http://rawstory.com/…

Walt Disney World, backed by the Florida Retail Federation and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, has sparked a row with state lawmakers and the National Rifle Association over Florida’s “Preservation and Protection of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Motor Vehicles Act of 2008,” enacted July 1, which allows employees with concealed weapons permits to store their guns in their cars during work hours.

Disney maintains its zero-tolerance policy towards guns, warning that taking a gun onto company property could be grounds for termination. Disney’s Animal Kingdom security guard Edwin Sotomayor, accordingly, was fired on Monday following a Friday suspension; Sotomayor had announced to local media that he would be storing a gun in his car in accordance with the law but in violation of Disney’s policy. He refused to let his employer search the car.

“It seems if you work for Disney,” the NRA said on its website, “you give up not only your Second Amendment rights, but your First Amendment rights as well.”

This is stupid. The 2nd Amendment is derived from general property rights theory. As Anthony Gregory over at LewRockwell.com said of this:

They want to force Disney World to allow weapons on their private property. This is self-defeating. The right to bear arms, like all rights, must be rooted in self-ownership and private property. Otherwise, I could impose my “right” to bear arms on someone else’s land by forcing myself, armed, into someone’s home. That defeats the whole purpose. If you can’t respect someone’s right to keep guns off their private property, it’s hard to get others to respect your right to keep guns on your own. The current situation is intolerable all around: Even under Scalia’s standard, people can’t keep own, and carry any weapons they choose within the bounds of private property, and yet at the same time people can’t forbid weapons on their own property.

http://www.cnn.com/…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Washington D.C.’s sweeping ban on handguns is unconstitutional.
The justices voted 5-4 against the ban with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether the city’s ban violated the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” by preventing individuals — as opposed to state militias — from having guns in their homes.

District of Columbia officials argued they had the responsibility to impose “reasonable” weapons restrictions to reduce violent crime, but several Washingtonians challenged the 32-year-old law. Some said they had been constant victims of crimes and needed guns for protection.

There were 143 gun-related murders in Washington last year, compared with 135 in 1976, when the handgun ban was enacted.

The judgment is not yet on the SCOTUS’s website.

It’s another 5-4 ruling. I don’t like these splits. The ruling doesn’t have the power as it would otherwise. In the short term the legal result is the same but in the long run I think it gives more room to question it in the future.

As you can see in the graph below the handgun ban made no apparent or calculable difference in the number of homicides in DC:

Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign just said on CNN that “we disagree with the courts interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Given the history, at least going back to the 1939 ruling, we feel it refers to a ‘well-regulated Militia.’” So he admits that the meaning was different.

Now he just said if you just look at the debates from the amendment’s time that you’d see his interpretation was correct.

Really?

• “[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
  –James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46
• “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms … ”
  – Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
  –Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette
• “No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
  – Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution
• “The right of the people to keep and bear … arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country …”
  – James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789
• ” … to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
  – George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380
• ” … but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights …”
  – Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29
• “The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”
  – Zacharia Johnson, delegate to Virginia Ratifying Convention

Just a few. Obviously it was a topic of discussion at the time. If the Congress had the ability to raise an army and control militias why then would they have to put in the 2nd Amendment less they felt the Congress couldn’t be trusted?

Over at Yahoo we find a quotes from the justices:

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

What part of “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” does he not understand? “The people” and “shall not be infringed” seem pretty clear to me. The amendment would be pointless unless it was for the people. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 of the US Constitution says of the powers of Congress: To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States, respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

So, again, why the 2nd Amendment? They can arm them but not disarm them?

I never updated the blog about my Firearms Permit out of sheer laziness. I wasn’t too busy or distracted–I just wasn’t interested in recapping the story into text form after I talked bile’s ear off about it last Wednesday. If there was a way to do voice posts (idea!), I would have opted in that direction. At any rate, in case there was anyone on the edge of their seat over it, the thrilling conclusion of: You have the right to bear arms. Period.

I left work early last Wednesday and headed over to the Nutley Police Department where I ended up waiting in the “lobby” before I was admitted entry to the Detectives’ Offices upstairs. There was a woman in the lobby with me, pacing and showing 8×11 black and white photos of what looked like a fallen tree to a police officer and dispatcher. She kept saying that she wasn’t able to move her car because of the tree. She spoke in broken English. I couldn’t tell what her first language was. The police officer, a hard-looking older woman, asked her if she called the police when this happened. She said yes, waved the photos back and forth, and impatiently said the cops told her they would eventually get to her but had other things to do that day. At that point, the police officer buzzed me through the main door, and I walked up to the second floor.

I had to ring a bell because the door was locked. An older man opened the door and let me in. I gave him my first name, and he said, “Oh yes, your permit. Just take a seat.” I watched him open the file cabinet and go through some papers. This was the same man that took my prints and chatted with me on the phone the week prior. He came back over after a few minutes to tell me the laminating machine was warming up and that I owed them roughly $70. When I told him I paid in September, he never questioned me and was shocked it had taken this long to get my papers together. He fingerprinted my permit and brought me to the sink, instructed me on the proper way of washing away ink (scrub with liquid soap and only use water when the ink is completely gone; the soap loses its effectiveness when mixed with water). When I finished I walked over to the laminating machine. I asked him for his name, shook his hand and thanked him for being so incredibly helpful and informative every time I called. Dennis gave me that, I’m just doing my job look and smiled. After explaining to me exactly how I should go about purchasing a firearm, we talked about gun laws again and how ineffective most police officers can be about the subject.

He agreed that bile being charged $56 twice for applying in North Arlington and shortly after moving to Fort Lee was garbage. He started telling me a story about how he received an application a while back from a guy that answered “yes” pertaining to him having a record. The explanation? The kid was in the town park after curfew when he was in high school. The same applicant also explained that he had charges brought up on him for assault with a weapon. Dennis said when he saw that, he had to dig up what the charge was. After investigating old records, he discovered that this guy was charged with firing a potato gun with his younger brother 10 years ago. When he brought this information to the Chief of Police, Dennis said he asked if they were really going to get in the way of this person’s right to defend themselves because of a childhood prank? He shook his head and said, “It’s ridiculous.” He never told me if the applicant ever received his permit.

Before I left, he assured me that when I apply for another Purchaser’s Permit, it won’t take that long at all.

The Second Amendment needs more people like Dennis in law enforcement. As much as I was annoyed that it took so long, I’m glad I got a relatively hassle-free experience out of it. And there you have it, another positive police story on the blog. Maybe next time I go back and see Dennis, I’ll ask him if he’s a member of LEAP.

I guess filling out bile’s Firearm Reference Form for the second time inspired me call over to Nutley’s Police Department to inquire about my own ID. It’s been about nine months (Sep 19, my birthday) since I dropped off the paperwork and got fingerprinted. In those nine months I’ve seen bile, bosco, and ramuh get their ID’s and make their purchases. Ridiculous, I know. I suppose I could put a little blame on myself for not being overly persistent or aggressive, but I had little faith in my abilities to make anyone in the police department move any faster than they were currently going.

My experience throughout this process was that police officers and detectives have notably different attitudes about firearm possession. The police officers in my town always sounded “put-off” with any phone call I made–this includes my inquires about when I would be able to come down to process my fingerprints. They changed the times and dates on a weekly basis–to which I found out later were incorrect, thanks many to the detectives (who rolled their eyes when I explained how I was misled). The detectives were more than happy to answer any questions, go over my paperwork for accuracy, and fingerprint me twice (during the first round of printing, the computer froze and my prints were lost). They’re also very open about airing out their disgust of the system. They’ve critiqued the FBI’s ability to review prints in a timely basis and how the NJ Freeholder’s dragged their feet when they should have been verifying my mental background check. I was told that I should receive a phone call relatively soon:

I asked him what the phone call was for. He said, “Um, well, so you can pick up your ID; the nature of this conversation.” He sounded like he was holding back a laugh to avoid embarrassing me.

Being a stickler for following procedure, I had to ask, “But you guys never sent out the reference letters. Aren’t you planning on doing that?”

This time he laughed, “No.”

A little confused and interested, I explained what the procedure was (to my knowledge) and asked him why they weren’t going to bother with the references.

He replied, “We aren’t issuing the reference letters because it’s your Second Amendment right to own a firearm. Plain and simple.” He said that so clearly, as if his intention was to ensure that I never confused that right with anything else anyone would or could have said to me to skew it. For a moment I was speechless, due to half-expecting some run-around, asinine reply. Attempting to regain some ground in the conversation I stammered, “Well, yea. Exactly!” I could have just as easily said, “well duh,” and it would have been the same effect.

Still surprised, I continued the conversation further, “You know, in Fort Lee, they wouldn’t take that for an answer when I filled out the reference letter for my boyfriend. They called me up, told me they didn’t really want my opinion on gun control, and asked me to fill out another form if I was seriously interested about being a reference.”

He laughed, “Well, let’s be reasonable. If I am your worst enemy, are you really going to make me your reference? References don’t mean anything.”

We talked a little about gun politics and how if a criminal wants a gun, they’re going to get it through illegal means anyway, and how all these references and background checks really don’t do much.

It was a pretty refreshing conversation, I’m not going to lie.

It’s totally possible that my file has been sitting on their counter for months, and the only reason I have a pick-up date is because I called in today. Since the detectives have consistently kept positive, down-to-earth attitudes towards me, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time and shelf my cynicism… at least until next Wednesday.

I receive a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize around noon today.
I usually don’t answer unknowns, as they tend to end with me struggling to explain to Spanish-speaking Texans that they’ve dialed the wrong number.
This was my conversation, to the best of my memory:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Um, yes. Is this Laurie Par-a-vati?

Me: Speaking.

Caller: Yes, hi. This is Officer (inaudible) from the Fort Lee Police Dept.

Me: Oh, hi. (I immediately try to remember if I missed paying a parking ticket or something)

Officer: Yes, you submitted a reference letter for an Antonio Musumeci. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Me: Close enough, and yes I did.

Officer: For a fire arm permit.

Me: On, yes! (possibly a little too eager)

Officer: (long pause) I’m not sure if you completely understood what you were supposed to write on the reference form.

Me: What do you mean?

Officer: Well, (sympathetic pause) in the section where you’re supposed to explain why you think Antonio should get a fire arm, you wrote ‘because he wants one’ and ‘it’s his 2nd Amendment Right’.

Me: Yeah. Is there someth–

Officer: I always say these papers aren’t clear enough.

Me: …

Officer: Well, (pause) we aren’t really concerned with your opinion on gun control. I mean, if you look at the news, just giving someone a gun because they want one really hasn’t worked out well.

Me: (I opt to bite my tongue instead of getting into a blog of bile discussion) Oh, yea, I watch the news. I mean…

Officer: What this is suppose to serve is (pause), a moment to sort of vouch for Mr. Antonio. Tell us briefly why you think he should get a firearm. I figured you probably didn’t understand the intention of that section.

Me: I see. Because I figured, since Fort Lee already issued him a firearm.

Officer: (pause) Yes, well, you know. If you look at the news, just giving someone a gun because they want one really doesn’t work out well. If you watch the news (nervous laugh) you’ll see this.

Me: Oh, okay. Right.

Officer: Well, if you are serious about being his point of contact…

Me: Can you send me another one then?

Officer: We’ll send you another form, and just briefly explain if you think he is capable of owning a firearm.

Me: No problem. Thank you.

Officer: Have a nice day.

I want to throw this out there: the officer was not being a jerk. He stuttered, was really trying to be polite, and almost sounded like he was expecting me to get confrontational with him.

So am I surprised that my comments got me a phone call? Yes and no. I knew what they wanted to read was most definitely not what I wrote, that’s for damn sure. But the fact that they actually took the bait, wasted the time to call me, have this conversation, and to resend the reference letter annoys me a bit. Sure, now I have blog of bile subject matter to post about, but at the expense of bile’s firearm license waiting period. I guess the new game is seeing how long it will take them to mail out the blank form again.

Moral of the story? The 2nd Amendment is not a good enough reason for wanting a firearm.