UPDATE: They tried again and the bill passed. Terrible news.

Great news: California Senate rejects open-carry gun ban

The California Senate rejected a bill Monday that would have made it illegal to carry unloaded guns in public, but lawmakers will give the vote one more try.

Monday’s 20-16 vote fell one short of the majority needed, but the Senate will reconsider the measure Tuesday.

The bill, AB1934, was introduced after a series of demonstrations by gun-rights organizations during which they encouraged participants to openly carry unloaded weapons. California law lets gun owners carry a rifle or handgun in a holster if it is not loaded.

Via Instapundit, who writes

Okay, it’s a small thing. But it’s California.

I actually don’t think it’s a “small thing” at all. Though I’m not what you’d call an “open carry advocate” I do believe that the right to carry guns legally is a crucial one. The problem with open carry in California is not that it’s allowed, it’s that the gun must be unloaded. Defeating this bill maintains a bad staus quo, but it makes the fight for the legal allowance to carry loaded guns a possibility in the future. That would have been far more difficult had the legal allowance to carry even unloaded guns been revoked.

The stated reasoning behind the bill was that too many people call the police whenever they see a gun in public, and since they cannot tell whether a gun is loaded or unloaded they somehow have a right to be concerned.

This is my issue with that: If people called police because they saw black people driving fast in a car and couldn’t tell whether or not they had just robbed a convenience store, they’d be bigots. If people called police because they saw some Hispanics gathered on a street corner and couldn’t tell whether or not they were in the country legally, they’d be bigots. If people saw some Muslims talking to each other quietly and called the police because they couldn’t tell whether or not they were terrorists, they’d be bigots.

So why is it when someone sees a gun owner and calls police because they can’t tell whether or not the gun is loaded that they have a right to be concerned?

People just calling 911 out of the blue just because they saw some black people driving fast in a car, just because they saw some Mexican-looking people gathered on a street, or just because they saw some Muslim-looking folks conversing in whispers do not deserve to be taken seriously and should be held accountable. The same goes for people who call in the cops just because they saw someone with a gun on their hip.

Bill A1810, which would have required registration of long guns, was also rejected.

There’s been a lot of new coverage of the 5-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and all the problems it caused in New Orleans. Like the original go-round, the plight of the areas where the hurricane actually hit got much less coverage. So go check out this post I wrote back at the time on Murdoc Online showing many photos of the effects of Katrina east of New Orleans.

Something else that must not be forgotten about Katrina and its aftermath was the eagerness with which the local New Orleans law enforcement agencies tried to confiscate legally-owned firearms. At a time when people were on their own more than ever, the police spent an awful lot of effort to disarm law-abiding citizens when they should have been protecting them.

If you have only a passing knowledge of those events, I heartily recommend reading The Great New Orleans Gun Grab by Gordon Hutchinson and Todd Masson.

Does Dressing Up as a Cop, Staging Fake Traffic Stops, Looking for Drugs, and then Keeping the Drugs Violate the Fourth Amendment?

At the Volokk Conspiracy:

In United States v. Torres-Sobrado, — F.Supp.2d –, 2010 WL 3290958 (D. Puerto Rico 2010), handed down last week, twelve defendants allegedly dressed up as police officers and pulled over motorists for traffic violations. One of the twelve was an actual police officer, but apparently the rest were not. They would then look for drugs, and when they found drugs they would keep the drugs and later sell them.

At least one man was killed during the, um, operations. Among the charges against them was an accusation that they violated the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But

In last week’s decision, the defendants moved to dismiss this count of the indictment as a matter of law. They made two arguments. First, the defendants argued that they are not real police officers, and therefore are not state actors under Fourth Amendment law. Second, they argued that even if they were state actors, they did not violate the Fourth Amendment because their stop and seizure complied with Fourth Amendment standards. The stop was based on probable cause, the drugs were in plain view, etc.

One commenter writes:

I certainly think it’s just for those that pretend to be state actors to suffer the same consequences of their actions as if they were in fact state actors. If we are going to enhance the punishment for a cop that uses his badge and uniform to assist him in carrying out a crime, why would we not want to treat an impostor in the same way?

That makes me wonder about places with minimum sentences for using a gun during a crime. Does that minimum sentence apply if the defendant uses a fake gun which the victims believe to be real? How about “assault with a deadly weapon” if the “deadly weapon” is not real?

Another commenter:

I think that the civil rights violation is the least of their problems.

Agreed. And I guess I sort of wonder why that charge was made in the first place. But all I know of the case is what I quickly read today, so there is certainly a lot of detail that I am ignorant of.

Via Instapundit.

Snowflakes in Hell:

Looks like they are relenting on the policy of banning firearms in public housing, but it’s not clear yet whether their new policy is going to be acceptable.

I hadn’t been following this. Crazy.

Mayor Daley backs off plan to limit residents to one gun

The headline makes it sound like good news, but check out some more details in the Sun-Times:

It prohibits possession of those handguns outside the home. The home is specifically defined as the inside portion “traditionally used for living purposes” — not the garage, yard, porch, deck or walkway.

No more than one firearm in the home could be “assembled and operable.” The rest must be secured by a trigger lock or locked box or “broken down in a non-functioning state.”

Additionally, a $100 firearms permit good for three years would be required for each gun owner and an application fee of $15 plus an annual “reporting fee” of $10 for each gun. Mandatory classroom training and range time (cost unspecified) would be required to get the firearms permit.

Here’s an interesting bit: people over 18 but under 21 would require parental permission to obtain a gun. They want to tell 20-year-olds to go get a note from their mommy.

No gun shops allowed. Period. Buy your guns elsewhere. (Though I’ve got to think that ten thousand prospective gun shop owners are licking their chops about the possibility of setting up a store just outside the city.)

Finally, the city would maintain a list of “permissible” guns that residents could own. No word on what would be on the list.

Chicago Corporation Counsel Mara Georges, who a couple of days ago said that previously proposed restrictions, including one handgun per person, were reasonable and would stand up in court says, well, that these new proposed restrictions are reasonable and would stand up in court.

She also makes the driver’s license comparison. I keep seeing that one. I really don’t think those people making that argument have thought things through.

Via Say Uncle and Newsalert:

Chicago Moves Quickly To Draft New Gun Ordinance

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will push for a strict handgun ordinance to replace its doomed gun ban that will likely include limiting each resident to a single handgun, requiring gun owners to have insurance and prohibiting gun stores from setting up shop in the city, his top lawyer said Tuesday.

This is all part of the way things are done. Rulings are handed down, the losing side tries to make new rules that comply to the letter of the new but the spirit of the old. If it’s not good enough, the new rules get challenged and, if warranted, overturned. And establish precedent along the way.

Chicago Corporation Counsel Mara Georges weighed in:

She said that limiting Chicago residents to one handgun would pass constitutional muster. Nowhere has the court determined that “a person is entitled to more than one handgun,” she said. “And one handgun is sufficient for self defense.”

She said banning gun shops in the city is another reasonable restriction. She said studies have shown a disproportionate number of shootings near gun shops and because there are dozens of gun shops in the Chicago area — 40 in Cook County alone — a ban would not inconvenience gun buyers.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about Georges’ logic, let’s just look at her previous statements about the 2nd Amendment, gun laws, and how they’ll hold up in court:

City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges has told two City Council committees she’s confident Chicago’s law will stand.

Georges tells Aldermen the Supreme Court’s decision on Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban shouldn’t apply to Chicago, because previous Supreme Court rulings have said Second Amendment “right to bear arms” doesn’t apply to local governments, like Cities. She says D.C. is a federal jurisdiction.

Hmmm. She didn’t quite get that one right.

Anyway, it’s probably easier for everyone if she convinces Daley to just keep trying to restrict things unreasonably. That way the challengers don’t have to travel all over the country to get stuff struck down.

On the road right now, but here are a few thoughts about the decision.

Like Heller, this is a game-changing landmark. But we didn’t get where we are in a couple of years, and it’s going to take more than a couple of years to get back closer to where we should be.

However, sooner or later people are going to have to give up on the whole “the 2nd Amendment means guns for an organized government militia” thing. We’ve been telling them for years and years that it doesn’t mean that. The Supreme Court keeps judging that it doesn’t mean that. At some point critics are going to have to accept that it doesn’t mean that.

UPDATE: Here’s something else by Reynolds. It includes:

the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions have made a major difference. In particular, they have offset the gun-control community’s longstanding effort to “denormalize” firearms ownership — to portray it as something threatening, deviant, and vaguely perverse, and hence demanding strict regulation, if not outright prohibition. That effort went on for decades, and received much media support. Two decades ago, it seemed to be working.

But with the Supreme Court saying that it’s clear the Framers regarded individual gun ownership as “necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” that effort must be seen as a failure now. Gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is the new normal, and the Second Amendment is now normal constitutional law.

I was asked last night what I thought this decision would mean by the person who told me that it had been handed down. I responded that since I hadn’t read any details about it, I could only say that I thought it was good and though I doubted gun laws in many places would change overnight, this decision would change the playing field and form a new foundation that future cases (and laws) would be built upon. The key is to maintain the momentum and not lose focus just because it looks like things are going well.

Why Chicagoans Need Guns by John Stossel:

Two years ago, the Heller case in DC was billed as the “landmark gun-control case.” But the Supreme Court is expected rule on a bigger case next week: McDonald vs Chicago. Heller only applied to Washington DC, but if the Supremes rule for Chicago gun owners next week, that could change laws nationwide.

BBC News

Gail Cochrane, 53, had kept the gun for 29 years following the death of her father, who had been in the Royal Navy.

Police found the weapon, a Browning self-loading pistol, during a search of her home in Dundee while looking for her son.

She admitted illegal possession of the firearm, an offence with a minimum five-year jail term under Scots law.

Cochrane told the High Court in Edinburgh that she had never contemplated she might be committing a crime by keeping the gun or that she might need to get a licence for the weapon.

She said: “I thought it was just a war trophy.”

It actually sounds like it’s a Czech-made pistol chambered for 7.65mm Browning ammunition, not a Browning pistol.

The judge in the case said”I am not satisfied that a reasonable explanation has been put forward for not handing this gun into the authorities throughout the 29-year period she says she has had it in her possession.”

and I guess that, considering the law, that it was the legal thing to do.

Which is why no such law must ever ever ever be allowed in this country.

Police were searching for her son who had missed a court date. They found the gun underneath a mattress. Did they think the guy was underneath the mattress?

Oh, well. She’ll be out when she’s 58.

Sad.

A lethal gun battle

The Boston Globe:

Will it really kill legal gun owners if we restrict them to one gun purchase a month? It may kill children if we don’t.

In some neighborhoods, it’s as easy to get your hands on a pistol as on a bag of Cheetos. We’re battling an epidemic of gun violence in this state, with 14-year-olds dying. We have to do something about gangs. But we also have to do something about guns.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 1,000 of the illegal guns recovered from criminals and crime scenes in Massachusetts last year and found that more than a third were originally bought — legally — right here.

How did they get into the bad guys’ hands? Some were stolen. And some were acquired through straw purchases: That’s where legitimate buyers purchase multiple weapons, then sell them illegally on the street.

Legislation being considered on Beacon Hill would limit gun buys to one every 30 days, making it impossible for traffickers to buy in bulk in Massachusetts.

So by their own admission, only one-third of the guns were bought legally. How many of those were bought more than one per month?

It seems that doing something about the other two-thirds of the crime guns would be more effective than limiting the rights of legal gun buyers. But that’s just Murdoc.

And they don’t quite get the “straw purchase” definition, either.