RKBA News: Hawaii Becomes First State to put Gun Owners in Federal Database

What a coincidence…the State BHO calls “home” just happens to be the first State to crack to big brothers Stalin-esque intimidation on gun control. -SF

Hawaii signed a bill Thursday to become the first state to enter gun owners into an FBI database that will automatically notify police if an island resident is arrested anywhere else in the country.

Gov. David Ige said in a statement that the legislation is about community safety and responsible gun ownership. He said it will help law enforcement agencies protect Hawaii residents and visitors.

State Sen. Will Espero, who introduced the bill, and the Honolulu Police Department said the measure could serve as a model for other states. However, critics believe gun owners shouldn’t have to be entered in a database to practice a constitutional right.

Most people entered in the program, known as the “Rap Back” database, are in “positions of trust,” such as school teachers and bus drivers Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division said in May. Hawaii is the first to add gun owners.

Supporters say the law would make Hawaii a leader in safe gun laws. Allison Anderman, a staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the bill was “groundbreaking,” and that she hadn’t heard of other states introducing similar measures.

Yet others say gun owners shouldn’t have to be entered in a database to practice a constitutional right.

“I don’t like the idea of us being entered into a database. It basically tells us that they know where the guns are, they can go grab them” Jerry Ilo, a firearm and hunting instructor for the state, told the Associated Press last month. “We get the feeling that Big Brother is watching us.”

The National Rifle Association and the Hawaii Rifle Association had called on their members to oppose the registration bill and the measure barring those convicted of stalking or sex assault from owning or possessing a gun.

“This is an extremely dangerous bill. Exercising a constitutional right is not inherently suspicious,”  Amy Hunter for the National Rifle Association, said in May. “Hawaii will now be treating firearms as suspect and subject to constant monitoring.”

Despite pressure from the gun lobby, Ige signed the measure barring gun ownership from those convicted of stalking or sex assault and a third piece of legislation Thursday.

He also signed a third measure that gives police the power to seize firearms and ammunition if the homeowner has been disqualified because of mental problems, according to Hawaii News Now.

The Associated Press contributed to this Report.

Read the Original Article at Fox News

Gun Law News: Mississippi Becomes 10th Constitutional Carry State

Mississippi and Governor Phil Bryant are fast becoming one of my favorite States and Governors (Right Behind my Home State of Texas of course). First the Religious Freedom Bill and Now Constitutional Carry!! It does my heart good to hear and read about so many liberals CRYING and COMPLAINING…As the old saying goes: You know you are on the right track when Liberals Despise and Hate You!  Good For You Governor Bryant!!! -SF

Mississippi became the 9th state to restore permitless carry today, the 15th of April, 2016.  It seems poetic that Governor Bryant chose to sign HB 786 into law a few days before most citizens were required to file their federal taxes. The easing of one burden helps reduce the pain of another, in this case.  HB 786 is titled the “Church Protection Act”, which is a correct description.  The bill provides that churches can create volunteer church security that will have the same protections that private security guards now have in Mississippi.  The program will require training and the designation of the volunteers in writing.

The permitless carry portion of the bill was an amendment that made a small, incremental change to Mississippi law.  Last year, in 2015, the legislature changed the law to allow people to carry concealed firearms in purses, bags, cases, briefcases, and other fully enclosed case, without a permit.  This year the amendment to HB 786 added pistols or revolvers carried in a “sheath, belt holster or shoulder holster”.  There is not much left.  From HB 786, as it was sent to Governor Bryant.  Underlined words have been added to the statute by the bill:

(24) * * *  A license * * * under this section is not required for a loaded or unloaded pistol or revolver to be carried upon the person in a sheath, belt holster or shoulder holster or in a purse, handbag, satchel, other similar bag or briefcase or fully enclosed case if the person is not engaged in criminal activity other than a misdemeanor traffic offense, is not otherwise prohibited from possessing a pistol or revolver under state or federal law, and is not in a location prohibited under subsection (13) of this section.

The law has a provision to prevent the use of state resources for the enforcement of any future federal regulation or executive order that infringes on the Second Amendment or the Mississippi Constitution of 1890:

SECTION 5. No federal executive order, agency order, law not enrolled by the United States Congress and signed by the President of the United States, rule, regulation or administrative interpretation of a law or statute issued, enacted or promulgated after July 1, 2016, that violates the United States Constitution or the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 shall be enforced or ordered to be enforced by any official, agent or employee of this state or a political subdivision thereof.

Vermont has had “Constitutional” carry for as long as it has been a state.  The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15th, 1791, a great Christmas present to the United States, four months after Vermont became a state in the same year.  In 1791, no permit was required for either open or concealed carry of weapons.

Vermont, plus the nine states that have restored “Constitutional” carry now make up 20% of all the states in the Union.  They are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming.  They extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and from the Canadian border to the Mexican.   It will be more difficult to call them a  “handful” now, as the outnumber the states that still cling to the outdated notion of “may issue” concealed carry permits.

Those states are Hawaii, California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Maryland.

The new law is not absolute, perfect, “Constitutional” carry.  All the “Constitutional” carry states have some restraints on carry.  In Arizona, you are required to have a permit to carry in a restaurant that serves alcohol.  In Wyoming, you are required to be a resident; in Mississippi, you are not allowed to carry in your waistband without a holster.

There are several other states that are prime candidates to pass permitless carry.  New Hampshire and Utah passed bills that were vetoed by their governors.  Louisiana and Missouri have implemented strong Constitutional amendments to protect the right to keep and bear arms;  the courts may not allow a permit requirement for a fundamental right.

I will not be surprised if a majority of the states have Constitutional carry by 2025.  That would only be another 16 states.  Three states became “Constitutional” carry states just this year.  The infringements on the exercise of Second Amendment rights have always been based on racism and lies.  Now they are being repealed, and Second Amendment rights are being restored.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

Read the Original Article at Ammo-Land

 

Let Political Correctness Be Damned!

I make it a point to stay away from the political carnival, and I know the actions of politicians are ALWAYS duplicitous and eventually self-serving, but it really is a breath of Fresh air to see a Governor, more to the point, a SOUTHERN Governor, stand up against the rising tide of liberalism and Federal Extortion of the States to ignore the MAJORITY’s Moral and Religious beliefs.

After Georgia Governor Nathan Deal recently vetoed a similar bill (because of Federal and Corporate Extortion) and by consequence cow-towed to the Gay Rights minority, I thought the South was doomed to join the rest of the country in that long grey line of the “Politically Correct”, but Governor Phil Bryant has thrown a huge monkey wrench into all that. Let’s hope his example of  sticking up for a States Sovereign Rights spreads like wildfire. Thank You Governor. -SF

On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act into law. To protect religious liberty in his state, he stood up against corporate bullies and leftist pressure groups.

The Republican governor should be an inspiration to lawmakers everywhere.

In the last few years, states and localities nationwide have prosecuted small businesses for declining involvement in gay marriage ceremonies. We’ve seen the government do some pretty terrible things, like Washington state trying to bankrupt a 70-year-old florist, or Oregon fining a bakery $135,000 and then placing a gag order on the owners to silence them.

We’ve even seen the most intolerant tendencies of the Left’s rank-and-file whena pizza place in Indiana was threatened with violence for even discussing thepossibility of not participating in a gay wedding celebration.

 The message has been clear: It’s not enough to respect everyone, to live and let live. You must actively participate in ceremonies that go against your beliefs or the government will punish you.

To make matters worse, whenever state legislatures have considered religious freedom bills to protect regular Americans from this intolerance, activist groups and massive corporations like Disney, Hilton, and Marriott have shown up and threatened boycotts, protests, and relocations. Recently, lawmakers in West Virginia and Georgia have been cowed into shelving or vetoing these common sense policies.

This is the toxic atmosphere of corporate bullying Bryant chose to fight. As he wrote in a signing statement:

I am signing HB 1523 into law to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by state government or its political subdivisions […]This bill merely reinforces the rights which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom as stated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A shocking amount of slanted news stories uncritically describe Mississippi’s new law as “anti-gay” or “discriminatory.” Nothing could be further from the truth

A shocking amount of slanted news stories uncritically describe Mississippi’s new law as “anti-gay” or “discriminatory.” Nothing could be further from the truth—you can read the details here. The law now simply protects religious organizations and a narrow slice of small businesses from being forced by government to engage in behavior that contradicts their deeply held beliefs. Nobody is being denied services because of who they are.

Bryant and the Mississippi state legislature have set a sterling example for other states seeking to protect the rights of all Americans. They did so in the face of vitriolic, misleading opposition from progressives and the corporations they use as instruments of bullying. This took real courage, and deserves our praise.

Read the Original Article at Daily Signal

Texas News: Supreme Court Get’s It Wrong Again…Non-Citizens SHOULD NOT be Counted

The Federal Judicial Branch is more screwed up than a soup sandwich. Bad Call. -SF

In a loss for voters, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against two residents of Texas who had argued that the Texas legislature diluted their votes when it used total population to redraw state Senate districts.

In Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court allowed states to use total population in redrawing district lines, even though that this includes a large number of noncitizens (legal and illegal), felons, and others who are ineligible to vote.

Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger challenged the state Senate districts drawn by the Texas legislature using total population in 2013. They claimed that both the number of citizens of voting age and the number of registered voters in their districts deviated substantially—between 31 and 49 percent—from the “ideal” population of a Texas Senate district. They argued that this disparity significantly diluted their votes in comparison to those of voters who live in districts with large numbers of non-voters.

 According to this logic, their votes were worth roughly half those of voters in other districts. In other words, they claimed that their Senate districts had the same number of representatives as other districts that contained the same number of people but only half the number of eligible voters.

This is a particular problem in Texas, which has almost two million illegal aliens, about seven percent of the state’s population.

‘One Person, One Vote’

By way of background, state legislatures reapportion voting districts for their state and federal representatives following each decennial Census. The guiding principle for states—“one person, one vote”—requires that all voters have approximately equal voting power.

This principle comes from a line of cases decided by the Supreme Court in the mid-1960s. Prior to that time, the Court had refused to intervene in redistricting controversies, claiming it was a “political question” that the courts should not consider.

According to the Court, the “one person, one vote” principle that it read into the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requires that “seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis.”

The Court never defined what population basis states could use. When the Court previously declined to hear a 2001 case similar to Evenwel v. Abbott, Justice Thomas Clarence observed that the Court “left a critical variable … undefined … the relevant ‘population’ that States and localities must equally distribute among their districts.”

Urban Lawmakers Dominate

Before the Supreme Court’s creation of the “one person, one vote” principle, many states had refused to redistrict for more than half a century, despite a dramatic nationwide population shift from rural to urban areas.

These state legislatures were dominated by rural legislators, who were not willing to reapportion and lose their power and control. The “one person, one vote” principle led to legislative districts being redrawn in nearly every state and urban areas gaining a large number of legislative seats.

Today, lawmakers from urban areas dominate many state legislatures the way rural areas used to because of the huge influx of noncitizens, both legal and illegal, into predominantly urban settings. The Court’s decision in Evenwel is a refusal to correct this problem, in sharp contrast to what it did sixty years ago when the situation was reversed.

Claims of vote dilution have been the driving force of redistricting cases for decades, and the Court has affirmed dozens of judgments against states and local governments for diluting the votes of its minority residents. Yet in Evenwel v. Abbott, the Court failed to enforce its “one person, one vote” principle evenhandedly. With this ruling, the Supreme Court has sanctioned states’ dilution of citizens’ votes.

Total Population

The Court has concluded that states may base their legislative districts on total population. In an opinion for six members of the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found that history, the Court’s precedents, and the settled practice of states using total population make clear that “it is plainly permissible for jurisdictions to measure equalization by the total population of state and local legislative districts.”

The majority also pointed out:

[N]onvoters have an important stake in many policy debates … and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies. By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total-population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation.

The problem with that analysis is that noncitizens, particularly illegal aliens, are not entitled to any representation, constituent services, or public benefits. Their presence distorts the redistricting and apportionment process and shifts political power in a way that is fundamentally unfair to citizens, both those eligible to vote and those, like children, who are not eligible.

There is also no credible basis for the claim that representatives would choose to vary the amount of help they give to constituents depending on how large the population is in their districts.

Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito agreed with the majority’s conclusion but not its reasoning. Writing separately, Thomas noted that the Court has never provided a sound basis for the “one person, one vote” principle and has struggled to define what that principle protects. Thomas concluded that Evenwel and Pfenninger are right that the Court’s “one person, one vote” precedents are based on “the theory that eligible voters have a right against vote dilution.” In his view, the majority’s reasoning “rests on a flawed reading of history and wrongly picks one side of a debate that the Framers did not resolve in the Constitution.”

Alito pointed out one of the only redeeming features of this decision. Texas asked the Court to also rule on whether states “are not barred from using eligible voter statistics” to draw boundary lines instead of total population.

This question “implicates very difficult theoretical and empirical questions about the nature of representation.” Alito stated the Court has “no need to wade into these waters in this case” and can consider it “if and when” the Court gets a redistricting plan that “uses something other than total population as the basis for equalizing the size of districts.”

State legislatures should consider changing their rules and laws governing redistricting to make citizen population the standard for drawing legislative districts, not total population. That is the best way to protect the value of citizens’ right to vote.

Read the Original Article at Daily Signal

Anti-Campus Carry Activist Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

Anti-campus carry activists at the University of Texas at Austin have created a self-fulfilling prophecy—they’ve spent so much time and energy claiming that campus carry is going to cause real problems for the university that their warnings are scaring off top talent, causing a real problem for the university.

Both the Los Angeles Times and The Daily Texan recently reported that Siva Vaidhyanathan, a finalist for the deanship of UT-Austin’s Moody College of Communication, withdrew his name from consideration because he doesn’t believe he would be willing to discipline a professor who refuses to abide by the state’s new campus carry law.

As Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) pointed out in a February 25 statement titled “Campus carry isn’t bad for higher education; paranoia about campus carry is,” fear of campus carry at UT-Austin is causing far more problems than has the actual implementation of campus carry on the more than 100 U.S. college campuses where it’s currently allowed. When a thousand professors get together to hype a particular concern—be it campus carry, insufficient state funding for higher education, UT’s deteriorating campus infrastructure, or Austin’s oppressively hot summers—that harsh cacophony of voices is going to have an adverse effect on recruiting, whether justified or not.

Antonia Okafor, Southwest regional director for SCC, commented, “Campus carry is a molehill that groups like Gun Free UT have made into a mountain. Now those same groups want to blame campus carry when the nation’s top academic talent opts for less mountainous terrain.”

Because opponents of campus carry have spent so much time and energy overstating the statistically insignificant dangers of campus carry, it should come as no surprise that people who don’t know any better are starting to believe them. Well-intentioned but misguided activists at UT-Austin have created a moral panic akin to the equally baseless “Satanic panic” of the late 20th century. And like any moral panic, this one is fueled in part by the media.

The aforementioned L.A. Times article on Texas’s campus carry law notes, “The experience of Utah and Colorado does not support the claim that having more gun owners on campus increases security, according to a study last year by the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus, a nonprofit based in Croton Falls, N.Y. In both states, crime rates on college campuses increased while the student populations dropped.”

That is an interesting way of stating the facts, given that neither a promise to lower campus crime rates nor a pledge to increase student enrollment was among the generally accepted talking points for legalizing the licensed concealed carry of handguns on Texas college campuses and that there is no evidence that licensed concealed carry has negatively impacted either crime rates or student enrollment at the colleges where it’s currently allowed.

SCC—the nation’s only advocacy group dedicated to lobbying for the legalization of campus carry—has consistently pointed out that campus carry is about personal protection, not campus protection; that college campuses are statistically very safe; and that only a tiny percentage of academics are licensed to carry concealed handguns. All of that contradicts the notion that campus carry will lead to a drop in crime rates.

If SCC doesn’t think campus carry is likely to lower on-campus crime rates, who does the L.A. Times article seek to rebut with the statement that the history of campus carry “does not support the claim that having more gun owners on campus increases security”? That statement strikes down a straw man constructed by the author and, despite all evidence to the contrary, leaves readers with the distinct impression that campus carry may be responsible for the purported increase in on-campus crime.

Not one college in Utah or Colorado has reported a single incident of a concealed handgun license holder using a handgun to commit a violent crime on campus (and yes, there is a way that anti-campus carry activists and the media could double-check this if they wanted to). There also hasn’t been a single report of an armed license holder being the victim of a violent crime on any of these campuses. Therefore, the findings of the cited study have little bearing on the campus carry debate. In fact, the cited study—which was conducted by a gun-control group and was not peer reviewed—plainly states that its “results certainly do not prove that concealed carry causes more crime.”

The final report of UT-Austin’s campus carry policy working group notes, “Our examination of states that already have campus carry revealed little evidence of campus violence that can be directly linked to campus carry, and none that involves an intentional shooting…We found that the evidence does not support the claim that a causal link exists between campus carry and an increased rate of sexual assault. We found no evidence that campus carry has caused an increase in suicide rates on campuses in other states.” The UT report goes on to state,“We reached out to 17 research universities in the seven campus-carry states…Most respondents reported that campus carry had not had much direct impact on student life or academic affairs.”

The L.A Times article’s reference to college enrollment is equally egregious, in that the aforementioned study uses only two years of data (2012-2013) to intimate that campus carry leads to a decrease in enrollment. Even a cursory review of the raw numbers reveals that this insinuation isn’t supported by a complete view of the data.

After a 2006 court ruling legalized the licensed concealed carry of handguns at all public colleges and universities in Utah, Utah’s public colleges and universities saw record enrollment in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. After slight declines in 2012 and 2013, Utah again saw increased enrollment in both 2014 and 2015. There is no reason to assume causation—legalizing campus carry didn’t cause enrollment to go up—however, there is clearly no negative correlation between student enrollment and the legalization of licensed concealed carry on campus.

The reporter for the L.A. Times draws from one dubious study by a group of activists opposed to campus carry, to lend credence to the claims of activists opposed to campus carry. That’s not journalism; it’s just another form of activism. The article, which includes no comments from proponents of campus carry and makes no attempt to present a clear picture of proponents’ arguments, is nothing more than an editorial masquerading as news.

Along with other alarmist articles, it’s helping to fuel a moral panic—a totally unwarranted mass paranoia—that has already taken a toll on the Lone Star State.

About Students for Concealed Carry:

Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on the debate over campus carry in Texas, visit WhyCampusCarry.com.

For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

Read the Original Article at Ammo-Land