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 A California Democrat is proposing a new law requiring residents to register their shotguns and rifles or go to jail, store CBSNews.com has learned.
Assemblyman Mike Feuer, help whose district includes Beverly Hill and West Hollywood, online this week introduced legislation ordering law enforcement to “permanently keep” records of anyone who buys a gun from a dealer or an individual. California already stores information about handgun purchases.
The proposal comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a landmark civil rights case, McDonald v. Chicago, which will decide whether Second Amendment rights in the federal constitution trump state anti-gun laws. But California is proposing mandatory registration — and not a flat ban, as Washington, D.C. once tried and the justices rejected — and even legal scholars specializing in this area disagree about whether registration is constitutional.
“Even though the constitutionality of such a measure is a close call, it is a horrible public policy choice,” says Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGuns Foundation. “Just as Canada is about to do away with their long gun registry after squandering $1 billion, California wishes to attack law abiding gun owners for firearms not used in crime.” – [source]
 A group of students at Oakland University is lobbying for the ability to legally carry concealed guns on campus, in spite of the university’s ban on weapons for civilians.
Members of OU Students for Concealed Carry on Campus plan to walk around Oakland’s campus this week wearing empty gun holsters in support of loosened gun restrictions at the school, according to the Detroit Free Press and WDIV. Oakland currently bans everyone except police officers from bringing weapons onto campus.
The group’s protest is part of a nationwide demonstration against regulations that ban guns on college campuses. ConcealedCampus.com, the national Web site for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, says the Empty Holster Protest is the organization’s “signature attention-getter.”
Those students could have some support in the state legislature. A bill introduced into the state House in September would ban institutions of higher learning — including colleges, universities and community colleges — from regulating the possession, ownership or carrying of legal firearms. – [source]
Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law two bills supported by gun-rights activists.
1 of the bills signed Monday would broaden the state’s current restrictions on local governments’ ability to regulate or tax guns and ammunition. One specific provision bars local governments from prohibiting a person with a concealed weapons permit from possessing a gun in a park.
The other bill declares that guns manufactured entirely in Arizona are exempt from federal oversight and are not subject to federal laws restricting the sale of firearms or requiring them to be registered.
Brewer says that bill “should send a clear and convincing message that politicians in Washington should not attempt to get between Arizonans and their constitutional rights.”-[source]
I don’t drive a pickup truck with a gun rack.
I don’t hunt.
I’ve never fired a weapon and never intend to do so.
With all of that said, side effects I consider attempts to gut the words of the Founding Farmers in the Second Amendment as an assault on our collective freedom.
Those 27 well-chosen words are what set us apart from other people.
“A well regulated Militia, symptoms being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”The vast majority of guns rights advocates have no qualms with efforts to keep automatic weapons out of circulation or to establish reasonable gun control standards.
The assault on the Second Amendment in many quarters of this country is absolute. There is a growing clamor to severely restrict all guns or to favor outright bans. This is wrong-headed thinking for many reasons.
Use and knowledge of guns should not be reserved to the exclusive control of the state.
Most of the ideas that the United States is founded on weren’t all that radical back 234 years ago. Principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and original Bill of Rights have existed in one form or another since the days of Ancient Athens.
The radical departure in 1776 was the ability of a people to set themselves free of tyranny. The gun – whether you like it or not – is what gave birth to the United States of America. The ideals espoused in the two founding documents wouldn’t have been worth the paper they were printed on if it hadn’t been for guns and the willingness of many to fight and die for liberty. Our freedom was won by guns and blood, not debate and diplomacy.
The world – especially Europe – claims we have a fascination with guns in this country. It was just 69 short years ago that an America fascinated with guns came to the rescue of the people of Europe and Asia.
It is amazing the level of commitment a truly free people takes to brothers and sisters around the globe they have never seen or met. We are a nation of strong believers in personal freedom and liberty. It is ingrained in the knowledge that the state doesn’t hold absolute control over us. -[source]
According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, cheap the term “saber rattling” is defined as:
a threatening of war, buy information pills or a menacing show of armed force.
Some people call it posturing. In the animal world it’s related to establishing “pecking order”. Some people would have us believe that a pecking order is a bad thing, help that it’s barbaric, and should be reserved only for the animal world. I disagree. It’s a natural thing that will happen no matter how much people try to suppress it. Pecking order keeps the world in a state of organized cosmos. Every playground has one, every corporate board room, and even the halls of Congress. It’s the way the world works, and without it there would be chaos and unending strife. People have to know who is in charge and who must bend the knee and kiss the ring that rules.
I suppose that’s why firearms are so important. They are the equalizing force, available to all free people everywhere. They tell the 200-pound sexually aggressive male that he must not rape the 120-pound female, who is alone on the street at night with no one around to protect her. The firearm gives her the ability to kill the stronger male.
Firearms tell the sociopath that he must not break into your family’s home at night and kill your family as you sleep. There is always the chance that you will awaken, get your firearm and shoot him until he dies. Dead sociopaths and dead rapists. That’s a good thing, a necessary thing for society to function in an orderly fashion.
Without the right to keep and bear arms, we revert to humanity’s default state of “law of the jungle”, where only the strong survive, where the big rule the small, and where the weak die in a puddle of blood, flesh and urine. We need the firearm and the freedom to use it or our children will live in a binary world of masters and slaves, with no check on immorality, no governor to hold the strong accountable, and no way to protect the weak from the strong.
In a world without freedom and firearms, only the evil will have guns, and they will use them to the detriment and enslavement of good people everywhere. History has taught us that, and it’s a lesson we should forget only at our own peril.
So what does all this have to do with saber rattling, a threatening of war, or a menacing show of armed force?
Look at the present situation in America. Many say we are on the brink of economic collapse. Our elected officials exude an unprecedented arrogance, totally ignoring the will of the people, hell-bent on dragging us into a world we neither want for ourselves nor our children. In short, the pecking order has been established, and it’s 180 degrees out of phase. They are the ruling class and we are subservient to them.
Or are we?
I hear the clank of metal on metal in the distance.-[source]
On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments addressing whether the Second Amendment applies outside of jurisdictions controlled by the federal government. The court will almost certainly say that it does, and soon it may consider a question that should be equally easy to answer: whether the Second Amendment applies outside of the home.
In 2008, the first time the Supreme Court explicitly declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to “keep and bear arms,” it ruled that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban violated that right. Since the Chicago handgun ban at issue in the case the Court heard on March 2 is virtually identical, it will be overturned if the Court concludes that the Second Amendment binds states and cities as well as the federal government. Because the Court has ruled that almost all of the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights apply to the states by way of the 14th Amendment, it would be very strange if the fundamental right to armed self-defense did not make the cut.
Assuming the Court strikes down Chicago’s handgun ban, what other forms of gun control could be vulnerable? Since the Second Amendment protects the right to “bear” arms as well as the right to “keep” them, restrictions on carrying guns in public are a ripe target.
Forty-one states either do not require a permit to carry a handgun or issues one to anyone who satisfies a few objective criteria, which generally include firearms training and lack of a criminal record. Seven states let local officials decide whether to issue permits, and Illinois, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C., do not allow even that option.-[source]
They’re sworn to uphold the law, but some Iowa sheriff’s aren’t happy with new rules that take away their power to decide who can pack heat and who can’t.
Until now, sheriff’s have been able to deny people concealed/carry gun permits if they saw fit. Under the new law, they “must issue” permits to anyone without a felony conviction. Local sheriffs say that leaves the door wide open for guns to get in the wrong hands.
For gun rights group IowaCarry, the new legislation a considered victory.
“It takes the burden of proof away from the citizens and puts it on the sheriff so that the citizen doesn’t have to prove why they need the permit or why they want the permit. It puts that burden of proof on the sheriff to prove why he doesn’t feel they should have a permit,” explained Luke Nixa, Northwest Regional Director of IowaCarry.
For one local sheriff, it takes his better judgment out of the permit issuing process. What if the person applying is currently part of a criminal investigation?
“It takes that discretion away because we know we have information but there’s no criminal charge or conviction filed yet,” said Buena Vista County Sheriff Gary Launderville. “That puts a lot of people in jeopardy.”
The new law makes sheriff’s more accountable, saying they must give a reason why the permit was denied and allows people to appeal the decision.-[source]
A federal appeals court in Washington will have the chance to examine the latest version of the District of Columbia’s gun restrictions, in a possible test of how to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller.
Lawyers for Dick Heller, a name party in the earlier case, filed a notice Thursday that they will continue fighting in this follow-up case. They are appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reverse a March 26 decision by U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina. That ruling upheld new restrictions the D.C. Council passed in the wake of the 2008 decision. For example, all handguns must be submitted to D.C. police for a ballistics identification process.
Stephen Halbrook, a lawyer for Heller, said a week ago that an appeal of Urbina’s decision was likely because, he said, the judge was overly deferential toward the city. Lawyers for the District say the council worked to strike a balance between Second Amendment rights and public safety concerns.
The original Heller case, then known as Parker v. D.C., also went through the D.C. Circuit. In a March 2007 decision, Senior Judge Laurence Silberman wrote that Heller had standing to challenge the District’s gun laws and that the laws in place at the time were unconstitutional. Heller, of course, won before the Supreme Court in a decision that said the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.-[source]
 Robert Hassinger bid farewell on Tuesday to an old friend, a revolver whose craftsmanship, hallmarks and engraving led him on a fascinating quest and fed his lifelong passion for American history.
“I like to do research,” said the retired insurance investigator, who returned an 1851 Colt “Navy” revolver to the Chicago museum from which it was stolen 62 years ago.
Inside the third-floor board room of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland, he donned a pair of white gloves and carefully removed the gleaming revolver from a brown valise.
“There’s no pitting, no rust,” Mr. Hassinger, 83, said as he showed it to Libby Mahoney, chief curator of the Chicago History Museum, who was visibly impressed by its excellent condition.
“I can’t really believe that it’s resurfaced. You’re an extremely honest person,” said Kathleen Plourd, the museum’s collections director.
At a gun show here in 1991, Mr. Hassinger traded an 1860 Army revolver for the earlier 1851 Colt model because its low serial number piqued his interest. He began researching its history, accumulating information in a neat binder.
While paging through Man at Arms magazine in 2001, the North Hills man read an article headlined “John Brown’s Colt Navies.”
John Brown, a zealous abolitionist, led an ill-conceived raid in 1859 on a U.S. military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va. Afterward, he was tried and hanged. Three of his sons also died in the anti-slavery movement.
But Brown’s third son, Owen, escaped from Harpers Ferry, fleeing to Canada and later returning to the United States. The article reported that Owen Brown’s gun, stolen in 1948 from the Chicago History Museum, remained missing and had a serial number of 43156.
Mr. Hassinger knew his Colt revolver bore the initials O.B. on its backstrap. He figured the initials were those of the soldier who used the gun but was never able to match the letters to anyone, even after examining regiment rosters.
On the day he got it, Mr. Hassinger showed the O.B. initials to his wife, joking, “This stands for ‘Oh, boy, look at the neat gun I got.’ “-[source]
It’s been a quiet week in Jefferson City.
Legislators writing laws. Debating the budget.
Training with handguns.
About 16 Missouri lawmakers — along with several legislative staffers and at least one representative’s wife — are taking a firearms-training course sponsored by the bipartisan “Sportsmen’s Caucus” that will qualify them for concealed weapons permits.
Tuesday’s lesson plan? Proper firearm care and cleaning.
“You need to bring your weapon tonight, pilule ” read a reminder sent out over the House e-mail system. “No ammo will be needed. Pizza and soda will be served.”
Missouri, price like most states, allows people to carry concealed weapons if they pass a training course and register with a law enforcement agency. This week, lawmakers took steps to extend that privilege into the corridors of the Capitol.
On the same day of the lawmakers’ firearms class, the House gave first-round approval to a bill that would expressly allow legislators, their aides and employees to carry concealed weapons in the statehouse.
“If you stay up with your news and what’s going on in the world, you know bad things happen all over the place,” said Rep. Jeanie Riddle, a Mokane Republican who sponsored the amendment that added the Capitol language. “It would be nice for us to not be a statistic.”-[source]
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