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Posted on 11/28/2008 7:02:51 PM PST by neverdem
"As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." That was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on June 26, 2008, responding to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington, DC's draconian handgun ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms—not a collective one.
"I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals," Obama went on, "but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures."
While it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the decision, Obama's statement was an improvement over his previous equivocations. But that line about Chicago and Cheyenne definitely stood out. Chicago, after all, has a gun ban in place that's just as constitutionally dubious as the one struck down in Heller. Indeed, Alan Gura, the attorney who successfully argued Heller before the Court, is now working on the challenge to the Windy City law.
So last week's announcement that President-elect Obama has tapped outspoken gun control advocate Eric Holder to serve as his attorney general should come as something less than a complete shock. Holder, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton and as acting attorney general under President George W. Bush (a position he held until John Ashcroft was confirmed), has pushed for sweeping and restrictive gun control measures throughout his career while also endorsing the now-discredited collective rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. Obama's selection of Holder raises some serious concerns about his administration's commitment to upholding the entire Bill of Rights.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, for instance, Holder took to the pages of The Washington Post, where he played on the public's newfound fear of terrorism to lobby for additional gun show regulations. But as National Review's Jim Geraghty recently pointed out, of the two "terrorists" that Holder claimed were stalking America's gun show circuit, one was eventually acquitted of supplying guns to terrorists (though not of the separate charge of weapons smuggling), while the other, a man named Ali Boumelhem, didn't buy so much as a camouflage vest at a gun show. Since he had a felony record he let his brother do the shopping. In Holder's mind, that's a "loophole" that needs closing, but as Geraghty notes, "background checks like the one Holder was calling for would not have stopped [it], since the straw purchaser (the surrogate for the real buyer) is chosen because he has a clean record." Unless Holder wants to forbid gun sales to people with disreputable family members or friends, it's hard to imagine how any law could prevent this situation.
More recently, Holder was one of thirteen former Justice Department officials to sign an amicus brief on behalf of the D.C. government in the Heller case. That document, which endorsed restrictive gun control measures and cited rare and sensational events like the Columbine and Virginia Tech school shootings as evidence of "the deadly toll that firearms exact," also made the case for the collective rights interpretation that has now been rejected by both the Supreme Court and leading liberal legal scholars.
What does all this mean for Eric Holder's Department of Justice? Nothing good, says Second Amendment scholar and Independence Institute Research Director David Kopel. As Kopel told me via email, under the leadership of Attorney General Janet Reno and Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, "the DOJ used the U.S. Attorneys offices for the aggressive prosecution of gun owners and sellers, often on flimsy charges. We may expect many more such prosecutions under Holder." Moreover, Holder's turf now includes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, which was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department after 9/11. That's one tool that Reno didn't have in her kit. "Now that the Bureau is part of DOJ," Kopel explained, "Attorney General Holder will have great power to force the imposition of onerous new regulations on firearms sales, on firearms stores, and on manufacturers."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, of course, famously attacked critics of the government's anti-terrorism policies for chasing "phantoms of lost liberty" and giving "ammunition to America's enemies." Let's hope that Second Amendment supporters won't be chasing as many "phantoms" once Eric Holder inherits the Bush administration's sweeping law enforcement powers.
Damon W. Root is an associate editor at reason.
Ok...?
Your correct. Merely producing a primer that erodes over a calender year will make bulk storage for all but LEO’s and DOD assets self destruct / expire.
Do they the ability to do that with powder that actually works?
Not sure but anything is possible I spose.......BTW Doe Eye’s I will post that data for you but it will take a while to collect........I will ping ya in the next few days to a solid post with links to verify for you.
Stay safe !
L
Huh ???
L
The primers ??
L
I don't want you to go out of your way. I'm am curious where your list came from, I mean, why do you have to research a list you just posted?
Domestic Evidence.
If gun control laws have any effect, it may be to increase crime. For instance:19
* New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as “the most stringent gun law” in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
* In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
* In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city’s murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.
Defenders of the Washington law say it isn’t working because criminals are getting guns in Virginia, where the laws are more relaxed. But just across the Potomac River, Arlington, Va., has a murder rate less than 10 percent of that of Washington (7.0 murders versus 77.8 per 100,000 population). Can the difference be explained by the fact that Washington is a large city? Virginia’s largest city, Virginia Beach, has a population of nearly 400,000, allows easy access to firearms - and has had one of the country’s lowest murder rates for years (4.1 per 100,000 population in 1991).
An analysis of 19 types of gun control laws [Table I] concluded that not only do they fail to reduce rates of violence, they even fail “to reduce the use of guns or induce people to substitute other weapons in acts of violence.”20 For example:21
* When Morton Grove, Ill., outlawed handgun ownership, fewer than 20 were turned in.
* After Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982, it experienced no decline in violent crime.
* Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.
* 20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.
* New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation - and 20 percent of the armed robberies. Even more troublesome is the fact that the places where gun control laws are toughest tend to be the places where the most crime is committed with illegal weapons:22
I don’t have exact numbers......I made a general comment. I use such numbers read over time on such sites as these :
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States
http://www.commonfolkusingcommonsense.com/files/conf_more_guns_less_crime.pdf
http://www.commonfolkusingcommonsense.com/files/does_gun_control_reduce_crime.pdf
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday/topic-rumsfeld.html
Stuff I have linked on my home page.....list was a generalization, not all inclusive.
I think it is based on degradation of UXO items I deal with over time . Propellants weaken over time even when they are not designed to do such. I am confident, yet never positive, that an effort to make such degrade over a set period of time could work. Very expensive effort , sort of like landmines, submunitions etc that render themselves inert over time.
You're the expert in this area, but I thought that had to do with electronically disabling the detonation train somehow. I didn't realize the actual explosive compounds degraded that quickly.
I've fired 60 year old ammo that functioned flawlessly, so I'm a bit confused.
L
Your correct....yet if opened to environment due damage or man made erosion disc etc it will weaken over time. If such was specifically designed into the device it would be viable that such would function or not function as designed in a accelerated fashion IMO.
It reminds me of a PGI event I was at where the vendors were all bitching about the ATF idiots who wanted them to deliberately contaminate their products with 'taggants' so they could be traced.
"So let me guess this straight young feller. You want me to deliberately contaminate the products I sell, even though by law I have to guarantee that they're 99.9% pure. Is that about right?"
That ended the conversation apparently.
L
taggants used in test production created a “static” hazard.....that was primary reason it was dropped. Powder and static is baaaaaaad ooooooh kay......:o)
Yer right......I doubt we will see it yet I predict they will try .
You at work ?
He will urinate on the Second Amendment the first chance he gets.
Where’s the FBI links? Anybody tries to refute FBI statistics, they’ve already lost.
Click the pic to go to the Gun Facts v4.2 download page!
I screamed this after the HELLER decision, but the celebrations were making people stupid.
Heller may have affirmed the 2nd as an individual right, but it did not define the SCOPE of that right. Just like you don't have a right to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, you may find you don't have a right to posess a firearm in a crowded theatre.....or any other public place.
DC revealed the liberal mindset when they refused to allow Heller to register a semi-auto handgun after the SCOTUS decision. Obama, if he can change Kennedy to a reliable liberal, will have his 5 votes and will work hard to narrowly define the 2nd.
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