The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled [pdf] that the NRA is eligible for reimbursement of attorneys' fees from Chicago and Oak Park.  That makes my day.

You may recall that the NRA had a case running in parallel to McDonald v. Chicago, and though they lost, they were later vindicated by Alan Gura's victory in the Supreme Court.  The ever-quotable Frank Easterbrook writes:

This litigation was over except for the entry of an injunction by the district court. Chicago and Oak Park capitulated, which made the exercise unnecessary. By the time defendants bowed to the inevitable,

…

The Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller affirmed that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to own guns.  McDonald v. Chicago incorporated that right against the states.  Both of those cases were about ownership of guns in the home.  The issue of carry outside the home (the "bearing" part of "keep and bear") was touched upon only lightly and vaguely.

This case may change that.

Charles Williams legally purchased a gun in Maryland.  He jumped through all the hoops.  He did everything right.  After picking it up from the shop, he dropped it off at his girlfriend's house.  Later, he retrieved the gun and headed home.  He was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail for unlawful transportation of a firearm without a permit.

Williams admits that he didn't even apply for a permit.  Why?  Because the state of Maryland has made it clear that they don't issue them.  Sure, there's a bureaucratic framework for doing so, but the process is so arbitrary that denial is a foregone conclusion.

At the moment, Mr. Williams is a criminal.  He hurt nobody.  He didn't deprive anyone of anything.  He simply committed a malum prohibitum offense that would not have been a crime if his rights were respected.

In a way, this case is a rematch.  In one corner, we have Alan Gura, who represented us admirably in McDonald v. Chicago.  In the other corner, we have Chicago counsel James Feldman, who utterly crashed and burned in his attempts to argue the city's claims in that case.  Apparently, Feldman isn't willing to settle for one failure in front of the nation's highest court, so he's repeating it here.

The case at hand is Ezell v. Chicago, a challenge to Chicago's ban on the construction of indoor shooting ranges within the city limits.  The ban presents something of a Catch-22, due to the Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance (also known as the "We're Cooperating As Little As Humanly Possible With The Damn Court" ordinance).  The Ordinance requires that registration of a handgun include

an affidavit signed by a firearm instructor certified by the State of Illinois to provide firearm training courses attesting that the applicant has completed a firearm safety and training course, which, at a minimum, provides one hour of range training

That's a hard thing to do when there are no firing ranges around.  Judge Diane Sykes summed it up best:

We're not talking about regulation.  This is a ban.  The city has simultaneously mandated live-fire training as a condition of licensure and prohibited it.  How can that be permissible, and not a burden of a very significant sort on the 2nd Amendment right?  [19:19]

Audio of the arguments is available here [mp3].

John Richardson has the scoop on this one.  Introduced by Cliff Stearns of Florida and co-sponsored by Heath Shuler of North Carolina, the bill seeks to enforce national reciprocity for carry permits.

Two years ago, Senators Thune and Coburn attempted to pass a similar bill by amending it to the Defense Department budget.  It failed by only two votes then, and the landscape is much more amenable to it now.

That is, if the Tea Party still believes all that stuff they did last November.

I subscribe to a few anti-gun mailing lists. As such, I get weird emails from time to time. Some are ludicrous, some are informative, and lately, most of them carry a certain air of desperation.

Today's example: a request from the Wisconsin Anti Violence Effort urging me to sign a petition against reform of Wisconsin's carry laws. According to the petition,

Research shows that allowing more people to carry guns in more places will lead to one thing — more tragedies.

That's odd, because most statistics I've seen prove quite the opposite. Perhaps if they'd provided a citation, I could research their allegation further. Alas, none seems forthcoming.

Not that it would help much. Carry reform in Wisconsin, though long overdue, is all but inevitable.  Once passed, Illinois will be the last state in the union that completely bans concealed carry.

The ATF hasn't had a director for almost four years.  Former director Carl Truscott's reign was marked by numerous complaints about misappropriation of funds and poor treatment of employees.  Following his resignation in 2006, the parameters were changed, and Senate confirmation is now required for a nominee.

In the meantime, former prosecutor Michael Sullivan served as Acting Director, but was blocked from nomination for the permanent position.  Sullivan resigned January 20th, 2009, the day President Obama was sworn in.  Presumably, the idea was that the new President could find someone capable of passing confirmation hearings.

Andrew Traver isn't that person.

The Brady Campaign sent me an email this morning to let me know who they're endorsing for tomorrow's mid-term elections.  I have to say, the list is pretty thin.  This could be due to the fact that they only have $5,661 in cash to spend this cycle.

Mayors Against Illegal guns gave $150,000 to the Raben Group to spend on something, though I don't know what.  Founder Robert Raben also sits on the board of directors of the Alliance for Justice, a group that represents several progressive political causes, but doesn't seem involved in gun control.

Josh Sugarmann's Violence Policy Center currently shows a balance of zero.  That's a bit odd, since the Joyce Foundation has pumped roughly $2.1 million into various other groups under the ostensible heading of "Gun Violence."  Still, that money appears to be targeted towards university and community research programs, rather than towards political endorsements.

Last Friday, I had a very interesting conversation with a war correspondent from the UK Daily Mirror. He's been embedded with the SAS in Afghanistan. He's seen his share of guns, and he's done some shooting.

Personally, he's not fond of them, but nor is he hostile. In fact, he mentioned that gun crime is on the rise in London, and he wondered aloud if England's strict gun laws might be the cause rather than the solution.

This was going to be a very interesting conversation, indeed.

Would you look at that handsome devil?  How can this guy possibly be single?

A few months back, I spoke with a reporter from the Financial Times of England.  The interview went well, but as always, I was a bit misquoted.  Though the errors were not significant, and they did not distort my intent, they can be illustrative.

Ms. Fifield was a joy to speak with.  She has her reservations on widespread gun ownership, but she was open and honest about them, and much to my delight, she was a great listener.  She's also one of the few people I've met who can still take notes in shorthand.  We spoke at great length about the history, context, and implications of the 2nd Amendment.

As you can see from the article, she had a great deal of ground to cover, and the fact that she took trouble to get all the technical terminology correct shows marvelous attention to detail.  It's only natural that a few things get transposed.

Adam Williams was convicted in Indiana for distribution of narcotics and possession of a firearm as a felon in 2008.  He chose to appeal his conviction to the 7th Circuit on several points, one of which was the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1).  The section in question bars convicted felons from owning firearms.

The Court's opinion is here [pdf].  Williams based his appeal in part on the Skoien decision, which has since been remanded.  The Court considered the applicability of that case in the current proceedings and found it wanting:

And although we recognize that § 922(g)(1) may be subject to an overbreadth challenge at some point because of its disqualification of all felons, including those who are non-violent, that is not the case for Williams. Even if the government may face a difficult burden of proving § 922(g)(1)’s “strong showing” in future cases, it certainly satisfies its burden in this case, where Williams challenges § 922(g)(1) as it was applied to him. Williams, as a violent felon, is not the ideal candidate to challenge the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1). [p. 16]

Skoien considered the question of a misdemeanant, not a felon.  Furthermore, there is a big difference between a felony conviction for writing a few bad checks and one for violence.  Under the Skoien doctrine of "intermediate" scrutiny (and perhaps even strict scrutiny), the court finds that a ban on firearms possession by violent felons passes muster. Part of me agrees.

The 2nd Amendment Foundation is spearheading a lawsuit [pdf] to challenge Maryland's rigid scheme on the issuance of concealed carry permits.  In short, a civilian seeking a permit for "personal protection" must show "documented evidence of recent threats, robberies, and/or assaults, supported by official police reports or notarized statements from witnesses."

Plaintiff Raymond Woollard should therefore meet the criteria.  According to the complaint, his home was broken into on Christmas Eve, 2002.  Woollard was beaten by the intruder, and it took police over two hours to respond to his wife's 911 call.  His assailant was sentenced to probation at first, then imprisoned after assaulting a police officer.

Upon the assailant's release only three years later, Mr. Woollard was issued a permit.  In 2009, his renewal was denied by the defendants, who cited a lack of evidence to "support apprehended fear (i.e. – copies of police reports for assaults, threats, harassments, stalking).”

The man who assaulted Mr. Woollard in his home now lives three miles from him.  If that doesn't qualify as "apprehended fear," I'm not sure what does.

We've got our first post-McDonald decision [pdf], and it's a bit of a disappointment.  Judge Skyes' original decision, in which the 7th Circuit had applied strict scrutiny to the "core right" of the 2nd Amendment and "intermediate" scrutiny to the rest, has been overturned.

The Heller dicta regarding "presumptively lawful" regulations and "longstanding prohibitions" were on full display here.  I worry that those two phrases will continue to cause us trouble into the foreseeable future.

For now, the constitutionality of §922(g)(9) (the Lautenberg Amendment) still stands, and the bar for scrutiny has been lowered from strict to intermediate scrutiny across the board:

The United States concedes that some form of strong showing (“intermediate scrutiny,” many opinions say) is essential, and that §922(g)(9) is valid only if substantially related to an important governmental objective.  [p. 8]