Supreme Court Gives Incomplete Victory To NY Gun Owners

The Supreme Court declined to intervene in a case involving a lawsuit against New York City challenging a law that restricted where gun owners could take their weapons. New York amended the law last year leading the Court to decide that the issue was moot in a two-page unsigned opinion.

Under the original rule, gun owners were limited to transporting their guns to their home, their business, or one of seven shooting ranges that were outside of city limits per USA Today. Gun owners challenged the rule in federal court where it was upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2018, prompting the Supreme Court to hear the case. However, in June 2019, the city changed to the rules in what The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the petitioner, called a “nakedly transparent effort to evade this court’s review.”

In the decision, the Supreme Court noted, “After we granted certiorari, the State of New York amended its firearm licensing statute, and the City amended the rule so that petitioners may now transport firearms to a second home or shooting range outside of the city, which is the precise relief that petitioners requested in the prayer for relief in their complaint. Petitioners’ claim for declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to the City’s old rule is therefore moot.”

Responding to claims that the city might arbitrarily change the rule again after the case is dismissed, the Court followed the procedure of vacating the lower court’s judgment and remanding the case back for further proceedings, if necessary. In other words, if New York returns to its old tricks, gun owners can pick up where they left off.

Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas joined in a dissent which argued that the Court should have rendered a decision on the case because New York only withdrew the regulation when it became apparent that the city would lose the case on the merits. The dissent also noted that, if the city had violated the Second Amendment rights of the petitioners, that they were entitled to damages and payment of legal fees.

The dissent fires a warning shot at the city when it references the Heller decision, calling the city’s violation of the Second Amendment “not a close question.”

In its entirety, the case is a victory for gun owners but an incomplete one. The petitioners achieved their aims of having the onerous restrictions removed, but failed to win damages and repayment of fees.

New York’s retreat indicates that the city knew that pursuing the case further would result in an embarrassing loss and another landmark gun rights case. While gun owners did not get that landmark ruling today, the Court has indicated to jurisdictions everywhere that Heller is now settled law.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Propose Gun Registry Bill

We’ve noted before that both parties seem to be making calculated moves in an attempt to become less popular with voters in advance of the midterm elections. Now two Democrats, who were apparently worried that some gun owners might not vote Republican, have proposed a national gun registry.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) introduced the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act in the House and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) introduced a companion bill in the Senate. The Washington  Examiner reports that the bill would make it illegal to own an unlicensed gun and would require a firearms license and federal background checks for all sales and transfers of guns. The bill would also require the attorney general to create a federal system to record gun purchases.

The bill is one of several gun control proposals named for Chicago honor student, Blair Holt, who was murdered in 2008. Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country as well as one of the highest crime rates.

Rush’s office claims that the gun registry would protect the public from “unreasonable risk of injury and death” from private gun sales. Second Amendment advocates would also point out that a gun registry would make gun confiscation easier in the event of a ban. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cal.) proposed such a ban just last month.

Gun owners have nothing to fear from the Democratic proposals. With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, most gun control bills are dead on arrival. An exception would be the bump stock ban being pushed by President Trump and many Democrats.

Even a large number of Democrats from conservative-leaning states would oppose strict new gun laws. It’s fitting that the new anti-gun proposals originate with members of Congress from California and Illinois, two of the states most out of touch with the rest of the country with respect to gun rights.

In spite of the recent school shootings, guns registered a distant third on a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll behind health care and jobs/economy. Only 13 percent of voters considered guns the most important issue. There was no breakdown between the pro- and anti-gun factions in the poll.

The largest impact of the Democrat bill will be to mobilize gun owners to resist the attempt to erode gun rights. Democratic proposals that confirm the worst fears of gun owners will drive Second Amendment voters to the polls where defending Donald Trump might not.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Vegas Style Shootings Are Impossible to Prevent

A day after the Las Vegas massacre, pundits and political activists are out in force. Gun control activists are pushing their agenda while others are arguing for a hidden conspiracy. The one thing that most people have missed about the shooting is how easy it was to carry out and how difficult it would be to prevent similar attacks.

Stephen Paddock presents a problem for both sides of the gun debate. He purchased his guns legally in spite of waiting periods and background checks, but even stricter gun laws won’t prevent killers from getting weapons. Guns, both legal and illegal, are plentiful in the United States and relatively easy to obtain. Stephen Paddock had no criminal record and there was no reason to prevent him from legally purchasing a gun. The same cannot be said of the gangbangers of Chicago who, despite criminal records, also seem to have no trouble finding guns.

Paddock avoided security by avoiding the concert venue which likely had metal detectors and building a sniper’s nest in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay casino across the street. Paddock likely smuggled his arsenal into the building in suitcases or golf bags. A frequent traveler myself, I have never seen a single hotel with metal detectors or luggage screening of any sort. Why would they? It isn’t illegal to have a legally owned gun in your hotel room (subject to state and local laws).

From the right, the traditional answer of more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits would not have made a difference in Las Vegas. Paddock was shooting with a high-powered rifle from across the street on the 32^nd floor of a high-rise hotel. Pistols in the hands of concert-goers would have been useless.

From the left, no gun control laws under consideration would have prevented the massacre. Paddock passed background checks because he had no criminal record or history of mental illness. His large arsenal was accumulated over months or years at stores in several different states so waiting periods would not have made a difference. Gun-free zones just move the violence to other areas.

In fact, no law other than a total ban of guns in private hands would have prevented the shooting. The number of illegal guns used in crimes indicates that even a ban would not go far enough. Since thousands of guns that are already in private hands, confiscation would be required to prevent those guns from falling into the wrong hands. Such a policy is not only unconstitutional, it is politically impossible and unworkable from a practical standpoint, requiring the diversion of thousands of law enforcement officers from their current duties to tracking down and seizing guns from law-abiding citizens.

A total gun ban would not even necessarily have prevented Paddock from killing scores of people. In 2016, a man driving a stolen truck killed 85 people in Nice, France. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma City with a truck bomb.

Lone gunmen with no prior criminal history are notoriously difficult to defend against. I was working in the northern Virginia area in 2002 as the DC Sniper murders were taking place. The sniper, John Muhammad concealed himself in the trunk of Chevrolet Caprice and eventually killed 17 people and wounded 10. The entire Washington area was petrified. People were afraid to go outside for even long enough to pump gas.

Afterward, I thought that the strategy would be an easy one for Islamic terrorists or others to adopt. If Al Qaeda or Islamic State sent a few hundred followers across the country with locally purchased guns to shoot up shopping malls, concerts, movie theaters, parks and restaurants at random, the United States would be paralyzed in short order. Such attacks are impossible to prevent in a free society. The killer will ultimately be killed himself, but if suicide or martyrdom is the shooter’s ultimate goal, death is not a deterrent.

New laws and rules could make it more difficult for the Stephen Paddocks of the world to go on murderous rampages. The question is how many rights we are willing to surrender and how many inconveniences we are willing to endure. Do we, as a nation, want to scrap the Second Amendment and undergo TSA screenings every time we check into a hotel? For most of us, the answer is no.

The fundamental problem with mass killings is the existence of evil and the depravity of the human heart. Evil cannot be legislated out of existence no matter how hard we try. We just have to deal with the evil-doers as best we can.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

ACLU Tosses Second Amendment Under the Bus

The American Civil Liberties Union is a group that was founded to protect the constitutional freedoms of Americans. The ACLU website brags, “For almost 100 years, the ACLU has worked to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Yet there seems to be one freedom that is too controversial for the ACLU to protect.

After the Virginia branch of the ACLU aided the alt-right groups that participated in the riot in Charlottesville last weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports that the ACLU will not defend the right of “hate groups” to march with firearms. The group will also consider the potential for violence when considering whether to work with potential clients.

“The events of Charlottesville require any judge, any police chief and any legal group to look at the facts of any white-supremacy protests with a much finer comb,” said Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director. “If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else.”

There were many pictures of the white supremacist marchers openly carrying guns, which is legal in Virginia. At this point, it is unclear if any of these guns were fired during the riot, but photographer Zach Roberts did photograph an alt-right militant using a pistol to provide cover to the white supremacists who savagely beat Deandre Harris, a black special education teacher, with metal poles.

In an online statement, the ACLU said, “If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution.”

The question is one of intent. How can the ACLU determine whether marchers are peacefully exercising their Second Amendment rights or using guns to intimidate political opponents? Without evidence, the answer to that question is in the eye of the beholder.

Until they show intent to break the law, white supremacists have the same rights as any other American. The ACLU has recognized this for decades. As far back as 1978, the group defended the right of neo-Nazis in to march in Skokie, Illinois.

The problem seems to be on the Second Amendment, where the ACLU has long been ambivalent. The group historically considered the right to bear arms to be a government right to arm the militia. In 1980, the ACLU said, “With respect to firearms, the ACLU believes that this quality of dangerousness justifies legal regulation which substantially restricts the individual’s interest in freedom of choice.”

The freedom of speech and the right to bear arms are both enshrined in the Constitution that the ACLU claims to protect. These rights apply to neo-Nazis and Klan members just as they do to every other American. The ACLU has said that it would continue to deal with requests for aid by white supremacist groups on a case-by-case basis, but it is disingenuous to protect one right and not the other, even after Charlottesville.

No right is absolute. Just as freedom of speech does not include yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, the right to carry is subject to reasonable limits. It should be up to state and local governments to learn from Charlottesville and, if they see a legitimate need, enact constitutional legislation that restrict weapons under certain conditions. Virginia law already contains restrictions on the right to carry in certain circumstances.

If anyone, white supremacist or otherwise, abuses their right to bear arms by using legal guns to commit crimes, they should face stiff penalties. If this gunman, who used his gun to aid in the assault and battery of Deandre Harris, can be identified, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including the loss of his Second Amendment rights if he is convicted of a felony.

If the alt-right had not exercised their right to freely assemble and speak their minds, the Charlottesville riot would never have happened. In spite of that, the ACLU is not denying First Amendment aid to racist groups. Why should the Second Amendment be any different? 

Originally published on The Resurgent