Earlier
this year, Eric Holder--along
with Janet Reno and several
other former officials from the
Clinton Department of
Justice--co-signed an amicus
brief in District of Columbia v.
Heller. The brief was filed in
support of DC's ban on all
handguns, and ban on the use of
any firearm for self-defense in
the home. The
brief argued that the Second
Amendment is a "collective"
right, not an individual one,
and asserted that belief in the
collective right had been the
consistent policy of the U.S.
Department of Justice since the
FDR administration. A brief
filed by some other former DOJ
officials (including several
Attorneys General, and Stuart
Gerson, who was Acting Attorney
General until Janet Reno was
confirmed)took issue with the
Reno-Holder brief's
characterization of DOJ's
viewpoint.
But at the least, the
Reno-Holder brief accurately
expressed the position of the
Department of Justice when Janet
Reno was Attorney General and
Eric Holder was Deputy Attorney
General. At the oral argument
before the Fifth Circuit in
United States v. Emerson, the
Assistant U.S. Attorney told the
panel that the Second Amendment
was no barrier to gun
confiscation, not even of the
confiscation of guns from
on-duty National Guardsmen.
As Deputy Attorney General,
Holder was a strong supporter of
restrictive gun control. He
advocated federal licensing of
handgun owners, a three day
waiting period on handgun sales,
rationing handgun sales to no
more than one per month, banning
possession of handguns and
so-called "assault weapons"
(cosmetically incorrect guns) by
anyone under age of 21, a gun
show restriction bill that would
have given the federal
government the power to shut
down all gun shows, national gun
registration, and mandatory
prison sentences for trivial
offenses (e.g., giving your son
an heirloom handgun for
Christmas, if he were two weeks
shy of his 21st birthday). He
also promoted the factoid that
"Every day that goes by, about
12, 13 more children in this
country die from gun
violence"--a statistic is true
only if one counts
18-year-old gangsters who shoot
each other as "children."(Sources:
Holder
testimony before House
Judiciary Committee, Subcommitee
on Crime, May 27,1999;
Holder Weekly Briefing, May
20, 2000. One of the bills that
Holder endorsed is detailed in
my 1999 Issue Paper "Unfair
and Unconstitutional.")
After 9/11, he penned a
Washington Post op-ed,
"Keeping Guns Away From
Terrorists" arguing that a new
law should give "the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a
record of every firearm sale."
He also stated that prospective
gun buyers should be checked
against the secret "watch lists"
compiled by various government
entities. (In an
Issue Paper on the watch
list proposal, I quote a FBI
spokesman stating that there is
no cause to deny gun ownership
to someone simply because she is
on the FBI list.)
After the D.C. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that the D.C.
handgun ban and self-defense ban
were unconstitutional in 2007,
Holder
complained that the decision
"opens the door to more people
having more access to guns and
putting guns on the streets."
Holder
played a key role in the
gunpoint, night-time kidnapping
of Elian Gonzalez. The
pretext for the paramilitary
invasion of the six-year-old's
home was that someone in his
family might have been licensed
to carry a handgun under Florida
law. Although a Pulitzer
Prize-winning photo showed a
federal agent dressed like a
soldier and pointing a machine
gun at the man who was holding
the terrified child, Holder
claimed that Gonzalez "was
not taken at the point of a gun"
and that the federal agents whom
Holder had sent to capture
Gonzalez had acted "very
sensitively." If Mr. Holder
believes that breaking down a
door with a battering ram,
pointing guns at children (not
just Elian), and yelling "Get
down, get down, we'll shoot" is
example of acting "very
sensitively," his judgment about
the responsible use of firearms
is not as acute as would be
desirable for a cabinet officer
who would be in charge of
thousands and thousands of armed
federal agents, many of them
paramilitary agents with machine
guns.
Here's a new podcast in which Jon Caldara and I have a quick discussion of Colorado's election results, including the defeat of several tax increase ballot issues, and the defeat of Marilyn Musgrave. It's a little over 7 minutes long, and available in MP3 on iVoices.org.
The Federalist Society's annual conference in Washington, D.C., opens on Thursday, November 20. The evening before, the Mason Law Federalist Society and American Constitution Society are co-hosting a symposium on D.C. v. Heller. The events takes place from 5-8 p.m. at GMU Law School, in Arlington, Virgnia. Speakers include Steve Halbrook, Nelson Lund, Clark Neily, John Frazer, and me, on the side of the Standard Model, and Alan Morrison, Dennis Henigan, and others, on the opposite side. My presentation, in the panel "Looking Back at the History of the 2nd Amendment," will be about the natural law roots of the Second Amendment; it's the topic of my forthcoming article in the Syracuse Law Review. The event is free, although if you want the 3 CLE credits, there is a $25 fee. Registration is here.
U.S. House so far: -11.
Losses in Colorado 4
(Markey over Musgrave),
Florida 8 (Grayson over
Keller), Florida 24
(Kosmas over Feeney),
Michigan 9 (Peters over
Knollenberg), NJ 3
(Adler over Myers), NY
13 (McMahon over
Straniere), NY 25 (Maffie
over Sweetland), Nev. 3
(Titus v. Porter), Penn.
3 (Dahlkemper over
English), and Vir. 11
(Connolly over Fimian).
For all races, the
Democrat is listed
first.
The remaining undecided
races with Second
Amendment implications
are: Alaska (Berkowitz
v. Young), Calif. 4
(Brown v. McClintock),
Idaho 1 (Minnick v. Sali),
Michigan 7 (Schauer v.
Wallberg), Ohio 1 (Driehaus
v. Chabot), Ohio 15 (Kilroy
v. Stievers), and
Washington 8 (Burner v.
Reichert).
Just to guess, let's say
that Democrats win 4/7
of these races. The
final result is -15 for
the Second Amendment.
Not good, but much
better than the
worst-case scenario of
-26 I
noted last week.
The new House of
Representatives will
have a pro-gun majority
on a normal vote. The
Pelosi-Hoyer leadership
will certainly not be
pro-Second Amendment;
but that leadership has
recognized that its
majority is precarious
without pro-gun
Democrats. However, a
generally sympathetic
majority does not
guarantee victory for
the pro-rights side if
the President invests
major political capital,
as President Clinton did
in 1994 to pass the ban
on so-called "assault
weapons" by a single
vote.
U.S. Senate so far. In
Virginia, a +1 as
Democrat Mark Warner
wins the seat vacated by
the retirement of
Republican Jim Warner.
Elsewhere, -4 from
Democratic wins in
Colorado (Udall), NC
(Hagen), NH (Shaheen),
and NM (Udall).
Still undecided Senate
races:
Gun-owners win either
way in Alaska, where
Stevens might be the
Comeback Kid. He leads
with 66% of the vote
reported. I think that
Stevens is emblematic of
the culture of
institutionalized
corruption which I
admire Sarah Palin for
fighting. But I also
think that the
prosecutorial tactics
(including the illegal
concealment of evidence)
were so abusive in
U.S. v. Stevens that
the judge should have
dimisssed the charges.
The two other undecided
Senate races are Oregon
(Merkley v. Smith) and
Minnesota (Franken v.
Coleman). Both are tight
as a tick. The most
probable result would be
one win by each party.
So the final Senate
result would be -4.
Bottom line: More than
enough votes to hold a
filibuster, if the
Senators with the votes
have the will to hold.
Especially considering
that there are about
eight Democrat Senators
who would readily self-identy
as "pro-gun" and several
more who might vote that
way. And considering
that the Republican
caucus contains no
Republicans worse than a
C (as graded by the
NRA).
Governor losses. -1. In
Missouri, Democrat Nixon
replaces Republican
Blunt, who did not run
for re-election. There
is a potential gain if
Republican Rossi wins
the re-match of the race
which Democrat Gregoire
perhaps stole in 2004.
President. Based on past
record, certainly a -1.
One important difference
between our last
Democratic President and
our next one is the
latter has shown himself
to be much more
self-disciplined.
Accordingly, it is
possible that he will
not waste his political
capital on a reckless
culture war against gun
owners, as President
Clinton foolishly did.
So perhaps President
Obama will spend his
political capital
elsewhere, and be a -0.1
President on the gun
issue. The approach
would be in line with
the positive, unifying
themes that Obama
presented on victory
night in Iowa last
January, and with his
eloquent victory speech
tonight.
I don't know if
President Obama will be
so temperate. But anyone
who fears for the worst
can still hope for the
best.
Update: In the
Senate races, Stevens
and Coleman won (but
there will be a recount
for Coleman), and Smith
is leading with 70% of
the vote in. Chambliss
may face a run-off in
Georgia. So thus far,
the Senate count is -3.
In the House, the
pro-Second Amendment
candidate won the
following races which
were undecided: Alaska,
California, and Ohio 15.
Reichert has a slight
lead in Washington 8,
with 40% of the vote in.
So the final result in
the House is -14, or -15
if Reichert loses. There
are probably still
enough votes in both
houses of Congress to
pass positive
legislation, but not
enough to over-ride what
would be a near-certain
presidential veto. And I
doubt that the
leadership of either
house would put
President Obama in the
position of having to
veto a gun bill.
National Journal
assembled 46 leading
bloggers from the Left and
the Right
to predict the results
of the presidential
election, as well as some
other key races. The results
are sorted by Left and
Right. To the extent that
one might view negative
predictions as a Declaration
Against Interest, there are
the following interesting
results: The majority of
Left bloggers think Obama
will lose Montana. The
majority of Right bloggers
think McCain will lose
Pennsylvania; that
Republicans John Sununu (N.H.)
and Elizabeth Dole (N.C.)
will be defeated for
re-election; and the
Democrat Beverly Perdue will
be elected Governor of North
Carolina.
The various bloggers also
offer their comments on the
role that blogs played in
the 2008 election cycle, and
some guesses about the
biggest surprise on election
night.
My article today for National Review Online examines every Governor and U.S. Senate race, and the top 50 U.S. House races, to see which races have important implications for the Second Amendment, and which do not. Bottom line: the worst case scenario is a loss of 7 pro-Second Amendment votes in the Senate, and 26 in the House. The good news is that things could be a lot worse without the many pro-RKBA Democrats who are running. On Tuesday night, Florida and New York will be the most important states to watch for House races.
Last Friday, I presented a paper at a symposium at the University of Chicago's International House. The paper was part of a symposium on "Taiwan's New Approach: Opportunities and Challenges for President Ma Ying-jeou's Government." The paper is titled Poisoned Milk and the Poisoning of Democracy: Some Cautions about China Trade and Taiwan Sovereignty. It argues that Taiwan should make national security the foremost consideration in trade policy with China. This would support liberalization of Chinese tourism and Chinese students being allowed to study in Taiwan, the better to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. The paper suggests that--for purposes of human rights, and to sow the seeds for long-term political reform in China--new Taiwanese foreign direct investment in China be required to go to businesses which allow Chinese workers to elect a workers council. Taiwan should energetically develop its trade with India, as an alternative to China; should further restrict Chinese food imports; and should get rid of trade negotiators who have business interests in China. Allowing economic integration with China without regard for national security could, the paper suggests, lead to the destruction Taiwan's sovereignty, independence, and freedom.
Do any commenters have information about when this term was first used, and who thought it up? The earliest use in a court case I have found is in a New York decision in 1964, but there appear to be prior uses starting at least in the 1950s. There is an urban legend that the term was invented by a Klansman. Do commmenters have any knowledge about that claim?
Rocky Mountain News columnist (and University of Colorado law professor) Paul Campos used the famous essay by historian Richard Hofstadter as the template for a column last Wednesday, criticizing Republicans. In my media analysis column for the News on Saturday, I suggested that--at least based on the evidence within Campos's column--"the paranoid style" was more accurate as a description of Campos's own approach.
In a recent
interview with
Field & Stream,
Barack Obama stated, "if
you talk to sportsmen in
my home state of
Illinois, they will tell
you that I've always
been a forceful advocate
on behalf of the rights
of sportsmen, on behalf
of access for sportsmen
and hunters. I've been
somebody who, well
before the recent
Supreme Court case,
stated my belief that
the Second Amendment was
an individual right." In
a
podcast for
iVoices.org, I
interviewed Richard
Pearson, the Executive
Director of the
Illinois State Rifle
Association. Pearson
has been lobbying on
sporting and right to
arms issues at the
Illinois legislature
since 1989. He has more
first-hand knowledge of
Obama's record on these
issues than anyone
except Obama himself. In
the 20-minutes podcast
interview, Pearson
suggests that Obama's
claim about his record
is extremely inaccurate.
As for Obama's
credibility on Second
Amendment issues, an
article by David
Hardy, on the Pajamas
Media website, points
out that during Obama's
tenure on the Board of
Directors of the Joyce
Foundation, the
Foundation spent a great
deal of grant money for
a long-running effort to
prevent the Second
Amendment from being
recognized as an
individual right
applicable to Americans
who are not in the
National Guard.
Back in the early 1990s, Gary Mauser (Simon Fraser University, British Columbia) and I wrote an article, originally published in Political Communication & Persuasion, explaining why polls are sometimes inaccurate as measures of public opinion. The article is titled 'Sorry, Wrong Number': Why Media Polls on Gun Control are So Often Unreliable, and although the focus is on polls about gun control, the article observes some general problems with polling. If Senator Obama on election day significantly underperforms, or overperforms, what the polls predict, there will be many possible causes, other than the "Bradley Effect" or the "Reverse Bradley Effect." There are many factors, other than race-consciousness of the interviewees, which may cause a gap between opinion polls and actual votes.
In a new article for America's 1st Freedom (a NRA member magazine), I examine some of President Obama's potential Supreme Court picks. (Based on a list of potential nominees in an article by Stuart Taylor in the National Journal.) Justices Cass Sunstein, Merrick Garland, Sonia Sotomayor, and Eric Holder would be terrible for Second Amendment rights, I suggest. Attorney General Deval Patrick and Secretary of the Interior Tom Daschle would be pretty bad in that regard, too, I argue. The article also summarizes Obama's record on Second Amendment issues.
FactCheck.org is an
excellent project of the
Annenberg Public Policy
Center of the
University of
Pennsylvania. It a
non-partisan
organization which
provides factual
evaluations of the
claims of and about
political figures. I
have cited it in my own
writing, and will
continue to do so.
However, that FactCheck
has a well-deserved
reputation for accuracy
and good judgment does
not mean that its work
is infallible, as the VC
has
pointed out
previously. The
Encyclopedia Britannica
also has a well-deserved
reputation for accuracy
and impartiality, but
the Britannica
sometimes contains
errors or
overstatements.
FactCheck’s September
22, 2008,
report on the
National Rifle
Association’s
advertising critical
claims that the NRA
“distorts Obama's
position on gun control
beyond recognition.”
FactCheck itself,
though, has overstated
its claims, and made
several errors.
Much of FactCheck’s critique of the NRA is the mere recitation of vague platitudes by Obama claiming that he supports of the Second Amendment.
FactCheck fails to recognize that Obama's platitudes and the NRA's charges could be simultaneously true. For example, John McCain might sincerely say, “I strongly support First Amendment rights.” A group critical of McCain might take out advertising which says “McCain sponsoroed the most comprehensive restriction of political speech in American history, and he is an opponent of your First Amendment rights.” All the statement are true: McCain sponsored the McCain-Feingold act, which outlaws a great deal of speech related to federal elections; people who are strong First Amendment advocates can therefore conclude that McCain is a very serious threat to First Amendment rights. McCain, however, is doubtless sincere in his belief that the political speech restrictions are consistent with his support for First Amendment rights. His First Amendment is simply much smaller than the First Amendment which free speech groups like the ACLU support. FactCheck would be incorrect if it declared that the free speech group was making "false" charges which "distorted" McCain's views.
Likewise, the NRA is not distorting Obama’s record when they accurately point out his advocacy for draconian gun controls, even if Obama offers generic platitudes about Second Amendment rights. Obama may sincerely believe that the various measures he has promoted are consistent with the Second Amendment; the NRA disagrees, and it is not factually inaccurate for the NRA to say so.
On some of the charges, FactCheck appears not to have studied Obama’s words carefully. For example, one NRA claim is that Obama wants to “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns.” FactCheck accurately reports that Obama did endorse such a position in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race. (FactCheck also supplies the details of Obama’s 2008 claim that the questionnaire was filled out by an aide without Obama’s knowledge, even though Obama’s handwriting is on the cover of the questionnaire.) But FactCheck asserts that the NRA is lying because of Obama’s response to the same question in 2003: “While a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable, I believe reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns are necessary to protect the public safety.”
The 2003 response hardly means that Obama does not favor a handgun ban. He simply said he recognized it as politically impracticable. A candidate can simultaneously support something, and consider it “politically impracticable.” For example, in a 1997 Connecticut Law Review article, Glenn Reynolds and I wrote in favor the historic and textual interpretation of the Congressional power over interstate commerce: that it applies to commercial activities conducted across state lines, and to the regulation of activities which are “necessary and proper” for regulating interstate commerce. Thus, I think that laws about who can possess guns (e.g., persons convicted of particular crimes, children, alcoholics, etc.) should be matters of state law, not federal law. (With the caveats that state laws cannot violate the Second Amendment, and that other federal powers might be legtimately used in certain situations; for example, congressional power over immigration might be an appropriate basis for a federal restriction on gun possession by illegal aliens.)
If I were running for Congress in 2008, and somebody asked “Do you favor repealing federal laws about the mere intrastate possession of guns?” I would probably explain that a complete repeal is “not politically practicable,” and would say that I would work instead for marginal improvements in the laws.
Now suppose my opponent puts out a brochure which says “Kopel favors repeal of federal laws on gun possession.” Is the opponent distorting my position beyond recognition? Well, probably not.
A good FactCheck article would point out the difference between my 1997 position and my current statement on what is “politically practicable.” But my very choice of the words “politically practicable” indicates that if political circumstances changed, so that a broad repeal were politically practicable, then I would support it.
Conversely, if I (or, Obama or McCain) were asked "Do you think that the federal government should require journalists to get a government license?" the response would not be "Licensing journalists is not politically practicable, but there are other steps the government could take to improve media quality."
So Obama’s 2003 acknowledgement that handgun prohibition was not “politically practicable” (at least for a U.S. Senate term that would begin in 2005) is consistent with support for handgun prohibition.
FactCheck concludes the section by citing Obama’s claim at an April 2008 debate “I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns." The claim is, to say the least, highly dubious in light of the evidence about his 1996 questionnaire, and FactCheck should not have treated this dubious claim as the final word on the subject. FactCheck failed to report that during the Potomac Primaries a few weeks earlier, Obama had said that he supported the D.C. handgun ban, and considered it consistent with the Second Amendment
FactCheck also overlooked the Obama campaign’s statement when the Supreme Court granted cert. in the D.C. handgun case: “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional” and that “local communities” should have the ability “to enact common sense laws.” (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 20, 2007.)
On the day the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, Obama campaign announced that he agreed with the Court’s decision because it affirmed an individual right. (The full quote is reproduced in another section of the FactCheck report.) Notably, Obama did not say that he agreed with the Court’s interpretation that the handgun ban was a violation of the individual right. Asked about the November 2007 statement supporting the D.C. ban, the campaign called the statement “inartful.” Not an inaccurate expression of Obama’s views—just “inartful.”
In sum, FactCheck's label of “False” for the NRA’s statement that Obama supports laws to “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns" was based on sloppy reading of some of Obama's statements, and failure to report other statements explicitly in favor of handgun prohibition.
A similar error is repeated for "Mandate a Government-Issued License to Purchase a Firearm", which FactCheck calls "Misleading." FactCheck quotes a Jan. 15, 2008, interview with the late Tim Russert:
NBC's Tim Russert, Jan. 15: Senator Obama, when you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?Obama then went on to list some things which thought could be done. The phrase "I don't think we can get that done" has the same import as "not politically practicable." It does not convey opposition to the idea.
Obama: I don’t think that we can get that done.
The NRA claims that Obama’s position includes: "Ban use of Firearms for Home Self-Defense." FactCheck says this is “False.” FactCheck discusses Obama’s opposition to an Illinois bill to prevent localities with handgun bans from punishing a person who used a handgun in lawful self-defense on his or her own property. Obama’s statements in opposition to the bill (which are not quoted by FactCheck) explained that he was worried that the bill would erode local handgun bans. (At the time, Chicago and five of its suburbs banned handguns.)
FactCheck writes: “Letting the owner of an unregistered firearm escape the penalty for failing to register is one thing, but it's another thing entirely to make it a crime to use any firearm – registered or not – in self-defense.” Well, if you ban a person from having a handgun at all, you are certainly banning them from using it for self-defense in the home.
Moreover, the Washington, D.C., gun law--which Obama supported--forbade the use of any firearm in the home for self-defense. (Including a registered rifle, a registered shotgun, or a pre-1976 registered handgun legally possessed under the grandfather clause). The Supreme Court later declared the self-defense ban to be unconstitutional.
Another NRA claim which FactCheck says is "False" is: "Ban Rifle Ammunition Commonly Used for Hunting and Sport Shooting.” As FactCheck reports, the issue involves Obama’s support for legislation to expand the federal definition of armor-piercing ammunition. Almost all rifle ammunition used for hunting deer or larger animals will penetrate a bullet-resistant vest; such vests are designed to stop handgun ammunition, not rifle ammunition. (In part because rifles have longer barrels, their bullets generally have greater velocity, and hence greater kinetic energy, than handgun bullets.)
Obama supported a bill to give the Attorney General the administrative authority to ban any rifle ammunition which can penetrate the type of vests commonly used by police.
FactCheck accurately quoted a limitation in the bill: it would apply only to ammunition which is “designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability." The “marketed” prong is easy, since rifle ammunition makers do not tout such capability in their advertising.
However, the “designed” language is broad enough to allow bans on anything. Almost every automobile in the United States is “designed” to drive over 100 miles per hour. The speedometers show this capability, and even if they did not, every automobile manufacturer is fully aware that its autos can be driven at very fast, unsafe speeds. The auto engines are “designed” to have a certain amount of power, and this “design” is based on the full knowledge that that auto can be driven over 100 mph. Among the definitions of "design" in Black's Law Dictionary is "The pattern or configuration of elements in something, such as a work of art."
Just as the deliberate configuration of the elements of every automobile can be accurately said to be “designed” to drive over 100 mph, so every deer-hunting round can be said to be “designed” to penetrate body armor. Notably, the ammunition ban language did not say "designed and intended."
FactCheck does quote Senator Kennedy, the sponsor of the bill, saying that he did not want to ban hunting ammunition. Nevertheless, the plain language of the bill, and not Senator Kennedy’s floor statements, were what would be enacted into law. If there were ever a judicial challenge to ban on particular rifle ammunition ban, a court might well find that the language of the statute, along with judicial deference to agency interpretation of the statute, meant that there was no need to look to legislative history.
FactCheck give NRA a "Partly True" for: "Expand the Clinton Semi-Auto Weapons Ban to Include Millions More Firearms." FactCheck agrees that Obama has declared his support for "assault weapon" bans, because he think that "assault weapons" are guns which belong only on "foreign battlefields." But FactCheck adds: "We're not sure where the NRA gets its claim that 'millions' of additional weapons would be covered." The answer is straightforward, in the Illinois legislature, Obama for SB 1195, which defines "assault weapons" much more broadly than the 1994 federal law. It included double-barrel and break-open shotguns in 28 gauge caliber and larger; and also banned .50 caliber rifles.
The FactCheck gives the NRA a rating of "Uncertain" to "Increase Federal Taxes on Guns and Ammunition by 500 Percent" and "Close Down 90 Percent of Gun Shops in America." Both these statements, FactCheck correctly reports, come from a newspaper report of Obama's 1999 description his gun control plan. (Chicago Defender, Dec. 13, 1999.) (At the time, he was running for the U.S. House of Representativs.) FactCheck notes that Obama has not pushed for these proposals since his election to the Senate, and adds, "We asked the Obama campaign about his position on an ammunition tax but have received no response."
“Uncertain” is an awfully generous label, Obama-wise. Obama clearly announced he supported the particular policies. He has never said that he has changed his mind on those policies. His campaign was specifically offered a chance by FactCheck to say whether Obama had changed his mind, and the campaign refused.
Just because Obama is not pushing for something in Congress does not make the NRA's claim uncertain. FactCheck gives NRA a "True" for "Pass Federal Laws Eliminating Your Right-to-Carry." Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states which do not have procedures for issuing concealed handgun carry permits. (40 states issue under mostly objective standards, while 8 states give nearly limitless discretion to the issuing authority.) In the 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama said he favored a national ban on concealed carry permits. Like the carry ban, the bans on gun stores and the 500% firearm and ammunition tax proposals do not become less true simply because Obama is not pushing them at present.
The NRA gets a "Mostly True" for "Restore Voting Rights for Five Million Criminals Including Those Who Have been Convicted of Using a Gun to Commit a Violent Crime." FactCheck points to the relevant bill co-sponsored by Obama, and cites the Sentencing Project for the fact that 5.3 million felons who have served their sentences cannot vote. The Sentencing Project pointed out that most felony convictions are not for violent or gun crimes. So the NRA claim is “Entirely True.” The NRA never asserted that most felony convictions are for violent gun crimes.
"Unsupported" is how FactCheck describes: "Appoint Judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary Who Share His Views on the Second Amendment." FactCheck's reasoning is that "the NRA can point to no statement by Obama calling for a Second-Amendment test for his judicial appointees, and we could find none."
That Obama has not announced a litmus test does not mean that it is unrealistic to expect him to appoint Justices who share his views on Second Amendment and on other matters of constitutional law. It would be reasonably expected that Obama appointees would take a similar approach of nominal support for the individual right, but finding that hardly any gun controls short of complete prohibition violate that right.
One final NRA claim does not get a FactCheck rating, but it does get a response that might as well as come from the Obama press office. That is: "Obama would be the most anti-gun president in American history."
FactCheck supplies Obama's quote from Heller decision day, beginning with "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms..", and promising, "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."
Well, that Obama has "always believed" in the individual Second Amendment right did not prevent him from proposing a national ban on concealed carry, a ban on 90% of gun stores, a 500% tax increase on firearms and ammunition--as the FactCheck article itself reports. If a candidate proposed banning 90% of bookstores and a huge tax increase on books, it might be justifiable to predict that he would be "the most anti-book president in American history"--notwithstanding his proclaimed belief in the individual First Amendment right.
FactCheck calls the NRA prediction, "a pretty tall statement. We don't know how George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson might have felt about armor-piercing ammunition or assault weapons."
Fortunately, there haven't been many anti-gun Presidents, in U.S. history; and only the Clinton administration invested a large portion of its politcal capital in gun control. So President Obama would not have much competition in the "most anti-gun" contest.
We know that Washington and Jefferson were avid gun collectors, and that Jefferson recommended daily hunting as the best form of exercise. We also know that Jefferson instituted a government program to supply guns, at federal expense, to people who couldn’t own one. We know that neither Washington, nor Adams, nor Jefferson ever proposed banning a type of gun simply because it was useful on “battlefields.”
As far as we know, Obama has never fired a gun, or even held a gun in his hands. We do know that no President in American history has, in his pre-presidential career, endorsed so many sweeping prohibitions and other severe controls on American gun ownership.
The September 22, 2008, FactCheck on the NRA criticism of Obama is marred by the omission of crucial facts, one-sided and misleading presentations of issues, and thinly-concealed political advocacy. According to FactCheck, the NRA refused to answer FactCheck's request for explanations of its claims. If so, the refusal provides a partial explanation of why so many crucial facts were missing. Whatever the reasons behind the problems in the September 22 report, FactCheck should publish a substantially revised edition.
- Doing My Patriotic Duty:
- Obama Campaign Challenges NRA Ad:
- FactCheck flubs Obama gun fact check:
That's the topic of a
new
article I've written
for
Liberty magazine.
First year law students
may be interested in
observing the importance
of contract law in the
right of revolution
against tyranny.
Also, the latest version
of my draft article,
Pacifist-Aggressives vs.
the Second Amendment: An
Analysis of Modern
Philosophies of
Compulsory Non-violence
is now on-line. (3
Charleston Law Review,
no. 1, forthcoming). VC
readers first saw this
article, as a working
paper, last fall. It's
been significantly
revised, in part thanks
to helpful commenters
from VC readers.
[David Kopel, September 6, 2008 at 2:45pm] Trackbacks
The "media's
treatment of Palin and her family this week
has been the quintessence of hypocrisy, the
vilest form of the politics of personal
destruction." So I argue in my Rocky
Mountain News media
column today.
Based on e-mail I've gotten from some
readers, it's clear that some people have so
much emotional investment in their hatred of
Palin that they can't read very well. So to
be clear, and to amplify a point I
explicitly made in the last paragraph of the
column, it's legitimate and necessary for
the media to ask questions about her public
policy positions (including those on sex
education), her record in public office, her
political philosophy, whether her experience
makes her well-qualified to be VP or
President, and so on.
And BTW, astute readers will spot a typo:
"Ronald Reagan's daughter Nancy Davis"
should be "Ronald Reagan's daughter with
Nancy Davis."
UPDATE. An excerpt from a reader e-mail:
I do not always agree with your stance on the issues of the day, but I am with you 150% on this issue. I wonder if you saw the op-ed page political cartoon in the Denver Post on Thurs. Sept. 9th? As the father of an adult special needs individual, slightly older than Bristol Palin, but just as pregnant and just as unwed at this time, I was incensed at the sleaze demonstrated by this portrayal of a McCain/Palin "shotgun wedding" along with the caption underneath the cartoon. What sent me completely over the edge however was the hand at the left of the frame holding a sign announcing that Bristol Palin is five months pregnant along with two elephant heads whispering and giggling. How low will the media go and is there anything that ordinary people like myself can do to put a stop to such behavior? I know firsthand the emotional toll that an unexpected pregnancy is exerting on our family, (she and her boyfriend have our unyielding support) but more importantly on our daughter. Here in the Palin family's case, the entire world is hearing all the details. How sad to put a confused and frightened seventeen year old through this additional stress. My disappointment with the Denver paper is such that I plan to cancel my subscription next week. After I saw this lowdown smear at this innocent minor, I drove down to McCain headquarters and offered my services to the campaign and made a donation to the McCain 2008 campaign. As you can see, I have been touched both emotionally and personally by what is passing for journalism in this election year.
Yesterday's
Investors Business Daily
reports on the Chicago chapter of
Public Allies, a group with trains and
pays stipends to community organizers
and other youthful volunteers. According
to IBD, "Barack Obama was a founding
member of the board of Public Allies in
1992, resigning before his wife became
executive director of the Chicago
chapter of Public Allies in 1993." IBD
also describes the diversity training in
Chicago; it is not clear from the
article whether this particular training
took place while either Obama was
involved in the group. IBD states that
in the Chicago training, "heterosexism"
is explained as "a negative byproduct of
'capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy
and male-dominated privilege.'"
Here is my bleg: do VC readers know of
any serious research about a link
between heterosexism and capitalism,
white supremacy, patriarchy and
male-dominated privilege? My initial
impression is the cause and effect
theory of heterosexism is quite wrong.
Communist dictatorships, for example,
are often quite hostile to homosexuals;
yet Communist states are not capitalist,
generally have legal equality of men and
women, and (outside Europe) are run by
non-whites. Conversely, ancient Greece
was relatively tolerant of some forms of
homosexuality, and yet was patriarchal,
dominated by whites, and had a primitive
free market.
So, is there a serious intellectual
argument for the Public Allies theory of
the causes of heterosexism?
"O, what has caused this great commotion, -motion, -motion, Our country through? It is the ball that’s rolling on for Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Like the William Henry Harrison campaign of 1840, the Barack Obama campaign has been at the cutting edge of using social networking media. My column for today's Rocky Mountain News, "Twitter and Text Your Way to Victory," looks at innovative use of media in 2008, and in the past. It's mostly based on an interview with Chris Hughes, the 24-year-old wunderkind who is Obama's Director of Online Organizing. I suggest that Obama's brilliant use of social networking was a sine qua non of his victory.
Lots of Obama biographical pieces in the media this week, including the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, The New Republic, and National R

