Alphecca

Weekly Review of the Media on Guns

Welcome to the October 4th edition of my weekly roundup of media coverage on firearms issues. There's lots going on so I'll try to limit my blather about each:

The Supreme Court can have a dramatic influence over all the rights we are guaranteed by the Constitution. That's why when the President nominates someone to become a justice, a close look at that candidate is needed by all of us. If John Roberts was a mystery, at least he had solid conservative credentials. Harriet Miers is more than a mystery, having never been a judge at all. The only thing I've been able to dig up about her opinions on the Second Amendment come from a Time Magazine article:

In 1992, in Texas Lawyer, while President of the state bar, Miers wrote about the effect on the criminal justice system of an episode in a Fort Worth courthouse, where in July of that year, a man angry about his divorce went on a shooting spree, killing two lawyers and wounding two judges and a prosecutor before surrendering at a TV station:

* "The same liberties that ensure a free society make the innocent vulnerable to those who prevent rights and privileges and commit senseless and cruel acts. Those precious liberties include free speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of liberties, access to public places, the right to bear arms and freedom from constant surveillance. We are not willing to sacrifice these rights because of the acts of maniacs."

The fact that she considers the right to bear arms a "precious liberty" that should not be sacrificed as an expedient to solving crime problems is a good sign. Still, I hope there will be more during her confirmation hearings. We shall see but a perfect example of why appointments such as this are important comes from the AP:

The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a lawsuit against gun manufacturers accused of negligence for firearms violence in the nation's capital.

An appeals court had said the District of Columbia government and individual gun victims — including a man who was left a quadriplegic after being shot in 1997 — could sue under a D.C. law that says gun manufacturers can be held accountable for violence from assault weapons.

The high court had been asked over the summer to use the case to strike down the statute, which gun makers said interfered with their right to sell lawful products.

The lawsuit still could be voided by a new federal law, however. The Senate voted in July to shield firearms manufacturers, dealers and importers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes. Action is pending in the House.

[...]

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals had ruled last spring in the case against Beretta USA Corp., Smith & Wesson Corp., Colt's Manufacturing Co., Glock Inc., and other companies.

"No due process issue is raised by legislation that seeks to redress injuries suffered by district residents and visitors resulting from the manufacture and distribution of a particular class of firearms whose lethal nature far outweighs their utility," Judge Michael Farrell wrote.

It's clear, by the way, that Judge Farrell is seeking to legislate from the bench when he decides that firearms' dangerous nature "outweighs their utility". That kind of social-engineering could be applied to an awful lot of other products.

To understand how dangerous the statutes are to commerce in the country as a whole, let me quote Eugene Volokh on the Appeals Court decision:

The court generally rejected various lawsuits against gun manufacturers, but held that victims of gun crimes were entitled to sue gun manufacturers under D.C. Code sec. 7-2551.01 (under a separate statute, the city is also entitled to sue manufacturers and dealers based on such crimes, for reimbursement for various health care costs that it has had to pay):

Any manufacturer, importer, or dealer of an assault weapon or machine gun shall be held strictly liable in tort, without regard to fault or proof of defect, for all direct and consequential damages that arise from bodily injury or death if the bodily injury or death proximately results from the discharge of the assault weapon or machine gun in the District of Columbia.

To quote the court further,

The SLA defines “assault weapon” to include a number of specific products, and invests “machine gun” with the same meaning defined in D.C. Code § 7-2501.01 (10), i.e., “any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot: (A) Automatically, more than 1 shot by a single function of the trigger; [or] (B) Semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading.”

The latter definition of "machine gun" is of course highly misleading. "Machine gun" means a gun that shoots more than one round per trigger pull; that's the nearly universal definition. Semiautomatic guns aren't machine guns.

What's more, this definition labels as a machine gun the overwhelming majority of all semiautomatic guns, since even those semiautomatic guns that come with a smaller magazine can generally be used with a larger magazine -- the only "conversion" required is simply slapping in the bigger magazine. But in any event, regardless of what labels the D.C. law uses, it likely covers about half or more of the guns that are sold throughout the country, including most standard handguns (other than revolvers) and most semiautomatic rifles.

And this law imposes liability for manufacturing and distributing semiautomatic weapons even if the manufacturers and dealers are distributing the guns far outside D.C., in a jurisdiction where the guns are perfectly legal -- and semiautomatic guns are legal nearly everywhere in the U.S. You may have the perfect right to buy such a gun in some state (let's say Tennessee), sellers may have the right to sell it to you there, and Tennessee-based manufacturers may have the right to make it there, both under Tennessee law and under federal law. But because of the actions of the D.C. City Council, the manufacturers may find themselves having to stop selling the guns in Tennessee, for fear of being sued in D.C. Or they may at least increase the gun's price, which means that the D.C. City Council would have effectively imposed a tax on what happens in Tennessee.

To use an analogy, Fireworks are prohibited in Vermont. What if Vermont passed a statute that held fireworks makers liable for all injuries caused by their products even if the products were manufactured and sold only in states that do not prohibit them?

The hope was that the Supreme Court would hear the case and (in a perfect world) strike-down DC's statute as interfering with the lawful commerce of gun makers in other states. They refused to hear the case.

Meanwhile in Florida...

Well, if the Brady Bunch is unhappy about Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, also known as the "Castle Doctrine", they'll be virtually apoplectic over a newly proposed law that would prohibit employers from banning their workers firearms as long as they keep them in their personal vehicles. From the Sun Sentinel:

Florida businesses could soon face criminal charges if they try to stop employees from bringing guns to work in their cars, thrusting the state into a growing national debate pitting individual freedom against job safety.

Backed by the National Rifle Association, two state lawmakers have filed bills that would allow workers to have guns at work, as long as the weapons remain locked in their vehicles.

The legislation is modeled after an Oklahoma law that drew national attention when a number of major companies, including energy giant ConocoPhillips and oil-services conglomerate Halliburton, sued to have it overturned.

A Florida version could have similarly sweeping effects, particularly in Central Florida, where the region's largest employer -- Walt Disney World, with more than 57,000 workers -- does not allow its employees to bring guns onto park property. Universal Orlando, which employs 13,000 people, has a similar policy.

About 353,000 people in Florida, meanwhile, have concealed-weapons permits, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That figure does not include people who don't need to obtain the licenses, such as police and military personnel.

I had posted about this yesterday, saying that I was on the fence about it because of the conflict with the property rights of private business but several reader comments have swayed me towards supporting the measure. A person's car is an extension of their home, so to speak. That is, just as an employer shouldn't be concerned if a worker has firearms (or beer or a satellite dish) at home, so too they should not be able to regulate what that worker has in his personal vehicle as long as he doesn't bring something prohibited into the workplace itself.

As I said yesterday, maybe the worker has a CCW permit and when he leaves work, he'll be going other places than home and wants his firearm with him. Or, as many where I work do, he might be heading to the range after punching out.

A lot of businesses in Florida are against the proposal so it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out next Spring.

Heading North to Wisconsin...

I've written before about the proposed legislation to finally permit (get it?) concealed-carry in Wisconsin. In an editorial today, the Wisconsin State Journal is besides itself:

To understand how dangerously foolhardy it would be for Wisconsin to adopt a law permitting people to carry concealed guns, consider what happened this spring in Minnesota, which adopted a similar law.

According to second-degree murder charges, drunken 26-year-old Zachary Ourada was harassing women at a Minneapolis restaurant. Doorman Billy Walsh asked Ourada to leave. Ourada then pulled out a concealed gun and shot Walsh four times in the back, killing the 43-year-old father of three.

When police apprehended Ourada, he was reported to have shouted: "I didn't do nuthin' wrong. I got a permit to carry that (gun)."

Indeed, Ourada had a permit along with an obviously perverted sense of right and wrong. It was a tragic combination.

[...]

Advocates of concealed weapons legislation like to claim that we all would be safer if the ban on hidden guns were removed. That sort of "up is down" thinking belongs in Alice's Wonderland. It would be silly if it weren't so deadly serious, as Billy Walsh's family can attest.

Remember, concealed weapons legislation is not about the constitutional right to bear firearms. It's about inviting people to walk around with hidden firearms.

Now remember, open-carry IS allowed in Wisconsin. One mutant able to obtain a CCW permit in a neighboring state is hardly proof that the streets will be awash in blood if the legislation passes.

Quick update: Blogger Say Uncle shows that the premise of the above editorial is a lie! According to the original news report, Ourada left the bar after the argument and returned 45 minutes later with the gun. So this wasn't even a "concealed carry" issue. It doesn't change my argument though, which is:

In almost every state that allows concealed carry, the overwhelming majority of permit holders are upright citizens. In fact, only a fraction of one percent have been arrested for violating laws, far lower than the general population as a whole. To make that even clearer, here are some statistics -- gathered from state records, mind you -- showing just how low the violation rate is among CCW permit holders (via the NRA):

The following indicate permit revocation rates for states that report such data.

* Florida: 798,732 issued, 146 (0.02%) revoked due to firearm crimes by licensees. (Dept. of State, 10/1/87-2/29/02)
* Kentucky: 71,770 valid permits, 585 (0.8%) revoked for any reason. (State Police, 10/1/96-12/31/01)
* Louisiana.: 15,319 issued, 67 (0.4%) revoked for any reason. (State Police, (11/1/96-2/28/02)
* Oklahoma: 35,329 issued, 108 (0.30%) revoked for any reason. (SBI, 2/28/ 2002)
* North Carolina: 47,046 issued, 242 (0.5%) revoked for any reason. (SBI, 12/1/95-9/29/01)
* South Carolina: 33,492 issued, 164 (0.5%) revoked for any reason. (SLED, 8/96-5/26/02)
* Texas: 223,584 issued, 1,772 (0.8%) revoked for any reason. (DPS, 1/1/96-5/1/02)
* Tennessee.: 130,187 issued, 1,126 (0.9%) revoked for any reason. (DPS, 12/96-5/4/02)
* Utah: 44,173 issued, 565 (1.3%) revoked for any reason. (Dec. 31, 2001)
* Virginia: 172,347 issued, 372 (0.2%) revoked for any reason. (State Police, 7/95-4/02)
* Wyoming: 7,480 issued, 20 (0.3%) revoked for any reason. (Dept. of Criminal Investigation, 10/1/94-2/02)

Chicago, Washington DC, and yes, Milwaukee, Wisconsin would love to have crime rates per capita that low. Don't tell that, though, to Helle K. Berry of Racine, WI, who submitted to the Racine Journal Times this letter:

I write with fear in my heart for the possibility of passage of a concealed weapons bill for Wisconsin. That we have guns is not the issue, the issue is their concealment. If guns are so necessary, let’s strap on a holster and show the world!

[...]

If a criminal, or even just a youngster with his/her hands on a gun to commit a crime for the first time, thinks that their victim is carrying a gun, my belief is they are more likely to shoot the innocent person. It becomes a contest of who shoots first.

I guess she feels it would be better to not have a chance and just get shot without defense. She also says:

When I was awakened one night by a burglar standing in my bedroom doorway, I used my most effective weapon, my voice. He left the same way he came in, through the window from which he had cut out the glass. A gun was unnecessary and could have been much more dangerous. And, of course, it would not have been under my pillow and reachable.

The thought that someone walking down the street could be carrying a gun sends chills down my spine. There are so many angry people in our world these days, let’s not make it even easier to cause grievous bodily harm.

Well, I'm certainly glad that her "voice" was all that was needed to send a burglar scrambling but alas, Ms. Berry, that isn't how it usually works. Indeed, you may consider yourself fortunate that you didn't experience rape, beatings, or murder, the usual outcome of a confrontation between a woman and an intruder.

Speaking of Racine...

Last week I wrote about how the NRA's Eddie Eagle program was in the crosshairs in Racine. From today's Journal Times:

The Racine City Council will decide tonight whether the Police Department can use hundreds of coloring books that have images of guns to teach gun-safety to children.

Alderman Pete Karas says he opposes the Police Department's request to get free coloring books from the National Rifle Association because the books could be harmful because of the images of guns.

I'm not sure that Karas actually has a clue about his Police Department's proposal. From last week's Journal Times:

Eddie Eagle - a feathered National Rifle Association cartoon character who teaches children how not to handle guns - could actually be harmful, says an alderman opposed to a Police Department plan to use Eddie in programs for children.

The City Council will decide Tuesday whether the Racine Police Department can order hundreds of coloring books from the NRA for no charge and use them in conjunction with lectures the department holds with children.

Among other things in the books, children would be coloring in images of guns and of children finding guns in their homes. Opposition Alderman Pete Karas, who is leading the charge against the police department's efforts, said the booklets are harmful and ineffective, teaching children that guns are for adults, which could further a child's interest in the weapons.

"These are things that usually aren't brought up to children," Karas said. "This is an introduction."

But the NRA's Eddie Eagle can help children of all ages know not to touch guns, to leave the area where they found the gun and to find an adult, "and that's the only thing the gun program teaches," said Sgt. Bill Macemon, Racine Police Department spokesman.
Karas isn't so sure.

"At first glance you look at this and say it's OK," he said, "(but) by making kids aware of guns ... they may, in essence, be harming children, especially those who are contemplating juvenile suicide or juvenile homicide."

By his strange logic, if schools or the police want to teach kids not to take drugs, that will let kids know that drugs exist and they'll become junkies. Teach kids not to play with matches? Now they're "Burnin' down the house"! Don't even THINK of teaching them not to talk to strangers, they'll be yakking-it-up with them all day.

It must be so frustrating to someone such as Sgt. Macemon who wants to do the right thing and teach kids to leave guns alone, use free materials from a proven program to do so, and then has to deal with boneheads like Karas.

One last thing... One of our own, The Gun Guy at Nation of Riflemen, is having a tough time of it right now and is selling his firearms collection to pay the bills. I've been there and it sucks. As he is probably the premier gun-rights blogger in the country, why not head HERE and help him keep his collection by hitting the contribution button located at the top of the right-hand sidebar? He deserves everyone's support. Thanks!

Well, I'd better get this posted. Naturally I'll be on Cam Edwards' show later today and remember that if you listen to it via Sirius Satellite, it's now on Channel 144. Thanks for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at October 4, 2005 09:33 AM