Law School Conservative

I got an interesting email from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms urging Americans to spend their tax refunds on firearms and ammunition. I have reproduced it below:

Americans should “let the government buy your next gun” by spending part, or all of their economic stimulus checks on a new firearm, ammunition or shooting accessory, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Economic stimulus checks will be going out in the mail this spring as an incentive for American citizens to go shopping to help boost the nation’s sagging economy. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb thinks it would be a boon to America’s firearms industry for that money to be spent on pursuits guaranteed by the Second Amendment, while also providing jobs and paychecks, and creating new jobs for people in the industry.

“This is our money, anyway,” Gottlieb said of the stimulus checks. “If we weren’t paying it in taxes to begin with, it would still be in our bank accounts and wallets, and we would already be spending that cash on a new rifle or shotgun, perhaps a new handgun and ammunition, shooting accessories and other equipment.

“Set some cash aside to buy gasoline for a trip to the range,” he added, “and don’t forget that with every firearm and ammunition purchase, Americans contribute to the Pittman-Robertson federal excise tax program that supports state wildlife agency programs, including hunter education. Not only will these purchases provide a much-needed boost to the gun industry, they allow gun owners an opportunity to take more than just a symbolic swipe at anti-gunners and anti-hunting groups.”

Gottlieb also suggested that firearms retailers consider offering special discounts to customers who use their stimulus checks in their stores.

“These checks should help pay for a lot of new guns and gear,” he said. “We think there are few better ways to celebrate our fundamental right to keep and bear arms than to spend your money where it matters the most: At your local gun shop or sporting goods store.”

Now, go, get yourself a nice new gun, and as always remember to follow the law and practice gun safety at all times by keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction, keeping your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire, and by keeping the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Editor’s Note:  This piece was written by Lorne Gunter of the National Post, a newspaper out of Canada, and was referenced by Wayne LaPierre in his prior post.

Nearly 340,000 Canadians — about 1% of the population — were victims of violent crime in 2006, according to a Statistics Canada study released in late February. But just 8,100 were victims of a violent crime committed with a gun.

If you were the victim of a gun crime, it’s probably no comfort to know you were one of “just” 8,100. Still, despite the hype, gun crime is not statistically a serious problem in Canada. Banning guns, or even restricting their use more closely, will have no appreciable impact on rates of violent crime. Knives are used in nearly three times as many violent crimes as guns, yet no one calls for a knife registry. Even blunt instruments are used more often than guns without demands that government licences be required before one may buy baseball bats and lead pipes. So why do liberal-left politicians expend so much energy trying to restrict gun ownership or even ban guns outright?

The principal reason, of course, is that modern liberalism is the victory of symbolism over substance. A public policy or law is seldom designed mostly to solve an identified problem. Its primary purpose is to reflect well on the good intentions of the person or group proposing it.

So what if laws and social programs produce no tangible benefits? They remain on the statute books and retain full funding — complete with massive bureaucracies — because they enable liberals to convince themselves something is being done. Activity is confused with achievement.

Gun control is constantly put forward by intellectually lazy politicians and do-gooder activists because attempting to restrict gun ownership is easier than taking on real criminals. More importantly, anti-gun laws enable politicians and activists to claim they are doing something to cure a problem that concerns voters and donors, even though restricting gun ownership among law-abiding citizens has no mitigating effect on violent crime.

Mandatory minimum sentences for guns crimes — of the kind favoured by Conservative politicians — may have little impact on violent crime rates, too. The number of violent gun crimes is small. A one-quarter or one-third reduction in gun crime would produce a negligible reduction in the overall rate of violent crime.

But at least mandatory sentences for using a gun punish only the guilty. And a one-quarter to one-third reduction in gun crime means 2,000 to 2,500 fewer victims.

On the other hand, restrictive gun laws punish an entire class of people — law-abiding hunters, target shooters and gun collectors — for the actions of others and are never likely to reduce victimization. StatsCan has reported that “handguns made up nearly two-thirds of all firearms used” for violent crimes. This is significant because for more than 70 years, it has been the law in Canada to register all handguns. If registration were an effective method for reducing crime, handgun crime would be nonexistent. Instead, handguns are far and away the most common crime-guns and their use is growing.

So if registering handguns will never reduce crime, perhaps banning them would. That is the solution proposed by Ontario’s Liberal government and Toronto’s Mayor, David Miller.

Again, this is attacking the problem in a way that will never solve it.

The simple fact is that most crime-guns — especially criminal handguns — are not legally owned now. They have never been registered. Their existence is unknown to police. They do not appear in our national firearms databank. Since they are already illegally owned, it’s unlikely their owners would hand them in if they were suddenly banned. (Or should I say, “banned more?”)

The only people harassed by a handgun ban would be sport shooters and collectors — people who are already no threat to commit crimes. Drug dealers and gang members would ignore a ban as readily as they ignore existing laws on trafficking, extortion, robbery and murder.

In 2006, Saskatchewan Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz obtained unpublished StatsCan tables showing that between 1997 and 2005, only 2.3% of homicides were committed with registered guns.

The does not necessarily mean 97.7% of firearms murders in Canada are committed with unregistered guns. In some cases the registration status of the weapon could not be determined.

Still, his numbers show how pointless a ban on guns would be; unless, of course, you were looking for a hollow symbol of your deep and abiding concern.

A DC gun owner shows how to comply with DC gun laws…and how they make self defense impossible.

See video here from CBS.

Also, see Wayne LaPierre discuss the Supreme Court argument.

Today the Supreme Court held extended arguments in D.C. v. Heller, the DC gun ban case, and it seems a majority of the justices are ready to hold that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and bear arms.

The Chief Justice, as well as Justices Alito, Scalia and Kennedy all seemed to believe that the Second Amendment supports an individual right to bear arms.  Justice Thomas, while characteristically silent during argument, is likely also of this view.  Justices Breyer and Ginsburg, while skeptical, seemed open to the idea.

Open for debate is what the court will do in terms of defining a standard of review for these cases.  Justices Scalia, Alito and the Chief seem to be all about strict scrutiny, Justice Kennedy seemed to be convinced.  It is, however, possible that a compromise can be struck and that intermediate scrutiny would apply.

Coverage from SCOTUS blog here.  This coverage links to other news reports.

See the surprisingly balanced article here.

“A well educated electorate, being necessary to the preservation of a free democratic state, the right of the people to keep and bear books, shall not be infringed.”

No one in their right mind would take that sentence to mean that only voters are allowed to have books. If you look at that sentence, you’ll see a close resemblance to the following:

“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.”

Let me ask this: If the first sentence does not create in the state a right to limit the possession of books to voters, then how does the Second Amendment, constructed in a virtually identical fashion, limit the possession of arms to the militia?

The answer is that it does not.

I used this sentence in a debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment, and I got this unbelievably ignorant answer: “Well, books don’t kill people!”

Excuse me?

I can think of several books that have, in one way or another, incited murder, rebellion and revolution. Among them:

1. The Koran
2. The Bible (think the Crusades)
3. Mein Kampf
4. Common Sense
5. The Communist Manifesto

If the Second Amendment spoke about the possession of books, and books have caused people to kill in the name of whatever or whoever inspires them…are we still justified in limiting them? Are we justified in limiting the possession of books to those who intend on voting?

The obvious answer is no.

Then how are we justified in limiting the possession of defensive weapons to people who are involved in the militia? What the hell is the militia anyway? Then again, what the hell is electorate? How can we define one and not the other. How can we construe the same words one way and not the other.

If its asinine to think that the Constitution would create a “collective right” to possess books, its asinine to think that the Constitution creates a “collective right” to bear arms with the same language.

After I explained this to the person I was debating, she said to me “you clearly don’t have a heart, you’re wrong.”

Rather no heart than no brain.

Recently, the Brady Campaign against your second amendment rights released its most recent state rankings (I will not link from here, I am morally opposed).

However, I will link to here and here. These sites analyze the rankings…no surprise: the higher your Brady Rank, the higher your violent crime.

While the gun-banners keep arguing that the U.S. needs to be more like England when it comes to firearms, they're ignoring the reality of life in Great Britain:  dangerous streets and defenselessness for those who obey the law.

The latest evidence that England's gun ban only disarmed the good guys comes from Liverpool, where BBC Radio host Shelagh Fogarty went to find out if residents in her old neighborhood feel safe. 

She got her answer when a gang member drove by and pointed a gun at her.  Fogarty says if it weren't for the fact that a police siren fired up nearby at that same moment, she'd be dead today.  Dead in gun-free England, where the government banned handguns more than a decade ago. 

Apparently England's drug gangs and street thugs didn't get the memo, because they're still armed.  In fact, violent gun crime continues to climb in the UK.  Residents aren't safe and everyone knows it. Even the British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says she doesn't go out at night because she doesn't feel it's safe. That's life under a gun ban.  The criminals have the upper hand, and even powerful politicians cower in their homes. 

Talk to any Brit who used to be a gun owner, and they'll say, "Don't let it happen to you."  They're right.  There are many threats to our freedoms this year, but each one is also a chance for us to safeguard our freedoms.  Gun owners must rise, and stand united, and prevail. Or England is our future.