This chestnut comes from Laura Washington at the Sun Times: “If I had my way, the gun lobby would be looking at three yards and a cloud of dust. Let’s get organized and shove tougher gun policies right down their throats.”
This sort of thing is typical of the gun-control crowd, and gang, we’re only going to see more in the coming months.
Why? Because they’ve been pushed into a corner. They had their chance with the Brady Bill in 1994, and now they’re seeing the failure of their agenda on both local and national levels.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech slayings, the public was fed the typical call for more stringent gun laws. In fact, the ATF updated the “mentally defective” language on the most recent revision of Form 4473. None of this was surprising.
The big shock was that, for the first time, the media was confronted openly with the obvious question: “How did disarming these people protect them?”
The government has been doing its best for the better part of a century to disarm the American populace under the guise of “doing what’s best for you.” The result has been a systematic and catastrophic failure. This is the first step any tyrannical regime takes before it starts the wholesale revocation of basic civil rights, but they did such a wonderful job of selling it to us that many actually believe and campaign for it.
In 1987, the tide began to turn, as Florida took the step of allowing civilians to carry concealed firearms. More important was the structure of the permit involved. Previously, such permits were only given to those deemed eligible (read: rich, politically-connected, and white) if at all. The previous system left the decision to bestow a permit to a sheriff, judge or review body, and it operated on cronyism and politics.
The 1987 Florida license was called “shall issue,” which meant that, as long as an applicant met the requirements (clean criminal record and proof of safety training), the state had to issue the permit. Only under strictly-defined conditions could an applicant be denied. Race, income and connections were no longer an impediment.
Critics screamed that we would see the streets run with blood and that Florida would become the Dodge City of the 20th century. Of course, that didn’t happen. If it did, 36 states wouldn’t have followed suit over the next ten years.
The gun-control lobby has tried their best to persuade us that CCW licenses equal murder permits, but crime statistics actually show dramatic decreases in violent crime in municipalities where citizens are armed.
We still have our stubborn hold-outs, though. Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and the District of Columbia still keep virtual or outright bans on handguns on the books. It’s grimly ironic that these are the most violent cities in America, an irony that’s become very obvious in the last few years.
Sooner or later, a legal challenge with real teeth was bound to come along, and now it has. Back in March, the Federal Appeals court struck down the capital’s 31-year-old ban on handguns based on a lawsuit brought Tom Palmer and five other plantiffs. Presiding Judge Laurence Silberman summed it up by saying, “There are too many instances of ‘bear arms’ indicating private use to conclude that the drafters intended only a military sense.”
Precisely. Of course, DC Mayor Fenty isn’t letting this go without a fight, and he’s doing the worst thing for his side he could possibly do. He’s appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.
This will mark the first time since 1939 that the Supreme Court has issued a ruling directly interpreting the 2nd Amendment. During the Clinton administration, they might have been able to weasel out under the “collective right” interpretation, but not now. The case is too high-profile, and they’ll have to hear it.
The only defensible decision will be one that matches Silberman’s, and it will send ripples out across the country. Bans like those in Chicago, New York and San Francisco will fall by the wayside, and many other gun-control laws will follow nationwide.
Yep, the mayor of Washington DC may very well be the best thing that happens to the 2nd Amendment in years. I honestly never thought I’d hear myself say that!
Of course, the District’s stance is shaky at best (You can read the whole thing here). Their logic and arguments are couched in lots of legalise and pretty typeface, but it can all be summed up pretty easily.
The decision below is mistaken in three fundamental respects. First, as the overwhelming majority of circuit decisions conclude, the text and history of the Second Amendment establish that it protects weapons possession and use only in connection with service in state-regulated militias. That conclusion is supported by United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), in which this Court unanimously directed that the Second Amendment must be interpreted and applied in view of its obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such [militia] forces. Id. at 178.
First off, Miller simply stated that Eugene Miller’s sawed-off shotgun was not protected from the $200 NFA tax-stamp because it wasn’t a “military weapon” in the eyes of the court. Contrary to popular belief, Miller did not specify whether the 2nd Amendment applied as an individual right or not. The case was about the enforceability of a tax, and nowhere in the ruling was there an attempt to define “militia.”
(Some argue that “militia” refers to the National Guard. Not so. The National Guard was enacted in 1903 under Article 3. The 2nd Amendment was written in 1791. The two are not connected.)
Second, even if there is a right to possess and use weapons unrelated to militia service, the Second Amendment restricts only federal interference with state-regulated militias and state-recognized gun rights. Legislation enacted by the District does not implicate the Amendment.
Ah. “So, even if we flunked out invoking Miller, we can still claim immunity because the District isn’t an actual state!”
Washington DC is the capital of the United States and the seat of our government. I’d certainly hope that the same laws apply to them as the rest of the country, despite Fenty’s stubborness.
Third, in any event, the District law at issue in this case does not infringe whatever right the
Second Amendment could be read to protect, because it is eminently reasonable to permit private ownership of other types of weapons, including shotguns and rifles, but ban the easily concealed and uniquely dangerous modern handgun.
“In any event?” Hm. So, rifles and shotguns, which are carried by government agents, are alright, but pistols, which are also carried by government agents, aren’t “militia” weapons. At this point, they’re reaching, a point borne out by the claim that handguns are “uniquely dangerous.”
A word to the wise: if you want to do real damage, handguns aren’t the way to go. Handguns are convenient to carry around, but on the scale of modern firearms, they’re quite mediocre.
Further in, they cite Presser v. Illinois as giving the District exemption, but a careful reading of Presser proves quite the opposite:
The provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” does not prevent a State from passing such laws to regulate the privileges and immunities of its own citizens as do not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States.
The relevant language is “Passing such laws (…) as do not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States.” That includes the Bill of Rights. The District has no right to deny her citizens its protections.
They even get desperate enough to quote Arthur Kellerman, whose research was so thoroughly discredited, he ended up withdrawing it. The appeal limps on to argue its merit based on allegations that handguns escalate domestic violence, raise suicide rates and cause fatal accidents.
So, this is how it runs:
- Cite an inappropriate precedent,
- If that fails, claim immunity as a non-state,
- If that fails, claim that “c’mon, we’re just banning some weapons,”
- If that fails, start throwing around statistics to confuse the issue.
Seriously, these guys couldn’t make their way on a high-school debate team with that strategy. You’ve got alot of smoke and mirrors to disguise the issue at hand: the ban (and others like it) is an indefensible violation of the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
The brief then resorts to this dramatic little platitude:
Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.
The District has been doing just that for the last three decades. The most stringent gun control laws in the country haven’t saved any lives. From a pragmatic standpoint, gun control doesn’t work, not when the most restrictive cities have the highest firearms homicide rates per capita.
To defend such policies, and to call for more, is to stand by while people die. It’s no coincidence that Fenty announced his appeal “flanked by more than a dozen police officers.” He lords governs the most dangerous city in America, and disarming the populace hasn’t done anything to stop criminals from acquiring weapons and acting against a vulnerable populace with impunity.
Given the arguments and current climate, there is simply no way the SCOTUS can reach any different conclusion than the 9th Circuit decision, that the “right of the People to keep and bear arms” refers to the individual. The phrase “the People” has been unanimously declared to mean “the individual” in respect to the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments, and there is no logic under which the Second Amendment does not apply equally.
This may very well be the death knell for gun control in this country, and we’ve got Mayor Fenty of all people to thank for it.
I’d also like to close with a salient quote from Saint George Tucker:
“The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people”
—Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803), Volume 1, Appendix, Note D [Section 13: Restraints on Powers of Congress]