Defense Distributed (@DefDist) tweeted at 11:31 AM on Wed, Feb 27, 2013: DEFCAD: AK47 Fire Control Group CAD files added with video http://t.co/kS5LjKYjvM #defcad http://t.co/pxPhS0Nkzn (https://twitter.com/DefDist/status/306818866510708736) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download
2/27/2013
2/25/2013
LGBT supporters of POTUS
It is the height of obsequious dereliction that the LGBT community by and large supports POTUS for his tepid, empty promises of "equality" while ignoring or excusing the larger issue of constitutional degradations and indignities committed by that fraud and traitor. Are the LGBT bloc so desperate for social recognition they would rather gain tax breaks if it meant losing their country and ultimately their freedom? Shame on the LGBT supporters of Obama!
2/23/2013
2/14/2013
2/13/2013
Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights will hold a hearing “Proposals to Reduce Gun Violence: Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is Chair of the Subcommittee, and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is the Ranking Member. The Subcommittee has solicited letters from the public. My letter is below.
—–
Feb. 8, 2013
Dear Senator Cruz:
I am submitting this letter for the Feb. 12, 2013, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing “Proposals to Reduce Gun Violence: Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.”
To begin with, the Subcommittee should acknowledge that crime reduction policy has been a great success in the United States in recent decades. For example, in the early 1980s, the U.S. homicide rate was more than 10 per 100,000 population. Today, that rate has fallen by over half, to under 5. This is comparable to the early 1960s. Overall rates of violent crime have also fallen sharply since their peak of several decades ago.[1]
There are many causes for this progress. Perhaps one of them is that today, 41 of the 50 states respect the constitutional right to bear arms, so that a law-abiding adult can obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm for lawful protection, or even carry without a permit in a few states. In contrast, in the early 1980s, only about half a dozen medium or small states provided a fair system for licensing the carrying of firearms.
Second, the exploitation of the Newtown murders as an occasion to impose a plethora of new anti-gun laws is unwise. Professor Gary Kleck, of Florida State University, is by far the most eminent worldwide scholar on quantitative data about firearms, and the effect of firearms laws. His book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America was the winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology, for “the most outstanding contribution to criminology” in a three-year period.
Kleck’s 2009 article “The worst possible case for gun control: mass shootings in schools” [American Behavioral Scientist 52(10):1447-1464] explains why gun control laws enacted as part of an inchoate desire to “do something” after an atrocious crime such as a mass murder in a school are particularly unlikely to prevent future such crimes. Rather, the “do something” anti-gun laws typically amount to an expression of rage against guns or gun owners, and fail to make children safer.
Regarding some particular proposals that have been raised, as alleged responses to Newtown:
The “assault weapons” issue is one of the most long-standing hoaxes in American politics. The guns suggested for prohibition do not fire faster, nor do they fire more powerful ammunition, than guns which are not singled out for prohibition. External features such as telescoping stocks, or forward grips, make it easier for a user to control the firearm, to shoot it accurately, and to hold it properly. Features which make a firearm more accurate are not a rational basis for prohibition.[2]
Magazines holding more than 10 rounds are not “high capacity.” Semi-automatic handguns constitute over 82% of new handguns manufactured in the United States.[3] A large percentage of them have standard, factory capacity magazines of 11 to 19 rounds. The AR-15 type rifle has for years been the best-selling rifle in the United States. The factory standard magazine for an AR-15 rifle is 30 rounds.
Assertions by some prohibitionists that the aforesaid common guns and common magazines are only made for mass murder are a malicious libel against the millions of peaceable Americans who own these self-defense and sporting tools.
Pursuant to District of Columbia v. Heller, such firearms and magazines may not be prohibited, because they are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” 554 U.S. 570, 625 (2008). As Heller explained, the Second Amendment prohibits prohibition of “an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose” of self-defense. Id. at 628.
Senator Feinstein’s prohibition bill targets an enormous class of arms. Taking into account the at least 4 million AR-15 rifles, plus everything else, the Feinstein ban would likely apply to at least 10 million firearms.
As for the magazines, the Feinstein ban does not focus solely on genuinely “high capacity,” non-standard magazines (e.g. 75 or 100 rounds) but instead bans common magazines holding 11 or more rounds; the gigantic class of what she would ban probably numbers at least several tens of millions, and perhaps much more.
That in itself is sufficient, according to Heller, to make prohibition unconstitutional.
—–
Feb. 8, 2013
Dear Senator Cruz:
I am submitting this letter for the Feb. 12, 2013, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing “Proposals to Reduce Gun Violence: Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.”
To begin with, the Subcommittee should acknowledge that crime reduction policy has been a great success in the United States in recent decades. For example, in the early 1980s, the U.S. homicide rate was more than 10 per 100,000 population. Today, that rate has fallen by over half, to under 5. This is comparable to the early 1960s. Overall rates of violent crime have also fallen sharply since their peak of several decades ago.[1]
There are many causes for this progress. Perhaps one of them is that today, 41 of the 50 states respect the constitutional right to bear arms, so that a law-abiding adult can obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm for lawful protection, or even carry without a permit in a few states. In contrast, in the early 1980s, only about half a dozen medium or small states provided a fair system for licensing the carrying of firearms.
Second, the exploitation of the Newtown murders as an occasion to impose a plethora of new anti-gun laws is unwise. Professor Gary Kleck, of Florida State University, is by far the most eminent worldwide scholar on quantitative data about firearms, and the effect of firearms laws. His book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America was the winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology, for “the most outstanding contribution to criminology” in a three-year period.
Kleck’s 2009 article “The worst possible case for gun control: mass shootings in schools” [American Behavioral Scientist 52(10):1447-1464] explains why gun control laws enacted as part of an inchoate desire to “do something” after an atrocious crime such as a mass murder in a school are particularly unlikely to prevent future such crimes. Rather, the “do something” anti-gun laws typically amount to an expression of rage against guns or gun owners, and fail to make children safer.
Regarding some particular proposals that have been raised, as alleged responses to Newtown:
The “assault weapons” issue is one of the most long-standing hoaxes in American politics. The guns suggested for prohibition do not fire faster, nor do they fire more powerful ammunition, than guns which are not singled out for prohibition. External features such as telescoping stocks, or forward grips, make it easier for a user to control the firearm, to shoot it accurately, and to hold it properly. Features which make a firearm more accurate are not a rational basis for prohibition.[2]
Magazines holding more than 10 rounds are not “high capacity.” Semi-automatic handguns constitute over 82% of new handguns manufactured in the United States.[3] A large percentage of them have standard, factory capacity magazines of 11 to 19 rounds. The AR-15 type rifle has for years been the best-selling rifle in the United States. The factory standard magazine for an AR-15 rifle is 30 rounds.
Assertions by some prohibitionists that the aforesaid common guns and common magazines are only made for mass murder are a malicious libel against the millions of peaceable Americans who own these self-defense and sporting tools.
Pursuant to District of Columbia v. Heller, such firearms and magazines may not be prohibited, because they are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” 554 U.S. 570, 625 (2008). As Heller explained, the Second Amendment prohibits prohibition of “an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose” of self-defense. Id. at 628.
Senator Feinstein’s prohibition bill targets an enormous class of arms. Taking into account the at least 4 million AR-15 rifles, plus everything else, the Feinstein ban would likely apply to at least 10 million firearms.
As for the magazines, the Feinstein ban does not focus solely on genuinely “high capacity,” non-standard magazines (e.g. 75 or 100 rounds) but instead bans common magazines holding 11 or more rounds; the gigantic class of what she would ban probably numbers at least several tens of millions, and perhaps much more.
That in itself is sufficient, according to Heller, to make prohibition unconstitutional.
The conclusion is reinforced by Heller’s observation that handgun prohibition was unconstitutional “Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights.” Id. at 628. For substantive rights (as opposed to procedural ones), the two main standards are Strict Scrutiny and Intermediate Scrutiny. The former is for most situations of racial discrimination by government, and for most types of content-based restrictions on speech. The latter is used for government discrimination based on sex, as well as for most “time, place, and manner” regulations of speech in public places.
So we know that handgun prohibition fails Strict Scrutiny and also fails Intermediate Scrutiny. Although formulations of Intermediate Scrutiny vary from case to case, the general approach is that to pass Intermediate Scrutiny, a law must involve “an important government interest” and must “substantially” further that interest.
Now consider Intermediate Scrutiny as applied to handguns. Handguns constitute approximately one-third of the U.S. gun supply. They are used in about half of all homicides.[4]
And yet, a handgun ban fails Intermediate Scrutiny. If a handgun ban fails, then the bans on magazines and on so-called “assault weapons” must also fail.
The large majority of firearms banned by Sen. Feinstein’s bill are rifles. Rifles constitute about a third of the American gun supply. But rifles account for fewer than 3% of U.S. homicides—fewer than blunt objects such as clubs or hammers. The rifles covered by the Feinstein bill would account for even less.
Because handguns (very frequently used in crime) cannot be banned under Intermediate Scrutiny, rifles, or a subset of rifles (rarely used in crime) cannot be banned either.
There are no solid national statistics about the current use of 11+ magazines in crime. Given that 11-19 round magazines are standard for a large fraction of modern handguns, one might guess that 11+ round magazines would be used in some crimes. Even so, such magazines would be used less often in crime than handguns in general. Thus, a magazine ban also fails Intermediate Scrutiny.
It is important to remember that when applying Intermediate Scrutiny to a Second Amendment question, Heller’s methodology (by announcing that a handgun ban fails Intermediate Scrutiny) is that one must not consider solely the criminal uses of an arm. One must also consider the frequency of an arm’s use by “law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” The sheer quantity of what Senator Feinstein would ban is itself evidence that the banned firearms and magazines are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”
Heller makes it clear that some non-prohibitory controls are permissible. Because the Heller case was about a gun ban, the Court did not deeply explore the contours of legitimate non-prohibitory controls. However, the Court has said enough to at least raise questions about the constitutionality of “universal background checks.”
It is often said, by anti-gun lobbyists, that 40% of firearms sales take place today without checks. Notably, the study on which this claim is based was conducted before the National Instant Criminal Background Check System became operational.
Besides that, a great many private transfers of firearms take place between family members, or other persons who have known each other for many years.
More fundamentally, private transfers are not with the proper scope of Congress’s power to regulate “Commerce . . . among the several States.” Pursuant to federal law since 1968, private sales may only take place intra-state. 18 U.S.C. §922(a). They are not interstate commerce. Nor, indeed, are they necessarily commerce of any sort, no matter how broadly defined, since many such transfers are gifts.
In Printz v. United States (1997), Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion suggested that a mandatory federal check on “purely intrastate sale or possession of firearms” might violate the Second Amendment. 521 U.S. 898, 938 (2007).
This view is supported by the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. There the Court provided a list of “longstanding” laws which were permissible gun controls. Heller at 626-27. The inclusion of each item on the list, as an exception to the right to keep and bear arms, provides guidance about the scope of the right itself.
Thus, the Court affirmed “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.” Felons and the mentally are exceptions to the general rule that individual Americans have a right to possess arms. The exception only makes sense if the general rule is valid. After all, if no-one has a right to possess arms, then there is no need for a special rule that felons and the mentally ill may be barred from possessing arms.
The second exception to the right to keep and bear arms is in favor of “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” This exception proves another rule: Americans have a general right to carry firearms. If the Second Amendment only applied to the keeping of arms at home, and not to the bearing of arms in public places, then there would be no need to specify the exception for carrying arms in “sensitive places.”
The third Heller exception is “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” The word “commercial” does not appear because the Supreme Court was trying to use extra ink. Once again, the exception proves the rule. The Second Amendment allows “conditions and qualifications” on the commercial sale of arms. The Second Amendment does not allow Congress to impose “conditions and qualifications” on non-commercial transactions.
Federal law has long defined what constitutes “commercial sale” of arms. A person is required to obtain a Federal Firearms License (and become subject to many conditions and qualifications when selling arms) if the person is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. This means:
a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms;
18 U.S.C. §921(a)(21)(D). Of course a person who is “engaged in the business,” but who does not have a FFL, is guilty of a federal felony every time he sells a firearm. 18 U.S.C. §§922(a), 924.
Currently, the federal NICS law matches the constitutional standard set forth in Heller. NICS applies to all sales by persons who are “engaged in the business” (FFLs) and does not apply to transfers by persons who are not “engaged in the business.”
President Obama has already ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to inform FFLs about how they can perform a NICS check for private persons who would like such a check. On a voluntary basis, this is legitimate, but it would be constitutionally dubious to mandate it.
Finally, there has been talk of new federal laws against gun trafficking and against straw purchases. Fortunately, gun trafficking and straw purchases are already illegal, and there are many people who have the federal felony convictions to prove it.
Allegedly, federal prosecutors will be more willing to enforce the already-existing bans on trafficking and straw purchases if the laws are restated by enacting new legislation. A simpler approach would be for the President or the Attorney General to order U.S. Attorneys to give greater attention to the enforcement of the existing laws. Moreover, new statutes, especially when drafted in a “do something” crisis atmosphere may turn out to be highly overbroad, and to impose harsh new penalties on persons who were not the intended targets of the new statutes. The poorly-named “USA PATRIOT Act” should provide a cautionary example.
Below are some articles which might be interest to the Subcommittee.
“Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown.” Why random mass shootings have increased and what to do about it. Wall Street Journal. Dec. 17, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323723104578185271857424036.html.
“Arming the right people can save lives.” Good guys with guns have managed to thwart many mass attacks. Los Angeles Times. Jan. 15, 2013. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kopel-guns-resistance-nra-20130115,0,955405.story.
My U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on gun violence. Jan. 30, 2013. http://davekopel.org/Testimony-Senate-Judiciary-Kopel-1-30-13.pdf.
“Ronald Reagan’s AR-15.” Volokh.com. Jan. 15, 2013. http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/15/ronald-reagans-ar-15/.
“A Principal and his Gun.” How Vice Principal Joel Myrick used his handgun to stop the school shooter in Pearl, Mississippi. By Wayne Laugesen. Boulder Weekly. Oct. 15, 1999. http://davekopel.org/2A/OthWr/principal&gun.htm.
Pretend “Gun-free” School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction. 42 Connecticut Law Review 515 (2009).http://ssrn.com/abstract=1369783.
“Gun-Free Zones.” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2007. The murders at Virginia Tech University.http://davekopel.org/2A/OpEds/Gun-Free-Zones.htm.
Sincerely,
David B. Kopel
Research Director, Independence Institute
Associate Policy Analyst, Cato Institute
Adjunct Professor of Advanced Constitutional Law, Denver University, Sturm College of Law.
My Letter to Ted Cruz on Gun Control Proposals Randy Barnett
My Letter to Ted Cruz on Gun Control Proposals
Randy Barnett • February 12, 2013 12:17 pm
Today, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights is holding a hearing on proposals for new gun controls. Below is my letter to the Ranking Member, Senator Ted Cruz, which expands upon a brief op-ed of mine, Gun Control Fails Rationality Test, that ran in the Washington Examiner a couple weeks ago:
Hon. Ted Cruz, Ranking Member
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Cruz,
Within minutes of the Sandy Hook murders, gun control advocates began exploiting this horrific event to promote their favored policies. I know this because I was contacted by reporters to respond to these calls even before I had heard that the event had taken place moments before. This was far too early to know what had happened, much less how and why. Yet the drum beat had begun for long sought after measures that would not have prevented these murders. That drum beat continues.
I understand that you are having hearings on various gun control proposals on Tuesday, February 12th. In your deliberations, you may find useful the attached article entitled, “Gun control fails rationality test,” that appeared on January 29th in the Washington Examiner. In this article, I make the following points:
• The Supreme Court evaluates fundamental rights using a heightened standard of scrutiny;
• The Supreme Court has held that the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right;
• Some of these measures – for example, laws prohibiting such popular rifles as the AR-15 and the normal capacity magazines for such rifles – are flatly precluded by the Supreme Court’s categorical protection of weapons “in common use” by ordinary citizens for lawful purposes, such as the protection of self and others;
• These and most other gun regulations currently under consideration would also fail the least demanding heightened scrutiny: rationality review;
• This is because most proposals either would not have prevented the incidents that are said to motivate their passage, they would keep legal weapons of identical lethality, or they are discriminatory in their treatment of the Second Amendment rights of American citizens;
• For this reason, these measures are irrational;
• This analysis is useful to identify such measures as pretextual efforts, the real purpose of which is to impose an undue burden on the exercise of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms, or to improperly stigmatize its exercise;
• For all these reasons most, if not all, of the measures being proposed are unconstitutional.
To this analysis, I would add that the Congress has its own independent obligation to assess the constitutionality of the measures it enacts. When the courts defer in any way to Congress – as they do even when applying heightened scrutiny – it is on the assumption that Congress has already considered independently whether its legislation is within its enumerated powers, or has violated an express prohibition of the Constitution. For this reason, the types of “scrutiny” that courts will apply to enacted laws is irrelevant to Congress’s own assessment of whether any measure it may enact is irrational and, therefore, unconstitutional. In other words, although the courts have the last word on whether an enacted measure is unconstitutional, Congress has the first word. And a refusal by Congress to enact a measure because, in its judgment, the measure violates the Second Amendment will take precedence over any judicial or executive branch opinion on that question. Only if Congress concludes that a measure is constitutional, does the executive and judicial branches have the opportunity to disagree with this assessment.
Therefore, it falls to your subcommittee to inquire seriously into whether any given measure under consideration would actually violate the Second Amendment. To this end, you should ask:
• Would the proposed measure would have prevented the event, such as Sandy Hook, that is being used to justifies its enactment?
• Are firearms with equal if not greater lethality and rate of fire left legal while others are being prohibited?
• Will some citizens – such as current or retired members of law enforcement or government officials – be privileged in the means by which they can protect themselves over others?
• If an American citizen who is employed to protect the safety of others, or an active or retired police officer, requires a certain type of weapon, with a certain rate of fire or capacity, to protect him or herself or others, why does not a law abiding citizen of the United States require the same sort of weapon for the same lawful purpose?
• Will those who are willing to violate laws be affected in any manner by the existence of this measure, or will its burden largely be borne by law-abiding, and in many cases licenced, citizens who pose no threat to others?
• Will a gun control measure, such as the maintenance of a data base, facilitate future violations of the fundamental guarantees of the Second Amendment, for example, by making confiscation of weapons easier?
The rationality of gun control measures turn on the answers to these and other such questions. Yet most law professors who opine on the constitutionality of gun control measures simply do not know enough about firearms, or the realistic effects of gun regulations, to have a genuinely expert opinion on whether any particular proposal is constitutional. Instead, their opinions are typically based either on their predictions of how courts will rule, often based on how they hope the courts will rule, or their opinion of how deferential courts should be to the Congress. Unless they address questions such as those I listed, however, their opinions can provide little guidance to Congress in its independent assessment of the constitutionality of these proposals.
It is the job of Congress to ask these questions in order to ferret out efforts to violate the fundamental rights of Americans by those who dislike the rights protected by the Second Amendment, or who have an irrational fear of firearms. The answers provided by such an independent inquiry will reveal many of the current proposals to be pretextual efforts having little or nothing to do with preventing the incidents that have roused the emotions of the public, and everything to do with imposing an undue burden upon, and stigmatizing the exercise of a fundamental right. I hope this letter, and the accompanying article, helps inform the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights discussion.
Sincerely,
Professor Randy E. Barnett
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory
Director, Georgetown Center for the Constitution
2/11/2013
Lawful vs Unlawful?
I'm not so big on lawful vs unlawful these days. I think that line of discourse (and included in that domain are questions of constitutionality, etc) is increasingly used a means to divert social frustration and anger. Obviously government is of the position that might makes right. Legitimacy and consent of the governed isn't necessary since dissent can be suppressed (oppressed) through fear, intimidation, and violence. People need to stop thinking in terms of what the law says. Who is responsible for making sure the law is adhered to? The government. And that is a conflict of interest. We need common law courts and militia but my remedy to the situation is only increasingly mainstream.
2/04/2013
2/01/2013
Dokkōdō
written in 1645 by Miyamoto Musashi. it is called The Dokkōdō.which means"The Way of Walking Alone" . he wrote it 1 week before his death.
1 Accept everything just the way it is.
2 Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
3 Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
4 Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5 Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6 Do not regret what you have done.
7 Never be jealous.
8 Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
9 Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
10 Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
11 In all things have no preferences.
12 Be indifferent to where you live.
13 Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14 Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
15 Do not act following customary beliefs.
16 Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
17 Do not fear death.
18 Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19 Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
20 You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.
21 Never stray from the way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)