GOA – LonelyMachines

Build Back Better and Gun Control

There’s a great deal of hand-wringing about the idea that there are secret gun-control provisions in Biden’s spending bill. Gun Owners of America have been spamming social media outlets in an attempt to use this for fundraising. Problem is, it’s a complete lie.

The relevant language starts on page 65. It proposes $2.5 billion in spending over a ten-year period for the following:

(…) to support training, technical assistance, research, evaluation, and data collection on the strategies that are most effective at reducing community violence and ensuring public safety

Notice there is no mention of guns or any kind of gun regulation. If the language about “community violence” sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is Operation Ceasefire finally being implemented on a national level, and that’s a good thing.

The program was initiated in Boston in the mid-1990s, and it exceeded its stated goals in reducing juvenile homicides. Police unions declared it the Boston Miracle, and it was implemented in several other major cities.

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Civil Rights

Jeremy Kettler v. United States

We have another gun case headed to the Supreme Court. It’s a viable challenge to New York’s transport ban, brought by a credible plaintiff, and supported by competent litigators.

But that’s not the one in the news. Instead, we have faux outrage that SCOTUS won’t hear Kettler v. United States, a case in which one idiot sold illegal silencers to another idiot, got busted, and wants to waste everyone’s time and money appealing his conviction. The lawsuit was brought by everyone’s favorite incompetents at Gun Owners of America (GOA), and I’m thankful the court chose not to hear it.

Let’s rewind. A few years ago, several states passed “Firearms Freedom Acts,” laws which claimed to exempt their citizens from federal gun regulations. Kansas passed their version in 2013. From a theoretical standpoint, these laws set up an interesting debate between federal and state power to regulate firearms, and they might provide a challenge to the overbroad application of the Commerce Clause.

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Civil Rights

Wait…what?

Just yesterday, the Gun Owners of America was castigating the NRA for supposedly “selling out” other gun organizations by carving themselves an exemption from the provisions of HR 5175 (also known as the DISCLOSE Act). Today, they’re taking credit for killing the thing. Go figure.

The NRA’s “carve out” exemption was the poison pill that killed the act. The 1st Amendment is at best a tangential issue for the NRA, but in this case, they had to get involved to protect the interests of their membership. Getting directly involved in a 1st Amendment battle takes them a bit off the reservation, but tainting the bill with an exemption that was bound to offend its sponsors was a good strategy.

It may be cynical, but it works. Two years in a row, sponsors of the DC Voting Rights Act have chosen to abandon efforts at passage rather than accept reforms to the District’s onerous gun laws.

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