Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

Our challenge of the California Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA), if the high court accepts it for review, could be a critical wake-up call to lower federal courts that continue to employ what they call an ‘interest-balancing approach’ to deciding gun control cases because that strategy is forbidden by the 2008 Heller decision. It is time to bring a halt to what is essentially a revolt by the lower courts against the landmark Heller opinion, and the Pena case could provide that vehicle.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF founder and Executive Vice President
December 2018
SAF SEEKS SUPREME COURT REVIEW IN CHALLENGE OF CALIF. HANDGUN STATUTE
[One of the key things at issue in this lawsuit is that microstamping cannot be practically implemented yet California insists that all new gun designs incorporate it. This results in a ban on the sale of new gun designs. And as older guns cease to be manufactured this will result in no new guns being legally offered for sale in California.

This would appear to me to be a good starting point to build precedence for a strong Second Amendment.

See also: Order that gun makers do impossible en route to Supremes.—Joe]

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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

  1. It would be great for the “interest-balancing approach” to be shot down entirely. It clearly must be because there is absolutely no Constitutional justification for it. But unfortunately, it seems to be widely practiced and rarely challenged.

    • Isn’t the assertion that accommodations or other services or goods be separate AND equal a balancing approach that was rejected completely with Brown v Board of Education? Because separate was inherently unequal for the various Constitutional rights implicated by Plessey v Ferguson and its progeny, no balancing was appropriate for such fundamental constitutional rights?
      If we’re talking about the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and it’s hard to pursue those interests if you are dead, how can the right reemphasized in Heller be balanced against ANY government interest, no matter how important, compelling or merely articulatable?

      • The “government interest” which will be claimed is the safety/lives of all people. They will claim that restricting gun access will save more lives. Yes, some people could have defended themselves and saved their own lives, but on the whole, it will be claimed, more lives will be saved with less access to guns by everyone.

        I used to blog about this sort of thing as the government treating us like cattle to be dehorned.

        • Sure, but the point is that “compelling state interest” is not a consideration authorized by the Constitution. The words are “shall not be infringed” or “Congress shall make no law”. Those words mean “no”, and whether you can pretend that some people might be hurt thereby is utterly irrelevant.
          The same goes for free speech, where it is somewhat better understood at least by moderates and conservatives: my right to free speech includes the right to insult you, annoy you, etc. — unlike the fake right as practiced elsewhere in the world.

  2. “Interest-balancing approach”. Such deviously clever words, yet it is tempting to miss-characterize the enemies of liberty as ignorant, stupid and ridiculous.

    Our founding principles, in this instance, come from the Ten Commandments. Regarding property and trade it could not be more clear or concise;

    4. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is…

    So first; nothing is truly yours, for you didn’t truly make anything. This concept is critically important to understand, because the enemies of liberty use it against us, as they presume to occupy the place of God. “You didn’t build that!” says Barak Obama for but one small example, and by that he means that the state is the rightful owner of everything (actually the pope asserts this privilege, but one step at a time). So the state has, in essence, set itself up as the anti-god.

    5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

    Five is critical to understand as well, because the enemies of liberty have been very focused on erasing it. “To make the son as unlike the father as possible” is one of the stated goals of public education. Woodrow Wilson was very keen on this idea, and likewise all communist revolutions (and criminal gangs) have sought to remove the youth from their parents, and thereby control the mindset of the next generation.

    6. Thou shalt not kill.

    Some translate it as shall not “murder”. Obviously you cannot eat so much as a salad without “killing”. Today we have tax-payer-funded killing factories, so clearly the enemies of liberty are attacking number six. Murder and the threat of murder are after all the ultimate means of keeping the People under control, feeding the beast.

    7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

    From the outset of moving pictures in this modern era, we have been encouraged to violate number seven, and the push became a total onslaught starting in the 1960s.

    8. Thou shalt not steal.

    It is the most obvious that number eight is under a coordinated attack. We may reiterate it as “That shalt not engage in coercive redistribution, or ‘Redistributive Change'”. Clearly that one has to go away.

    9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

    Nine has been re-written in the mind of the enemy, to reverse it’s meaning. The enemies of liberty believe thou MUST bear false witness against thy neighbor when circumstances require it, for how else to rationalize coercion and theft? It’s the “smart” thing to do. Lawyers teach one another to do this.

    10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

    Ten is my favorite of the last five because, with amazing focus and clarity it defines the rights of property. It wasn’t enough to say, Thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not commit adultery. Here it says don’t even WANT other people’s property or other people’s spouses. And then it defines property as “house” (that which you have built or purchased), “servants” (employees, meaning business operations and associations), “ox” (meaning business assets and the means of production), ass (the means of transportation, which also requires freedom of movement), nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. No one can worm, weasel, rationalize or slither their way out of it, and so of course number ten must be denied, ignored, or re-written (and it has been re-written, most notably by the papacy once they realized that they’d failed in banning the Bible.

    When it comes to an “interest-balancing approach” then, we can readily see that the interests of the enemies of liberty must be the “balance” against the perfect law of liberty. Lies, disruption of the family unit, larceny, covetousness, licentiousness and killing must be the “balance” against truth, and thus the interests of our deadly enemy (the anti-Christ) must be given “equal consideration”, a “fair chance”, and we must be “open-minded” at all times, and “progressive” toward the lure of error. Otherwise the whole authoritarian system of looting and lording (which crows like a rooster atop the henhouse) breaks down and falls apart.

    And this comes next after the Commandments;
    And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

    Make of that what you will.

  3. I no longer remember why it is, but CA gun stores don’t stock used handguns. The only used ones they offer are on consignment. A fair number of them are labeled “for police only”, although why that might be is not evident by appearance. I suspect that might be due to them not being models listed on the approved handgun list. Which, BTW, must be kept current by the manufacturer. The approval has a time limit (what, the design spoils with age?), and if another batch is not submitted for “testing”, that handgun is removed.

    There is, at most, only ~1/3rd of potential handguns that might be available in CA. Oh, I forgot, that was the case before the micro-stamping ruling, so those numbers have probably dropped some.

  4. It’s morbidly amusing to think the people filing these challenges actually believe they will get a fair hearing when the reality is that with very rare exceptions ALL JUDGES in the US are ANTI FREEDOM and ANTI SELF DEFENSE in their outlook on life and the law. This means that with rare exceptions the outcome of these cases is PREORDAINED by the personal beliefs and agendas of the judges who rule on them. We have a “LEGAL SYSTEM” in America. NOT a “Justice System”. And that “Legal System” is CORRUPT.

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