Some repeat players this week in our gun law roundup — surprise, surprise — but there’s also some stuff you probably haven’t seen before. It’s never a sure bet whether that’s a good or bad thing, but alas…
Illinois Prints Licensees
In what Illinois lawmakers claimed was addressing the failure of the federal NICS system to stop the Aurora shooter from buying a gun, Illinois decided to increase the price of a firearms license. And also take their fingerprints.
This measure was taken because harassing poor people and forced arts & crafts exercises are sure to get Mississippi to update their conviction records. Or something.
The stated justifications for laws are drifting further and further from their operation. There is no way the Illinois gun owner card will have any impact a NICS check.
NYC Tries to slip out of SCOTUS
As we’ve discussed before, New York City is the defendant in the most important Second Amendment case of the decade, and they want out. The city was in the news this week, advancing through their blatant attempt to give the Supreme Court’s less stalwart justices a way out of deciding their case.
Ironically, New York City’s actions here are similar to those taken by the NRA before Heller was decided in 2008. As that case headed for the Supreme Court, the NRA lobbied heavily for DC to repeal their handgun ban. This would have rendered the Heller case moot.
The NRA eventually relented under pressure from pro-gun litigators, but New York City doesn’t have that kind of pressure to stop here. Still, the optics of New York’s attempted exit are bad enough that it’s unlikely to moot the case.
The only concern this move has is whether it will empower the incremental “law-and-order” Chief Justice Roberts to force his pro-gun colleagues into a narrower ruling.
Obama Says It’s Too Easy to get a Machinegun
While participating in VTEX Day in Sau Paulo, former president Barack Obama went on a tirade about American gun law. He said your typical host of how anybody “can buy any weapon, anytime…without much if any regulation.” What was most interesting, though, was his assertion that it is easy to buy machineguns in the US. This is laughable. Yes, civilians can own machineguns in the US. As for how easy it is, ask someone who had to drop eleven grand on a piece of full-auto plumbing, then wade through nine months worth of bureaucracy how easy it was. (Spoiler: it’s not.)
NJ Ammo Control
A small contingent of new bills were unveiled in the already nightmarishly anti-gun state of New Jersey. They include one banning already-illegal straw purchases as well as the possession of an unserialized firearm. Another one requires gun safety training every four years to keep a gun license, and one requiring ammunition sellers to track sales of “handgun ammunition” and report them to State Police.
This push comes after NJ Dems struggled for years to pass new laws under Chris Christie, but the new Gov. Phil Murphy wants to make NJ a “national leader” on gun control. Whatever that means.
Salesforce Shows its Guns
This week Salesforce, a monolithic e-commerce provider instituted a new policy which prevents any of their customers from using their technology to sell semiautomatic weapons or accessories. Salesforce helps website run shops, maintain info on customers, and other things. It’s a prolific producer, operating out of a branded skyscraper in California.
The company is not concerned with the “small number of existing customers” they will lose, according to company spokeswoman. To be frank, this type of corporate cultural “wokeness” might give rise to stakeholder lawsuits – especially when the policy, as here, serves no business purpose and has a guaranteed negative impact on revenue.
Washington State’s Novel Suicide Prevention Strategy
Washington State this week made some rumblings after implementing a gun suicide prevention system championed by Alabama Law professor Frederick Vars. I first learned of Vars’ idea for a voluntary “no-sell” list years ago when I was his student. He now, as he did then, presents the idea as a voluntary way to keep people at risk of suicide from purchasing a gun to end their lives.
One thing is unquestionably true: guns make suicide attempts more lethal. But mental health issues are stigmatized enough in our society as it is, that revoking civil rights for people struggling with depression would only worsen the stigma and make people less likely to seek needed help.
To Vars “it’s about respecting the autonomy of people even though they may have mental illness, they’re still independent agents and ought to be able to control their own destiny.” That’s where Vars’ idea has merit: it’s predicated on a private, revocable, individual choice to be put on a “no buy” list.
The only downsides to this problem, of course, would be if records were allowed to creep into other uses. For now, the model law requires the destruction of all records of the person’s gun rights waiver upon request.
As long as that stays in effect, or is even strengthened (perhaps be requiring the records be eliminated within 24 hours, and allowing a civil cause of auction should the records not be destroyed), there is truly little risk to the law. That said, it remains to be seen whether enough people use the program to justify the cost of implementation.
Texas safe storage campaign
On Monday, Texas lawmakers approved a massive spending bill, within which $1 million was injected to fund a “public safety campaign on gun storage.” The information campaign is a tiny drop in the $250 billion state budget, and likely a large nothing-burger with cheese. Governor Abbott can use his line item veto to zero it out if he so chooses.
“Illinois Wants Gun Owners’ Fingerprints…And Their Cash”
Mmmm, no…it’s a violation of my 4th Amendment rights…
What is worse, Illinois wants a fresh set of prints when you apply to renew your FOID card, which is now every 5 years instead of 10. I really had no idea that prints could change!
They do if you work with your hands.
Scars, burns, deep abrasions etc. will alter them.
The requirement is bullshit harassment but yeah, people’s prints do change or can be altered.
I’m pretty sure Illinois has the prints of most of their finer citizens doesn’t seem to reduce their crime/murder rate. So print the rest of the population.
I hope I can keep my prints & cash! Over 2000000 FOID holder’s could turn EVERY election! Legal pot coming in ILL too😩
Legal pot will just give the state slightly more revenue in taxes, cut enforcement costs and maybe save the state some extra money when stoners don’t vacation in a legal state.
Other than that it really has no downside unless you’re a dealer or a narcotics officer. Comes with funny billboards too.
Take their guns and keep ’em stoned, that’s the liberal way…
riiiight… drugs have NO downside… smh.
“Drugs” to a right-leaning statist are like “ghost guns” to Keven DeLeon.
The downside of drugs, generally, is their strange ability to convince otherwise rational people that statist policies are, in fact, good policies and that freedom is overrated.
Other than that they just sit there unless you use them.
You can’t call pot a drug because you can’t buy it in a drug store. It’s not like pain pills, diet pills, mood uppers, mood downers, it’s just a weed
I don’t think Illinois can afford to up the stupid with MORE potheads.
{NY tries to duck out of being reversed by the SCOTUS on their BS law}
“Ironically, New York City’s actions here are similar to those taken by the NRA before Heller was decided in 2008. As that case headed for the Supreme Court, the NRA lobbied heavily for DC to repeal their handgun ban. This would have rendered the Heller case moot.”
Holy, shit is that actually true?
If so, the NRA is even more on my shit list, if possible…
This is true, NRA lobbied against the McDonald case. McDonald v. Chicago was originally funded by Alan Gottlieb at SAF. Unlike the losers at NRA and their state affiliate ISRA, SAF plays to win. When NRA bureaucrats like Chris Cox saw that the McDonald case was heading for the Supreme Court, they hired insider D.C. lawyer and former Solicitor General of the United States under President Bush Paul Clement to barge into Alan Gura’s case and steal ten minutes of Gura’s thirty minute oral argument time in front of SCOLTUS, after Gura did all the work. This way NRA, Inc. could steal credit and send out a press release falsely claiming credit for the McDonald decision to all the brain-dead baby boomers that are still stupid enough to send them money.
After McDonald v. Chicago provided a crushing victory for 2nd Amendment activists, gun rights “leaders” in Illinois fell all over themselves to sell out to anti-gun police unions in state Rep. Brandon Phelps’ concealed carry bill in 2013. Their crowning achievement was personally negotiating Duty to Inform with the IL Chiefs of Police, who opposed any sort of citizen carry in Illinois for the past FIFTY YEARS. NRA contract lobbyist Donald Todd Vandermyde supplied the DTI language in Phelps’ bill, no doubt provided by lawyers at NRA HQ. Valinda Rowe from (southern) Illinois Carry and John Boch personally negotiated the DTI with the IL Chiefs lobbyist in 2010-2011, Richard Pearson from ISRA was not in the room with Rowe and Boch, but signed off on it. If you’re stupid and live in an all-white small town, the police are your friends.
NRA, Inc. is a whorehouse filled with traitors and scum. Illinois “gun rights” types are mostly small town hicks like Pearson, Rowe and Boch who sell out gun owners to police unions.
California now has a law that requires ammo sellers to report sales to the Ca. Dept of Justice. The reported information includes identification information, and the amount and caliber of all ammo sold. The ID information is to be used to make sure that the buyer is not a prohibited person, which costs $1,and in addition, buyers must have a registered gun in the DOJ data base or they have to pay $19 and wait ten days to pick up their ammo.This goes into effect July 1, theoretically, although no regulations have been approved. If the regs are not approved, sales will stop until they are. Given the paperwork burden on sellers, I suspect that the $1 fee will be raised by January 1.
Other than making it harder and more expensive to buy ammo, no one knows what use all of the information about the millions of bullets purchased every year will be.
That’s serious business. It’s as I had anticipated, regulate the hell out of ammunition. 50 rnd box a month and bring back 50 empties for your next purchase. Yup, that’d pretty much fck sht up, and who’s to stop it?
All of us reloaders, that’s who. We don’t buy our ammo, we make it. Just as everyone should learn to do with anything they consider to be important. If you need something, but you have to buy it, then that is a weakness that someone can exploit to see that you won’t have it, whatever it was.
So, if you really need it, learn to make it for yourself, whatever it is. Cover that weakness, and it is no longer a weakness, now it’s a strength.
ISRA just informed me via email that the SB1966 died in Senate committee:
In Wednesday’s House session, SB1966. , Kathleen Willis’ infringing “Fix The FOID” bill, passed on a floor vote and went back to the Senate for concurrence on the three amendments.
There was a Senate Judiciary Hearing yesterday but the bill was not called, the amendments were “held in committee”.
Today there was a Senate Judiciary Hearing without SB1966 being considered.
The bill will remain held in this committee, and the spring legislative session will end at Midnight without passage of this bill in the Illinois Senate.
Thank you for your efforts during this legislative session, your support was vital in halting this dangerous legislation.
Your ISRA Lobbying Team was there fighting for you, and you did your part supporting the Second Amendment Rights of you and your fellow Illinois Gun Owners.
Richard A. Pearson
ISRA Executive Director
Good to hear and just in time. If they had one more day or two this would have probably would have become law with the shooting in Virginia today causing the weak kneed to cave.
Is this Willis clown on the payroll for Bloomberg. It seems all she does is come up with stupid gun control laws.
Yes Willis is a Bloomberg puppet. It was painfully obvious that she had no understanding of the THREE bills she “wrote”. She was torn to shreds by Republicans BUT she just stood there with a blank stare and occasionally said something stupid.
Proof that Willis is a clueless puppet? “Kathleen Sances, president of the Gun Violence Prevention PAC, which was involved in drafting the legislation, is holding out hope the proposal will come for a vote before the Senate at a later date.”
When they had to redraft it twice to get the votes in the house, you know it’s complete nonsense. They managed to pass by a whopping TWO vote even though the Dems hold a super majority.
Willis now goes back to her feeding trough until 10/28.
License: When the government takes your Rights, then sells them back to you….
Illinois can eat a bag of dicks.
Bag O Dicks, mixed assortment, on sale at Dicks sporting goods. Blow out prices good place to get a job but I’ve heard the service sucks.
ILLAnnoys Wants Gunm Owners Fingers.
This was already decided by the Supreme Court…
Murdock v. Pennsylvania 319 U.S. 105 (1943)
Held:
– A State may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution.
– The flat license tax here involved restrains in advance the Constitutional liberties of press and religion, and inevitably tends to suppress their exercise
Opinion:
…It is contended, however, that the fact that the license tax can suppress or control this activity is unimportant if it does not do so. But that is to disregard the nature of this tax. It is a license tax — a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights. A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution….
… The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down…
… It is a flat license tax levied and collected as a condition to the pursuit of activities whose enjoyment is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Accordingly, it restrains in advance those constitutional liberties of press and religion, and inevitably tends to suppress their exercise…
Murdock v. Pennsylvania 319 U.S. 105 (1943)
“The only downsides to this problem, of course, would be if records were allowed to creep into other uses. For now, the model law requires the destruction of all records of the person’s gun rights waiver upon request.”
Although not my primary function, I was one of many scientists who ended up doing some IT functions during my working years. In the digital age there is NOTHING so permanent as temporary listings or data that are supposed to be destroyed “upon request”.
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