GOP plays politics with public safety - Part One

[photo via Greg Fallis]

Employing the classic Republican projection tactic, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz accused President Obama of playing politics with gun safety reforms. In the world according to NRA beholden Republicans, our President and all citizens concerned with the overly easy availability of firearms are hypocrites. And by the way he didn't see anything at all odious about the NRA's hideous pro-gun ad which was definitely not about the President's daughters. Pay no attention to the fact they were referenced in the opening ten seconds of the ad. And we'll just ignore the NRA's ad was premised on a outright lie.

But please let's not trouble Mr. Cruz with those damned librul facts. It would interfere with his false statements made about firearm availability:

"There actually isn't the so-called gun show loophole. It doesn't exist. Any licensed firearm dealer that sells at a gun show has to have a background check," he said.

I guess that's technically half true. I'm reasonably sure the majority of licensed dealers are responsible sellers. But that's not the loophole. The problem is irresponsible private sellers at gun shows like this 70 year old guy with a huge stash of high powered weapons for sale:

Asked who could buy his Uzi semi-automatic weapon with a bundle of 30-round magazines, Norm replied, "Anyone who has $2,000."

And this father/son team anxious to close a single sale:

At Saturday's show, a teenager named Jacob walked the aisles with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder and a "For Sale" sign pinned to his chest. For $1,800, Jacob said, the deal would include magazines of 20 and 30 rounds.

Jacob turned the final stage of the transaction over to his father, Doug, who declined to give his last name.

Told that his would-be buyer lived in California and the weapon was illegal there, Doug said it didn't matter.

"As far as I'm concerned," Doug said. "I'm selling you a DVD player."

Just a little free market capitalism between strangers no doubt to take advantage of the inflated prices caused by gun industry alarmists. Somehow this doesn't shout "taking personal responsibility" to me.

Wanting to shut these dark deals down is not the same as trying to prevent responsible owners from buying firearms. But if the gun hoarders want to call pointing out the insanity of this lax regulation playing politics, well fine. Deal me into the game. I'm playing to win this round.

Shots fired on gun appreciation day

On this date in history, angry Second Amendment absolutists organized a collective action to show solidarity for their cause -- Gun Appreciation Day. A day to show the world they are many. They are strong. They are armed with cash and high-caliber firearms. And they are not afraid to use them. Shots were literally fired.

So far we know five people were shot accidentally at three different gun shows today. Three of the gunshot victims were at one show, at a safety checkpoint for private sellers. Sounds like something that might happen at a fly-by-night flea market, not so much like a well regulated marketplace for weapons of human destruction.

But enough about the crass commercialism of the day. On the PR side, they also held protests. Tell me the NRA didn't fund this banner.

[BuzzFeed photo Many more at the link.]

I looked at the photos and saw mostly middle class people who are probably not hoarding guns. They're simply panicked by the false rumors flooding their news streams. Guns make them feel safer and they believe the government is trying to take them away from everyone. They're not a danger to society. The problem is those other faces in the crowd who aren't as competent -- or emotionally stable. Weeding that element out is the only way to make all of us safer -- whether we want to carry a gun, or not.

Hey gunbloggers - Yoo hoo

By Libby

The focus on Yoo's memo has been mainly about the torture excuses and the assertion that Ashcroft signed off on it. He apparently didn't. But I would think that Second Amendment bloggers would be more than little concerned about this item.

The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial assertions of presidential power. [...]

The Fourth Amendment assertion is one of several far-reaching legal arguments revealed by the disclosure Tuesday of a 2003 Justice Department memo that authorized harsh military interrogations. In its footnotes, asides and central text, that 81-page memo asserted nearly unlimited presidential powers during a time of war, although the Justice Department later said the military should not rely on its reasoning.

The way I read this, all Bush has to do is declare a national terrorist emergency and he can send his stormtroopers into the streets of America and confiscate your guns, the law and the constitution be damned. Furthermore, if a president wanted to declare martial law for some reason, any reason, this memo would pretty much allow it.

I'm often assured that would never happen, but I have to ask, if the administration never even contemplated such a move, why on earth would they go to the trouble to lay a 'legal' framework for it and I might remind you that this is not the only justification they have put into place to do so. Let's not forget the de facto repeal of Posse Comitatus. Add to that the massive database the administration has assembled including phone calls, internet communications and financial transactions which would give them the ability to pinpoint who owns the guns and it looks to me like the government could disarm the citizenry a lot more efficiently and swiftly than they can terrorists.

Maybe they'll never use this power, but is anyone willing to take that chance? And if you're willing to trust this administration with that kind of power, ask yourself if you're willing to trust the next one. The precedents don't disappear just because the players change.

Hey Rudy - hold the phone

By Libby

Under the heading, what was he thinking? Did he forget who he was talking to?

While delivering his big speech today before the National Rifle Association, Rudy was interrupted by a cell phone call from his wife, Judith Nathan. An apparently surprised Rudy told the crowd, "it's my wife," spoke to her for a moment, and closed the call with a touching, I'm-happily-married moment, saying, "I love you" to her in front of a crowd of gun rights types.

Why he didn't turn it off before he started speaking might be explained by simple inattention, although the more cynical viewer, considering this has happened before, might think it was purposefully contrived to show what a family man he is. If so, this man has no understanding of gun owners.

The NRA crowd is macho to the max. Nothing gets between these folks and their firearms. Certainly not the "little woman." Rudy was presuambly there to convince them of his sincere conversion to 2nd amendment rights and this crowd is easily insulted. The impression he will have left is that his wife is more important than talking to them about guns.

I don't know what the semiauto-toting gunslinger calls it today, but in my day they would have called him pussy-whipped. I doubt they were favorably impressed.

The right to bear arms

By Libby
Updated below

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

Michael Linn Jones in a thoughtful post, tears up an op-ed in the WaPo today written by the mayor and attorney general of DC on the gun ban case currently in the courts. He argues that gun control is fascist and asks:

All right. But tell me this…what difference does it make what the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is if it also says a citizen’s right to own and bear arms shall not be infringed? It could say that in order to provide meat for the table, etc., but the end result remains the same. The second phrase of the amendment is clear enough.

I have to agree and I'd go further. I'm no constitutional scholar but I don't think it takes a academian to put this amendment into historical context and tease out what was on our Founder's minds when they wrote the first phrase.

In those days, everyone owned a gun for hunting and protection. The citizens were the militia, They used their own guns and what the Founders were trying to prevent was the government of England from coming in and disarming the people. It's not a stretch to see their intent was to prevent any government interference in private gun ownership, including perhaps a future despotic president who might seek to disarm the citizenry in order to faciliate his own fascist fantasies.

Guns should be registered for practical reasons and I don't have a problem with gun laws that don't infringe on the right of ownership, but the idea that banning guns prevents crime seems to me to be at best naively optimistic and at worst dangerously restrictive. Criminals and the criminally insane will get guns outside the law anyway or find other ways to cause bodily harm. Your neighbor with the Uzi isn't likely to shoot up your barbecue if his gun is registered. Neither will he be able to save you from a home invasion of armed robbers if he is disarmed himself.

The intent of the Second Amendment is clear. I only hope when this case makes it to SCOTUS that the court doesn't muddy the waters with some half-baked decision or worse yet, uphold a ban. With the current Roberts court, I'm afraid that's pretty much a crap shoot.

Update: The papers have been filed. Scotusblog has links to the documents and the legalese analysis.

Hold your fire

By Libby

Here's another little way the Bush doctrine is endangering our safety at home. Our local police are running out of ammo

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

So they can't train the new recruits in firearm proficiency and it's costing the taxpayer additional local funds to keep their police departments in bullets.

I guess that's one way to ensure that a potential declaration of martial law wouldn't meet any resistance from local law enforcement officers who might still believe in civil liberties. Rather convenient way to disarm the people as well, without the bother of confiscating the firearms. I have to think that individual gun owners are also feeling the same pinch and would likely keep less ammo on hand. Wouldn't be much chance of an armed uprising without bullets.

Just saying.

DC git yer guns - now or later?

Robert Levy scolds Congress for taking the steam out of his lawsuit, Parker v. District of Columbia, by proposing legislation that would repeal the gun ban in DC. I don't pretend to understand the finer points of law that he references but it seems to me he speaks in absolutes on a matter that is fraught with uncertainties and if you cut through the lawyerly talk, he's basically saying - don't screw up my case.

He makes some interesting arguments, but one has to factor the attention his precedent-setting suit would engender if it indeed ever reached SCOTUS when assessing his objections. Forgive my cynicism, but I think Levy may protest too much out of his own interests and I'm not so certain waiting until the courts, as he says, "decide to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by upholding a total ban on handguns" before undertaking Congressional action is the correct solution either. It seems to me to be just as dangerous an approach as the "bird in the hand" strategy currently on the table.

I'm sure I don't know the correct answer to this conundrum, but I'm not so certain Levy does either.