (I didn't spot it first--a gentleman on the Illinois Carry forum pointed this out way back in May, and I didn't think to do anything with it until late October). Here, by the way, is a clip that contains not only Henigan's version of the Second Amendment, but some good commentary about his little omission (the folks who made and posted that clip on YouTube also beat me to the punch, by several months, but I only just found out about it--guess I can't really claim being first, after all).

Their new position is considerably different (some might say dramatically different):

"Thus, the Parker court concludes, "the right in question is individual.

The court, however, simply obscured the real issue. There is no question that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to "the people" -- that much is clear from the text. The issue is: What right does the Second Amendment grant to the people? Is it the right to possess and use guns for private purposes like hunting or self-defense, as asserted by the Parker majority, or rather the right to be armed for purposes related only to service in a government-organized militia?"

Leaving alone, for the moment, the utter fabrication that there is anything in the text of the Second Amendment that states that the right to keep and bear arms is contingent on militia membership (government-organized militia membership, no less), this is quite obviously a rather dramatic reversal, and might be seen as indicative of a realization that their old position was a guaranteed loser.

Don't worry, Paul (Helmke)--you don't have to call it a "retreat," if that sounds too . . . cowardly to you. You can always call it a "retrograde maneuver." Then again, could it be that you don't view cowardice with the same contempt that most Americans do?



*Like these guys.

Not much to add

I'll say up front that little, if anything, that I'm about to post here has not already been pointed out on myriad other gun blogs, but the points are important enough to be worth making over and over. I refer, of course, to the murderous rampage perpetrated yesterday in an Omaha, Nebraska mall, by a cowardly, evil loser of a punk.

It is, of course, not only the pro-rights blogs that have taken note of this atrocity--the Brady Bunch has wasted no time in calling for a renewed ban on so-called "assault weapons."

We need to stop selling military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips to civilians. The killer knew what he was going to do, and he knew what tools he needed. Our weak gun laws make these killing machines readily available. We can take steps to prevent tragedies like this in the future.

What the Bradys don't mention is that the psychopath was armed not with an "assault weapon," but with an SKS rifle--which was never outlawed by the now (thankfully) expired ban on so-called "assault weapons." [Well, at least most news outlets are saying that Hawkins was armed with an SKS--CNN is calling it an AK-47--but since the same article also refers to "SKS 7.66 mm ammunition," it's pretty well impossible to put any faith in anything they have to say about firearms.] Anyway, I imagine the next thing the Bradys will have to say is "send us money."

More important than the Brady Bunch's hysterical distortions (which are, after all, quite predictable) is the generally ignored (with a few exceptions such as this and this) fact that this was yet another massacre in a "gun free zone" (or victim disarmament zone, or psychopath's free fire zone, etc.).

Although Nebraska passed a "Shall Issue" concealed carry law which went into effect last year, and even Omaha (surprisingly, I think) struck down its municipal ban on concealed carry, the Westroads Mall had its own policy of victim disarmament. Well, congratulations, Westroads Mall--that policy was just as resounding a success as Virginia Tech's similar policy, or Trolley Square's, for that matter.

If there is any justice in the universe, the ghosts of Robert Hawkins, Cho Seung-Hui, and Sulejman Talovic are suffering unspeakable torment somewhere, but unfortunately, they can take some comfort in the fact that the same victim disarmament policies that enabled the degree of carnage they caused are still in effect all over the country.

UPDATE: It seems that whether Young Mr. Punk Coward Psychopath used an SKS, or what the media calls an "AK-47" (which is generally mainstream mediaspeak for "semi-automatic copy of the AK-47") depends on which media outlet one chooses to believe. Heaven forbid I expect "Authorized Journalists" to get a simple question resolved within 24 hours. I note that the Brady Bunch is now calling the gun an SKS (and still insisting that it's an "assault weapon").

It's worth noting also that the "ban" on so-called "assault weapons" was not a ban in anything like the usual sense--such firearms manufactured (or imported) before the September 1994 effective date of the "ban" were completely legal to own, to sell, and to use; likewise the standard capacity (the more accurate term for "high capacity") magazines.

In short, the so-called "ban" on so-called "assault weapons" would not have been a serious obstacle to the worthless punk.

So what did these geniuses want the Supreme Court to do?

Peter Smith's blog post in the Huff 'n' Puff Post "Second Thoughts and Second Guessing: Second Amendment and the Supreme Court 2008," is a few weeks old, but there's something about it that I would like to point out. In it, Smith seems to take the position that the Supreme Court was somehow wrong for taking up the District of Columbia v. Heller case.

And isn't it convenient that somehow the court has decided to take up the issue in an election year? No reason to suspect collusion with the NRA there. Nope. None whatsoever. Not a bit.

Hey, genius--you do realize that it's the citizen disarmament advocates who rule D.C. who appealed to the Supreme Court, do you not? Granted, the pro-rights side also wants a Supreme Court ruling, but would have had no way of getting the case to SCOTUS without D.C.'s appeal. As to the especially ludicrous implication that this is some kind of shadowy conspiracy cooked up by the NRA and the Supreme Court, I suppose it would be too much to ask that Smith take note of the fact that the NRA worked actively to keep this case away from the Supreme Court. Interestingly, by the way, the Brady Bunch apparently tried to talk D.C. into retreating on its draconian gun laws, rather than appealing to the Supreme Court (not much faith in the strength of your side's case, Brady Bunch?).

In fairness to Smith, he is not the only one who seems to think the Supreme Court is butting into an issue in which it doesn't belong--the International Herald Tribune (on the same day of Smith's blog post) opened an op-ed piece with the claim that SCOTUS had "inserted itself" into the debate:

By agreeing this week to rule on whether provisions of Washington D.C.'s stringent gun control law violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court has inserted itself into a controversy with large ramifications for public safety.

I am, by the way, intentionally ignoring the IHT's not-so-subtle attempt to re-frame this as a debate about "public safety," rather than Constitutional rights.

What is perhaps most amusing about this apparent anguish over the Supreme Court's involvement is that had the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the pro-rights side would already have won. Granted, a gun rights victory in the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals would have lacked much of the national importance of a favorable outcome in the Supreme Court, but it would still have been a significant victory for gun rights, and a fairly major defeat for citizen disarmament (the D.C. circuit is, apparently, considered an especially important and influential one). As things stand today, citizen disarmament advocates can still claim that "no gun control law has ever been struck down in federal court on Second Amendment grounds" (as the D.C. ban is still in effect pending the Supreme Court appeal).

The Supreme Court, therefore, has (for the moment, anyway) come to the rescue of D.C.'s draconian gun laws. I fervently hope the reprieve is a temporary one (and am cautiously optimistic that it is), but on the local level, that reprieve (courtesy of SCOTUS) is the only life support that D.C.-style "gun control" has.

It seems to me that the objections to the Supreme Court taking this case are based not on the idea that somehow it's not an appropriate case for SCOTUS, but on the disarmers' fears that they're going to lose. What does that say about the strength of their case?

Freedom is obsolete

At least that's what Lee Gaillard seems to assert. In his opinion piece, titled "The Second Amendment is Obsolete," Gaillard states that in the DC v. Heller case, both sides will use the Second Amendment to "buttress their briefs" (this, apparently, is not a reference to desperate measures to hold up underwear in which the elastic has given up the ghost).

According to Lee, though, the Second Amendment should (apparently) be simply ignored:

But regarding tangled and contentious issues of ownership and regulation of guns in the 21st century, our Second Amendment -- crafted to address 18th-century national security threats -- offers no solution.

Sure--makes sense to me. How could the right to keep and bear arms possibly have any bearing on the . . . right to keep and bear arms?

In 1791, the United States had recently battled England for its independence; France owned the vast Mississippi watershed; and another war with England loomed. Yet even in 1791, this right to bear arms was deemed conditional.

First, the Second Amendment has never been primarily about protecting us from England and France--its primary purpose is to ensure the citizenry's ability to protect itself from the U.S. government, should the dark day come that the government subverts the Constitution and attempts to impose tyranny. Furthermore, I'm having a bit of difficulty reconciling a couple concepts here:

. . . shall not be infringed
conditional
. . . shall not be infringed
conditional

Does not compute.

The nine justices should hone their grammar skills. The introductory absolute phrase ("A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,") preceding the main clause sets the condition for why the people collectively had a right to keep and bear arms: to be able quickly to muster their local "well regulated Militia," individually lifting smooth-bores down from over their fireplaces so they could assemble and march off to defend "the security of [their] free State" against aggressors.

"Introductory absolute phrase"--now that's a new one--going beyond the argument that the right "is not absolute," we are now apparently to believe that what you claim limits the right is "absolute." Have you told Paul about that "absolute" thing? I bet he'll love it. Also,

. . . keep and bear smoothbores . . .

I'm almost positive that's not what the Second Amendment says. By the way, speaking of grammar and the Second Amendment . . . .

Moving right along:

In 2007, however, the U.S. has a large, active-duty military establishment.

Sounds like a very good reason to have a populace capable of fielding a large, capable force of armed citizens.

Replacing 1791's militias, today's local "well regulated" National Guard units maintain armories stocked with government-supplied weapons, each pistol and M-16 assault rifle carefully inventoried upon its return after weekend and summer training periods.

The National Guard does not "replace" the militia--ask Rudy Perpich.

Citizen-furnished smoothbores? Long gone.

Millions of civilians own smoothbores (although they generally refer to them as shotguns), many of which would serve quite nicely in a militia context (United States v. Miller notwithstanding), and if the unconstitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (or at least the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986) is ever established, private citizens may even keep and bear an extremely capable fighting "smoothbore."

Given the Founders' original intent clearly contained in that introductory absolute phrase, the consequently irrelevant Second Amendment should be long gone, too.

Again with the "introductory 'absolute' phrase," eh? As for the "irrelevant Second Amendment," and your desire that it be "long gone," are there any other parts of the Bill of Rights you would like to throw away? I mean, with all the highly professional "Authorized Journalists" to speak for us, is freedom of speech for the unwashed masses not rather out of date, as well?

On the other hand, there's a huge difference between sporting rifles and high-cyclic-rate-of-fire weapons designed to suppress enemy defenses during military assaults -- in the process disabling or killing as many human beings as possible. Despite Congress' failure to renew the assault weapons ban, there is no justification for civilians to possess machine pistols or automatic rifles.

True, there is a difference between what are commonly thought of as "sporting rifles," and most modern fighting rifles--"assault rifles," if you prefer--sporting rifles generally fire more powerful cartridges, but are generally less capable (in terms of rate of fire, magazine capacity, etc.) in a fight against an out of control government. U.S. v. Miller, by the way, would seem to argue that the Second Amendment provides much more protection for the right of private ownership of the fighting rifles than for the sporting ones. Oh, by the way, since fully automatic firearms have been heavily regulated for over seven decades (and have been even more heavily regulated since 1986), and since the now (thankfully) expired ban on so-called "assault weapons" dealt only with semi-automatic firearms, there is no relationship between the "assault weapons" ban and the "machine pistols and automatic rifles" that so offend you.

He basically goes onto say that America already has too many guns, and as a result, far too many shootings (he doesn't bother to establish a causal relationship--we are supposed to accept that without question).

Lives already are being lost as the deadly deluge of firearms inundates Detroit, Philadelphia, and other besieged cities -- overwhelming police departments and slaughtering citizens. In 2005, 846 American service members died in Iraq; 10,100 U.S. civilians died from gunshot wounds.

What does he want us to do, withdraw from the U.S. (come to think of it, I think that's precisely what he ought to do)? By the way, care to address the "deadly deluge" of felonious thugs inundating these "besieged cities"? Didn't think so.

If the Supreme Court decides that Washington, D.C., does not have the right to ban handguns, it countermands local firearms regulation nationwide. Yet for these deadly weapons and their ammunition to go unregulated is absurd. The court must decide, then, whether regulation should occur instead at state or federal levels.

Federal precedent exists: The Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has posted its list of 10 categories of people "who cannot legally receive or possess firearms and/or ammunition."

You're missing the point, Lee--if Heller ends up invalidating all local gun legislation (something I don't expect to happen, even at my most optimistic), it certainly invalidates federal gun laws, and some believe that it would strike a telling blow against the scourge of state firearms legislation, as well (again, I'm not quite so optimistic, but it's a compelling argument). By the way, you're about five years out of date--since the Homeland Security Act (signed in 2002), the BATFE has been part of the Department of Justice, rather than the Treasury Department.

The Second Amendment disappears atop the frothing surge of hundreds of millions of already "owned" guns flooding our streets. The Supreme Court needs to dismiss District of Columbia v. Heller as inapplicable, handing down instead a decision concerning the level at which these deadly weapons are to be regulated for public safety.

Translation: I don't like the Second Amendment--it's scary--make it go away.

This went a little long, and dealing with Gaillard's tyranny enabling screed for this long might force me to take another shower, but when I get started, I have trouble stopping.

Documents don't "live and breathe," Lee--if the Second Amendment doesn't fit well with your tyranny enabling agenda, work to repeal it. Good luck with that. If you do manage that, and strip Americans of the Constitutional guarantee of the preexisting fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, then you can try to disarm us. Oh, and one more thing . . .

Molon Labe.

UPDATE: Nicki is all over this clown, too.

So how does he fit into the 'gun lobby'?

Citizen disarmament advocates like to claim that the reason their agenda seems to experience rather a lot more defeats than victories is a well-funded "gun lobby," that buys off legislators in order to protect gun industry profits. Never mind that membership in gun rights advocacy groups totals well into the millions--millions of people who make no profit from the manufacture and sale of firearms (and in fact spend quite a lot of money on guns). Never mind the legions of unpaid bloggers whose tireless advocacy of the right to keep and bear arms comes without a penny of compensation (how many unpaid anti-rights bloggers are out there?). Never mind the vast sums of money being dumped into the laps of the civilian disarmament advocates (although they don't seem to be managing that money all that well). Never mind any of that--don't confuse the issue with facts.

I can't help but wonder, though, how Robert Levy fits into this view. The driving force behind the most significant Second Amendment case in decades (actually, it could easily end up being the most significant ever) has, according to the New York Times, never owned a gun, and is not particularly interested in them. If he has any financial ties to the gun industry, no one seems to have found them (and I don't for a minute imagine that no one has looked for such a connection).

Levy bankrolled this Second Amendment advocacy endeavor with his own money, not as what is so contemptuously labeled a "gun nut," but as a "rights nut" (I, by the way, consider myself to be both kinds of "nut").

Mr. Levy, who said he is “not particularly interested in guns,” pursued the case to vindicate his libertarian principles.

“Free markets,” he said, ticking off his basic beliefs. “Private property. Individual rights. And most of all, strictly limited government in accordance with the constitutional structure the framers established.”

Furthermore, Levy makes it very clear that the "gun lobby" is not behind this endeavor.

Along with carefully selecting the plaintiffs, the lawyers working with Mr. Levy shaped their case in a second way, consciously keeping their distance from some groups that support gun rights.

“We didn’t want this case pictured as another case sponsored by the usual suspects, which is to say the gun community,” Mr. Levy said. “Basically we wanted this to be a grass-roots public interest case, so I decided to fund it.”

In fact, the NRA (almost universally, but incorrectly, considered to be synonymous with the "gun lobby") was perhpas the biggest obstacle to the advancement of this case.

The road to the Supreme Court has been a bumpy one, Mr. Levy said, thanks mostly to the National Rifle Association.

“The N.R.A.’s interference in this process set us back and almost killed the case,” he said. “It was a very acrimonious relationship.”

“Their thinking was,” Mr. Levy said, “‘good case, might win in the appellate court but it could be a problem if it reaches the Supreme Court.’”

Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s chief executive officer, largely confirmed that characterization. “There was a real dispute on our side among the constitutional scholars about whether there was a majority of justices on the Supreme Court who would support the Constitution as written,” Mr. LaPierre said.

Face it, citizen disarmament advocates--your enemy isn't the "gun lobby"--it's the People (and I don't mean the National Guard).

I wonder what bothers Laura more

This will be quick--I was planning to write something else today, and still intend to do so later, but with this bit of drivel, Laura Washington has left me with too tempting a target to pass up.

Her article, "Republican pols pander to People of the Gun," tends to wander around rather aimlessly, but the gist seems to be an expression of disgust over the fact that Republican presidential candidates are trying to win the support of Americans who value the Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

What I'm curious about is this: is Laura more upset that Republican candidates are "pandering" to gun owners, or that Democratic candidates don't seem to be going after the citizen disarmament vote? It seems to me that if citizen disarmament were a platform with any deep public support, someone would be trying to get that vote--especially in the Democratic primary (since candidates tend to lurch in the direction their party's extreme fringe for the primaries, and then lurch back to the middle for the general election).

I haven't seen that happening, though. In fact, recently, Obama actually tried (weakly) to sound as if he had some respect for gun rights. I can't imagine that he fooled anyone, but the mere fact that he tried is telling.

So, which is it, Laura?

UPDATE: Nicki, at the Liberty Zone, gives Laura's "article" the thorough stomping it deserves.

Harvard students against rights

I had kind of decided to get out of the habit of responding to collegiate newspaper editorials that espouse citizen disarmament--it seems more sporting to limit my efforts to arguing with grown-ups. Then again, if I require that the opinions to which I respond exhibit a mature, sober thought process, I'll have to stop arguing with the Brady Bunch, the VPC, and the purveyors of just about every other bit of citizen disarmament advocacy I encounter. Besides, this editorial in the Harvard Crimson, while contemptible, is of a type I find particularly interesting.

The editorial, titled "Pulling the Trigger, The Second Amendment is an anachronism in need of repeal," argues (not surprisingly, given the title) for an end to the Constitutional guarantee of the fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. The "reasoning" (being generous here) is weak enough that it's really not worth the time to bother debunking, but there is something about the editorial, staff's position for which I can muster some respect.

That respect is based on the fact that the authors, although statist herbivores, are at least honest. Rather than arguing that "the People" are really the National Guard (except everywhere else that term appears in the Bill of Rights), or that "shall not be infringed" poses no obstacle to any law that doesn't ban all firearms, they seem to acknowledge, at least tacitly, that restrictive gun laws will be unconstitutional as long as the Second Amendment exists. This, of course, is a vastly more respectable gambit than the Brady Bunch legal director misquoting the Second Amendment to remove any reference to "the People", or Rudy Giuliani claiming that the Second Amendment allows "limited gun control."

I'm seeing more and more of this (also here, here, and here), and call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I take it as a sign that we're winning. Whether it stems from pessimism (on the citizen disarmament advocates' side) about the outcome of DC v. Heller, or the growing body of respected legal scholarship that indicates that the Second Amendment means what is says, the debate seems to be shifting (very gradually) away from being about the clear meaning of the Second Amendment, to being about whether we should (in the words of Benjamin Wittes) "repeal the damn thing."

"Repeal the damn thing" if you can, tough guy.

Hey Cook County--you're going the wrong way!

Yesterday, I made a vague promise to try to post an update on the resolution of support for the Second Amendment that is spreading across Illinois, county by county. Well, I never quite got to it (was busy celebrating the fact that I am now one year closer to the grave).

Anyway, since the last update, Bond County has joined the growing majority of Illinois counties that are opposed to Chicago-style "gun control," the county board having so voted on Tuesday, November 20th (I know--I'm not keeping up).

Jackson County will have a committee vote next Tuesday (December 4th), to determine whether or not the resolution advances to the full board.

This, then, is what the map currently looks like:
(click to enlarge)

As I mentioned yesterday, it would seem that Cook County and the rest of the state are headed in opposite directions. As a general rule of thumb, the direction opposite the one in which Cook is headed would certainly seem to be the correct direction in which to go.

As always, keep an eye on the Illinois Pro Second Amendment Resolution website for more details (and more frequent updates than you'll find here).

A bit of good news regarding the proposed Cook County ordinance?

I considered posting this update as an edit to today's earlier post, but such updates can get kind of lost in the shuffle, so I decided a new post was in order. What this is about is what looks like some good news for Chuck's Gun Shop, and bad news for Cook County's aspiring tyrant, Larry Suffredin.

Remember what Suffredin smugly and pompously stated (also remember that the lack of spaces between many of the words isn't my fault):

"As a home rule unit, Cook Countyhas the legal right to regulate where these establishments are allowed tooperate. Chuck's Gun Shop is within one mile of a school which will not beallowed once this ordinance passes."

Fellow Illinois gun rights activist GarandFan discovered the following in the Illinois state constitution (in SECTION 6. POWERS OF HOME RULE UNITS).

(c) If a home rule county ordinance conflicts with an
ordinance of a municipality, the municipal ordinance shall
prevail within its jurisdiction.

So now the question is whether or not Riverdale has an ordinance that conflicts with Suffredin's new pet tyranny. Let's take a look. I couldn't find anything about proximity to schools in Riverdale's municipal gun laws, which might spell bad news for Chuck's after all, but I did find this (click to enlarge):

So it would seem that Riverdale intends to be protected from Cook's draconian gun laws (Riverdale has some fairly draconian laws of its own, but that's another matter), but I wouldn't be surprised if Cook County took Riverdale to court in order to impose Chicago-style tyranny on Riverdale (arguing that Riverdale has no ordinance that directly conflicts with the provision that imposes a minimum distance from schools), and not much more surprised if Cook won. Just to be safe, I think Riverdale ought to pass a new ordinance, specifying that gun shops must be a minimum of one inch (maybe one angstrom) from a school--now that would indisputably put their ordinance in direct conflict with Suffredin's proposal, giving Riverdale the upper hand.

I realize, of course, that this proposed ordinance goes well beyond Chuck's, and needs to be fought tooth and nail regardless, but a chance to defeat this portion of it is still good news--especially given my sneaky suspicion that Chuck's was to a large degree the target of this abomination. I would certainly like to see "Snuffy" Pfleger's face if it does turn out that Chuck's is safe after all.

Cook County (Illinois) slides a little further into decay

David Codrea (and others) got to this story well ahead of me, but since it's in my state (not that I'm happy to claim it), and since my old pal "Snuffy" Pfleger is involved, I feel kind of compelled to take a look at Cook County's latest outrage. Cook County (for those with the good fortune of living far enough away to be unaware) is the county in which Chicago festers in its combination of anti-gun tyranny and rampant violence (a combination that probably strikes many Chicago residents as incongruous, but is actually par for the course, and fairly predictable). By the way, the Reuters article in the link not only uses the wrong spelling of "reign" (for this usage, they mean "rein"), but apparently putting spaces between words was something the authors could only be bothered with when it suited them.

Anyway, it seems that Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin (author of Cook County's ban on so-called "assault weapons") has now decided to go after gun shops--shops that are not even accused of breaking any laws.

Citing the senseless loss of liferesulting from random gun violence, Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredintook a giant step today toward reducing the number of handguns on the streetsof Chicago and Cook County by introducing an ordinance that would restrict thelocation where gun shops in suburban Cook County can operate.

(See what I mean about spaces between words?) Anyway, let's take a look at this "giant step," shall we? How would placing more restrictions on Cook County gun shops keep guns out of Cook County? Does anyone really believe that someone who wants a gun will decide to do without, simply because he can't get it without leaving the county? Anyone who does believe that, perhaps I could interest you in a great deal on a pair of breeding mules.

"I am tired of business as usual. I am tired of picking up the paper orturning on the news to see reports about innocent children gunned down in coldblood, because some gang member bought a gun at their local gun shop,"Suffredin said.

Letting slide, for the moment, Suffredin's rather . . . interesting assertion that gang members are buying many of their guns in gun shops, are we to understand that it's the fact that the guns are bought (according to Larry) at local gun shops that offends him? I guess now we know why he thinks getting the shops out of Cook will help--it's apparently not the fact that armed thugs are killing people that bothers him--it's the fact that they're acquiring the guns locally (again, according to Larry).

"For nearly thirty years, I have fought for sensible gunlaws. Whether it was against the NRA or legislative leaders, I fought to passlaws to keep guns off our streets."

And a marvelous job you've done, Larry--which is why Chicago is so admired as an oasis of peace and domestic tranquility.

Here are the particulars of the proposed ordinance.

The proposed ordinance would amend the Cook County Deadly Weapons DealerControl Ordinance and would:

-- Remove the exemptions for municipalities, like Riverdale, that passed

less restrictive ordinances in order to avoid the provisions of the

existing Weapons Ordinance;

-- Extend the restriction on gun shops within one mile of a school or park

to all municipalities within Cook County.

-- Increase the distance required between licensed weapons dealers from

five to ten miles

-- Ban gun shows completely in Cook County.

By the way, does Cook County even have gun shows (I honestly don't know)?

Father "Snuffy" will be especially pleased, I'm sure, that Chuck's Gun Shop's location within a mile of a school makes it one of the shops threatened by this latest attack on freedom (has anyone ever explained why a gun shop near a school is so terrifying--is there a lot of shooting near gun shops?). According to another article, along with Chuck's, three other gun shops (of the twenty or so in the county) are on the chopping block.

I'm fascinated by the provision of the ordinance that overrides municipal ordinances less strict than the proposed county ordinance. Every time statewide firearms preemption laws are discussed, the citizen disarmament zealots launch themselves into hysterics because local control is being usurped (interestingly, though--these same people seem very keen on the idea of restrictive federal gun legislation). Now, though, we see Cook County proposes to attack the local laws of municipalities like Riverdale (where Chuck's is located).

In talking about the resolutions supporting the Second Amendment (most recently here), that are sweeping the state, county by county (and I'm overdue for another update on that--maybe later today), I have mentioned Cook County's growing isolation from the rest of the state. Judging by Suffredin's proposal, maybe that's how Cook likes it (as long as downstate taxpayers continue sending tribute up north).

UPDATE: More at Days of Our Trailers

And Helmke accuses us of revisionist history

Back in late October, I posted a YouTube video clip, which at that time (more on that later) had been on the Brady Bunch website. In the clip, the Brady Bunch legal director, Dennis Henigan, waxes hysterical about the Parker v. District of Columbia decision. My interest in the clip stemmed from the fact that when (about one minute into it) Henigan recites the Second Amendment, he leaves out the phrase "of the people." As we all know, the Brady Bunch doesn't like for the right to keep and bear arms to be a right of the people, so they apparently decided to simply omit the Second Amendment's reference to the people.

As David Codrea points out, one of the especially amusing parts (if you like irony, anyway, and I certainly do) of the clip is when Henigan pompously spews the hypocritical admonishment that "It is not appropriate for the courts to edit the Constitution." Along the same lines, the hypocrisy of the Brady Bunch's little cartoon also amused me.

Fast forward to yesterday, when on Helmke's blog, he (or whoever it is who actually does do "his" writing) once again accuses us (gun rights advocates) of leaving out the part of the text of the Second Amendment that he believes makes us uncomfortable.

There is the “Militia purpose” clause, with 13 words. Then there is the “keep and bear Arms” clause, with 14 words. Two clauses and 27 words. This is an uncomfortable fact to those accustomed to reading only half of the Amendment, reciting the last 14 words over and over again as if the first 13 didn’t exist.

The Constitution says they do exist, and so we must read the whole Second Amendment. We must give effect to all of its words – not just the ones we like – to understand what the Amendment means.

Perhaps if Helmke actually still permitted comments on his blog, he would find that we gun rights advocates are perfectly happy to discuss the militia clause with him all day--probably a lot more willing than he would be to discuss the "of the people" part.

But it gets even better. I found out today, via Snowflakes in Hell and Days of Our Trailers, that not only does the Brady Bunch have no compunction about trying to cover up what the Constitution says, when they get called on it, they even try to cover up what they themselves once said--they have disabled the link on their website that leads to the page with Henigan's version of the Second Amendment--and even the video clip is gone from YouTube.

No problem--I suspected they might try something like that, and took precautions:


Considering the funding problems at the Brady Bunch, I wonder if they'll be able to afford all the erasers they'll need to rewrite history to their liking.

Help for KABA

Keep and Bear Arms is a vital resource for keeping the gun rights community current with the latest threats to our Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. To keep up their vital work, KABA needs help:

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It's a cliché, and one that I think is quite often used inappropriately these days, but freedom is indeed not free. The cost of not paying that price, however, is one that simply cannot be borne by those who cherish liberty. The price of a box of ammo, to help pay for the fight against those who would leave us with nothing with which to shoot that ammo--is that too much to ask?

So . . . how do they intend to ban this?

In a comment responding to my post from yesterday, fellow gun rights blogger Robb Allen (Sharp as a Marble) exposed yet another point of absurdity in regard to the VPC's apparent contention that Washington DC's handgun ban is all that stands between DC residents and mass suicide. To illustrate his point, Robb gives us this story, about a man who, over the course of a weekend, built a homemade firearm (using steel pipe) with which he committed suicide. Maybe the VPC should lobby for an aggressive policy of pipe control.

Checking out the comments posted in response to Robb's post about that incident, I found other references to building firearms at home (and not crude "zip guns," either--in many cases we're talking about the kinds of "military grade assault weapons" that so terrify the anti-gun herbivores).

For example, this YouTube video shows old men in Pakistan making fully functional (and fully-automatic) AK-47 copies (and many other guns) in "factories" that looked like mud brick hovels.

Perhaps my favorite link, though, was to The Home Gunsmith, a site run by a British citizen who, in a counter-strike against that country's draconian firearms laws, has dedicated himself to spreading knowledge of how citizens, with little in the way of mechanical skills or expensive tools, can build effective fighting firearms with which to defend their lives and liberty. The following line is prominently displayed on the site, and I assume it came from the site's owner (P.A. Luty). I really like it, and will most likely end up stealing it before too long:

There are over 550 million firearms
in worldwide circulation; that's one
firearm for every twelve people.
The only question is;
how do I arm the other eleven?

The site sells manuals on constructing 9mm submachineguns (and other guns) from materials that can be cheaply had at any hardware store. I assume these would have smoothbore barrels (as I don't know how one could easily or cheaply rifle a barrel). Accuracy would suffer, but at short range, and with a full-auto, that's probably a small concern. Still, I assume he did it that way because British law treats gun barrels as controlled items. If one were doing such a project here in the States, where a mere barrel is considered to be an inert hunk of metal, I would think it might make more sense to acquire a factory-made, rifled barrel, which can be had without any paperwork, and build the rest of the gun around it.

Even here at Armed and Safe, I've discussed home manufacture of guns as a way of defeating gun registration (which could also be referred to as gun pre-confiscation) and other so-called "gun-control" laws, although I was looking at the "80% frame" market (by the way, Rick Celata could use some help).

With the insane murder rates in "gun-controlled" urban sewers like Washington DC and Chicago, it would seem that citizen disarmament advocates have developed a very impressive immunity to logic in regard to discussions about violence reduction strategies. Still, if it can be shown that the more they prohibit guns, the more ways freedom loving people will find to defeat their prohibitions, they'll be forced to acknowledge that where there is a will there is a way, and that those who would fight for liberty have no shortage of will.

VPC claims Washington DC's gun laws necessary to prevent epidemic of suicides

It hasn't been long since I discussed the latest silliness from the VPC, but the more I think about it, the more I feel compelled to point out the utter absence of logic in the VPC press release. The fact that nothing in DC's homicide stats provides much reason for faith in the efficacy of gun bans in reducing violence, thus forcing the VPC to instead concentrate on suicides, is rather telling.

I utterly reject the contemptible scare tactics used by citizen disarmament advocates--"Only 'gun-control' will save you from crackheads and gangbangers," or, "Only 'gun-control' will save you from angry, white 'gun nuts,'" or, "Only 'gun-control' will save you from terrorists," etc., but at least such Chicken Little fear mongering tacitly acknowledges that part of the problem is evil people, who commit evil acts, with guns.

But with this, we are apparently being told that only "gun-control" will save Washington DC residents from . . . themselves. If I were a DC resident, I would have trouble not taking that as a rather harsh insult, implying that only through the noble efforts of the benign DC officials am I being prevented from offing myself. How blessed DC residents must feel to have such paragons of wisdom watching over them.

While the VPC defends DC for supposedly protecting residents from themselves, we are apparently expected to ignore the fact DC's laws prevent citizens from protecting themselves (despite the well-known fact that police are under no obligation to provide the protection that citizens are denied from providing themselves).

That's a fool's bargain--which, perhaps, makes DC as good a place as any for it.

Light 'em up, folks

In my typical last-minute fashion, I am joining War on Guns in asking readers to contact CNN. The idea is to get lots of emails lobbying for a certain question to be asked in tomorrow's Republican CNN/YouTube debate (in which viewers submit questions, via YouTube video segments, to be asked of Republican presidential candidates at tomorrow's debate in St. Petersburg, Florida).

The question in, well . . . question? Tom Gresham and Clint Smith ask the candidates what three gun laws they (the candidates) would repeal first.

As Gresham points out, just about all the candidates claim to support the Second Amendment. We, of course, know better, but since Second Amendment issues are so far off the radar screens of so many potential voters, candidates are unlikely to be seriously challenged on this claim.

Since, as Gresham also points out, numerous studies have not been able to determine that any benefit (in terms of violence reduction) has been derived from any gun legislation, it would seem that a candidate who "supports the Second Amendment" could find three gun laws (of the well over 20,000 on the books) that could be safely dispensed with. Certainly, a politician who really "supports the Second Amendment" would be able to do so (the trick would narrowing the choices down to three).

CNN needs to hear from us--it wouldn't hurt to remind them that with SCOTUS agreeing to hear District of Columbia v. Heller, the issue of gun rights is gaining prominence in the presidential race.

Maybe we can help it gain a little more.

Second Amendment a wedge issue? Not if both parties' nominees say the same thing about it

Jeff Soyer, at Alphecca, and Sebastian, at Snowflakes in Hell, have written intelligently about Jed Babbin's article in Human Events, called "The Second Amendment Wedge." Babbin's article is about District of Columbia v. Heller going to the Supreme Court as the biggest Second Amendment case in modern history, and doing so in the midst of a presidential election.

Babbin's point is that this is an issue which many Democrats have good reason to fear, and the issue's rising prominence has to be a cause for concern for them.

The Heller appeal will be argued next spring and unless something very odd happens, it will be decided before the election. This is very bad news for the Democrats who -- like Hillary -- don’t believe that the Second Amendment grants to private citizens the right to keep and bear arms.

If Hillary was scorched by the heat she took for her flip-flopping on the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, it would seem that she would have an even narrower line to walk (impossibly narrow, perhaps) in trying to reconcile her "common sense [gun] legislation," with an individual right of the people, that shall not be infringed.

However, as Jeff and Sebastian both point out, exploiting Clinton's weakness on gun rights issues will be impossible for the Republicans, if the best they can do for gun rights is Giuliani or Romney. From Alphecca:

Besides, if Giuliani or Romney win the nomination, their lack of credibility would make it a moot point in the national debate. Is there really a difference between their positions and that of Hillary’s or Obama’s? Nope. Gun control can only be a spot of contention if the two parties’ candidates disagree about it.

Some, of course, will dispute the assertion that Romney and Giuliani are largely indistinguishable from Clinton and Obama on Second Amendment rights issues. Babbin's article does a bit of that here:

One Republican -- Mitt Romney -- has spoken on this precise point. In his interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Romney said his personal view was that the Second Amendment granted the right to keep and bear arms to individuals.

The problem is that I (and, I suspect, quite a few others among the gun rights community) ain't buying it--Red's Trading Post does a good job of explaining why (also here). As for Rudy, I figure I've already made my opinion known (and don't forget this!). Romney and Giuliani might have managed to rewrite history enough to make their hostility to the Second Amendment less obvious than Obama's or Clinton's, but it still hardly takes a mind reader to know that gun owners cannot count on any help from those two.

District of Columbia v. Heller can help keep the Socialists out of the White House, but only if the Republican Party is smart enough to nominate a candidate who does not seem as enamored with Big Brother style total control as is the opposition.

Philadelphians scared of toys?

If, as Sigmund Freud is often said to have stated, "a fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity," then what are we to think of people who fear toy weapons? The Philadelphia Daily News article in that link is about the Thanksgiving Parade in Philly, which honored Philadelphia Officer Chuck Cassidy, who was recently shot and killed in the line of duty. At the parade, toy vendors caused some parade goers to wrinkle their delicate noses in disapproval of the fact that toy guns were displayed for sale.

In a city gripped by gun violence and patrolled by on-edge cops who just lost one of their own to a bullet, many parade-goers yesterday said they were surprised and disturbed to see vendors selling toy assault weapons on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

"It just wasn't a good thing," said Gail Reide, who sat on a bench with her two cousins, ages 4 and 2. "It just lacks wisdom in today's environment."

Apparently, "wisdom," to Ms. Reide's way of thinking, is raising another generation of helpless herbivores.

According to the article several officers at the parade were among those offended, but thankfully, apparently not quite all of them have such tender sensibilities.

While some officers seemed upset to see toy guns being sold, others shrugged it off.

"What can I tell you?" one officer said. "Boys will be boys. Let's hope their parents teach them the right thing."

Imagine that--hoping that parents go to the effort of actually raising their children, rather than trying to emasculate them.

One of the toy vendors was evidently quite surprised about the amount of heat he took for his toy selection.

Roberts, 28, who owns Roberts Novelty, of Easton, said he was unaware of Philly's gun problem. He said he's used to working small towns with a pro-gun culture.

"We go down South a lot and that stuff sells real good," he said.

If I were you, Mr. Roberts, I'd seriously consider going back to the "small towns with a pro-gun culture"--not only are sales apparently better, but such places tend to be vastly safer than urban sewers like Philly.

Supreme Court to hear DC v. Heller--send me $50,000

What? The Brady Bunch did it--why can't I? Actually, though, today's post isn't dedicated to making fun of the Bradys as much as it is about making fun of their perhaps even sillier comrades at the Violence Policy Center.

The VPC has of course also noticed that the Second Amendment case is going to the Supreme Court, but apparently have found themselves no longer up to the task of arguing that DC's handgun ban has been an effective bar to homicides. Now, they claim that it is suicides that will balloon out of control if the ban is struck down.

"Washington, DC's ban on handguns in the home has long protected DC's residents as measured by the District of Columbia's firearm suicide and overall suicide rate. The District’s handgun ban provides compelling evidence of how strict gun laws save lives by keeping handguns out of homes. The District of Columbia ranks 51st (last) in the country for firearms suicide for 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The District also ranks last for overall suicide. Maintaining the ban will ensure the health and safety of DC residents. [See http://www.vpc.org/dcsuicide.htm for data on DC suicide rates compared to the 10 states with the highest suicide, gun suicide, and gun ownership rates, as well as a full ranking of all 50 states by their firearm suicide rates and overall suicide rates for the year 2004.]

So let me see if I'm following them correctly here--the reason Washington DC needs to have the ability to ban handguns is that doing so is necessary to stop DC residents from committing suicide? Doesn't that sound just a teensy bit . . . ludicrous?

At risk of being accused of callous disregard for my fellow man, I have to wonder how much I should mourn the potential loss of people who would commit suicide over the revocation of restrictive citizen disarmament laws. Seems to me that people who view liberty with such fear and loathing are unlikely to be people the country needs. I think Darwin would agree.