At one point after your quote the female judge tries– for about the sixth or seventh time– to remind the city’s attorney that the injury is not the travel to a gun range but the complete ban on their existence, and she states, “The City requires this as a component of ownership but prohibits a citizen from getting that training without leaving the city. How do they even think that’s rational?” She obviously doesn’t speak to gun-grabbers much. Rationality has nothing to do with the argument!

Chiefjaybob
April 10, 2011
Comment to Quote of the day—City of Chicago Attorney.
[Agreed. Those of us on “the front line” for years are used to it but you could tell the judge was getting increasingly frustrated with the guy. And the attorney would repeatedly say things like (paraphrasing) , “We have the power to regulate, such as zoning, so this ban is just a simple exercise of our power to regulate.” This would tick the judge off even more. I think the judge was nearly to the point she would have slapped him and walked off had it been a one-on-one private discussion.

If I had been doing the questioning I would have asked him since the city had the power to regulate and zone did the city also claim the power to ban all mosques, synagogues, and churches within the city? Just as theists regularly attend their place of worship a gun range is where gun owners go to exercise their “religion”.—Joe]

Where people are known to gather with guns can be attractive to criminals.

City of Chicago Attorney
April 4, 2011
Starting at about 29:15 in the recording of the oral arguments.
[I couldn’t quite figure out what the attorney’s name was perhaps it was “Feldman”. But that doesn’t matter as much as he represented Chicago and that he and probably others that wrote the Chicago brief had never been to a gun range yet proclaimed they knew enough to justify banning them in the city.

I question the factual basis of the above assertion and even if it were conceded as a fact that would not be sufficient grounds to infringe upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Using the same logic as above they could also ban parking lots because they can attract car thieves, grade schools because they can attract child molesters, and banks because they can attract robbers. I view the statement above just as bigoted as saying places where people with dark skin loiter attracts an illegal drug trade hence those kind of people are not allowed to loiter on public streets.

It was very pleasant to hear the attorney get slapped around pretty hard by two of the judges.

H/T to Sebastian and David Hardy.—Joe]

I’m very concerned about the open carry movement. It seems to be expanding.

Suzanne Verge
Of the Los Angeles chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
April 6, 2011
LA City Council support ban on openly carrying guns
[Open carry as a political protest in California is the social equivalent of a gay pride march in front of Fred Phelps church. The immediate benefits are questionable and you shouldn’t expect to make many friends in the process.

In terms of firearms Suzanne Verge is the equivalent of a minor official in Phelps’ church and as shown above responds in an analogous manner.—Joe]

Madigan is just another unqualified hack politician driving a short-sighted special-interest agenda against all reality and fiscal responsibility. This idea will waste money we don’t have and empower criminals to more confidently pick out the helpless and defenseless. If you are a gun-owner in Illinois you should be affronted, perhaps even ticked off. If you not a permit holder in Illinois, you should be terrified. Lisa Madigan is putting your name and your home on the menu.

Michael Marks
Director of Communication-Fifty Caliber Institute
April 7, 2011 Newsletter
Regarding Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, wanting to release the names of gun owners to the public.
[The entire concept of creating lists of gun owners and making the list available to the public is no different than doing the same with homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, or Muslims. We are not sexual predators and we don’t appreciate being treated like them.—Joe]

The President says he believes in the Second Amendment, which one supposes is gracious of him, but in his op-ed he also snidely refers to the beliefs of those who are concerned with Second Amendment liberty as being engaged in “wedge issues and stale political debates.”

The crimes on January 8 were the killing of six people and the wounding of 13 others. The response should not be — as is usually the case with gun restrictions — for the federal government to target law-abiding Americans.

William P. Hoar
April 5, 2011
Gun Controllers Don’t Want to Waste Tucson Tragedy
[I would like to also point out that if the President really thinks the Second Amendment is a “stale political debate” then he can stop bringing up gun control and tell the Brady Campaign and their ilk he is not interested in talking to them.—Joe]

When Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed briefs in the Supreme Court embracing the expansive individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, we warned that the primary beneficiaries of the Ashcroft Justice Department’s novel interpretation would be criminal defendants. An expansive individual right under the Second Amendment simply is not supported by history of the Constitution or binding Supreme Court precedent and threatens to undermine the Justice Department’s enforcement of existing gun laws.

“Now, the chickens have come home to roost. As the Washington Post today reported, the defendants are charged in separate cases with unlawful possession of a handgun and ammunition respectively. They both rely explicitly on the Justice Department’s briefs “and a memorandum from Attorney General Ashcroft to all 93 U.S. Attorneys in which he directs them to follow his interpretation of the Second Amendment” to support their Second Amendment challenges to the District’s gun laws. According to the brief in one of the cases: “As made clear by the various government representations, the United States now understands and represents before tribunals that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual and personal right, not a collective right of the state to form a militia.’ On this basis, the defendants seek to have the District’s laws, which impose a virtual ban on the private possession of handguns and ammunition, struck down.

Mathew Nosanchuk
Violence Policy Center’s litigation director and legislative counsel
May 30, 2002
Statement of Violence Policy Center in Response to D.C. Gun Crime Defendants Using U.S. Department of Justice Second Amendment Policy Shift to Strike Down Gun Laws
[I’m sure there were similar complaints when challenges were made against whites only drinking fountains and restrooms, and prohibitions against mix race marriages.

Undermining existing unconstitutional and discriminatory laws are a good thing.

That the VPC put itself on a parallel track headed into the same dustbin in history, nearly nine years ago, as the KKK is icing on the cake.—Joe]

Carry laws are in place in every state except Wisconsin and Illinois. To this day no evidence can be brought forth demonstrating these laws have lead to an increase in violent crime but much evidence exists demonstrating these laws correlate with a lowering in violent crime. Yet the Brady Campaign continues to warn about the “blood in the streets” that’s inevitable when carry laws are passed. Why are these people still clinging to their failed belief that guns are the problem? Because not doing so will cause them to lose their Joyce Foundation funding and then they would have to go find real jobs.

…

The bottom line is carry permits have been nothing but beneficial. There hasn’t been a single valid argument made against passing liberalized (in the classical sense of the word) carry laws. So far no “blood in the streets” instance have occurred and frankly the laws have been on the books in some states for decades. You would think the anti-gunners would wake up and realize nothing they’ve said has come true and thus their argument has no weight. Then again for most anti-gunners their argument is emotional and logic can go take a flying fuck and a rolling doughnut.

Christopher Burg
March 31, 2011
Brady Campaign Whining About Illinois Possibly Lifting Their Carry Ban
[Yup!—Joe]

We must, once again, confine military firepower to the battlefield, by reinstating a ban on high-capacity ammo clips.  Why hasn’t such legislation long ago been enacted?

Usually such a question prompts a discussion of the NRA’s outsized political power – its resources, its tactics of threats and intimidation, and the commitment of its cadre of true believers.  Indeed, in recent years, the gun control issue has become so dominated by the question of whether stronger gun laws can be enacted, that it has left little room to address the real issue – whether stronger gun laws should be enacted.

Dennis Henigan
Brady Center Vice President
March 29, 2011
Jim and Sarah Brady: Beyond Politics to Idealism
[To answer the first question, because it is pointless. I have demonstrated that with my video. Furthermore the U.S. Department of Justice sponsored study said, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

What is he implying with the statement “outsized political power”? Does this mean he thinks there should be some regulation of political power in this country? Perhaps when blacks/Jews/homosexuals get a little too uppity they should be silenced or at least put in their place. Or is it just those people that exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms that should be put down when their numbers get a little too big for the politicians to ignore?

As to whether stronger gun laws should be enacted. I think that discussion was settled with the Heller and McDonald U.S. Supreme Court decisions. But like the KKK that didn’t really accept the results of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves Henigan and Brady Campaign can’t seem to get past the fact that they lost.—Joe]