Decisions, decisions...

Can we really trust the Supreme Court to do what so many feel is the right thing?

Especially apparent after a recent decision, it appears that the fate of gun owners may still be up in the air.

And You Thought Hillary was Bad

From the NRA
Friday, June 6, 2008

The presidential primary season is finally over, and it is time gun owners took a careful look at just where apparent nominee Barack Obama stands on the Second Amendment. During the primaries, Obama hid behind vague statements of support for “sportsmen” or claimed his general support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

But his real record, based on votes taken, political associations, and long standing positions, shows that Barack Obama is a serious threat to Second Amendment liberties.

Don’t listen to his campaign rhetoric! Look at what he has said and done during his entire political career:

FACT: Barack Obama voted to allow reckless lawsuits designed to bankrupt the firearms industry.
FACT: Barack Obama has endorsed a complete ban on handgun ownership.
FACT: Barack Obama supports requiring law-abiding gun owners to register their firearms.
FACT: Barack Obama wants to re-impose the failed and discredited Clinton Gun Ban.
FACT: Barack Obama voted to ban almost all rifle ammunition commonly used for hunting and sport shooting.
FACT: Barack Obama supports local gun bans in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities.
FACT: Barack Obama voted to uphold local gun bans and the criminal prosecution of people who use firearms in self-defense.
FACT: Barack Obama refused to sign a friend-of-the-court brief in support of individual Second Amendment rights in the Heller case.
FACT: Barack Obama wants to eliminate your Right to Carry.
FACT: Barack Obama was a member of the Board of Directors of the Joyce Foundation, the leading source of funds for anti-gun organizations and “research.”
FACT: Barack Obama supported a proposal to ban gun stores within five miles of a school or park, which would eliminate almost every gun store in America.
FACT: Barack Obama voted not to notify gun owners when the state of Illinois did records searches on them.
FACT: Barack Obama voted against a measure to lower the Firearms Owners Identification card age minimum from 21 to 18, a measure designed to assist young people in the military.
FACT: Barack Obama favors a ban on standard capacity magazines.
FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory micro-stamping.
FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory waiting periods.
FACT: Barack Obama supports repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits information on gun traces collected by the BATFE from being used in reckless lawsuits against firearm dealers and manufacturers.
FACT: Barack Obama supports “one-gun-a-month” sales restrictions.
FACT: Barack Obama supports a ban on inexpensive handguns.
FACT: Barack Obama supports a ban on the resale of police-issued firearms, even if the money is going to police departments for replacement equipment.
FACT: Barack Obama supports mandatory firearm training requirements for all gun owners and a ban on gun ownership for persons under the age of 21.

Giving the Criminal the Edge with Gun Control

Gun Rights vs Conservation

In 1989, John Shuler of rural Dupuyer, Montana, heard grizzly bears outside his house; fearing they would kill his sheep, he grabbed his rifle and ran into the night.

The good news is he survived his encounter with four grizzly bears, as did his sheep. The bad news is his lawyers spent eight years and a quarter of a million dollars to get him acquitted of charges that he violated the Endangered Species Act by killing one of those bears. Early on in that legal battle, the federal government ruled that, although Shuler justifiably feared “death or serious bodily injury”—the test for a self-defense claim—he had no right to arm himself and enter into what the government called “the zone of imminent danger.”

That conclusion conflicted directly with an 1895 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which, quoting authority, the Court ruled, “Where an attack is made with murderous intent . . . the person attacked is under no duty to flee. He may stand his ground, and, if need be, kill his adversary.” Moreover, the government’s view of Shuler’s right to arm himself and confront danger conflicted with the ethos of the American West, a vast area from the midst of the Great Plains to the Cascades, from Canada to Mexico.

In the West, the virtues of individualism, independence, self-sufficiency, and self-governance yield, not only a strong distrust of government, but also a citizenry that forms the bedrock of America’s gun culture. Their State constitutions go further than does the U.S. Constitution as to their right to “keep and bear arms”; their laws include “make my day,” “castle doctrine,” and “stand your ground” provisions; and their supreme courts interpret broadly the right of self-defense outside the home. Little wonder then, that the story that captivated the Nation last December of a voluntary security guard who saved scores of churchgoers by shooting a heavily armed killer took place in the heart of the West—in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “[I]t was me, the gunman, and God,” she humbly proclaimed.

Washington, D.C. may only be 1,500 miles from Colorado, but it is light years away in the distance that separates the two cultures. In fact, Washington proves the truth of the ubiquitous western bumper sticker, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” For while Washington has had, since 1975, perhaps the Nation’s most stringent gun control laws and boasts more law enforcement officers per capita than any other city, it annually competes for and often wins designation as the Nation’s “Murder Capital.” No wonder that, for decades, law-abiding Washingtonians complained that they may not keep weapons in their homes to provide effectively for their own self defense.

One of those was Dick Anthony Heller, a District of Columbia special police officer permitted to carry a handgun while on duty but barred from keeping a gun in his home for self-defense. When his application to do so was denied, he sued under the Second Amendment. After his lawsuit was dismissed by the district court, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed in March 2007. Last November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Constitution protects, as the Court of Appeals ruled, an individual right to keep and bear firearms unrelated to militia operations.

Scores of briefs will be filed and the March arguments watched closely. Nowhere will the Court’s likely June ruling be more anxiously anticipated or closely scrutinized than in the West. For westerners believe what the Founding Fathers believed, that they have the right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves and loved ones from danger and their society from tyranny. While westerners may abide the Court discovering new rights in the shadows of the Constitution (its famous “penumbras”), westerners will not accept the Court destroying a right that has been so clearly in the bright light of the Bill of Rights since 1791.