Former supreme courts could just as easily have interpreted that amendment to require gun ownership, be well-regulated and linked to a militia, except for single-shot rifles for hunting.

But that ship has sailed. To unilaterally disarm citizens would only leave them vulnerable to bad guys with guns. The darkness has won. Get used to the bloody carnage. Beelzebub must be gleeful.

Robert W. Tyson
June 23, 2015
Letter: Gun control ship has sailed
[“…courts could just have easily..”? I guess there are people that think that. There is no “original intent”. The words used don’t mean what they say. The courts can just make up whatever they want and insert words like “hunting” that have nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

Then Tyson goes on to say citizens can’t be unilaterally disarmed because they would become vulnerable to the bad guys. But then immediately says the current situation with citizens being armed results in “the darkness” having won and “bloody carnage”. But wouldn’t people have been vulnerable to bad guys even if they had been disarmed decades ago?

I think this guy has crap for brains.—Joe]

Certain anti-gun folk seem to sincerely believe that the only reason Second Amendment advocates want to have a gun, or want other people to have the right to have a gun, is because guns are so great at killing people; that a gun not used to kill someone isn’t really worth having. But it isn’t true.

Brian Doherty
June 22, 2015
Gun Rights Advocates Don’t Just Want Guns in Order to Kill Criminals (Believe it Or Not!)
A much-hyped new Violence Policy Center study grossly misses the point about guns’ value in self-defense.
[Doherty points out the straw man almost all of us have encountered with the anti-gun people. It comes in various flavors, such as

• The only thing a gun is good for is killing.
• Guns are designed to kill.
• If you own a gun you must want to kill something.

No matter how many times we correct them they keep coming back with the same or essentially the same straw man. And we keep pointing out the data, as Doherty does in his article quoted above, that successful defensive use of firearms seldom involves killing anyone or anything.

So why do they keep attempting to use this straw man when each time they get what appears to be a full mouthful of reality shoved in their face? I believe it is because their minds don’t operate in our reality. They live in their own imagined reality.

I’m reminded of something Richard Feynman observed in one of his books. I think it was a musician friend was teaching Feynman music and Feynman was teaching the musician physics. After a few weeks the musician told Feynman, “When you say you know something, you really mean it.”

What this means to me is that there a lot of people who believe knowledge is a personal thing. One person’s beliefs, knowledge, and opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s. This is emphatically not true. But yet I am certain there are a great many people who believe this. These people cannot understand facts and logical trains of thought. You can no more teach them logic than you can teach colors to someone blind from birth.

Personal interactions with these people should elicit your sympathy. Their public claims of relevance should be greeted with mockery.—Joe]

How do you “prevent” people from violating laws? You can’t –there is no “pre-crime” division.

Firearms Policy‏ @gunpolicy
Tweeted on June 18, 2015
[I have tried to say the same thing over the years but this expresses it so much better.

You know The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is nonsensical simply by it’s name.—Joe]

Despite assertions that the benefits from waiting periods and background checks are obvious, the complete lack of empirical studies to support those claims is stark. No evidence is offered that either of these laws reduce violent crime, nor that they reduce overall suicide rates. Even more striking, the discussions that Appellant and amici use are not relevant to the case before the court.

Evidence provided in this brief shows that for at least concealed handgun permit holders, one of the classes of plaintiffs in this case, are demonstratively law-abiding, and that it is unlikely that waiting periods or background checks for additional gun purchases could lower crime rates.

George M. Lee
John R. Lott
June 2, 2015
BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE CRIME PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER
IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS AND APPELLEES JEFF SILVESTER, ET AL., AND SUPPORTING AFFIRMANCE
JEFF SILVESTER, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
vs.
KAMALA D. HARRIS,
in her official capacity as the Attorney General of California,
Defendant-Appellant.
[This is about California having 10-day waiting periods for people purchasing a gun even though they already have one or more existing guns and/or a concealed weapons permit.

You might be interested in reading the whole brief but it can be paraphrased as:

Kamala D. Harris and the supporters of this law must be living in an alternate universe. Not only don’t they have any data to support their half-baked ideas, they aren’t even talking about the topic at hand, and they misconstrue the data they do offer.

And if we were talking about what they want to talk about, which we are not and never were discussing, here is the data which destroys their view and proves they have at best a tenuous grasp on reality.

Lee and Lott were much more polite in their choice of words but that is what they said.—Joe]

CCW permit holders are so law-abiding that they compare favorably even to police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, during the period from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007 there was an average of 703 crimes committed by police per year, with 113 involving firearms violations.6 With about 683,396 full-time law enforcement employees in 2006,7 that translates into about 102 crimes by police per hundred thousand officers. Of course, this compares very favorably to the U.S. population as a whole over those years, with 3,813 crimes per hundred thousand people – a crime rate that was 37 times higher than that for police.

But concealed carry permit holders are even more law-abiding than that. Between October 1, 1987 and April 30, 2015, Florida revoked 9,793 concealed handgun permits for misdemeanors or felonies. This is an annual rate of 12.5 per 100,000 permit holders – a mere eighth of the rate at which officers commit misdemeanors and felonies. In Texas in 2012, 120 permit holders were convicted of misdemeanors or felonies – a rate of 20.5 per 100,000, still just a fifth of the rate for police.

Firearms violations among police occur at a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 officers. For permit holders in Florida, it is only 0.31 per 100,000. Most of these violations were for trivial offenses, such as forgetting to carry one’s permit. The data are similar in 24 other states.

George M. Lee
John R. Lott
June 2, 2015
BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE CRIME PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER
IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS AND APPELLEES JEFF SILVESTER, ET AL., AND SUPPORTING AFFIRMANCE
JEFF SILVESTER, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
vs.
KAMALA D. HARRIS,
in her official capacity as the Attorney General of California,
Defendant-Appellant.
[This makes it extremely clear that if you are concerned about private citizens legally carrying guns in public then there are a limited number of nonexclusive conclusions that can be arrived at regarding your concerns. Which of the following best describes you?

1. You are far more concerned about the police carrying guns.
2. You are not concerned about people legally carrying guns committing a crime with them. Instead you are concerned about those people using them lawfully. If you are a rational person we must conclude you are a violent and/or evil person afraid of being legally shot.
3. You were ignorant about the crime rates of people who legally carry guns and will now cease advocating in support of more restrictive laws regarding the carry of firearms in public.
4. You have crap for brains and don’t care what the data is.

Other options exist but they appear to be variations of the themes I have already enumerated. Or did I miss some?—Joe]

The fact that an individual may be able to demonstrate a greater need for self-protection, and therefore meets the “good reason”/”proper reason” requirement, does not indicate, in any way, whether that person is less likely to misuse handguns or may be less dangerous. See Drake, 724 F.3d at 454 (Hardiman, C.J., dissenting).¹² Nor does the District of Columbia’s “good reason”/”proper reason” requirement make it less likely that those who meet this requirement will accidently shoot themselves or others or engage in criminal activity than those who cannot meet this requirement. See id. The fact that a person may have a greater need for self-protection says nothing about how limiting the carrying of handguns to such individuals would result in a reduction of risk to other members of the public or reduce violent crime. Is the Court to conclude that people who do not have a heightened need for self-protection are more likely to commit violent crimes?

Frederick J. Scullin, Jr.
May 18, 2015
BRIAN WRENN, JOSHUA AKERY,
TYLER WHIDBY, and SECOND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION, INC.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA and CATHY L. LANIER,
Defendants
[H/T Firearm Policy Coalition (BREAKING: Washington, D.C. “May Issue” Handgun Carry License Law is Unconstitutional, Rules Federal Court Today).

The decision as a whole says “may issue” carry is probably unconstitutional and pending the actual ruling a preliminary injunction is granted against the highly restrictive D.C. “may issue” law. There are other jurisdictions that are going to have to take notice soon!

Others will have a lot more to say about what this means and the likely response of D.C. See for example see what Sebastian has to say about this ruling. But I really wanted to point out is that in the last sentence I quoted above the judge is calling the anti-gun people out on merely making “reasoning sounds” rather than a logical argument. He’s mocking them!

I especially like the part where the court agrees the plaintiffs should post a bond to cover the costs if the preliminary injunction was improperly granted. The plaintiff have to put up a bond of $1000.00. I regard that as a slap in the face for the tyrants of D.C.—Joe]