Texas Legislature Keeps on Fiddling

With a huge budget deficit looming on the horizon, a deficit that can mean an end to public education as we know it, do you know what our state representatives and state senators are doing these days?

Passing legislation to make women have a sonogram if they are considering having an abortion.

Passing legislation making it possible for students and professors at the state’s college campuses to carry concealed weapons.

Passing legislation to require every voter in the state to have a photo ID in order to exercise their right to vote. A requirement that will cost the state an estimated $3 million per year in money it doesn’t have.

In short, while Texas burns, the legislature is fiddling.

And really, it is small wonder. Voters, our neighbors, put these characters into office. And you do get what you vote for. Instead of going to Austin to solve what is very probably the most serious issue facing the state in years, they are going to Austin to work on high profile feel good issues that are near and dear to the hearts of their constituents.

I find it ironic that future college and university students will soon be the most unprepared generation to attend an institution of higher education due to cutbacks in public education, but they’ll be able to carry their own concealed Glock to classes.

You know, the gun industry might want to prepare its new line of carry-to-class handguns that include things like a pencil sharpener in the handle.

Or maybe include a place to keep your lunch money.

Hegar Files the Bill That Isn’t There

I am a little perplexed today, on the day we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A man that led millions down the path to social equality. A man who was shot dead with a single shot by one armed with a Remington Gamemaster 7600 rifle crouched near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee nearly 33 years ago.

Perplexed because we seem to be moving backwards and one evidence of that is a bill that was filed last week by my state senator, Glen Hegar. SB 321 to be exact.

Here is the meat of it:

“A public or private employer may not prohibit an employee who holds a license to carry a concealed handgun under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, who otherwise lawfully possesses a firearm, or who lawfully possesses ammunition from transporting or storing a firearm or ammunition the employee is authorized by law to possess in a locked, privately owned motor vehicle in a parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area the employer provides for employees.”

Now why is this going backwards?

What riveted my attention to this bill was the “holds a license to carry a concealed weapon” part of it. A history lesson is needed. I see.

Texans who hold a license to carry a concealed weapon can all credit State Rep Suzanna Gratia Hupp for this. It was this woman’s single-minded effort, an effort that also got her elected to the state legislature that saw passage, in 1996 of a law that allowed Texans to carry a concealed weapon once they had passed a safety course and obtained the license.

It is her story that compels me, and perplexes me.

In 1991 a crazed gunman opened up on patrons of a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, killing 24. Hupp’s parents were among the dead. Hupp was there. Her statement:

“I was looking for a weapon, any weapon, because my handgun was 100 feet away, outside in my car. I made an incredibly stupid decision to follow the law, and that cost my family's lives.”

Get it? Her weapon was in her car, exactly in the location specified by Hegar’s 2011 bill. Yet Hegar’s bill specifically targets those who already have concealed weapons licenses.

My point is, if the author of the concealed weapons license law had a gun in her car, and felt powerless to effect a change in the 24 tragedies that befell on that day how will employees who are allowed to lock guns in their cars be so dissimilarly affected? How will they, with their guns locked in their cars, in any way be more empowered than Suzanna Hupp was on that day?

Truth to tell, the only scenario that I can see happening at a workplace where employees are armed, if only at a distance, is that after a set to, a disgruntled employee comes back to the workplace after a smoking break armed to the teeth and ambushes his supervisor or any fellow employees who happen to offend them.

In other words in Hegar’s world, you need some pre-meditation in order to go and get your gun and then use it. What is lost is the immediacy of the moment which is what other lawmakers want to work on, like getting guns in the hands of college students and professors.

My other point is, then, that there has been just a whole series of retrograde motions here – backwards movement. Hegar’s reasoning fails because of Hupp’s 1991 experience. Therefore the next obvious step is to put concealed weapons in the hands of everyone willing to carry one with the nightmare of a possible future circular firing squad as one possible outcome.

My point is, is that we are going, and for some time now, have gone down the wrong path. And the more “gun freedom” laws that get filed and passed by state legislatures the less safe I feel.

 

If Ballots Don’t Work . . .

Now let’s revisit all of those Teabaggers out there, including Sarah Palin, who have openly called for armed violence against lawmakers. This is a You Tube video of a Florida radio personality making not-so-veiled death threats against elected public officials.

I wonder how many teabagging yahoos out there are going to whoop it up over what amount to death threats for lawmakers now that one of them has been the victim of gun violence.

Especially now that Congressman Robert Brady (D - PA) has announced that he will offer up a bill that makes it a federal crime “to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.”

“You can't put bull's-eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official.”

When I heard him speak to a CNN reporter this afternoon he specifically said that the Sarah Palin website that had crosshairs painted over 20 congressmen and women, including Gabrielle Giffords would definitely violate this law.

My bottom line is a little more severe, I think. My bottom line is that if you think your 2^nd Amendment solutions trump my 1^st Amendment rights, then maybe it’s time to do something about those 2^nd Amendment ones.

Civility Goes on Holiday in Belarus

When George Bush’s campaign fired the opening salvo in what became Bush vs. Gore, a lawsuit that became a landmark Supreme Court decision when it awarded the presidency to the Texas governor, probably no one expected very much repercussions. This is America, after all, and America takes its civil discourse, well, civilly.

Then George Bush became president, because Americans are a civil people.

Then George Bush turned a country at peace with a budget surplus into a country with two wars of aggression and in hock up to its armpits, if America had armpits, that is.

Makes you wonder, huh? And it makes you wonder now that we see ultra conservatives carrying guns to political rallies, when we hear of candidates refer to their plans to win elections as a 2^nd Amendment solution. Makes you wonder if civility will come to an end as it apparently has in the former soviet republic of Belarus.

In Belarus, in Minsk, they just held a presidential election, and the sitting president won another term in office.

Except the opposition candidates say the election was rigged.

And 10,000 of them turned out on Election Night to protest. And one of the opposition candidates was attacked by government riot police and he spent the night in the hospital as a result.

In Belarus, you see, civility has given way to survival of the fittest. And in Belarus, like in America, the fittest have all the guns.

UT AK-47 Shooter’s Actions are “Highly Suspicious”

In the news earlier today we hear that a University of Texas student sent people ducking for cover early this morning as he showed up to the campus with his AK-47 and popped off a few rounds outside, hitting no one, and then ran to the Perry-Castenada Library (PCL), fired a few more rounds before ending his own life on the library’s fifth floor.

Coincidentally, it seems that John Lott, a national figure that argues for legalizing the carrying of concealed weapons on university campuses, was going to present his arguments to UT students at the UT Law School at 6:30 this very evening.

However, in view of the fact that the campus suffered an attack by a student who was carrying a weapon that was decidedly not concealable, unless you are wearing a long trench coat, which this student was not, the Lott presentation was cancelled.

Causing the person at this website to label the AK-47 wielding student’s actions “highly suspicious.”

Not “highly suspicious” in the sense that someone who carries a semi-automatic rifle onto a university campus and then fires off a few rounds before ending his own life. Not that kind of “highly suspicious.”

No, we’re talking “highly suspicious” in that it was obviously the sole intent of this AK-47 student to disrupt the Lott presentation on the merits of carrying concealed weapons onto a college campus. Disrupt it and possibly get it cancelled.

Really. 

"The fact that the shooting occurred prior to the talk is, to say the least, highly suspicious."

Is that just about the craziest thing you’ve ever heard? Obviously, they seem to claim, this student came on campus fully intending to pepper the place with live ammo and then take his own life – all to prevent John Lott from speaking.

Now it occurred to me that what this guy just proved was that Lott might have a pretty good idea. Had all the students who shared the campus with the shooter seen him opening up on them, they could all have simultaneously pulled out their nines and drilled him from 18 directions.

And no, I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea. Guns and colleges are about as incompatible as guns and booze.

But read the article, and all the commenters. These people are convinced that the UT gunman was actually working to oppose the Lott presentation.

And would end his life for his cause.

Proof positive that owning a license to carry a concealed weapon does not require a minimum IQ.

NRA: Elena Kagan Probably Hates Guns

Today Wayne Pierre and Chris Cox, executives at the National Rifle Association’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia sent a letter to the Democratic and Republican ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announcing that, horror of horrors, they probably weren’t going to support Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s confirmation as Associate Justice to the US Supreme Court.

The PDF of their letter to the senators is here.

Most interesting in the letter is the array of reasons that they give to their opposition to Kagan, and by proxy, to any senator who votes to confirm her.

Interesting in that they don’t really have any.

Indeed, Kagan herself has characterized gun ownership rights as “settled law.” In their letter, the two execs even own up to that. So what’s the beef here?

As it turns out, they just don’t believe her.

Here’s what they said:

“During her confirmation hearings last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly stated

that the Supreme Court's historic Heller decision was "settled law". Even further, in response to a question from Chairman Leahy, she said ‘I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.’ Yet last Monday in McDonald, she joined a dissenting opinion which stated: ‘I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.’”

They don’t believe her because of what that other female Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor did in the recently decided McDonald v. Chicago case. Sotomayor, voted with the minority in the case, even though she also characterized gun ownership matters as “settled law.”


If Sotomayor, a woman, decided the case like that, then Elena Kagan, also a woman, would do likewise.

More to the point, Sotomayor was absolutely correct. By completely ignoring the first clause in the 2nd Amendment, that a militia is a good thing to have so . . . the Supreme Court’s more narrow definition on why gun ownership is a desirable thing – self defense – is not fundamental. Not fundamental as say, the right to life and liberty. If it were fundamental, wouldn’t everyone own a gun?

Which is, I guess, their point. The gun lobby is there to promote the purchase of guns. If everyone owned a gun because it was as fundamental as breathing oxygen, then the gun lobbyists could all retire.

And that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

Testing the Metal of State Employees

As I am sure you are aware, despite the pronouncements of Texas Governor Rick Perry that none were needed, metal detection checkpoints have been installed in the state capitol. Presumably, all who enter the state capitol are subjected to a scan to determine whether they are carrying weapons.

But don’t be so presumptuous. This is Texas, after all.

As it turns out, if you possess the right to carry a concealed weapon, that is, if you have a propensity to pack heat, you don’t have to walk through the metal detector.

What you are carrying, apparently, might set off an alarm.

Now wait, they say, this all makes sense. People who have a concealed weapon permit have been subjected to a criminal background check. That is, because those carrying such a permit have not been inclined to pump bullets into another person in the past, this means they likely will not be inclined to do so in the present or future.

So you would presume then that they get by and go around, and no one else.

But don’t be so presumptuous. This is Texas, after all.

As revealed late last week, those who carry a state employee ID badge also get to go around if they flash their ID. They’re OK, too.

Except for the fact that they are not. As it turns out, a staffer carrying a state employee ID badge has not been subjected to a criminal background check. Not that this necessarily means anything, but the reasons given to allow one kind of person to go around – gun wielders - do not equate to the reasons for another kind – briefcase wielders.

Odd, huh? Oh, but then, this is Texas, after all.

Bringing me to my point.

I wonder whether I could flash my school district’s faculty ID at the metal detector guy and be able to go around. As it turns out, I pass the requirement of having had the benefit of a criminal background check.

Every teacher in the state has.

Senate Bill 9, passed in the 80th legislative session made sure of it.

According to SB 9:

“S.B. 9 requires criminal history background information reviews of all certified public school employees and provides for a national criminal history clearinghouse. Current non-certified employees are required to submit to a statewide review, while certified employees hired on or after September 1, 2007 are required to submit to a national criminal history background information review. Individuals who have been convicted or received deferred adjudication for a Title 5 felony offense or a sex offense when the victim of the crime was a child would be prohibited from employment with a public school district.”

So you see, if a Glock-carrying lobbyist can go around a metal detection checkpoint in the state capitol, because he has been subjected to a criminal background check, so should a Texas public school teacher.

Hey, fair is fair.

Oh, but this is Texas, after all.

"Open Carry" Your Handgun to Church

It was over a year ago, early April 2008, when then candidate Barack Obama was secretly recorded at a northern California fundraiser and he made some candid off the cuff remarks on small town America to his well heeled audience. To wit:

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.”

“And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

And everyone piled on top. Obama was not only skewered by his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton, but also by the McCain campaign (which, as we found out later, was simply defending their base).

And guess what? Just downriver from small town in Pennsylvania we find a small town in Kentucky, with a small church and a small congregation whose pastor is celebrating the 4^th of July (on June 21st) and the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution by inviting his flock to bring their handguns to church with them. To “open carry” them, meaning to strap on their gun belts and carry their beloved guns openly in holsters.

From US News:

“A Louisville church is encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters to an "Open Carry Church Service" later this month, our sister paper, The Courier-Journal, reports. Participants will be able to enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.”

Did I just hear a huge verification of Barack Obama’s often vilified statement on small town America clinging to their guns and their religion?

To their credit, some local religious leaders are openly criticizing this plan, causing the pastor, Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church, to backpedal slightly and ask that the guns that the congregation brings not be loaded.

Because as we all know, guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.

I have always wondered which kind of handgun the Lord and Savior of the World, Jesus Christ would have preferred. Would He have been a fan of the old style Roscoe? Or would He have packed a Nine? I just can’t fathom it. Mainly because when I think of handguns, and the sole purpose of handguns, to kill people, I just don’t see Jesus “open carrying” anything but a Remington deer rifle.

1970’s Revisited: SLA Groupie Going Home

Waaaay back in the 1970’s we had terrorists, too. But back then they weren’t sent to Guantanamo, and they weren’t “Renditioned.” Basically the police fought them, some died, some were captured and tried, and some escaped.

Escaped to lead lives of semi normality.

That was the story of Sara Jane Olson (neé Kathleen Jane Soliah) who, as a twenty-something joined a dysfunctional terrorist group headed by a charismatic, but demented leader named Donald DeFreeze, but who called himself Cinqué (although he pronounced it sin-QUEUE) after the leader of the captured Africans who rebelled on the slave ship “La Amistad” in the early 19^th century.

During her time with the Symbionese Liberation Army, she apparently abetted in the attempted pipe bombing of a police officer as he sat in his patrol car (the bomb failed to explode), as well as being there when a 40-year old woman was shot-gunned to death during an SLA bank robbery.

But after the famous shootout between several members of the SLA and 300 or so LAPD officers, Olson fled to St. Paul, Minnesota, changed her name and became a productive member of the community.

I recall that day in 1974 very well. The local CBS affiliate in LA, KNXT, had just acquired a new kind of technology that they called a “mini-cam.” It was one of the first field uses of video tape technology, and the first time something like this was caught on tape for live prime time airing. The scenes, commonplace today, were riveting at the time. It took no time at all for all other news stations (and then national news) to pick up the feed with these live scenes as the house that the SLA had commandeered was surrounded, bombarded with tear gas canisters, and then erupted in a massive volley of return automatic fire.

So Olson escaped that madness and lived for 25 years in comparative peace, marrying and having children.

Only to be identified in 1999 by a tip from the “America’s Most Wanted” television show.

A show, ironically, that made its bones using video tape made at sensational scenes of police chases and captures.

Olson was tried and sentenced for her participation in the SLA crimes, and has now served the minimum sentence of 7 years at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. She will be paroled to her mother’s residence in Palmdale, California, which she hopes to use as a point of departure for a final reunion with her family and friends in Minnesota.

Olson will not be problem free, however. Despite the fact that her family and friends are waiting to welcome her back to the life she made while in hiding, others, who made a financial killing on her unmasking, are waiting in the bushes.

St. Paul gun store owner Mark Koscielski, who sold bumper stickers back in 1999 that said "Fight Terrorism — Jail Kathleen" is back in the news pronouncing his sentence upon her: “She's a ... terrorist and she shouldn't be out of jail.”

Now that the words “Terrorist” and “Terrorism” carry new meaning, this should prove to be a boom year for Koscielski. Who knows, he might already have T-shirts, bumper stickers and coffee mugs already for the coming market. Koscielski probably isn’t doing too badly anyway, given the “Obama Effect” that has taken over frantic gun sales nationwide, and is responsible for the fact that you can’t get a single shotgun shell or round for your “nine” in Oklahoma to save your soul.

On Packing Heat in Texas

Now you may have already heard somewhere that I’m not from around here. I’m from the state that, in the very same year, granted the right to same-sex marriage by virtue of a state Supreme Court decision, and then had a majority of its population revoke that right.

I’m originally from California.

California, it seems has a love-hate relationship with marriage rights. In a state that is widely regarded for its liberal social standards, I am sometimes startled at some of the very backward thinking that goes on there from time to time.

So what is the first thing that you think of when it comes to gun ownership rights in Texas? Yes, me too. Texas has a worldwide reputation for being not only a gun-loving state, but occasionally a gun-shooting state.

Texans love guns and low taxes. In that order.

So imagine my shock and surprise when I come to find out that Texas is one of only six states in the country that has laws on its books that specifically forbids the wearing of handguns out in the open.

It is legal, in Texas, to carry a concealed weapon on your person. You need a permit, but one thing that George W. Bush did for Texas gun owners as governor was to sign a concealed weapon bill into law.

Yes, before George W. Bush was governor, it was illegal in Texas for most people to carry a weapon on their person, concealed or not.

And the law is still on the books that specifically forbids your average person to “open carry” a handgun. Yes, here in wild and wooly Texas, where we have the Castle Law that gives a person the right to use shoot first and ask questions later when someone is trying to enter your dwelling, you can’t wear a handgun in plain sight.

And wouldn’t you know it; the law comes out of Reconstruction. The law forbidding the open carrying of a gun outside of your own property line was one of a series of Jim Crow Laws passed in 1870, and this one was meant to keep guns out of the hands of former slaves.

I find this to be absolutely fascinating.

And now we have a group of outside agitators coming to Texas to change this law. Their website is here.

From UPI:

“Opencarry.org co-founder Mike Stollenwerk said supporters of the proposed state law have begun targeting both state residents and lawmakers in attempt to get the state Legislature to pass the bill in January, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram said Sunday.”

“‘We are targeting Texas,’ Stollenwerk said. ‘Texas is probably the most pro-gun state, but doesn't have open-carry laws.’”

It came as some surprise to me that Texas is one of 6 states that forbid the wearing of a handgun: four other southern states, Texas, and New York. It is permitted everywhere else they say. So this group is concentrating on gun-loving Texas so that Texans can take their handguns out of their closets and nightstand drawers and put them onto their gunbelts where they rightly belong.

So while Californians concentrate on revoking the marital rights of their gay and lesbian neighbors, Texans concentrate on getting their state’s law changed that will bring guns out of the closet and into the streets.

I can’t figure out which is crazier.

Texas And Its Love Affair With Guns

Look at what came into my inbox today: an email from my congressman telling me about a Town Hall meeting to be held tonight, celebrating gun owners’ rights to keep and bear arms.

Nick Lampson, you will recall, is a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association, and this allows him to be associated with right-leaning gun-toting constituents of CD-22.

You notice he repeats how he supported the recent Supreme Court decision which struck down the District of Columbia’s anti-gun ordnance by essentially cutting out the whole reason why it is such a good idea to keep and bear arms. The Supremes did this to the 2nd Amendment.

Leaving Americans only the bad reasons to keep and bear arms.

But that’s OK, this is Texas after all. You have to make allowances for gun-totin’ tobacco chewin’ constituents who also vote.

Why am I harping on this once again? It has to do with the timely bit of news coming out of the tiny Harrold Independent School District in Harrold, Texas [map]. Harrold is a one-horse town just off US 287 in North Texas. It seems that their board of trustees has just OK’d a district policy change that allows teachers to carry concealed weapons during the school day.

Now wait. They didn’t just go into this all helter-skelter (sorry perhaps a poor word choice), they put some thought into this. The teachers must be licensed to carry concealed weapons and take a course in “crisis management and hostile situations,” and must use ammunition that is less prone to ricochet.

Their reason? They are 30 minutes away from police protection, and right next to the hustle and bustle of US 287 which brings all sorts of elements up north from . . . Wichita Falls.

So now that we don’t keep and bear arms because having a well-maintained militia is a good idea, we keep, bear, and wear arms in school buildings. Arms that don’t shoot bullets that ricochet. I guess, ammo made of very soft materials like soft expanding lead.

Now that is what I call a grand idea.

We replace minimally paid armed police and sheriff’s deputies with minimally paid armed school teachers.

In addition, I think students would probably think twice about sassing back over a low grade they received if they knew that their teachers are packing heat.

This all reminds me once again of the immortal words of Senator Tip O’Neill:

“All politics is local.”

Pete Olson and Nick Lampson: Brothers in Guns

I couldn’t help but note the small irony that this morning Fort Bend Now is showing two headlines nearly side by side, but actually posted 4 hours apart:

“Lampson Endorses Supreme Court Decision on D.C. Gun Ban” posted around 11:30 AM on Thursday.

and

“Olson Applauds DC Gun Ban Decision” posted around 3:30 PM later that day.

Pete Olson, it will be remembered is the Republican nominee challenging Nick Lampson for the seat he currently holds in Congress.

So for those of us who interpret the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution as it was written, and not as Justice Scalia reinterprets it (“Militia? What militia”), we will have no representation on this issue in Washington, DC whoever wins in Texas CD 22 in November.

Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me. This is Texas, after all.

And this is one case where I know that Nick Lampson is truly in favor of the decision, and is not just saying this to obscure the differences between himself and his conservative challenger. Nick is a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association.

One thing I do know, though, is that while Pete Olson talks the talk about the Supreme Court, he is fairly clueless on what constitutes a “strict constructionist” Supreme Court justice:

“I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision today to uphold American’s Second Amendment right to bear arms. Today’s 5-4 decision demonstrates the need for strict constructionist judges like Justices (John) Roberts and (Antonin) Scalia, who uphold the rights of American citizens as our founding fathers intended those rights to be enacted.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Then Fort Bend Now committed the same error that I saw again and again in the news yesterday, printing the false claim that this is the first time that there was a ruling on the 2nd Amendment:

“The ruling is being called ‘landmark’ by legal scholars who note that this is the first time the high court has conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791”

In a 1939 Supreme Court decision Re: United States v. Miller, the issue was decided, and correctly so. The inclusion of the words “well regulated militia” was not a fluke. They are part of the overall idea. An idea that these present-day “strict constructionist justices” clearly ignored.

But that pretty much goes along with what has historically transpired with regard to this issue. Here we have a 69 year old Supreme Court decision that ties the ownership of a gun to membership in a “well regulated militia,” and nothing . . . nothing changed until yesterday. Guns were owned and wars were fought by regular armies, not militias. But yesterday gun ownership magically became an individual right.

It’s almost like this whole thing has been both a skeleton in our country’s closet that no one talks about, and a veiled gentlemen’s agreement that has persisted through the generations.

Applaud and endorse all you want, this decision is going to have some far-reaching effects. Scalia et al. have opened the Pandora’s Box that has been guardedly kept shut since the late 18th century.

The big winners: gun and munitions manufacturers and the NRA. The big losers: everyone else.

On Judicial Activism in the US Supreme Court

Well the pendulum has swung a complete cycle. We are again beset by an activist Supreme Court, but now, they come with a new flavor.

Judicial activism is something that the right wing used as a mallet to beat over the heads of liberal judges when they found interpretations of the law that favored progressivism. Brown v. Board of Education is one decision that comes off the top of my head, the SCOTUS decision that desegregated public schools in 1953. At the time a decision that “separate but equal” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was viewed as a radical departure from how courts should rule on cases. They said it violated the separation of powers of the 3 branches of government, and that the Judicial Branch was claiming a legislative power that they did not actually have.

But now, over a half century later, we find that the worm has truly turned.

This case is a long time coming. I wrote a little about it over a year ago when it was being ruled on by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The District of Columbia handgun law was overturned there by a 2 to 1 majority. Today, by a 5-4 split decision, the Supreme Court verified the lower court’s decision.

But it did more.

Today we see that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution has been rewritten by these 5 activist justices. No longer is the 2nd Amendment about the military and a militia. Now it’s about individual rights.

To review. Here is the text of the 2nd Amendment:

“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”

Now back in March, when I commented on the Appeals Court decision, I marveled at how the Court went on a voyage through English grammar and punctuation in order to conclude that “the people” do not signify members of “the militia”. They relied on a grammatical argument to conclude that “the people” are individuals, and then went on to define this right as an individual right.

The majority on the Supreme Court didn’t spend time bandying grammatical interpretations about, they went right for the jugular and said that an individual’s right to own a firearm is supported by “the historical narrative” of practices and events both before and after the 2nd Amendment was written.

So it appears that the Supreme Court majority has exchanged a lesson in grammar, which in my opinion had flaws, with a lesson in US history.

Everyone in America owned guns in the late 18th century, so it must be a constitutional right.

Justice Stevens dissenting from the bench, said that this decision is just what it appears to be: legislation. From the Washington Post:

“He spoke dismissively of the court's ‘newly discovered right’ and said decisions about gun control should be made by legislatures.”

He also said something about which I have been raging (to myself) all day.

"Justice John Paul Stevens spoke from the bench to denounce the decision, which he said violated the court's precedent that the Second Amendment refers to a right to bear arms only for military purposes."

All day I have listened to CNN and MSNBC reporters prattle on about how this is the first time the Supreme Court has ruled on this decision. It’s not. As Justice Stevens said, there is precedent. In 1939, in United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court found that a prohibition of having a sawed-off shotgun was not in violation of the 2nd Amendment because a sawed-off shotgun does not lend itself to “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.

They had it right back in 1939. They got it all wrong in 2008.

That’s progress for you.

H.R. 73: License To Kill

While I was doing a little research on the DC Circuit Appeals Court decision on interpretation of the 2nd Amendment (and why I didn’t get any comments on that posting from gun nuts I’ll never figure out) I came across this little gem .

You know, it really surprises me that this wasn't authored by someone from the Texas delegation. It has "Yee-Haw!" written all over it.

The bill has been referred to the US House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. Tagged the Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 2007, the resolution does two things:

1) It guarantees the right to obtain firearms for security, and,
2) It guarantees the right to use firearms in defense of self, family, or home; enforcement.

Well waitaminute, someone would say, what about the 2nd Amendment?

The answer, I think, is that the resolution is not so much about guaranteeing the right to bear arms (as opposed to arming bears) as the right to use them when you feel threatened. That is, if you shoot someone in self-defense, you can’t be charged with discharging a weapon within city limits or something like that.

But it is interesting, don’t you think, that it also, in the language of the bill “reaffirms” the right:

“(a) Reaffirmation of Right- A person not prohibited from receiving a firearm by Section 922(g) of title 18, United States Code, shall have the right to obtain firearms for security.”

As if, what? As if maybe someday the Supreme Court’s 1939 opinion will someday be enforced and gun ownership will only be allowed to members of a militia? By the way, can you imagine what would happen if that ruling would ever come down? We’d have militias spring up everywhere. Wouldn’t that make America a fun place to live?

What I really hate about this Republican sponsored and co-sponsored (except for 2 Dems) resolution is that there are three conditions stated when one has a right to use firearms in self-defense, two are reasonable: self-defense in the course of commission of a violent felony by another person, defense of a home in the course of commission of a felony by another person. The first is a no-brainer, the second is iffy and conjures up memories of the death of two Scotsmen several years ago in Houston – drunk, they noisily approached a home and were shot to death through the door. But no, here is the objectionable sentence.

“(1) in defense of self or family against a reasonably perceived threat of imminent and unlawful infliction of serious bodily injury”

Emphasis is mine.

The resolution hasn’t a snowball’s chance in the nether regions of passing, but I wanted to wrap up this gun stuff with the observation that the right wing whackos are still among us, and in another alternate universe where Tom DeLay is still our congressman, this bill would be given serious consideration before it got passed and signed by President Cheney.

Do All Americans Have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

An interesting opinion was rendered yesterday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In the case Shelly Parker, et al., v. District of Columbia and Adrian M. Fenty, Mayor of the District of Columbia, by at 2-1 majority, the court upheld the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

For most Americans, this is a no-brainer. However, it has been argued for years and years that the language of the 2nd Amendment reveals that keeping and bearing arms was a precondition to maintaining a local militia. I quote:

“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”

The District of Columbia argued that the first clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” proclaims the Amendment’s sole purpose was to protect state militias from federal intrusion—and that the second clause is a discussion of military matters and guarantees civic rights, but not an individual right.

Good point. I’ve had that opinion for years and years.

This is a case involving a 1976 District of Columbia law forbidding the ownership of handguns. D.C. residents wanted to own guns for home protection and filed suit against the District of Columbia. On appeal, the case now has an opinion that will affect how the second amendment is interpreted across the country.

The majority opinion is actually a lesson in sentence construction and grammar. If you don’t believe me, read this:

“The provision’s second comma divides the Amendment into two clauses; the first is prefatory, and the second operative. Appellants’ argument is focused on their reading of the Second Amendment’s operative clause. According to appellants, the Amendment’s language flat out guarantees an individual right “to keep and bear Arms.”

But finally, like all specious reasoning the majority relied on definition - what is meant by “the people”. “The people”, they say represents the same idea as found in the term “the people” in the 1st, 2nd 4th 9th and 10th amendments.

“In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right—“the people.” …. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation.”

There you have it. “The people” are individuals so the right to bear arms is an individual right, not one that is a precondition to having a militia.

In her dissenting opinion Judge Karen Henderson just laid it on the line, essentially telling her counterparts, “Look, it’s already been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court”

In an opinion that can only be described as feisty, Judge Henderson agreed with her brethren that higher court opinions on the 2nd Amendment are few and far between. “Notoriously scant” is the term she used.

But there is one. A 1939 case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which upheld the indictment of men who carried a sawed off shotgun across state lines.

Henderson cites United States v. Miller in which defense argued that the National Firearms Act, outlawing shotgun barrels under 18 inches in length, violated their 2nd Amendment rights. Disagreeing, the Supreme Court opinion put it this way:

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

So here we have a lower court overturning a long-standing Supreme Court opinion.

So can we now all own sawed-off shotguns? M-16s? TOW missiles?

I don’t think the issue is settled or will be settled anytime soon. And really, it won’t be settled until Americans lose that insane belief that it is their God-given right to whack Bambi with an AK-47.