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Shouldn’t Everyone Be Allowed To Walk Around With A Gun?

July 28, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 14 Comments

I don’t like to repeat the same thing again and again, but I must say that the upcoming SCOTUS session which will hear a challenge to New York’s Sullivan Law seems to be bringing every nut-job out of the woodwork to weigh in – on both sides!

Now I expect Gun-nut Nation to start bleating their usual bleats about how gun-control laws will ‘disarm’ Americans and lead to fascism or worse. I’ll put that one in the same rhetorical trash can which contains the ‘fact’ that getting immunized against Covid-19 will make us sterile and end the human race.  It’s a ‘fact,’ after all.

But I expect better from my friends in Gun-control Nation because they always tout various legislative and/or regulatory responses to gun violence by stating that these schemes are developed with reference to evidence-based ‘facts.’ Not just fact. Evidence-based facts.

Want the latest example of how Gun-control Nation is going to make an argument before the SCOTUS which is just as crazy and ridiculous as anything we get from the other side? A group of African-American public defenders and legal aid groups have filed a brief which asks the SCOTUS to throw out the Sullivan Law because the law is used to “criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities.”

And to explain why depriving Blacks of their ‘right’ to own a gun, we have none other than Professor Carol Anderson, whose book, The Second – Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, shows how gun laws have been used to keep African-Americans powerless. And the moment you give the cops discretionary authority of who can arm themselves with a gun, you know for sure that Black Americans won’t be able to legally own or carry guns.

Professor Anderson says it like this: “Black people are vulnerable when they are armed, and vulnerable when they’re unarmed.” In other words, the Sullivan Law ‘criminalizes’ Blacks because the law doesn’t allow them to arm and protect themselves the way Whites are allowed to arm and protect themselves with guns.

Obviously, if we want laws to be applied equally to everyone, regardless of race, gender, or anything else, we need to take discretionary gun licensing away from the cops because they’ll just use the procedure to deny concealed-carry to Blacks.

I love the idea that if you can’t walk around with a gun in your pocket that you’re somehow making yourself an easier target for someone else who happens to be walking around with a gun. I’ve been hearing that one from the gun industry for the last 40 years since gun makers realized that nobody except some eccentrics like me were still buying guns for hunting and sport.

Way back in the 1960’s, nobody really gave one rat’s damn about 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ There was a little murmur from the corners of Gun-nut Nation during the debates leading up to the Gun Control Act of 1968. But even America’s ‘oldest civil rights organization,’ the NRA, didn’t make big stink when the law came up for a final vote.

That was then, this is now. And now we have a majority of Americans firmly convinced that keeping a gun in your home is a good thing to do, and only seven states still give the cops any decision-making ability to decide who should, and who shouldn’t walk around with a gun.

Want to know what makes people vulnerable to the point that they end up getting killed or wounded because they can’t defend themselves with a gun? It’s actually very simple – we live in a society where nobody backs down. Not only don’t people back down, but we just came through four years in which the country’s Chief Executive got up in front of masses of people every, single week and exhorted them to stand their ground and ‘fight.’

What exactly were all those MAGA knuckleheads fighting for? That was never made very clear. But if you can walk into the local gun shop, plunk down five hundred bucks and walk out with a product that will make it easier to stand your ground, why the hell not?

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If New York’s Sullivan Law Goes Away, What Difference Will It Make?

July 22, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

When I lived in New York City, I could carry a concealed gun because I was the manager of a wholesale gun business. In 1983, the day after I notified the police that I was closing down the business because we had sold the building we used for our offices and warehouse, two cops came by from the Licensing Division, took my gun away and told me I could have it back if I applied for a license to own and keep a handgun in my city home.

This process brought me into contact with the city’s infamous Sullivan Law, passed in 1911, which is going to be challenged in the Supreme Court next year. The law only requires a background check in order to keep a gun anywhere within the city, I can even take the gun outside of my apartment if I am going to a shooting range to keep up my shooting skills.

On the other hand, if I want to walk around with a concealed weapon, I have to apply for a different license and I must convince a hearing officer in the Licensing Division that I need to carry a gun because I have either personal safety issues or business reasons which cannot be handled by the normal, everyday policing of the NYPD.

This process, known as discretionary, or ‘may issue’ licensing, was the rule until the mid-1990’s, when a majority of states passed laws allowing for concealed-carry of a weapon (CCW) without any special reason at all. There are now only 8 states which still require someone who wants to protect themselves with a gun outside of their home to justify this desire based on some special need.

The states which still give the cops discretion as to who can and who cannot carry a gun outside the home are CA, HI, MD, DE, NJ, NY, MA, and RI. It is assumed that if the SCOTUS overturns the Sullivan Law, the discretionary, ‘may issue’ laws will quickly disappear in the other states as well.

I happen to live in one of the remaining ‘may issue’ states – Massachusetts. But in fact, police chiefs in just about every jurisdiction in Massachusetts, with the exception of the three large cities – Boston, Springfield, Worcester – routinely grant CCW without any kind of interview or intervention at all.

Before 2002, when Massachusetts moved all state licensing to a central location which was also the office which actually produced the physical license and mailed it to the local chief, many of the small-town cops didn’t even bother to send the application into the state for the background check. As one chief in a town of some 600 residents explained to me, “I know everybody in the town.”

Want to read a really good article which sums up what guns mean to cops in small towns?  You can download it right here. Basically, the article finds that rural cops have a very different view about guns than cops in big cities, because there are endless shootings in urban centers, whereas in the small towns the only thing that gets shot is a deer or a bird.

If the SCOTUS strikes down the Sullivan Law, I can guarantee you that the New York City cops will find some other way to keep law-abiding city residents from getting their hands on guns. Last year, Connecticut’s Governor, Ned Lamont, shut down the state’s fingerprint-processing office because of the Pandemic, which effectively kept anyone applying for a gun license to be approved. He was taken to court by a pro-gun group and was ordered to re-open the office which he did, briefly, and now he’s shut it down again.

Want to walk around town with a gun in your pocket to keep yourself safe and sound? Don’t live in a high-crime place like New York City. Live in some small town like where I live where your CCW application will be immediately approved.

Of course, there hasn’t been a violent crime of any kind committed in my town since a neighbor’s kid ran his dirt bike over my front yard and left some tread marks on the lawn.

[Thanks Gail.]

I’m Not So Sure The Court Will Expand 2nd-Amendment ‘Rights.’

January 23, 2019

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 3 Comments

              Why do I get the feeling that some of my gun violence prevention (GVP) advocacy friends can’t wait for the Supreme Court to expand 2nd-Amendment ‘rights’ beyond the boundaries set by the Heller decision in 2008? You may recall that Scalia’s opinion in that case ratified the idea that Americans who wanted to keep a handgun in their home would now be exercising a Constitutional ‘right.’ Period. Did this decision create Constitutional protection for walking around the neighborhood with a concealed gun? No. Did it create Constitutional protection for walking around the neighborhood with an openly-carried gun? No. Did it prevent localities from making all kinds of rules and regulations that had to be met before you could keep a handgun in your home? No. The decision simply said that as long as sooner or later you could be given permission to keep a handgun in your home, you were not being deprived of your 2nd-Amendment ‘right’ to ‘keep and bear arms.’

              The case which has the GVP advocacy folks worked up into a tizzy doesn’t actually question the constitutionality of New York City’s onerous gun-licensing process at all; a process known as the Sullivan Law which has been in effect since 1912 and is, simply put, the most restrictive licensing system ever devised anywhere on the planet. The case in question deals only with a regulation which is not, in fact, part of the licensing process itself, but only comes into effect after a gun owner spends a lot of money and a lot of time getting licensed to own a gun. The regulation in question forbids any resident of New York City to carry his licensed gun outside the five counties which comprise the city’s geographic limits. If, for example, you want to take your licensed gun to any location outie the city, the moment you drive from da city into Joisey or Rockland or some other place, you’re violating the NYC licensing law.

              The case in question basically argues that by requiring a city resident to keep his licensed gun within the city limits is to deprive that resident of his 2nd-Amendment ‘right’ to keep a gun in his home if he happens to have another home. And what is now going on within the GVP world is the great fear that if this regulation is struck down, it opens the way for all those crazy gun owners to go anywhere and everywhere they want with their guns.

              Which happens not to be true. What?  Hey Mike, are you saying that maybe, just maybe the GVP noise machine is making a big deal out of something that may turn out to mean little, if anything at all? That’s exactly what I am saying, and here’s the reason why.

              Let’s say I have an apartment in Manhattan and a house out at the beach, maybe in one of the Hampton high-crime towns like Southampton or Quogue. The moment I drive my car out of the city and cross the border between Queens and Nassau Counties, I’m actually not just violating one law, I’m, violating two. Because I can’t have a gun in my beach house without getting a gun license from the Suffolk County where the beach house is located, unless the address of my other home is in a jurisdiction which has no gun licensing at all.

              Could the Court rule that no jurisdiction has the authority to determine whether guns represent a threat to public safety and therefore strike down every gun-licensing law in every state? They can rule whatever they want to rule, but on this one I wouldn’t take the short odds. The whole point of the Heller decision was to protect private ownership of handguns but also to protect the government’s authority to uphold the ‘compelling interest’ of keeping communities safe. And even a court with a nut-job like Clarence Thomas wouldn’t uphold the notion that when it comes to public safety, armed citizens should be our first line of defense.

Heller Versus District Of Columbia II: The NRA Loses A Big One

May 19, 2014

mikethegunguy Blogs , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Ever since the Supreme Court decided in 2008 that the 2nd Amendment gave law-abiding Americans the right to keep a gun in the home for self-defense , the NRA had been racking up a very impressive series of legal wins in various courtrooms around the country, most recently a decision in California that struck down San Diego’s concealed-carry law as being an infringement of 2nd-Amendment rights.  But the music stopped playing last week when the Federal District Court in Washington D.C. upheld the city’s gun registration procedure which had been challenged by the self-same Dick Heller whose lawsuit became the basis for the historic 2nd Amendment decision in 2008.

Dick Heller

Dick Heller

Anyone who wants to own a gun in DC has to go through a pretty lengthy and cumbersome process, including a detailed background check, followed by a safety and proficiency course, and then is required to submit the actual gun to the police department for inspection and registration, the permit for which must then be renewed every three years.  Gun purchases are also rationed, i.e., nobody is permitted to purchase more than one handgun every thirty days.  There is no other political jurisdiction in the entire United States, including New York City with its infamous Sullivan Law, that mandates such a comprehensive registration procedure for all firearms, and it was the requirement that long guns be subject to background checks and inspections that, among other procedures, was challenged by Heller in his new lawsuit.

The District Court’s opinion runs more than 60 pages, based largely on testimony by, among others, the DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier, former ATF agents Mark Jones and Joseph Vince, and Dan Webster, who heads the Bloomberg Center for Gun Policy at Johns Hopkins University.  The plaintiffs produced testimony from Professor Gary Kleck, a long-time academic supporter of the NRA.  I don’t have space to go over every point that was argued in detail, but there was one basic issue that stood out and, not surprisingly, was omitted from a summary of the case posted by the NRA.

The NRA and other pro-gun organizations have consistently argued against any expansion of gun control measures because, according to them, such procedures make it more burdensome for law-abiding citizens to own guns while, on the other hand, criminals will always find a way to get around the law.  To quote the Plaintiffs: “Criminals circumvent the process by purchasing guns on the street and bypassing registration altogether.”  To which the District Court rejoined: “According to the Plaintiffs, municipalities should be limited to enacting only those firearms regulations that lawbreakers will obey – a curious argument that would render practically any guns laws unconstitutional.”

You got that one right, baby.  That’s what it’s all about.  The truth is that pro-gun activists don’t want any laws or regulations on firearms, regardless of the intent of the law.  On the other hand, it has to be said that most people who want more gun control would just as well see the 2nd Amendment go fly a kite.  As future gun litigation rumbles through the legal system, I hope that  jurists will be as candid and forthright as was Judge James Boasberg in speaking for the D.C. District Court, because in a debate that has been too clouded with overheated rhetoric and unsupported facts, it’s refreshing to read a legal opinion which clearly points out the basic issue separating the two sides.