Pro-Parker Editorial...From California: Manteca's Sun Post praises the recent ruling that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual RKBA and predicts that the case will end up before the Supreme Court because it contradicts a 2003 Ninth Circuit ruling. (The latter case was Silveira v. Lockyer and I have a stirring quotation from Judge Kozinski's dissent in that case posted at http://www.spw-duf.info/quotes.html.) http://sunpost.net/content/view/558/1/ --- NRA-Backed Bill Could Imperil Parker Decision: According to the lead lawyer in the DC case, Alan Gura, "If the D.C. gun ban is repealed before the appellate process is completed, Parker will be vacated and dismissed. It will have no precedential value. Whenever the Supreme Court might consider the Second Amendment in the future, it would likely be a criminal's case, not the upstanding plaintiffs in the Parker case who have been harmed by the DC ban." (I understand that there are different interpretations of this issue.) http://oregonfirearms.org/alertspage/03.31.03%20alert.html --- Webb, Kennedy And The DC Gun Ban: Joseph Farah is reminded, by the recent arrest of an aide to Sen. Jim Webb, of the 1986 arrest of a bodyguard to Sen Ted Kennedy, also on DC firearm charges. The two incidents point out not only how ridiculous the DC gun ban is but how hypocritical some politicians can be in denying self-defense to their constituents but exempting themselves from the same laws. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54951 --- NYPD Commissioner Blames Feds: NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly lashed out at the feds yesterday over out-of-state gun sales as a cop shot during a routine pot bust a day earlier was released from the hospital..."We've done pretty much everything that we can do as a city to address the gun problem," Kelly said. "We need a national gun-control strategy." (Right, let's make the rest of the nation as defenseless as the law-abiding residents of NYC. Perhaps we can start by electing a former NYC mayor as president.) http://www.nypost.com/seven/03292007/news/regionalnews/kelly_fires_salvos_in_cop_shoot_regionalnews_erika_martinez_and_lorena_mongelli.htm Related Article: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/03/29/2007-03-29_hell_be_just_finest_.html --- Democrats Table Montana Self-Defense Bill: Lawmakers took shots at each other Saturday over a proposed gun-rights bill, the day after it was tabled by a committee Democrats control...Gary Marbut of the Montana Shooting Sports Association said in a telephone interview the bill was crucial to clarify that law-abiding people legally can brandish guns to defray potential conflicts. He said most Montanans agree. http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/04/01/news/state/54-bill.txt --- Oops, Wrong Antique Store: Steve Bauer had had enough after two nights of someone breaking into his business and stealing antiques. So he armed himself with a cola bottle and a .44-caliber Magnum and spent the night at work. Soon, Bauer had his man. And a woman...(Note the ricochet from attempting to shoot out the tires on the truck. In another jurisdiction, Bauer might face charges for those shots.) http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-do-it-yourself-cop,0,4253423.story --- Oops, Wrong House: A 36-year-old burglar in New Mexico erred in threatening a 76-year-old homeowner with a knife. The victim fired two rounds, scoring with one. The burglar is hospitalized in stable condition and will likely be charged with robbery or aggravated burglary. http://www.kamc28.tv/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=2227 --- Oops, Empty Chamber: Of particular note, in this account of a Philadelphia DJ who barely survived an encounter with three armed robbers, is the fact that he was nearly killed because he carried his pistol without a round in the chamber, "Israeli style." (I sometime use a phrase, borrowed from my former teaching partner, about settling for all the training that comes in the box with the gun. Unfortunately, it actually comes down to all the training that the foolish have absorbed from movies and TV programs. As to the Israeli doctrine of empty-chamber carry, that is one of the negative aspects of the old Faribairn-Sykes doctrine.) http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20070402_Urban_Warrior___Police_assurances_on_his_gear_are_music_to_DJs_ears.html --- Acquittal Prompts Discussion In South Massachusetts: The recent acquittal of a homeowner who shot a burglar in the back appears to have prompted a local newspaper to look into the community of gun owners and shooters on the state's south coast. (No mention is made of the dynamics of how the burglar got shot in the back - we know that this can occur when an assailant turns after a defender initiates a trigger stroke.) http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070401/NEWS/704010362/1018/OPINION --- Flight Equals Guilt?: A New York man goes on trial in the shooting of another man who was feuding with the defendant's father. The defendant claims that he shot the man, who has subsequently died of liver disease, after the deceased man walked up to his car and pointed a gun at him. He claims that the man was shot as they struggled over the gun. The defendant, however, fled the scene and the gun has never been recovered. (Fleeing the scene of a self-defense incident tends to imply guilt in the eyes of most jurors.) http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703310403 --- How Many Guns Do You Need?: Opinions are like body parts...Ron Beatty presents his opinions on basic gun needs for the modern man. (My comments on this topic are posted at http://www.spw-duf.info/emperor.html#many. My years of teaching have shown me that some people who are comfortable shooting .40 S&W and .45 ACP pistols two-handed may not be comfortable doing so one-handed, in some of the close-quarters drills I teach.) http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle411-20070401-06.html --- Police Magazine Survey: Police Magazine surveyed more than one thousand officers on various Second Amendment issues, and the results are a slam-dunk for gun owners. Eighty-eight percent said more gun control won't make people any safer. More than 60 percent of officers said they own more than four firearms for their personal use. http://www.nranews.com/blogarticle.aspx?blogPostId=197 --- Duh!: A village in New York will take bids from FFL's for the firearms formerly used by its own police, now that those duties have been taken over by the town police department. Supervisor Howard Phillips said the firearms won't end up on the street because they would become available only to people with proper licenses. (And other police departments normally sell surplus or confiscated firearms to prohibited possessors? I've never heard of a single case in which an officer used a magazine or speedloader borrowed from a fellow officer during a gunfight.) http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703310400 St. Louis Gears Up For NRA Annual Meeting: Acres and acres of guns are coming to St. Louis in mid-April. And they'll be joined by thousands and thousands of sportsmen and enthusiasts gathering for the National Rifle Association's annual convention. (St. Louis, as I recall, was one of the very last jurisdictions to comply with Missouri's law to license citizens for CCW.) http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/50AFA823EC6C4EC7862572B00007D9FC?OpenDocument --- From Gun Week: Mar. 9 Parker Decision Could Start Showdown at Constitutional Corral by Joseph P. Tartaro, Executive Editor April 1, 2007 For the past 80 or 90 years, a debate has raged in the United States about the right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, property, community and the nation. Right before World War I, there was a push to license and register handguns inspired, in part by establishment concern about the worldwide labor movement and the wave of Eastern and Southern European immigration, and in part by the truly rough and tumble days of big city politics. A majority of Americans then believed that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteed them an individual right to keep and bear arms, a view that was so universal that it was even taught in schools at that time. But politicians being politicians, they invented ways around that belief and justifications for their proposals, which targeted at first only "concealable handguns." New York lawmakers, with major newspaper support, passed the Sullivan Law in 1911 justifying it by the claiming that they were fighting crime committed by immigrants, while they were also quietly disarming their political opponents. After World War I, Prohibition and violent crime associated with it, inspired more handgun control laws and restrictions of machineguns and sawed off shotguns. Rampant crime was again the justification, but once again, the National Firearms Act (NFA) subtly did not entirely ban some guns, it merely required their registration and "background check" approval by local authorities. 1939 Miller Case The Second Amendment defense was raised in a key challenge to the NFA, Miller vs. US, that was decided by the Supreme Court in 1939. That case involved possession of a sawed off shotgun by a man who had been convicted of other crimes. By the time the appeal got to the highest court, no one argued for the defense or for the individual right interpretation. The court decided that in the absence of anyone showing that a sawed-off shotgun had any connection to militia service, the NFA did not violate the Constitution. That court did not address the individual rights issue at all. But in the years that followed, the anti-gun establishment, including lawyers, scholars and policy makers pushed a tortured interpretation of the Miller decision. They began selling their "collective right" view that the Second Amendment only guarantees states the right to form and arm militias. Textbooks were rewritten on that tortured interpretation and hundreds, if not thousands, of other gun laws were passed by Congress, state legislatures and municipalities in the years that followed, including the Washington, DC, laws of 1976. Meanwhile, other political shifts and events cast their own shadows over the right to keep and bear arms. Many lesser court decisions upheld various challenges to local and state laws. However, on Mar. 9 a three-judge panel of the US Appellate Court for the District of Columbia sent shockwaves through the establishment and their partners in the general media by overturning major provisions of the DC gun law in a 2-1 decision in Parker vs. District of Columbia. The court's decision also said the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to keep and bear arms. (See related news story on Pages 1 and 2 of this issue.) The majority opinion was written by Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman. In his 58-page opinion, Silberman thoroughly reviewed the whole debate over what the Second Amendment guaranteed, citing many earlier court decisions, including Miller (1939) and citing much of the recent scholarship by leading law professors like Laurence Tribe and Sanford Levinson. Establishment Shocked For the first time, a federal court had overturned a local gun control law, but like the 2001 5th Circuit Emerson decision it did not prevent reasonable restrictions on keeping or bearing guns. So shocked was the establishment media that few even reported news of this historic decision, and many had not done so for almost two weeks after the decision was issued. Others however, were quick to print commentaries, usually following an anti-gun line. Of the broadcast network evening news shows, on Mar. 9, NBC Nightly News was the only one to cover the "history-making" federal court ruling striking down Washington, DC's, restrictive gun control laws. While anchor Brian Williams made the story his show's lead item, correspondent Pete Williams called it "the most important gun control ruling in 70 years." Meanwhile, CBS Evening News and ABC's World News ignored the story entirely. Veteran court reporter Tony Mauro, writing in Legal Times on Mar. 12, quoted a Cato Institute source with saying: "The issue has been teed up by Judge Silberman in such a way that no honest court can avoid dealing with it head-on." Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, which supported the challenge to the DC ordinances, but did not fund it, continued "He has cut through all the fog surrounding the Second Amendment." As this issue goes to press, it appears likely that DC government officials are likely to at least seek an en banc review of the ruling by the whole DC appellate court. If en banc review fails, the District would then face the decision of whether to appeal to the Supreme Court, which, with its new composition, Mauro noted, might be more eager to take up the issue than previous courts. If the city appeals and the court agrees to take the case, it could land on the high court's agenda in mid-2008, a presidential election year, Mauro said. Even if the high court rules in favor of an individual right, it would not spell the end of all gun regulation. As even Silberman points out, the high court has allowed reasonable restrictions of other individual rights such as freedom of speech. But such a decision could trigger litigation over a range of laws, including those that make criminal penalties more serious if they involve possession of firearms. The court challenges to gun laws could go on for years. The Parker case now returns to the district court level, where, according to Silberman's ruling, the judge must issue an injunction against the enforcement of the provisions that have been struck down. Commentaries In the meanwhile, authors of books on both sides of the gun debate as well as newspaper columnists started generating commentaries of their own. Needless to say, the anti-gun side was quick to condemn the decision. The New York Times said "The court relied on a constitutional interpretation that has been rejected by nine federal appeals courts around the nation. The decision was the first from a federal appeals court to hold a gun-control law unconstitutional on the ground that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals, as opposed to a collective right of state militias. Linda Singer, the District of Columbia's acting attorney general, said the decision was "a huge setback." The anti-gun organizations were quick to label the decision "judicial activism at its absolute worst," something they had previously supported, and predicted that if the DC law was negated, the guns laws of every city and state would follow and "blood would run in the streets." What about appeals? If the city does ask for an en banc review of the decision, there is no guarantee that the court will agree to that request. If the city appeals the decision to the Supreme Court, the high court can decide not to review the decision as well, an outcome which will mean that the DC law is overturned and another federal appeals court circuit will be on record as ruling that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. On the other hand, this court's decision in Parker vs. District of Columbia could be overturned. Either way, it looks like a showdown is coming at the Constitutional Corral. This article is provided free by GunWeek.com. For more great gun news, subscribe to our print edition. -- Stephen P. Wenger Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .