Tag: assault weapons ban

Reason: US Dist. Court Issues Temp. Restraining Order against Colorado Gun and Magazine Ban

David Kopel at Reason.com writes about a US District Court Judge issuing a temporary restraining order against the enforcement of Superior, Colorado’s municipal code which banned certain firearms and magazines. Hopefully such rulings will be coming soon to a state near you.

Colorado U.S. District Court issues TRO against magazine and gun ban

Today U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore issued a temporary restraining order against the ban on so-called “assault weapons” recently enacted by the town of Superior, Colorado, in Boulder County. The case is Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Superior.

Lead attorney for the plaintiffs was Barry Arrington, one of Colorado’s top lawyers on education law, and now the victor in a major Second Amendment case. Arrington previously served in the Colorado House of Representatives, and as a trustee of the Independence Institute, where I work.

Judge Moore formerly was a corporate lawyer (Davis, Graham and Stubbs, Denver), and then head Federal Public Defender for Colo. and Wyoming. He was appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2013, and confirmed unanimously.

Like several other towns in Boulder County, Superior recently outlawed semiautomatic centerfire rifles that have at least one supposedly bad characteristic, such as an adjustable stock; various semiautomatic shotguns; various semiautomatic handguns; and magazines with a capacity of over 10 rounds.

It was obvious that such arms are “commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” which is the Supreme Court’s rule from District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) for which arms are protected by the Second Amendment. First, the Colorado Attorney General and plaintiffs in an earlier case challenging the state of Colorado’s ban on magazines over 15 rounds had so stipulated. Colorado Outfitters Ass’n v. Hickenlooper, 24 F. Supp. 3d 1050, 1068 (D. Colo. 2014), vacated in part on other grounds and remanded, 823 F.3d 537 (10th Cir. 2016). (I represented 55 Colorado Sheriff plaintiffs in the case, which ended up with the 10th Circuit declaring that neither the Sheriffs nor the many other individual and organizational plaintiffs had standing.) Commonality was also found in the undisputed facts set forth in Fourth Circuit Judge Traxler’s dissenting opinion in Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114, 153-55 (4th Cir. 2017). The opinions of many other Circuit Courts provide additional, irrefutable proof of commonality; the banned firearms number in the millions, at least, and the banned magazines comprise over half of all magazines.

Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, courts are supposed to decide Second Amendment cases on text, history, and tradition. Judge may not decide based on their own opinions about good policy, nor should they defer to legislative policy judgements. The policy  balancing was already conducted by the American people when they adopted the Second Amendment.

In Bruen‘s historical approach, the most important periods are the Founding Era and Reconstruction (when the Fourteenth Amendment made the Second Amendment enforceable against state and local governments). English history is relevant to the extent that is shows an unbroken tradition that was adopted in America and continued to the Founding. Colonial history is also relevant. So is 19th century history, and (Reconstruction excepted), the earlier the better. The late 19th century is weaker, and the 20th century is far too late to show a historical tradition that could override the text of the Second Amendment.

Judge Moore wrote: “the Court is unaware of historical precedent that would permit a governmental entity to entirely ban a type of weapon that is commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, whether in an individual’s home or in public.”

To be precise, there are a few precedents pre-1900, but none are valid any longer…(article continues)

Colion Noir: S.736 Feinstein Introduces Bill To Ban All Commonly Owned AR-15s & Magazines Over 10 Rounds

We posted on this a few days ago, before the bill had been given a number. Here’s Colion Noir talking about S. 736, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021, or officially “A bill to regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.” They just want to save you from your rights; that’s all.

Breitbart: Feinstein Introduces Assault Weapons Ban of 2021

From Breitbart, Dianne Feinstein Introduces Ban on 205 Different ‘Assault Weapons’. It doesn’t look like a bill number has been assigned, yet.

Following Thursday’s House passage of a Democrat gun control bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced a ban on 205 “assault weapons.”

The legislation, called the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2021,” is co-sponsored by 34 Senate Democrats. It would also ban ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds.

Feinstein’s ban would allow current owners of “assault weapons” to retain possession of them, but if the gun is transferred, a person must undergo an FBI background check before receiving the firearm.

Her “Assault Weapons Ban” also bans bump stocks, which have been illegal since March 26, 2019.

Feinstein announced her ban stating:

It’s been 17 years since the original Assault Weapons Ban expired, and the plague of gun violence continues to grow in this country. To be clear, this bill saves lives. When it was in place from 1994-2004, gun massacres declined by 37 percent compared with the decade before. After the ban expired, the number of massacres rose by 183 percent.

In contrast, the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) issued a report indicating the 1994 “assault weapons” ban did not reduce crime.

The Washington Times quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Koper, author of the NIJ report, saying, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

The NIJ report continued, “The ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

Mises Institute: Joe Biden Wants a Huge New Tax on Gun Owners

This article from the Mises Institute discusses the gun control policies from Joe Biden’s Presidential platform, including the buyback program and alternative $200/firearm tax and registration in Joe Biden Wants a Huge New Tax on Gun Owners

Joe Biden’s gun policy platform offers support for almost all conceivable forms of government restrictions on the Second Amendment. This includes bans and restrictions on sales, expansion of registration and background checks, expansion of buyback programs and gun-grabbing statutes, and the closing of all sorts of “loopholes.”1

While we are only at the policy platform stage, where proposals are grandiose and imprecise, Biden’s legislative agenda will clearly be anti–Second Amendment and not a program to reduce crime and violence. First, he wants to stop the “gun violence epidemic” with restriction on rifles when it is handgun shootings, not rifles, that are a problem and one that is mostly confined to big cities controlled by leftists. Second, he wants to go after “assault weapons” and “weapons of war” when he should know that rifles like the AK and AR “sporters” are not military-grade fully automatic weapons. Third, he would like to hold gun manufacturers civilly liable for criminal acts committed with guns, a move which would shut down the industry, the true goal.

In support of the government’s buyback program, i.e., the carrot, Biden has added a gun tax for anyone who wishes to keep their rifles and high-capacity magazines. If you want to avoid the buyback and keep your guns and high-capacity (greater than ten rounds) magazine, you would have to register both under the National Firearms Act, which triggers a $200 tax for each rifle and magazine—the stick. The stick behind the stick is a penalty of up to ten years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine. Registration involves filling out a thirteen-page registration form and providing fingerprints and a photograph of yourself.This is certainly bad enough for gun owners and Americans in general, but if history is a teacher the end results could be much worse, potentially catastrophic.

Joe Biden was sold to the American voter in 2020 as a moderate of the Democrat Party.  He was not a conservative, but neither was he an AOC progressive or a Sanders socialist. His image as a white moderate male was also used to help sell the voters on Barack Obama.

There was also a time when Biden was actually a pragmatist on Second Amendment rights. As the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, he helped pass the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, which overturned decades of anti-gun court rulings and regulations to restore most gun owner rights and reexpanded commerce by eliminating restrictions on how and where guns could be sold. The legislation’s passage helped lay the foundation of the modern gun rights movement. According to Biden the pragmatist circa 1985:

During my 12.5 years as a Member of this body, I have never believed that additional gun control or Federal registration of guns would reduce crime. I am convinced that a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control. In my opinion a national register or ban of handguns would be impossible to carry out and may not result in reductions in crime.2

Despite his recognition of the futility of using gun control to reduce crime and gun violence, the “pragmatist” turned to the dark side when it became politically expedient to do so. In 1993 he helped pass the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which required background checks through a new national checking system (the National Instant Criminal Background Check System [NICS]). The next year he helped obtain a ten-year ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazine sales.

As vice president, he was President Obama’s point man in developing legislative proposals and executive orders to shore up gun control at the national level, and yet even that administration admitted that gun control is almost a futile endeavor and that their efforts amounted to little more than feel-good measures.

While no law or set of laws will end gun violence, it is clear that the American people want action. If even one child’s life can be saved, then we need to act. Now is the time to do the right thing for our children, our communities, and the country we love.3

Indeed, with more than a century of experience we know that gun control does not reduce crime but rather increases it, as John Lott has demonstrated. According to Lott’s evidence and that of independent researchers, no form of gun control has positive effects and most forms have negative effects on crime, murder, and mass shootings. Indeed, the most noteworthy policies that improve these problems are the elimination of gun-free zones and the expansion of concealed carry laws.4

With respect to Biden’s proposed gun tax, what are the expected outcomes? The tax is certainly not designed to raise revenue, as it would raise little and entail a good deal of bureaucratic spending. It would no doubt encourage gun buybacks and reduce gun ownership at the margin, but to what end? It would mostly impact responsible gun owners economically impacted by the lockdowns and unemployment. These are the gun owners who reduce crime rates because of the deterrence factor they provide. The gun tax would also encourage the diversion of guns and high-capacity magazines to the black market.

Most importantly, would the gun tax reduce access to guns and in turn reduce crime and violence? Biden has already admitted that the answer is no: “a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control.” Efforts to reduce gun violence through policies of red tape and taxes are doomed to fail and only lead to further inroads of enhanced policies of restrictionism and even outright prohibition.

For example, in order to address the real and imagined problem of narcotics addiction, which was already in decline at the end of the nineteenth century, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed in 1914 to regulate and tax the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine products.

However, the courts interpreted the legislation to mean that doctors could prescribe these drugs in the course of normal treatment, as a dental anesthetic or for short-term pain management, for example, but not as a treatment for addiction. This turned regulation into prohibition and quickly turned the imaginary crimes of blacks and Asians into very real crimes all across the country. Desperate addicts were willing to pay high prices and commit crimes to satisfy their addictions, and smugglers and drug dealers quickly developed a black market.

Similar negative consequences resulted from the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which started as a tax to reduce imagined crimes by minorities, i.e., Reefer Madness, only to quickly devolve into an outright prohibition. Fortunately, we as a people have recognized this mistake and are moving to legalize cannabis and hemp, i.e., marijuana, in a state-by-state process that works in the face of federal and international law.

As horrific and far-reaching as the consequences of the war on drugs have been, the consequences of “commonsense” gun control laws are potentially much greater in the long run. In a very important contribution, Stephen Holbrook demonstrates that the Nazis used gun registration information instituted and collected by the Weimar Regime to rapidly disarm the Jews and other political adversaries. This in turn greatly facilitated the Holocaust.5 A disarmed American population would similarly be much more vulnerable to political repression.

But putting this possibility aside, Biden’s gun control proposals, including the gun tax, offer no possibility of improved security, while most of them will make us less secure and more prone to crime and violence. Most importantly, they are all an affront and threat to our liberty as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Colion Noir: Bloomberg Says Ban Guns Holding More than 3 Rounds

Billionaire Tyrant Mike Bloomberg
Billionaire Tyrant Mike Bloomberg

This will come as no surprise to local readers, but presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is a tyrannical idiot. In the video below, vlogger Colion Noir comments on clips from a recent interview given by Bloomberg in which the candidate shows that he knows nothing about 1) the second amendment, 2) the 1994 assault weapons ban, 3) hunting, nor 4) firearms. But he’s super excited to legislate on an issue on which he is clueless. Bloomberg gives a vague definition of assault weapons which he would ban: “if it can fire a lot of bullets very quickly.” When pressed to give a better definition he says if you can’t hit the deer in three shots you’re a lousy shot and you don’t need more.