March 15
44 BC – Fearing his concentration of political power as permanent dictator and his personal popularity with the masses would result in him declaring himself King, Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of Senators
1564 – Mughal Emperor Akbar abolishes the jizya tax on non moslem subjects in India.
1783 – At Newburgh, New York, George Washington publicly speaks to his officers to not support a purported conspiracy to stage a military takeover of the government, due to the army not being paid.
1916 – President Wilson sends 4,800 United States troops over the border into Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa, after his attack on Columbus, New Mexico.
1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first, and the last, President of the Soviet Union.
1991 – The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany comes into effect, restoring full sovereignty to the Federal Republic of Germany and beginning the process for the reunification with the German Democratic Republic
2019 – Brenton Harrison Tarrant murders 51 people and wounds 40 more in an attack at a moslem mosque and islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand.
NSSF REACTION TO PRESIDENT’S GUN CONTROL EXECUTIVE ORDER
WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, takes exception with President Joe Biden’s Executive Order to increase gun control measures. In the name of “doing something,” the Biden administration is chilling fundamental Constitutional rights and simply rehashing existing law, many of which were previously supported by the firearm industry.
“The Biden administration should demand that soft-on-crime prosecutors and lawmakers use the laws already in existence to lock up criminals that misuse firearms to prey on innocent Americans,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Instead, this administration continues to scapegoat the firearm industry for its unwillingness to address crime. The failure of this administration to seriously address spiraling crime and instead focus its attacks on a Constitutionally-protected industry that works diligently to remain in compliance with laws and regulations and actively cooperates with law enforcement, especially ATF, exposes the lack of urgency Americans demand to curb rampant and out-of-control crime.”
The firearm industry worked with Congress to update the statutory definition of “in the business,” in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was passed last year and signed into law by President Biden. The update defined those Americans “in the business” of selling firearms as those “predominantly earning a profit.”
Further, The White House accused industry members, without evidence, of selling firearms without required FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications. This is disingenuous, at best. The firearm industry was the progenitor of the point-of-sale instant background check to ensure firearms are sold only to those the law has determined can be trusted to possess a firearm. The firearm industry has been on the leading edge to improve the quality of FBI’s NICS, including supporting the FIX NICS Act of 2017 that incentivized states and required federal agencies to submit all disqualifying background information to the FBI to ensure prohibited individuals are barred from purchasing firearms. NSSF supports increasing the submission of disqualifying records to FBI NICS but rejects the Biden administration’s demand to move closer to universal background checks, which will not work without a national firearm registry, which is forbidden by federal law.
The firearm industry has also been consistently addressing compliance with federal regulations to report the loss or theft of firearms during shipping. NSSF has repeatedly held compliance seminars with members of the firearm industry and common carriers to be aware of and remain in compliance with reporting requirements when firearms go missing during shipping. NSSF has led this effort to ensure firearms are accounted for during transit from manufacturer to distributor to retailer and finally to retail sale.
NSSF welcomes the Biden administration’s renewed attention to safe storage of firearms in the home. This has been an issue on which the firearm industry has led from the front for over two decades. Every firearm shipped from the factory includes a locking device. Additionally, through NSSF’s leadership with Project ChildSafe®, over 40 million firearm safety kits, including locking devices, have been distributed to communities across America through partnerships with over 15,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and five U.S. territories. This campaign has been recognized by the National Safety Council’s Green Cross Awards and the Government Accountability Office for its efficacy in reducing the criminal and negligent misuse of firearms through voluntary safe storage. NSSF welcomes the Biden administration’s support to increase the reach of this firearm-industry financed effort.
In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden held a White House meeting in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy. He spoke to then-NSSF CEO Steve Sanetti and referring to NSSF, the president said, “You guys are doing a lot of good things, including the gunlock thing. And this isn’t Joe Biden just blowing smoke. I mean it.”
NSSF has not opposed the use of emergency risk protection orders, or so-called “red flag” laws, so long as those laws include adequate protections for Constitutional Due Process considerations. To date, none of the “red flag” laws in the 19 states and District of Columbia include these Constitutional protections. NSSF urges the Biden administration and Department of Justice (DOJ) to address these Constitutional concerns that would encourage additional states to consider these laws.
President Biden’s demand to close “the dating violence restraining order loophole” has already been addressed and was not opposed by the firearm industry. Definitions of domestic partners were updated in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Congress expanded domestic and dating partners to the list of prohibited individuals to include those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. Those laws were signed by President Biden.
NSSF recognized that the Department of Defense (DoD) instructs all military members on firearm safety during entry-level training. These include the fundamental rules of firearm safety. The firearm industry welcomes the Biden administration’s acknowledgment of proven firearm safety practices that have been the hallmark of the firearm industry for over a century. To the extent that the Biden administration is attempting to politicize the acquisition for the warfighter, the only criteria should be which firearm is the best one to meet the needs of America’s warfighters. Injecting gun control politics into the process is dangerous. Gun control politics should never have a place in DoD’s selection processes.
NSSF does not oppose the reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act, that requires 3.7 ounces of metal be included in a major component part of a firearm. Detection technology has improved to the point where image detectors have been able to identify polymer-framed firearms. Demands to modernize this act deserve strict scrutiny. The Undetectable Firearms Act as it is currently written should be made permanent.
NSSF rejects the Biden administration’s demands to ban Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard-capacity magazines. This demand is clearly unconstitutional, as affirmed by the Heller, McDonald and Bruen decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that affirmed the individual right to possess firearms in common use. More than 24.4 million MSRs are in circulation today. That’s more than there are Ford F-150s on the road, the most-popular selling pickup truck. MSRs are semiautomatic firearms, which operate the same way as the most popular handguns and duck hunting shotguns. One cartridge is expended for each pull of the trigger. Likewise, efforts to ban standard-capacity magazines are an attempt to infringe on the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. The courts have affirmed that magazine possession is essential to the ability to exercise Second Amendment rights. NSSF knows from government studies that banning MSRs and restricting magazine capacity will not make our communities safer.
NSSF rejects the Biden administration’s demand to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This law is the expressed will of Congress that was passed with a wide bipartisan majority and prevents frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry for the criminal misuse of firearms by remote third parties. This would be akin to suing Ford and Anheuser-Busch for criminal drunk driving incidents. Criminals are responsible for the crimes they commit.
NSSF rejects President Biden’s weaponization of the nonpartisan Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to squelch the First Amendment rights of firearm businesses. The heavy-handed approach is nothing short of an attempt to chill First Amendment-protected commercial free speech about products protected by the Second Amendment. The firearm industry markets firearms only to those who are legally able to possess them. Only those over the age of 18 can legally purchase a firearm at retail after submitting to an FBI NICS verification.
NSSF also rejects the Biden administration’s attempt to weaponize the “zero tolerance” policy of revoking federal firearms licenses for minor clerical errors by compounding that ill-conceived policy to expand it to a “name-and-shame” effort. Firearm retailers are the front line for ensuring firearms are sold only to those legally able to purchase them and “zero-tolerance” risks the cooperative relationship between firearm retailers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). This weaponization of the ATF would codify the Biden administration’s efforts to transform the ATF from a law enforcement and regulatory agency to one that is a political arm of an antigun administration.
Washington Democrats Pass Rifle Ban Bill, 10-Day Gun Buy Wait
Washington State House Democrats have used the cover of two successive night votes to pass legislation banning the future sale of so-called “assault weapons” and a requirement that all gun buyers show proof of firearms safety training within the past five years, and endure a 10-day waiting period.
Evergreen State gun owners are furious and will focus their attention on the state Senate, where they hope to stop both measures.
At the same time, they are also trying to prevent Senate Bill 5078 from passing in the House. This measure is aimed at encouraging lawsuits against the firearms industry. A hearing on the bill was held Tuesday morning before the House Committee on Civil Rights & Judiciary. This legislation will almost certainly be challenged in court if it passes as a violation of the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
If the gun ban passes, it may be short-lived depending upon federal court action in California and Maryland, where such bans are being challenged by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Firearms Policy Coalition and, specifically in Maryland, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).
According to the Seattle Times, Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee was in the House chamber, watching the vote on House Bill 1240, which turned out 55-42, with some Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans against the measure. The vote occurred “shortly before 8:30 p.m.,” the Times report noted. Times readers are reacting predictably, with many opposed to the ban and others supporting it.
Inslee, an anti-gunner since his time in Congress, reportedly shook hands with members of the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group that has been pressing for the ban for several years.
“This is a very important vote. It is something that I’ve believed in since 1994 when I voted to make this federal law,” Inslee said.
DC Freaks Out Over DeSantis’s Ukraine Comments; Voters Shrug.
Salent segment:
Rah-rah, Slava Ukraini, and all that, but there’s a limit to American largesse. And people get miffed when Biden jets to Kyiv with a suitcase full of money but avoids East Palestine, Ohio.
Politicians in both parties must understand that their first responsibility is to their own nation; allies come second. Forget this, and the people will toss them on their tin ears. DeSantis makes his priority clear: the United States of America.
Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz asked every new US ambassador a simple question. “I’m going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.”
When they pointed to the nation assigned to them, Shultz corrected them. “Your country is the United States.”
DeSantis has passed this test. Biden has not.
Losing My Religion?
Reflections on falling away from unbridled tech-optimism.
So I’ve installed an all-new sound system in my study and the other day I was calibrating my subwoofer, as one does. The way I like to fine tune things is by listening to music I know intimately, and adjusting the levels until it sounds the way it should.
In this case I used my own 2001 album, which I released under the name Mobius Dick, Embrace the Machine. “Do not rage against the machine,” say the lyrics to the title cut. “Embrace the machine.” (Sorry, I don’t have this online anywhere at present; I should really do something about that. I was too sad about the demise of MP3.com in to put it up elsewhere at the time.)
Listening to that song reminded me of how much more overtly optimistic I was about technology and the future at the turn of the millennium. I realized that I’m somewhat less so now. But why? In truth, I think my more negative attitude has to do with people more than with the machines that Embrace the Machine characterizes as “children of our minds.” (I stole that line from Hans Moravec. Er, I mean it’s a “homage.”) But maybe there’s a connection there, between creators and creations.
It was easy to be optimistic in the 90s and at the turn of the millennium. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, the Berlin Wall fell, and freedom and democracy and prosperity were on the march almost everywhere. Personal technology was booming, and its dark sides were not yet very apparent. (And the darker sides, like social media and smartphones, basically didn’t exist.)
And the tech companies, then, were run by people who looked very different from the people who run them now – even when, as in the case of Bill Gates, they were the same people. It’s easy to forget that Gates was once a rather libertarian figure, who boasted that Microsoft didn’t even have an office in Washington, DC. The Justice Department, via its Antitrust Division, punished him for that, and he has long since lost any libertarian inclinations, to put it mildly.
“Live fire” tests for gun owners violates Second Amendment, says…
Harvard Law Review?
My buddy Jim Wallace of the Gun Owners Action League likes to refer to Massachusetts as a “Second Amendment battleground state”, and he’s not wrong. Beleaguered gun owners in the Bay State are subjected to a host of unreasonable restrictions on their right to keep and bear arms, and if anything the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen has only made anti-gun activists and politicians more eager to slap more laws on the books.
Under the pre-Bruen standard, local licensing authorities had broad discretion in approving or denying applicants for a License to Carry, and Wallace has previously told us that many jurisdictions are trying to get around the Supreme Court’s decision. State lawmakers are even pushing to require applicants to demonstrate their proficiency with a firearm by requiring live fire training and passing a test, something GOAL says is completely unnecessary.
Now a new article in the Harvard Law Review says those mandates aren’t just unneeded, they’re unconstitutional. The article focuses on the licensing process in Boston, where police already require applicants to pass a “shooting qualification test” at the local police range within two weeks of submitting an application. All would-be pistol owners (a LTC is required to own, purchase, and carry a handgun) must demonstrate “safe handling of, and familiarity with, a .38 caliber, 4-inch barrel revolver” as well as completing a scored live-fire test; requirements that have no analogues in history, according to the author.
The City of Boston could presumptively argue that its Qualification Test, which requires an LTC application to obtain a quantifiable point tally on a scored target, is the type of objective test that Justice Thomas deemed constitutional.
But that contention misconstrues Bruen. First, the Bruen majority did not hold that all objective licensing requirements are constitutional, for even an objective test must not “deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.” And a shall-issue permitting scheme “can be put toward abusive ends.”
Because the Qualification Test requires applicants to fire a heavy, unpopular handgun accurately, which not everyone can do, it impedes law-abiding citizens from exercising their armed self-defense right — the right to public carry is reserved only for those who shoot well with a heavy handgun. Second, Justice Thomas stated that background checks and firearms safety courses are constitutional, but a shooting qualification test is not a firearms safety course.
Thus, Bruen does not support the proposition that scored live-fire tests survive judicial scrutiny. The Qualification Test’s quantitative characteristics may mitigate its constitutional deficiencies but do not cure them.
In addition to accuracy, the Qualification Test demands that applicants show “safe handling of, and familiarity with, a .38 caliber, 4-inch barrel revolver.” The City of Boston does not provide any concrete guidelines, like a scoring rubric, for the safe-handling requirement, and licensing officials may have differing opinions on the matter. Such requirements do not resemble the “narrow, objective, and definite standards” that Justice Thomas referenced as per se constitutional.
According to the author of the law review article, Boston’s requirement is already ripe for a court challenge, and any move by the state to impose similar live-fire mandates on all LTC applicants would face stiff legal headwinds.
Based on the City of Boston’s facially unconstitutional licensing regime, any Boston resident can seek declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief for the City’s infringing the constitutional right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
This Note does not purport to discuss all the mechanics of either standing or § 1983 liability. As a general matter, however, it bears mentioning that an aggrieved applicant could assert a plausible claim for declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief against City of Boston licensing officials, the colonel of the Massachusetts State Police, and certain state firearms officials, subject to any affirmative defenses raised by the government.
It’s refreshing (to say the least) to see an article casting doubt on the constitutionality of a Massachusetts gun control law in the pages of the Harvard Law Review, and I hope this is the start of a trend. Far too many academic institutions have seemingly adopted a post-Bruen position of supporting any and all gun control laws, or at least criticizing those court decisions that have ruled a particular law unconstitutional.
Some, like the University of Minnesota, have even enshrined anti-gun activism into the curriculum in the wake of Bruen. I’m sure that the prevailing attitude at Harvard Law is still anti-2A, but at least the Harvard Law Journal is willing to print and publish pieces that take both Bruen and the right to keep and bear arms seriously.
The Buckeye Institute Urges Court to Overturn New York’s Unconstitutional Gun Law
Mar 14, 2023
Columbus, OH – On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in Christian v. Nigrelli with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on behalf of Project 21, a national network of black political, civic, and business leaders. In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that New York’s Conceal Carry Improvement Act violates the right of the citizens of New York, particularly black New Yorkers, to keep and bear arms, which the U.S. Constitution guarantees.
“For decades, African Americans and other racial minorities were the targets of firearms regulations that prevented them from exercising their right to bear arms, regulations that were often enacted with racial animus,” said David C. Tryon, director of litigation at The Buckeye Institute. “But as The Buckeye Institute argues on behalf of its client, ‘Historical regulations designed to oppress racial minorities or show distrust or animus towards “disfavored” groups, cannot be the basis for infringing on the right to bear arms.’”
In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court clearly told New York that it was unconstitutional to deny people their Second Amendment rights by forcing citizens to prove they have a “special need” before they could obtain a license to carry a firearm. In its brief, The Buckeye Institute shows that New York has simply substituted “special need” with “moral character” to deny members of disfavored groups—such as minorities and the urban poor—their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Here’s the White House ‘fact sheet’ for the executive order/ Looks to me to be a lot of wording that actually means little until we see what the DoJ is going to come up with…if anything.
My pilots & crews -of course- trained with their nomex flight gloves, so I’m familiar with them. We we also issued several styles of mechanix gloves, and they’re good too.
GLOVE UP!
PROTECT YOUR HANDS FOR BETTER SHOOTING
I’ve finally come around — I believe in gloves for shooters. Not only do they save wear and tear on my hands, but they’ve provided a few more unanticipated benefits. If you aren’t yet a believer, I’m going to convince you.
How Hard is Real Armed Defense?
Everyone has an opinion. Most people will give you their impression of armed defense if you ask them. Is it trivially easy or is it impossibly hard? I’ve looked at armed defense for a decade and think we often ask the wrong question about defending ourselves and our families with firearms. One view is that armed defenders have to make split-second decisions after evaluating a number of complex legal and tactical factors. In contrast, many new gun owners want to concentrate on firearms handling skills so they can manipulate their gun with “fast hands”. I don’t think that is what most defenders really do.
I think almost anyone can learn armed defense if they are willing to take instruction and then practice what they were taught. This is what I’ve learned from firearms students and instructors.
March 14
1794 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin.
1900 – The Gold Standard Act is signed into law by President McKinley, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.
1903 – Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, the first national wildlife refuge in the US, is established by President Theodore Roosevelt.
1942 – Anne Miller becomes the first American patient to be treated with the antibiotic penicillin
1951 – During the Korean War, United Nations troops recapture Seoul from the Chinese and North Korean forces for the second time.
1961 – After a decompression accident requires decent to a lower altitude, increasing fuel consumption causing the plane to run out of fuel and forcing the crew to eject, ( all safely ) a USAF B-52 bomber, carrying nuclear weapons, crashes near near Yuba City, California.
1964 – Jack Ruby is convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
1967 – The body of President Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
1995 – Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle.
2019 – Cyclone Idai makes landfall near Beira, Mozambique, causing devastating floods that kill over 1000 people.
Man killed in Battle Creek in apparent self-defense shooting
BATTLE CREEK — A 40-year-old Fulton man was killed in a Wednesday shooting inside an apartment in what police are calling a self-defense shooting.
The man is accused of breaking into an apartment at Georgetown Estates, Battle Creek police said.
Officers responded to a distress call at the 1975 E. Columbia Ave. apartment complex around 9:41 p.m. Wednesday where they found Donald Richard Guthrie had been shot.
Guthrie was transported by LifeCare Ambulance to Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo where he later died, police said.
“It appears that Guthrie had forced his way into the victim’s Georgetown Estates apartment, at which time the victim shot Guthrie,” police said in a release. “At this time, it appears that the victim acted in self-defense.”
The case will be submitted to the Calhoun County Prosecutor’s Office for review, police said. An investigation is ongoing.
Police declined to release any further details Thursday.
Last week the Senate Democrat majority was hospitalized with Senator John Fetterman dispatched to a psych ward and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who doesn’t seem to know where she is, hospitalized for shingles. Fetterman and Feinstein didn’t let being hospitalized slow them down and went right on co-sponsoring bills even though the former had to be hospitalized because he couldn’t take care of himself and the latter no longer recognized colleagues.
Even in the Senate, Fetterman couldn’t understand what was being said and Feinstein wasn’t aware that she had announced her retirement. Despite that there are press releases from their offices and they’re cosponsoring legislation as if they’re functional and able to make decisions.
Senator Feinstein just introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023 to mandate abortion nationwide while outlawing state restrictions on late-term abortion when babies can feel pain. Considering Feinstein’s own mental capacity may not be that much greater than an unborn child, she might want to reconsider the value of human life even when it can’t articulate its feelings. But Feinstein isn’t really introducing or sponsoring bills, her staffers, who announced her retirement without her knowing about it, are legislating in her name. That’s a coup.
Or what we used to call a coup before it happened and just became how things worked.
German gun laws make anything in the U.S. pale in comparison. This was the case even 30+ years ago when I was stationed there.
Thus we see that the gun grabbers will never be satisfied.
“Lax gun laws” blamed for Hamburg shooting
I recently took a look at gun control laws in Germany. It was because of the Hamburg shooting. I knew there would be a discussion of the gun laws on the books as well as calls for new ones and I wanted to be familiar with what’s already in place.
What they’ve got is pretty extensive, too. Mandatory storage laws, psychological evaluations before purchasing a gun, a licensing process that requires applicants to show a necessity for buying a gun, and age restrictions.
Frankly, they’ve got more rules in place than any state in the US could ever hope to get through.
Their gun laws are anything but lax.
Yet, in the wake of the Hamburg shooting, many are blaming lax gun laws.
Gun laws in Germany, where weapon ownership is among the highest in Europe, could be further tightened after last week’s mass shooting in which seven people, including an unborn child, were killed in a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg.
The attack has thrown up the perennial question of whether the various parts of the country’s federal system are working together, and strengthened the hand of those in the governing coalition who are seeking stronger gun controls…
But people are now asking why the specialist force is not deployed every day. And in a country whose fragmented political system is often a cause for complaint, a reckoning is coming over Hamburg’s weapons control authority’s response to an anonymous letter sent two months ago about [the gunman’s] mental health.
On 7 February, officers visited [the killer] at his flat in west Hamburg but gave him just a verbal warning after finding a loose bullet on top of the safe in which his gun and ammunition were supposed to be stored. The city’s health services seem to have had no involvement in the unannounced visit, despite the red flags of his book and the anonymous letter, which had suggested that [he] was suffering from a psychological disorder but refused to seek treatment.
A member of Hamburg’s Hanseatic Gun Club, [he] had held a weapons licence since December last year, and the awarding of this permit is a focus of attention as the people of Hamburg prepare to bury their dead.
So once again, we see a mass shooting in an area with extensive gun control laws already on the books.
Sure, many are focusing on a single round sitting on top of the gun safe, but let’s be honest here. That’s not the issue. The issue was, in part, that German gun control didn’t stop the Hamburg shooting. Gun control doesn’t do that.
What it does is make it so literally none of the people in that building had the means to resist this maniac.
Additionally, for all the talk of mental health, let’s remember that the shooter had to undergo a mental health screening in order to get his license. He passed that.
Now, I’m not saying that people can’t develop mental health issues afterward. Not at all. What I’m saying is that this is one of those measures we’re told we need here in the US, yet this is why it’s ineffective. The truth is many people can pass such a screening despite probably not being mentally well.
Germany has pretty extensive gun laws, some of the most extensive on the planet short of outright bans on anything more powerful than a blowgun.
That wasn’t the problem.
We’ll never solve the issue of mass shootings so long as people keep pretending guns are the issue, rather than people.
New York lawmaker admits proposed ammo tax is meant as “disincentive” to gun ownership
Thank you very much to New York Assembly member Pat Fahy for saying the quiet part out loud when talking about her proposed tax on ammunition. The Albany Democrat wants to see anywhere from a 2-to-5-cent tax on each round of ammunition sold in the state (basically, the bigger the bullet the higher the tax), with the money going towards community-based violence intervention groups. We’ve seen similar schemes enacted to great fanfare (and little effect) in cities like Seattle, and lawmakers have even proposed this idea in New York before now, but rarely are lawmakers so explicit in their intention to tax people out of a right.
“So, if you buy 50 rounds, it’ll be just a couple of extra dollars,” said Fahy. “So, it’s not a huge tax, but another disincentive to arming up.”
If New York Democrats do end up adopting Fahy’s bill and turning into law, that statement is going to come in very handy during the inevitable court challenge that will ensue. The Supreme Court doesn’t look kindly on taxing the exercise of a constitutionally-protected right, especially when it is designed to chill the exercise of that right.
The Court took up this issue back in the 1940s, in a case called Murdock v. Pennsylvania. At issue was an ordinance imposed by the town of Jeannette, Pennsylvania that required “all persons canvassing for or soliciting within said Borough, orders for goods, paintings, pictures, wares, or merchandise of any kind” to obtain a license from town officials in addition to paying a fee for the privilege of doing so. When a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses were fined under the ordinance for selling religious tracts without acquiring the mandated license, they sued, and eventually the Supreme Court found in their favor.
In its decision, the Court declared:
“the First Amendment, which the Fourteenth makes applicable to the states, declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .” It could hardly be denied that a tax laid specifically on the exercise of those freedoms would be unconstitutional. Yet the license tax imposed by this ordinance is, in substance, just that.…
A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution. Thus, it may not exact a license tax for the privilege of carrying on interstate commerce although it may tax the property used in, or the income derived from, that commerce, so long as those taxes are not discriminatory.
Fahy’s proposed ammo tax isn’t a flat licensing tax like the ordinance in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, but thanks to her comment to the press there should be no doubt that the tax on every round of ammunition is designed to be discriminatory in nature against any and all New Yorkers who dare seek to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. When she talks about disincentivizing arming up, she’s really saying the bill disincentivizes the exercise of a constitutionally-protected right, and that’s a no-go according to SCOTUS.
An ammo tax is also a terrible idea from a policy perspective. Seattle, Washington imposed a tax on the sale of both firearms and ammunition back in 2015, and it’s brought in far less money for violence prevention programs than supporters had predicted. They were boasting of $500,000 in tax revenue every year, but in 2019 about $85,000 was collected from the handful of remaining gun stores inside the city limits. Many FFLs chose to simply relocate beyond Seattle’s borders, and many Seattle residents have chosen to buy their guns outside the city limits as well.
Seattle’s violent crime, meanwhile, has gotten exponentially worse. There were 24 murders in Seattle in 2015; far fewer than the 55 homicides reported in the city last year. Seattle’s gun and ammo tax hasn’t made the city a safer place, and Fahy’s proposal would be just as ineffective in New York. But as Fahy herself has made clear, her tax isn’t about preventing crime. It’s about preventing responsible New Yorkers from keeping and bearing arms for self-defense.
YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTECT YOURSELF’: OKLA. HOUSE PASSES 2 BILLS RELATING TO PROPERTY RIGHTS
OKLAHOMA CITY –
There are multiple protections in the state including “Stand Your Ground” and the “Castle Doctrine” allowing Oklahomans to use physical or deadly force, if it’s in self-defense.
A bill passing through the House Thursday expands part of the Castle Doctrine.
“It’s a simple bill, on your property if you feel that your life is threatened, you have the right to protect yourself,” said Rep. David Hardin, (R) Stillwell.
House Bill 2049 expands the definition of a dwelling- allowing people to use physical or deadly force against people trespassing anywhere on their private property, not just breaking into their actual house.
The previous law only applied to self-defense when a person broke into the actual home.
Democrats argue that this creates a vague law and opens more doors to problems.
“There are too many opportunities for accidental mishaps if we extend the Castle Doctrine,” said Rep. John Waldron (D) Tulsa.
Rep. Jay Steagle, (R) Yukon, argued that this is just a recognition of what should already be in the law.
“Suggesting that an individual has the right to be on someone else’s private property before any kind of action needs to be taken- even conversation is absolutely ridiculous,” said Rep. Steagle.
Many republicans say this bill is necessary for rural areas of the state.
“I live 30 minutes away from a maximum-security prison- I don’t have time to ask them what they’re doing there, I need to have the right to protect my property,” said Rep. Jim Grego, (R) Wilburton.
Democrats say property lines aren’t always clear, and that this can create problems for people who may be out hiking or hunting.
“Are you all familiar with somebody that’s been affected by being out in a rural area and death coming to you because you are out on someone else’s land,” questioned Rep. Goodwin.
With all the debate the author reminded house members the intent behind his bill was simple.
“This bill is never intended for you to walk out and shoot anyone you want on your property, this bill is intended for you to be able to protect yourself,” Rep. Hardin said.