Alphecca

Weekly Check on the Bias

Welcome to the July 25th edition of the Weekly Check on the Bias regarding media's coverage of firearms issues.

Let's start with some good news. For several months now I've been posting about attempts by the Mayor and the Police Chief of Lincoln, Nebraska to thwart that state's new law allowing concealed carry. Specifically, they would deny the right of self-protection within Lincoln city limits. It started with Mayor Coleen Seng trying to get an ordinance passed that would ban concealed carry within the city. Back in May, Police Chief Tom Cassady supported the ban:

I support Mayor Coleen Seng’s proposal to limit concealed handguns in Lincoln because more guns will mean more problems in our community.

Our police officers, surveyed about this issue by a co-worker, Sgt. Jim Davidsaver, as part of his graduate research, responded overwhelmingly (85 percent) that concealed carry was unnecessary and made things less safe. It was the new trainees who were most inclined to support concealed carry. I think our recruits had not yet had the experience of their senior colleagues.

Police officers not only deal with the very worst people, they also deal with good people at their very worst moments, when judgment and clarity are overwhelmed by emotion. We’ve all handled the personal crises of fundamentally decent citizens who were momentarily acting poorly. Concealed carry in Texas is the perfect example: the Department of Public Safety reports 5,319 arrests of concealed carry permit holders in the first 51?2 years. That’s what worries us: we’ve seen some bad behavior from the best people, and we function in an uncertain environment where we cannot readily tell who is all right from who is not.

Cassady's use of Texas as "the perfect example" for not allowing concealed carry is almost laughable. As Texas Commissioner Jerry Patterson noted:

In 2000, on the fifth anniversary of the Concealed Handgun Law, the National Center for Policy Analysis issued a report that indicated Texans with concealed carry permits are far less likely to commit a serious crime than the average citizen.

According to the report, the more than 200,000 Texans licensed to carry a concealed firearm are much more law-abiding than the average person.

The report illustrated that Texans who exercise their right to carry firearms are 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for a violent offense. They are 14 times less likely to be arrested for a non-violent offense. And they are 1.4 times less likely to be arrested for murder.

H. Sterling Burnett, a senior policy analyst at the NCPA and the author of the report, concluded:

“Many predicted that minor incidents would escalate into bloody shootouts if Texas passed a concealed-carry law. That prediction was dead wrong,” Burnett said.

With 247,345 concealed handgun licenses active in Texas as of December 2005, the number of law-abiding licensees has had a positive effect on the crime rate.

Still, that did not deter Seng and Cassady from their quest to disarm Lincolnians. More here and here. Fortunately, yesterday, it appears that the Lincoln City Council has thwarted them. From the Freemont Tribune:

LINCOLN, Neb. - The City Council on Monday derailed Mayor Coleen Seng's bid to enact a ban on concealed weapons in Lincoln.

The council, which had been scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposal next week, voted 5-2 to take the item off its agenda.

Seng said she was shocked by the move. Police Chief Tom Casady said: "I feel like I've been cheated."

State lawmakers passed a bill allowing concealed weapons in the most recent session. It goes into effect Jan. 1. Seng had hoped to use a loophole in the law to get a local ban passed.

The law says a permit to carry a concealed weapon "is valid throughout the state" and that "a permit-holder may carry a concealed handgun anywhere in Nebraska."

Incidentally, the City of Omaha also recently lifted it's ban on concealed carry. Anyway, for now this is great news for both the residents of Lincoln, and of Nebraskans in general since they would also have been prohibited by a CCW ban. If Police Chief Cassady really doesn't trust the law abiding residents of Lincoln to carry responsibly, what does that say about his attitude towards them in general? If I lived there I'd be looking for a new top cop for the town.

Speaking of concealed carry permits...

CCW Permits in Utah Busting Budget? And it's not because of instate residents! From the Salt Lake Tribune:

In the 11 years since its passage, Utah's concealed-weapon law has become the closest thing to a national concealed-carry permit, with six of every 10 permits this year going to out-of-state residents.

A tidal wave of nonresident applicants since January has state Bureau of Criminal Identification officials overwhelmed and concerned that Utah taxpayers are subsidizing nonresidents' gun permits. Worse, they say the huge numbers of out-of-state applicants are robbing resources from other important public safety duties - particularly doing criminal background checks on school employees.

"Utah's is the de facto national concealed-carry permit," says Ed McConkie, chief of BCI, which administers the state's concealed-weapons licensing. Of more than 62,000 permits issued from 1995 to 2005, 19,000 have gone to nonresidents.

Applying for Utah's permit requires a gun-safety class, fingerprinting, a criminal background check and $59. An applicant does not have to be a Utah resident - or even have set foot in the state - to get a concealed-gun permit. Utah has licensed instructors in 42 other states and Canada to remotely train applicants for its permit.

Out-of-state applicants, for the most part, are not seeking to carry concealed weapons in Utah. Instead, they want to carry in the more than 30 states that recognize Utah's permit. Utah has the highest level of acceptance in the nation. Add that to the permit's five-year duration, low fee, ease of renewal and modest level of training, and it's no wonder gun rights activists call Utah's "the most valuable permit in the nation."

Apparently, the $59 dollar fee doesn't quite cover all the expenses. Seems to me the answer is rather simple; raise the fee until it does! There, glad I could solve that problem for them.

This article does highlight the need for univeral --nationwide-- reciprocity of CCW permits called for by many pro-gun advocates. The problem with that is that:

1) States such as New York and New Jersey would never EVER agree to such a thing. That would defeat the purpose of such national legislation in it's tracks.

2)Secondly, what of us who are fortunate enough to live in Vermont or Alaska, where CCW permits aren't required? Well, then I guess we would apply to Utah for one of their non-resident permits. Seems a small price to pay to carry in a lot of states.

Now, you would think that with non-residents of Utah being required to have classroom instruction, background checks, and getting fingerprinted all adds up to a rather strict and safety minded procedure to obtain one of their permits. Wrong!

Steve Gunn, a Salt Lake lawyer who is on the board of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, says he is not surprised about the popularity of Utah's permit considering how easy it is to get one.

"It's a shame that we make these permits available so easily and that we don't have more stringent requirements to get them," Gunn says. "The ease with which one can obtain a permit is not in the best interest of the public."

Do you get the feeling that no set of requirements would satisfy the likes of gun control advocate Gunn? You could make frontal-lobotomies and mandatory amputation of both hands a requirement for a CCW permit and he still wouldn't consider us safe to carry firearms. Not sure how we'd do that without hands but...

Update: As Cam Edwards points out, the actual funding problem in Utah is not that the permit fees can't pay for the cost of issueing them but that they DON'T pay for them. The monies collected go to Utah's general fund and are used for any such thing. It is Utah itself that gives a much smaller amount back to the BCI (the agency in charge of processing and issuing the non-resident permits).

A Preposterous Op-Ed on the 2nd Amendment. Ghod knows they try. They really do try to rationalize that the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it means... And they always preface that with how they themselves are gun owners or they grew up with guns or they personally support gun rights and then they show their true colors. Mike Freeman writes in the Gainesville Times (GA):

This amendment, as written by James Madison is made up of two couplets of two clauses The first couplet states, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state ..." The second couplet states "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Why did Madison and the members of the First Congress choose these particular words? What did they hope to accomplish and just what "right" were they trying to protect?

The best answer is that we just don't know for sure, because there is no record of the debate leading to the adoption of this or any other of the nine amendments, nor did the authors provide us with annotated copies to explain what they were intending.

The problem of arriving at a correct understanding is that this seemingly straightforward 27-word statement contains a lot of ambiguous words. Is "people" meant to refer to individuals or the collective whole? What is the difference, if any, between "keep" and "bear" arms? What does "a well regulated militia" really mean? Since "right" seems to be part of the subordinate clause, is it only valid in the context of a militia?

These are just some of the questions raised by a thorough study of the Second Amendment. Google the Second Amendment and you get, among other things, a 32-page article on the legislative and judicial history of this amendment. One of the most interesting parts of that article is the number of court rulings on what the Second Amendment means that are in complete disagreement with one another.

From that research, I can conclude that the following two statements are accurate: (1) Nobody today really knows what Madison and the First Congress intended with this amendment; and (2) You can find support for whatever you believe the amendment to mean in historical discussions and court rulings.

All of this suggests that the National Rifle Association's relentless crusade to oppose any realistic gun control legislation that it believes infringes on individual citizens' "right" to purchase, own and fire any type of rifle or handgun that he or she chooses, is without any clear-cut foundation.

Oh, you just knew he'd get around to slamming the NRA -- that being the favorite sport of anti-gun editorial writers. Notice how they never knock lobbying groups on the other side of the issue --the VPC and the Brady Bunch come to mind -- but instead hang on their every biased lie as if it were gospel truth.

Anyway, notice that he seems to have difficulty with the "ambiguity" of a phrase such as "the people". In fact, the very word "people" gives him pause. Reminds me of Bill Clinton and the definition of "is". Nonetheless, since the other nine original amendments all refer to rights of "people" as individual citizens, why should Freeman suddenly question its meaning in the second one? As an example, surely the First Amendment doesn't protect freedom of speech as only the province of a group such as, er, newspaper columnists...

The biggest howler, of course, is that he claims we can't possibly know what the original framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had in mind. Let me see if I can help him out here:

"They [proposed Bill of Rights] relate 1st. to private rights....the great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of government..."
-James Madison-- The Papers of James Madison

"...Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
- James Madison-- The Federalist, No. 46

"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."
--Second Amendment

Mr. Freeman, is that clear enough for you? Oh, you say, but what about all those other dead white guys during those times?

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
- Thomas Paine -- Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775

"...who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
- George Mason

"The great object is, that every man be armed."
--Thomas Paine

"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
- Patrick Henry

"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
- James Monroe

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." and
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense..."
-John Adams --A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA

"No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."
- State Gazette (Charleston), September 8, 1788

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
-Thomas Jefferson --Commonplace Book 1774

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed...." -Noah Webster --An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution 1787

"The few cases wherein these things (proposed Bill of Rights) may do evil, cannot be weighed against the multitude where the want of them will do evil...I hope therefore a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government..."
-Thomas Jefferson -- in a letter to James Madison, 1788

There. Again, glad I could help out. I guess Mr. Freeman simply didn't delve far enough into his "Google research".

Are Judges Part of the Problem? You better believe it. I've discussed before that you can have all the gun control laws in the world and criminals will still have guns. More anti-gun laws don't stop crime. Locking up thugs for a good long time does. The City of Brotherly Love is experiencing a surge in gun violence. There's been an interesting set of letters appearing in the Philadelphia Daily News over the past few weeks. It started with one by Joseph Fox, Chief of Detectives of the Philadelphia Police Department here:

More than 70 percent of Philly's murder victims have criminal records, many of them extensive. In excess of 80 percent of those arrested for murder have criminal records, many of them for violent crime.

The number of people who are engaged in violent criminal activity is minuscule as a percentage of the overall population. Common sense dictates that if this limited number of violent criminals are locked away, the bloodshed would begin to abate.

Our judges have the power to do this. Too many of them choose not to, and the others choose not to "step up and speak up," as we encourage our citizens to do.

And so the thugs continue to roam our streets, seemingly at will. One thing about gun-toting thugs, they are not the fearless characters they'd like us to believe they are. Strip them of their guns, bring them before a judge willing to send them to prison for a lengthy time, and they will crumble like the cowards they actually are.

It happens in federal court every day. It even happens in some of our local courts, too. Unfortunately, not in enough of them.

Our judges are elected officials. It is time to start holding them accountable. We can begin by demanding that their individual records of performance are made public. That will insure they have a record to run on next time they're up for election.

What Detective Fox is saying is, judges must be held accountable for the lenient sentences some of them mete out to the mutants who are making all of our lives miserable. A few days later, retired Philadelphia Judge Gene D. Cohen responded:

Fox's thesis appears to be blame the judges of Philadelphia for gun violence because criminals do not spend enough time in prison. While no one can be certain that length of prison sentences has anything to do with the current rash of homicides, I do know that sentences imposed by the judges in Philadelphia have been more severe. Yet the violence continues.

Judges in Philadelphia are doing a good job, and more than anyone but the police and the victims, they must face the reality of crime on a daily basis. Our judges, elected by and from the community, feel the pain of our society being torn apart by this wretched state of affairs.

[...]

Judges have always been a soft target for those critics who may look to deflect blame. The judges have no way and no one to fight back against criticism of their individual decisions.

There is no doubt that violence, especially gun violence, has become a dreadful problem for our city. This is a community-based crime prevention problem and blaming judges does nothing to help solve it.

I would say that "length of prison sentences" certainly would keep repeat offenders off the streets if they were long enough and that -- logically -- would reduce crime. If repeat offenders were locked up for good, that might even scare some would-be thugs into finding a better lifestyle.

In today's edition of the paper there are several responses to the judge:

Because judges are granted full immunity from civil responsibility for their actions on the bench, many of them preside over the court with arrogance and impunity, coddling the defendants, while disregarding the physical and mental trauma of the victims.

Clandestine plea-bargaining agreements, granted motions for continuances, and releases without bail have all played a significant role in Philadelphia's era of terror, while consent decrees ordered by a "judge" have opened the doors to repeat offenders in prison, releasing them to offend again and again.

I hold you in contempt of common sense, Judge Cohen, if you think granting $7,000 bail to a couple of drug dealers who were in possession of 60 firearms is your concept of "judges doing a good job."

--Retired police officer Robert D. Boyden

-----------------

Did Chief of Detectives Joseph Fox really offend Judge Cohen by blaming judges for gun violence?

But answer me this: Aren't you the guys who put back on the streets the criminals who commit gun violence, and aren't you the guys who give them light sentences - if any at all other than a slap on the wrist?

I don't think this is done by the police officer who puts his life on the line to apprehend these perps only to have them back on the street within hours.

Possibly you can explain this to us stupid people out here who see a 14-year-old being arrested for a fourth time for possessing a gun while still out on the street. It wasn't a judge arresting this little criminal and possibly facing death - it was a police officer.

Joe Moran, Philadelphia

So far, I haven't seen any letters in support of Judge Cohen's hypothesis that judges are blameless for the soaring crime in Philadelphia.

A Perfect Example of Lenient Judges... This one from Canada. Remember those 17 home grown islamic terrorists who plotted to blow up buildings in Canada and behead the prime minister there? From 24 Hours Vancouver:

The youngest of the 17 terror suspects charged in an alleged plot to bomb undisclosed locations in southern Ontario has been granted bail.

Justice Gary Trotter set out several conditions for the 16-year-old, including that he report to police every Friday and not have any communication with the other suspects.

The teen, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, cannot possess firearms and had to hand over any travel documents.

He will be under virtual house arrest, but is allowed to go to court, school, his lawyer's office and the police station unsupervised.

The youth was granted bail for $15,000, and he will be released into the custody of his parents, the court heard. He was only 15 years old at the time of his arrest.

Only $15,000 dollars bail? For a terrorist? Who cares how old he was at the time -- he's a TERRORIST. Oh but wait! He'll be "under virtual house arrest" but not when going to court, school, his lawyer, etc... Are Canadians feeling safer now?

That's a wrap in more ways than one around here.

When I first started these Weekly Reports almost four years ago, there were only a handful of gun bloggers and few were doing what I was -- examining media stories about guns, gun control, and the Second Amendment. Now there are hundreds. In an age when something is stale a few minutes after you post it, my Weekly Check has become a bit redundant.

In addition, my "day job" is requiring more of my time and I also -- especially -- want to devote additional energies to my science fiction project. I'm finding that the creativity of fiction writing is far more satisfying than anything I do around here. Maybe I just need a break from factual reality.

This will be the last of my regular Weekly Checks on the Bias. That doesn't mean I will stop blogging on Alphecca, especially about gun rights and media bias, just that I don't want it to be the "better part of a day" affair that the Weekly Check has become. I'll still put up individual posts of course.

My thanks go to all of you who have faithfully read these weekly missives. My thanks especially to Glenn Reynolds who first noticed and has often helped promote the report and of course to the other great bloggers who have given it mention as well. My sincere thanks also to Cam Edwards & NRA News for the terrific opportunity to do these reports live on national radio. Perhaps I can still do occasional features for them.

Lastly but most importantly, thanks to all of you for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at July 25, 2006 11:28 AM