Advice on weaponry

Peruta v. California: The Supreme Court’s Next Big Gun Case?
The Justices are deciding whether to hear a case that could determine whether there's a constitutional right to carry concealed guns in public spaces.

BY NORA BIETTE-TIMMONS AND OLIVIA LI
April 13, 2017

Edward Peruta is a litigious Vietnam veteran who spends part of each year living out of a trailer home in San Diego.

Neil Gorsuch is a conservative Coloradan with impeccable Ivy League judicial credentials.

Peruta’s legal challenge to San Diego County’s concealed carry permitting system has been winding its way through the federal court system since 2009.

Gorsuch was sworn in as the newest associate justice of the Supreme Court just four days ago.

On Thursday, their fortunes will meet when Gorsuch joins his first-ever Supreme Court conference to discuss whether the bench should hear Peruta v. California, which asks whether the Second Amendment protects a right to carry guns in public spaces. It could be the most consequential gun case since the Court confirmed the individual right to bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller nearly a decade ago. The majority opinion in that case was written by Antonin Scalia, Gorsuch’s predecessor and a staunch originalist, but it left unresolved a handful of major questions about the Second Amendment. Peruta seeks to answer one of them. Here’s everything you need to know about the case.

What’s this case all about, in a nutshell?

Broadly, it’s about whether the Second Amendment protects the right of a citizen to carry a firearm in public for self defense. More specifically, it’s about the “good cause” requirement many California counties — including San Diego — impose on residents applying for a license to carry a concealed weapon. How strict the “good cause” standard is varies by jurisdiction, but it means that gun permit applicants must have what the sheriff’s department deems to be a convincing reason to need to carry a gun. If a sheriff finds an applicant doesn’t clear that bar, they can’t legally carry a concealed gun in public, which is what happened to Peruta.

Didn’t the Supreme Court already rule that the Constitution guarantees an individual right to bear arms?

Yes, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to protect oneself with a firearm. But the facts of that case were about having a firearm in the home: The Washington, D.C., gun ordinance underlying that 2008 case banned some types of guns and required firearms kept in personal residences to be disassembled and unloaded. And residences were the explicit focus of the majority decision in Heller, in which Scalia argued that the Second Amendment “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

So, in other words, the Supreme Court has so far said that policymakers can still set their own standards for allowing people to carry guns in public?

Heller seems to leave room for that, especially when it comes to concealed weapons. Here’s the relevant section from the decision:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited … For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues … Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on … laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places.

Click to expand...

What’s taken the Supreme Court so long to resolve the question of whether there’s a right to carry in public?

Well, for starters, the court only grants cert (that is, agrees to hear arguments and rule on a case) to a tiny fraction of the petitions it receives. And in the years since Heller, it’s likely that the justices haven’t felt like they’ve seen a good case on this particular question of carrying guns in public. If the justices decide that Peruta is not the suit to determine if the right to carry a gun extends outside the home, there’s at least one other upcoming case on the issue — Matthew Grace and Pink Pistols v. District of Columbia — that the court could agree to hear.

Is this case more likely to be granted cert now that Gorsuch is on the court?

“As a matter of basic arithmetic, yes,” says Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University who part of Washington, D.C.’s legal team in the Heller case. “It’s easier to get four votes when you’ve got nine justices.” But Blocher also notes that even with Scalia’s former seat now filled, petitioners in gun cases face another obstacle to getting their cases heard. “Replacing him with Gorsuch doesn’t really up the odds that much. Besides Scalia, [Clarence] Thomas and [Samuel] Alito are the only ones who have supported a cert grant since Heller.”

In order for Peruta to be granted cert, Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito would need a fourth justice — most likely Anthony Kennedy or Chief Justice John Roberts — to also agree that the case should go forward for a full hearing.

What do gun-rights lawyers cite as the constitutional basis for carrying guns in public?

We put this one to Dave Kopel, a leading pro-gun legal scholar.

Heller describes in detail what the words in the Second Amendment mean. What are “arms?” What is “keep?” What is “bear?” Some people have said “bear” is a technical term that only means carrying arms while serving in the militia. Heller says no, “bear” means to carry arms in general.

Click to expand...

In addition, Kopel argues, when the court used Heller to lay out how guns can be regulated, it was de facto emphasizing that the right to bear arms extends to carrying them in public.

They say it’s okay to ban guns for convicted felons and the mentally ill. That’s an exception that tells you there’s a right, in general, to keep and bear arms. The fact that you need to name the exception tells you what the rule is. Likewise, Heller says conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of guns are okay. That tells you that selling guns, in general, is a constitutional right. The other exception they state is that it’s okay to ban the carrying of guns in “sensitive places” such as “schools and government buildings.” Well, again, that tells you there’s a right to carry guns in general, but you can make certain limits in spaces that are sensitive. If there wasn’t a right to carry outside your home, you wouldn’t need exceptions.

Click to expand...

Given that Gorsuch is an uber-originalist, will he find evidence for a right to carry in public in the text of the Second Amendment?

Maybe — but Blocher notes that originalist interpretations of the Second Amendment can also cut either way. Scalia’s famous Heller opinion certainly used an originalist argument — but so did the dissenting justices who argued that the right to bear arms did not extend outside the “militia” context described in the Bill of Rights.

The lower court opinion affirming San Diego County’s decision to reject Peruta’s permit application was also heavily originalist. In that opinion, Judge William Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cited sources from the 13th century, the Revolutionary War, and Reconstruction to illustrate that the right to bear arms does not necessarily include the right to bear arms in public.

Let’s go back to California, where this particular case started. How does the state handle issuing concealed carry permits?

Like most states, each county sheriff’s office is responsible for issuing concealed weapons permits. California is a “may issue” state, which means that its sheriffs have broad discretion over who gets a permit.

In San Diego County, the sheriff may issue a permit if an applicant meets these criteria:

- The applicant is of good moral character
- The applicant demonstrates good cause for the issuance of the license
- The applicant presents proof of residency within San Diego County

Are there alternatives to a “may issue” system for concealed carry permits?

You’re on to it: Indeed, the majority of states follow “shall issue” permitting schemes. That means if an applicant meets the criteria for a permit, the issuing authority must grant them a permit. Put simply, “shall issue” states remove discretion from law enforcement.

So what is Peruta arguing in this case?

That San Diego County’s “good cause” requirements are too strict because they basically preclude the ability to carry a gun in public. The county’s specific provision defines “good cause” as “a set of circumstances that distinguish the applicant from the mainstream and causes him or her to be placed in harm’s way. Simply fearing for one’s personal safety alone is not considered good cause.”

So what would happen to the “good cause” requirements if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Peruta?

States and municipalities that have “good cause” permitting requirements would have to make sure those stipulations aren’t too restrictive. A decision in favor of Peruta wouldn’t necessarily mean that states could no longer place any restrictions on concealed gun carry, however. “The question is not the absolute one of whether states are going to allow public carry,” Blocher said. Because, in practice, every state already does.

Why didn’t Peruta go about Southern California while armed, and just not conceal his firearm?

Because California doesn’t allow open carry. Peruta is saying he’s stuck between a rock (the good cause requirement) and a hard place (the ban on open carry).

So why isn’t he filing suit against California’s open carry rule?

He hasn’t said, but here’s a fair guess: He probably thinks he has a better shot at changing a rule in his county — the “good cause” restrictions — than he does changing a statewide law.

Click to expand...

Trump to Speak at NRA Forum, First President to Do So Since 1983

by Toluse Olorunnipa
April 14, 2017, 7:08 PM EDT

President Donald Trump will speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention on April 28, becoming the first U.S. president to address the gun-rights group since Ronald Reagan in 1983.

“The NRA is honored to have the president address our annual meeting at the leadership forum,” said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA. “We’re excited to once again have a president who respects the Second Amendment.”

The NRA endorsed Trump’s bid for president last May, after the then-candidate addressed the group’s annual forum in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump pledged at the time to “save our Second Amendment” and appoint judges which would support expansive gun rights.

His return visit to speak to the group’s 2017 Leadership Forum in Atlanta is likely to appeal to Trump’s base at a time when he has received criticism for reversing himself on promises to his most ardent supporters. At the same time, Trump’s speech to the influential lobby could repel Democrats and moderates who have been chafing under his presidency and have blocked some of his proposals from advancing in Congress.

The visit is scheduled for April 28, the last day of government funding under the current spending bill. If Congress doesn’t pass a new spending measure by that day, the government faces a partial shutdown.

Applauding Gorsuch

While Trump has not yet signed significant legislation or executive orders on gun rights, his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was hailed by the NRA. Gorsuch took the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last year and was part of a 5-4 majority in the pivotal D.C. v. Heller case. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to own a firearm for lawful purposes such as self-defense in the home.

The previous two Republican presidents -- George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush -- didn’t address the group during their presidencies. The younger Bush sent his vice president, Dick Cheney, to address the NRA’s convention in 2004 as he was seeking re-election. The elder Bush wrote a letter terminating his membership from the group in 1995 after an NRA fundraising letter described some federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.”

The White House confirmed Trump’s speaking plan, but didn’t offer additional comments.

Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, is an advocate of assault-weapon restrictions and serves on the advisory board of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group.

Click to expand...

Former University Professor Suggests the NRA Is 'More Dangerous' Than ISIS

Apr 22, 2017 // 7:25am
As seen on Fox & Friends Weekend

A former University of Missouri journalism professor is suggesting that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is more dangerous than ISIS.

George Kennedy, former managing editor at the Columbia Missourian newspaper and professor emeritus at the university's prestigious journalism school, brought up the comparison in a column published Thursday by the Missourian.

"The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a terrorist organization founded in 1999, headquartered in Syria and feared around the world. The NRA was founded in [1871], headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, and is feared by politicians across America," Kennedy wrote.

He continued: "What makes the Islamic State so feared it its willingness to kill in pursuit of its goal of creating a fundamentalist caliphate."

"What makes the NRA so feared is its willingness to spend heavily and campaign aggressively in pursuit of its goal of removing all restrictions on the possession and use of firearms just about anywhere by just about anyone."

Kennedy's column sparked outrage among Second Amendment advocates and gun owners. One of them, David Webb, joined "Fox & Friends Weekend" this morning to sound off.

Webb accused Kennedy of setting up a "false premise," in which he compares the number of people killed by ISIS to the number killed by gun violence.

"Here's what I'm saying to America: Don't get drawn in to it," Webb said. "It's not relative one to the other."

He added that Kennedy was also wrong when he claimed that ISIS has only killed nine Americans, noting that he conveniently left out those killed in ISIS-inspired terror attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino.

"The NRA advocates for proper training, proper laws, proper law enforcement and obeying the laws as they exist under the Second Amendment," Webb said. "They're not for the wild, wild West, as they like to put it out there in these little elitist theories."

Click to expand...

A Marine’s M107 Sniper Rifle Failed During A Firefight — So He Called Customer Service

By JARED KELLER
April 23, 2017

The Barrett M107 .50-caliber long-range sniper rifle is a firearm made for the modern war on terrorism. Officially adopted by the U.S. Army in 2002 and boasting a 2,000-meter range, a suppressor-ready muzzle brake, and recoil-minimizing design, the semi-automatic offers “greater range and lethality against personnel and materiel targets than other sniper systems in the U.S. inventory,” in an assessment by Military.com.

While Barrett’s reputation of “flawless reliability” has made the M107 the sniper weapon of choice, the rifle is just like any other essential tool: It often breaks when you need it most. And that’s apparently what happened to one Marine Corps unit pinned down in a firefight, according to one of Barrett’s longtime armorers.

Don Cook, a Marine veteran who’s been maintaining M107s for more than two decades, told National Geographic in 2011 that he one day received a call to Barrett’s workshop from a harried young Marine. During maintenance of the unit’s M107, the Marine had bent the ears of the rifle’s lower receiver; the next day, after engaging the enemy, they discovered the rifle wouldn’t fire consistently.

Despite the unit’s lack of tools (and time), Cook knew exactly what to do. The armorer instructed the Marines to use the bottom of the carrier to bend the ears back down. Within 45 seconds, the weapon was firing properly. “Thank you very much,” Cook says they told him, then he heard a dial tone. They had a firefight to get back to.

“It’s probably one of the biggest highlights of my life, to be able to help a Marine unit during a firefight,” Cook told National Geographic.

Watch him recount the incident himself in this excerpt from Sniper Inc, the National Geographic documentary about the Barrett family and the story of the M107 (the story begins at 9:26).

Click to expand...

Second Amendment -- Or Second-Class Citizens?

APR 24, 2017 @ 07:30 AM
George Leef , CONTRIBUTOR
I write on the damage big government does, especially to education.

In our “blue” states, many politicians have a deep animosity toward private ownership of firearms. (Yes, you also find some like that in “red” states, but they seldom have the political clout to do much damage to our Second Amendment rights.)

California is the prime example of a state where the dominant political class abhors guns and does all it can to hamper individuals who own and carry them. A recent action of the state legislature makes that point and has led to a lawsuit that will be heard later this year by the Ninth Circuit.

Among the state’s many useless and symbolic laws is its “gun free school zone” law, which would do nothing to stop a determined killer from storming into a school and shooting students, teachers, and anyone else. But the state wrote an exception into that law for retired law enforcement officials and citizens who held a concealed carry permit. Those individuals could bring their weapons with them onto school grounds.

But in 2015, the anti-gun forces in California wanted to eliminate that exception and pushed a bill in the state legislature. That bill provoked a storm of lobbying by interest groups. The ones that were successful were those favoring police and government workers. They managed to get the bill changed so that the retired peace officer exception was retained. Regular civilians who have concealed carry permits, however, had no such clout in the legislature and the bill was signed into law removing only their exception.

Who cares?

One person who does is Dr. Ulises Garcia. Dr. Garcia applied for and obtained a concealed carry permit several years ago after a former patient had made threats against him. As a result of the change in the gun free school zone law, he can no longer carry his weapon if he attends school functions with his children. For no good reason, he has been deprived of his rights. Indeed, he is now in violation of the law if he should come within 1000 feet of a school with his gun.

Dr. Garcia and a number of other plaintiffs filed suit against this discriminatory law in federal court. Their argument is that the state’s different treatment of two groups of citizens (retired peace officers and others who have concealed carry permits) is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law.

When their case, Garcia, et al v. Becerra, was heard in federal district court, Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell dismissed its Equal Protection argument that the law had been “enacted for the improper purpose of favoring a politically powerful group and to disfavor a politically unpopular one.” Judge O’Connell waived away that claim in a single paragraph, stating “The legislative history of the Act here does not indicate that the California Legislature was trying to prejudice civilian firearm owners when it retained the Retired Peace Officers Exemption Absent evidence of explicit legislative intent to cause harm to civilian gun owners, Plaintiffs cannot establish a violation of the Equal Protection Clause….”

So Americans can’t win an Equal Protection suit unless they’re able to find statements in the legislative history of discriminatory intent?! If that were the law, then such suits would never succeed for the obvious reason that politicians are too cagey to declare that they intend to help certain groups and damage others in their official deliberations.

Fortunately, a ton of legal precedent says that courts must look deeper than the legislative history of a bill when faced with a denial of equal protection claim. The Garcia case has come to the attention of the Cato Institute’s crack legal team, which has submitted an amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit, seeking a reversal of Judge O’Connell’s breezy decision.

In their brief, Ilya Shapiro and Thomas Berry point out that Supreme Court precedents going back to the 19th Century establish that courts must not look at the words politicians choose to utter, but to their actual, often covert, motives.

Consider, e.g., the case Ho Ah Kow v. Hunan, an 1879 circuit court decision written by Justice Stephen Field. (In those days, Supreme Court justices still had to “ride circuit” and hear cases in the judicial circuit to which they are assigned.) San Francisco had passed a city ordinance stating that any male taken into police custody would have his hair cut to a one-inch length. Two facts stood out to Justice Field: this ordinance would have almost no impact on prisoners other than Chinese men, who often wore their hair in a ponytail and it served no sanitary or disciplinary purpose.

Field struck down the law as a violation of equal protection, motivated by nothing more than animus against the Chinese. He wrote, “When we take our seats on the bench we are not struck with blindness, and forbidden to know as judges what we see as men.”

In the 20th Century, the Supreme Court often struck down laws where an improper motive to single out some group for unequal treatment could be inferred from the effects of the law. In Rogers v. Lodge, for instance, the Court struck down a voting procedure in Georgia that it found to be targeted at black voters. Quoting from the Cato brief, “Despite no ‘smoking gun’ in the legislative record the Court reiterated Davis’s ‘totality of the relevant facts’ approach and engaged in a detailed historical analysis of Georgia’s voting laws. This history proved to be determinative, because, as the Court made clear, ‘evidence of historical discrimination is irrelevant to drawing an inference of purposeful discrimination.’”

If judges look only at the legislative history of a challenged law, that, write Shapiro and Berry “dangerously narrows the universe of evidence they must examine to determine legislative motivation.”

That’s correct, but I’m pretty sure that the judge would have looked diligently for improper legislative motives had the group in question not been civilian gun owners, but instead a favored political group such as prisoners of a certain ethnicity or voters of a certain race. Californians who exercise their Second Amendment rights are treated as second-class citizens.

Now we will see if the infamous Ninth Circuit chooses to follow Supreme Court precedent, rule that it is not sufficient for a judge to toss out an equal protection case after only a look at the legislative history, and send the case back for further deliberations. If so, Judge O’Connell should ponder if there is any reason why people like Dr. Garcia, who has a concealed carry permit for a good reason, should be prevented from bringing his weapon on school grounds while retired peace officers (a category including employees of the California Department of Fish and Game) who are not likely to be subject to such dangers are allowed to.

Or will the Ninth Circuit engage in its customary habit of results-oriented judging and turn a blind eye to the plain fact that civilian concealed carry holders have been denied equal protection of the law simply because they are a disfavored group with no clout in the state legislature?

Click to expand...

The AR Pistol Brace Approval May Give The Gun Industry Just The Shot It Needs

America’s top firearms enforcement agency approved a gun accessory it formerly banned. This could have major implications for industry and even undercut more than 80 years of gun control.

By Christian Lowe
APRIL 27, 2017

In an obscure ruling penned in an eight-paragraph letter to a little-known gun parts maker, America’s top firearms law enforcement agency reversed an earlier decision on the legal use of a gun accessory that could have major implications for industry and may even undercut more than 80 years of gun control.

Developed by military veteran Alex Bosco to help his wounded warrior friend shoot heavier handguns more easily at the local firing range, the SB-Tactical pistol stabilizing brace was largely considered a curiosity by most of the shooting public when it was released in 2013.

Intended for use on so-called AR-15 pistols — which look and function like a standard AR-15 rifle, but have barrels shorter than 16 inches and do not include a shoulder stock — the SB-Tactical brace wrapped around a user’s arm so the shooter could fire the nose-heavy pistol more comfortably and accurately one-handed. The brace is made of a flexible plastic, attaches to the back end of an AR pistol, and looks a lot like a stock.

Then Gun Enthusiasts Began Customizing
That’s where the problems started cropping up. Relegated to the deepest recesses of the gun-nut public, AR pistols were mostly considered difficult to operate and impractical to own. They inhabited a loophole in the 1934 National Firearms Act that imposed heavy taxes and registration of any rifle with a barrel shorter than 16 inches. So-called “short barreled rifles” were considered the nefarious tools of gangsters at the time, and in response to the Prohibition crime wave, Congress essentially banned SBRs from civilian ownership.

But a pistol doesn’t fall into the purview of the restrictive National Firearms Act, so a gun that functions like a rifle but doesn’t have a stock and is “intended” to be shot using one hand was considered kosher under the law.

Fast-forward 70 years, and the popularity and sheer adaptability of the AR-15 rifle posed a dilemma. The rifle’s “buffer tube” — which houses a spring and weight to help cycle the bolt during a shot — extends out beyond the butt end of the gun, making for an uncomfortable but serviceable part to press against a shooter’s shoulder. That still wasn’t enough to make the AR pistol much more than a range toy.

When the SB-Tactical brace was released, however, with a letter from the gun-law-enforcing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms saying the device didn’t turn a pistol into a rifle, the gun world went nuts. Now these AR pistols could be outfitted with a brace that functioned like a stock in a pinch and the ATF said it was all above-board. It wasn’t long before firearms enthusiasts were flocking to gun stores buying AR pistols and slapping on an SB-Tactical brace for a poor-man’s — and legal — pseudo short-barreled rifle.

When the ATF saw the hijinks, it issued a letter in 2015 that punched the industry in the gut, ruling that “misusing” the brace by putting it against your shoulder “remade” the pistol into a rifle and was therefore subject to the NFA’s draconian rules. Gun store owners shelved their pistols and shooters were scared to take their guns to the range for fear of becoming an instant felon.

But on April 25, the ATF — after a concerted effort from gun owners and SB-Tactical — has “clarified” its 2015 ruling and said as long as the brace is installed as intended and isn’t modified in any way, putting it against a shoulder doesn’t miraculously turn it into a heavily-regulated SBR.

This Affects You Even If You Don’t Use This Equipment
Most everyday gun owners might ask, so what? I don’t have one of these weird guns, so what does this have to do with me?

First off, the ruling could prove a shot in the arm to a firearms industry struggling after the election of President Donald Trump. With a full-throated endorsement from the NRA and a pro-gun campaign agenda, Trump’s embrace of gun rights has had the unintended consequence of depressing gun sales. The Obama-era panic buying is history, and that’s left a glut of “Hillary 2016” inventory sitting on shelves gathering dust — particularly AR-style rifles, which had been in the Clinton crosshairs for years.

The new stabilizing brace ruling could stir up more interest in ARs from gun buyers who might now see the pistol version as a viable option. The ATF doesn’t allow owners to convert a rifle into a pistol, but there are plenty of pistols and other AR parts manufacturers out there who could really use a business boost.

But the biggest, and perhaps most significant, effect of the ruling could be the undermining of the National Firearms Act. The technology of today has forced the feds to tie themselves in knots trying to write rules that comport to a gun law written when the Thompson submachine gun was the biggest threat and revolvers ruled the handgun world.

What is a pistol? What is a rifle? Why does a stock make a pistol a rifle? Why does a vertical foregrip make a pistol an “Any Other Weapon” under ATF rules? It’s because the laws intended to ban what was around at the time, and times have changed a lot since then.

These days gun owners know there’s zero difference whatsoever between a 10-inch-barreled AR-15 with a padded buffer tube and one with a true buttstock. Both do the exact same thing to a target, but one costs an extra $200 in taxes and a nine-month wait for registration, and the other does not. With new technology like the pistol brace challenging the boundaries of nearly century-old gun laws every year, it’s only a matter of time before the NFA dies a lonely death of bureaucratic irrelevance.

Christian Lowe is the editorial director with military media company We Are The Mighty and the former editor of Shooting Sports Retailer magazine.

Click to expand...

vreihen said:

Is it a shotgun (Business Insider article) or a pump-action rifle (taskandpurpose.com article)?????

Click to expand...

Uwe said:

But I'm not sure why anyone would want a pump-action rifle chambered in .223 that weighs nearly 10 pounds.

Click to expand...

You Can Get Charged With Murder For Defensive Gun Use -- Even In A 'Stand Your Ground' State

George Leef , CONTRIBUTOR
MAY 21, 2017 @ 09:45 AM

Since American citizens have the right to keep and bear arms (not just law enforcement officials, as gun control advocates maintain), it would seem to follow that they’re entitled to use their weapons when they are threatened.

More than a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that in Beard v. United States, where the first Justice Harlan wrote that the defendant, who had been convicted of manslaughter for killing a man in a violent dispute, was not obliged to retreat, not to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground, and meet any attack upon him with a deadly weapon, in such a way and with such force as, under all the circumstances, he, at the moment honestly believed, and had reasonable grounds to believe, were necessary to save his own life, or to protect himself from great bodily injury.

To codify that right and prevent people from being put on trial for reasonable, defensive gun use when a prosecutor thinks they might instead have retreated or fled, 24 states have enacted “stand your ground” statutes. Among them is North Carolina, but a recent case there shows that when prosecutors and judges want to convict a man for using his gun, the “stand your ground” law can be trampled upon.

Gyrell Lee had been celebrating New Year’s Eve with his cousin Jamiel Walker in the latter’s home. Throughout the evening, a known troublemaker, Quinton Epps, came by and argued with Walker. When Epps returned with friends and became increasingly belligerent, Lee decided that he should get his gun from his car just in case matters got worse. Lee had completed his concealed carry class and was familiar with the law on gun use.

Epps returned once more and a shouting match between himself and Walker ensued in the street. Walker lost his temper and punched Epps, at which point Epps drew a pistol and shot Walker in the stomach. Walker fell and Epps then turned his gun on Lee, who had his gun out. Lee fired and killed Epps.

Lee was subsequently arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He was a bystander who had acted in self-defense, but nevertheless local officials wanted to make an example of him.

At trial, Lee’s attorney argued that he had acted in self-defense. But in charging the jury, the judge failed to make any mention of the state’s “stand your ground” law or the defendant’s right to use force in the defense of his cousin (who had died of his wounds). The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
On appeal, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, holding that the trial judge had not committed “plain error” in charging the jury without bringing up the state’s “stand your ground” statute. In pertinent part, that law reads “A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat in any place he or she has the lawful right to be if …he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another.” The Court of Appeals wasn’t convinced that the judge had made an error because it wasn’t sure that the statute applied in Lee’s case due to its uncertainty that a public street outside his home counted as “a place he had the lawful right to be.”

Good grief – if the General Assembly had meant to except public areas such as streets from the statute’s reach, it certainly would have said so.

The Court of Appeals also questioned whether the law applied since it didn’t see that Lee was truly in “imminent” danger. Apparently the judges thought Lee somehow knew that he could have just run away from the scene in safety.

Lee’s case has been appealed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina and Cato Institute has filed an amicus brief. In it, Camden Webb and Ilya Shapiro contend, “The outcome of this case is important not just because of the injustice done to Mr. Lee, but because allowing the Court of Appeals decision to stand would threaten effective invocation of no-retreat laws throughout the nation, and weaken a Second Amendment right to bear arms that the U.S. Supreme Court has only recently begun to reassert.” They’re right.

Prosecutors and judges often have a bias against those who own and use firearms. They are happy to find excuses for whittling away at the right of self-defense any time it involves a gun. Juries are frequently sympathetic to such defendants, but they need to be properly instructed on the law.

If this decision stands, it will undermine North Carolina’s “stand your ground” law and embolden prosecutors in other states with similar statutes to try their hands at evading their laws and imprisoning innocent people.

Click to expand...

Feds seize guns of 8 Chinese students at University of Arizona

Murphy Woodhouse, Arizona Daily Star
10:03 p.m. MT May 20, 2017


In recent months, federal and state officials have cited at least eight Chinese students at the University of Arizona for fraudulently obtaining resident hunting licenses, and also seized from them a number of firearms obtained using those licenses.

A high-ranking federal official told the Star his agency has no evidence of “malicious intent” by the eight students. Nevertheless, the purchases reveal what officials say is a potentially troubling vulnerability in federal and Arizona firearms laws, which exempt international students and other non-immigrant visa holders with hunting licenses from prohibitions on gun ownership.

One of the University of Arizona students cited said he was simply intrigued by American gun culture and wanted to have the experience of shooting his own firearm, a common motivation among the cited students, according to the federal official.

“It’s totally not possible,” Yifei Gong said of his prospects of ever owning a gun in China, where individual gun ownership is heavily restricted. “You probably won’t have a firearm for your life. That’s why most people want a firearm in China. They can’t buy one; that’s why they want one.”

Following advice found online and from fellow international students, Gong went to a Walmart and purchased a resident hunting license in November, according to him and Arizona Game and Fish Department records obtained by the Star. With the license, he said, he went to a gun shop and bought a semi-automatic RAS47, a U.S.-made rifle designed to mimic the Kalashnikov.

While self-defense was an element of his desire to purchase a gun, Yifei said it was first and foremost for “fun,” and he took his rifle to local shooting ranges several times.

But Gong’s time as an Arizona gun owner was to be short-lived.

In the early morning of Dec. 6, a state game and fish officer and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents went to Gong’s off-campus Tucson apartment to ask about his license and, ultimately, to seize his firearm, according to a report.

Gong was cited by the state officer for fraudulently obtaining a hunting license, a Class 2 misdemeanor to which he pleaded guilty and paid a fine. He is facing no other state or federal charges, according to court documents and a federal official.

Gong’s experience was not an isolated incident. As of early May, seven other Chinese students at the UA had been similarly cited and had their guns taken, according to court records and Homeland Security Investigations.

The citations and seizures are the most recent development in what Scott Brown, the Phoenix HSI special agent in charge, described as a more than yearlong project of the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats, a multiagency group of state and federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Despite the ominous sound of the name, Homeland Security Iinvestigations, the lead agency on the matter, does not suspect the eight UA students had any “malicious intent” when they acquired their licenses and guns, Brown said. He did say there are a “very small number” of other cases where there could be such intent, but even with those, Brown clarified, “our concern isn’t necessarily that they themselves pose the direct threat.”

“People like to go out in the desert and shoot guns — U.S. citizens and foreign students alike,” he said of what his agency found to be the most common motivation at play.

Brown said the cases highlight what he described as a loophole in firearms regulation that “could be exploited by those with malicious intent.”

“This is occurring in other states, where there are foreign students, where there are similar state hunting license requirements,” he added.

As it stands under federal law, nonimmigrant visa holders, like international students, are generally prohibited from owning guns. However, exemptions are made for those with a valid hunting license or permit, according to the ATF’s website. Arizona law reflects that exemption.

To buy a resident Arizona hunting license, applicants must have lived in the state for six months and not claim residency in another state or jurisdiction, according to the Game and Fish Department. One of the requirements of an F-1 student visa is maintaining “a residence abroad which you have no intention of giving up,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s website. That designation would typically prevent an international student from being able to get a resident hunting license.

“The visa paperwork make it very clear that they are not a resident of the United States,” said Gene Elms, law enforcement branch chief with Arizona Game and Fish. “They don’t qualify for a resident license in Arizona.”

Nevertheless, Gong said he easily purchased a resident tag at the Walmart on South Houghton Road last November, something Elms said he wasn’t surprised to hear. Other students purchased their resident licenses similarly, though two bought them through AZGFD’s online hunting license portal, according to AZGFD reports.

“I went to Walmart and they asked me how long I’ve been here. I’ve been here for at least two years, and they just assumed that I’m a resident of Arizona, and that’s the hunting license they gave me,” Gong said.

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed Gong’s purchase. “We have policies and procedures in place to help ensure we comply with applicable laws when issuing hunting licenses,” a statement from the company read. “A customer must provide valid identification at the time of the purchase to confirm residency.”

Several local gun shops declined to sell Gong a gun, citing their policy of not selling to international students. However, he said he eventually found one where his hunting license and other documents were enough to buy an RAS47.

“I did not know (I was breaking the law) until they seized my firearm. I believe that most of the people who are cited with this charge did not know that,” Gong said. “If there is something wrong with my hunting license, why would they sell it to me?”

Nonresident Arizona hunting licenses, while significantly more expensive than resident tags, can be purchased by nonimmigrant visa holders in Arizona. It’s legal for such license holders to buy and own a firearm until the license expires, at which time “they become a prohibited possessor,” said Mark Hart, a spokesman for the Game and Fish Department.

NO “BIG HAMMER”

In late 2015, the FBI issued a warning after it received reports of Chinese international students “legally” purchasing guns, according to a Dec. 23 Phoenix ABC 15 story.

In one case detailed in the broadcast, a Chinese student was expelled and deported after bringing two AR-15s onto the Arizona State University campus. Brown described that incident as “the most serious” in Arizona involving an armed international student.

Then, on Jan. 16, Juang Yue, a 19-year-old Chinese student at ASU, was shot and killed in a road-rage incident, news of which spread quickly in the Chinese student community.

In the wake of the tragedy, some Chinese students expressed an interest in buying guns for self-defense, and information on how to acquire them circulated online, as did warnings about the potential dangers of gun ownership. Gong said he was aware of the incident but that it played only a small role in his desire to purchase a gun.

It was around the time of the FBI warning and shooting that ASU’s Police Department asked the ATF for assistance with foreign student gun purchases. ATF, in turn, reached out to HSI because of its expertise in immigration-related issues, according to Brown.

In late 2016, state game and fish employees also noticed an uptick in students who did not appear to be residents coming to their Tucson office to buy hunting licenses, Elms said.

It took time, Brown said, to acquire the records necessary to determine who may have purchased licenses and firearms illegally, as well as what their intent was. The hunting license charges started coming in late 2016, according to court records. But those misdemeanor citations came from the state wildlife agency, not HSI, which could have brought more serious federal firearms charges.

“If there’s no malicious intent and we can get the students into compliance, remove the unlawfully obtained firearms ... we don’t need to drop a big hammer,” Brown said about why the state filed the charges.

Beyond Gong’s AK-47 lookalike, HSI agents have seized handguns and other rifles from the UA students.

“Every person that we’ve talked to, that we’ve seized weapons from, has acknowledged that they were not purchased for the purpose of hunting,” Brown said. “One person did say they were for hunting coyotes. The story was so hideously inaccurate he eventually decided that he didn’t want to stick with that story.”

UPDATES, REFORM NEEDED

There are several efforts underway to make it more difficult for foreign students to improperly purchase guns. While declining to go into details, Brown said the Legislature and Congress may eventually consider legislation that would “close the vulnerabilities.”

At the state level, the goal would be to reach “a standardized definition of residency in alignment with the federal definition of residency,” Brown said.

When it comes to nonresident hunting licenses, Homeland Security Investigations feels they should enable nonimmigrant visa holders to purchase only guns “specific to hunting/outdoor game sportsmanship,” according to a statement provided by the agency.

While he’s sympathetic to the concerns raised by HSI and others, Elms pointed out that many foreign nationals come to Arizona to hunt from around the world and legislative changes could negatively impact their ability to do so.

If the department’s commission backs a state legislative change, Elms said the state Game and Fish Department might support it, but at the end of the day, it is federal law “that creates this loophole,” referencing the hunting license exemption for nonimmigrant visa holders purchasing guns.

“Our state statute simply points to that federal legislation,” he added.

In their statement, HSI agrees that the federal exemptions for nonimmigrant visitors “need to be updated.”

“HSI and law enforcement partners have discussed that aliens here for specific hunting and/or professional sporting competition should be the only ones in possession of firearms or granted exemption to purchase firearms,” the statement goes on to say.

In the next few years, Game and Fish is switching to an online-only license application process, which could make inappropriately purchasing a resident license less likely. “When you do apply online, you’re prompted with a lot more questions than you would be at the Walmart,” Elms said.

Elms and Brown agreed that education could go a long way toward addressing the issue. In the wake of the citations, Brown said HSI and other agencies are working with state universities to make sure such students have a better understanding of gun laws and hunting license requirements.

“Life outside of campus can be complicated for all students, domestic and international, and occasionally in upholding all state and federal laws,” a statement from the UA reads, which goes on to say that when situations like this arise, the university’s staff communicates “with relevant legal and law enforcement entities as appropriate.”

“Most of the Chinese students here, the problem with them is just their lack of knowledge of the law system,” Gong said. “They know there’s a way you can purchase firearms, but they don’t actually know a lot about the firearms law.”

Click to expand...

Commentary: Second Amendment: An American tragedy

Fred Decker
Guest Columnist

A year ago, Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives staged a sit-in demanding a vote on federal gun-safety bills following the shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The National Rifle Association’s lobbying was largely blamed for no vote happening. But looking deeper, the Second Amendment with the unique American individualism wrapped around it underlies all. It is America’s fundamental gun problem.

As Michael Waldman at the Brennan Center for Justice suggests in Politico Magazine (2014), the NRA’s construing of the Second Amendment as an unconditional “right” to own and carry guns (a “right” beyond actual constitutional law in Supreme Court rulings) is why it thrives and has clout.

Without clout derived from Second Amendment hyperbole, we might not have, for instance, “stand your ground” laws in more than 20 states starting with Florida in 2005, laws that professors Cheng Cheng and Mark Hoekstra report in the Journal of Human Resources (2013) do not deter crime and are associated with more killing.

Fred Decker is a sociologist in Bowie, Md., with a background in health and social policy research. He earned his doctorate from Florida State University.
Pockets of America were waiting for the NRA’s Second Amendment fertilizer.

For many gun advocates, the gun is an important aspect of one’s identity and self-worth, a symbol of power and prowess in their cultural groups. Dan Kahan at Yale University with co-investigators studied gun-safety perceptions and wrote in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2007) how those most likely “to see guns as safest of all” were “the persons who need guns the most in order to occupy social roles and display individual virtues within their cultural communities.”

Or, as the essayist Alec Wilkinson writes more starkly on The New Yorker’s website (2012), although “the [gun] issue is treated as a right and a matter of democracy” underlying all is “that a gun is the most powerful device there is to accessorize the ego.”

A gun owner carrying his semiautomatic long rifle into a family department store, like Target, in a state permitting such if asked why will likely say because it is his “right.” He is unlikely to reveal the self-gratification gained from demonstrating the prowess and power of his identity, gained from using the gun “to accessorize the ego.” The Second Amendment here is convenient clothing to cover deeper unspoken needs, needs that go beyond the understandable pleasures and functions of typical hunting, for instance.

Australia is often mentioned as an example of nationwide gun-safety legislation reducing gun violence. Following the 1996 massacre of 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia, the government swiftly passed substantial gun-safety legislation. And as Professors Simon Chapman, Philip Alpers and Michael Jones wrote in JAMA’s June 2016 issue, “[F]rom 1979-1996 (before gun law reforms), 13 fatal mass shootings occurred in Australia, whereas from 1997 through May 2016 (after gun-law reforms), no fatal mass shootings occurred.”

But Australia also has nothing akin to the Second Amendment.

Anthropologist Abigail Kohn studied gun owners in the U.S. and Australia who were engaged in sport shooting. She describes in the Journal of Firearms and Public Policy (2004) how “it is immediately apparent when speaking to American shooters that they find it impossible to separate their gun ownership, even their interest in sport shooting, from a particular moral discourse around self, home, family, and national identity.”

And thus, “American shooters are hostile to gun control because just as guns represent freedom, independence — the best of American core values — gun control represents trampling on those core values.”

In contrast, the Australians “view guns as inseparable from shooting sports.” And “perhaps most importantly, Australian shooters believe that attending to gun laws, respecting the concept of gun laws, is a crucial part of being a good shooter; this is the essence of civic duty that Australian shooters conflate with being a good Australian.” While the Australian shooters thought some gun-safety policies were “useless and stupid,” they thought that overall gun-safety measures were “a legitimate means by which the government can control the potential violence that guns can do.”

Unlike Australia (itself an individualist-oriented country), America has the Second Amendment. And that amendment has fostered a unique individualism around the gun, an individualism perpetrating more harm than safety.

Maybe someday the Second Amendment will no longer reign as a prop serving other purposes and, thus, substantive federal gun-safety legislation happens. But as Professor Charles Collier wrote in Dissent Magazine: “Unlimited gun violence is, for the foreseeable future, our [America’s] fate and our doom (and, in a sense, our punishment for [Second Amendment] rights-based hubris).”

The Second Amendment, today, is a song of many distorted verses. A song of a uniquely American tragedy.

Fred Decker is a sociologist in Bowie, Md., with a background in health and social policy research. He earned his doctorate from Florida State University.

Click to expand...

Employees with CCW Permits at Work

Emerging Issues in Security
Dr. Steve Albrecht
Thursday - June 15, 2017

More state governors are signing legislation allowing employees who hold a valid a concealed carry weapon (CCW) permit to bring their guns to work, college campuses, and even K–12 schools in some rare instances. These new state laws can clash with company policies about firearms on the property.

At least 22 states have passed legislation that allows employees to bring their firearms to work, usually if they hold a valid CCW permit and their employer allows it inside the building. By contrast, most company policies will grudgingly allow firearms in their employee parking lots but not inside the facility. This collision of citizens/employee rights versus the rights of a company to create its own response, has predictably led to anger and several lawsuits from all sides.

Employees with CCWs say the rigors of the CCW permit process, along with their training and possession of their firearms at work makes a workplace violence incident or mass attack less likely, because a potential perpetrator would know they are armed and can defend themselves. Employers counter this by asking, “How do you prove a negative?” meaning it’s impossible to measure that type of deterrence value.

Companies have significant worries about the many liability issues attached to allowing employees to bring their guns to work: theft of the weapon from the employee’s desk, backpack, or briefcase; accidental discharges; horseplay and displaying the weapon in an unsafe manner around coworkers; domestic violence between dating employees, which may lead to lethal violence from a firearm either has on-site; and the built-in intimidation factor that a manager, supervisor, or coworker might feel when arguing with a subordinate or coworker known to be armed.

And companies have legitimate concerns about whether armed employees have the skills and tactical mind set to actually shoot a mass attacker, as opposed to following the run-hide-fight active shooter protocol and waiting for the arrival of trained law enforcement, who are already mentally prepared and tactically ready to engage. Company attorneys see the firm as liable if armed employees act or fail to act, without waiting for the police, or cause a wrongful death suit by shooting the wrong person or missing the attacker and hitting someone else.

HR and Security professionals agree that for any firm to allow firearms inside their facilities, these minimum standards will have to be in place: preferred program status for retired military personnel or law enforcement officers (they can be part of an initial pilot program of employees who have volunteered to be armed); proof of a valid CCW permit; proof of gun ownership and annual or semiannual firearms proficiency; an annual medical and psychological evaluation by a physician and a mental health clinician; a current police background check; a company registration program, to know who is armed and with what; locked employee firearm storage areas, with limited access; armed security officers at the site as well; and workplace violence awareness training for all employees.

Click to expand...

vreihen said:

Obviously not an issue at RTHQ.....

http://totalsecuritydailyadvisor.blr.com/emerging-issues-in-security/employees-ccw-permits-work/

Click to expand...