Legislation

It seems one of our state senators wants to introduce a Castle Doctrine bill.  This is pretty old news, and it may well have already passed, but what I would like to know (and don't have time to research myself) is what the specific changes are.  Does anyone have the text of the proposed legislation handy?

Hat tip to Blogonomicon.

... and the push is back.  Representative Moran has introduced a bill that would ban the manufacture or sale of .50 caliber rifles, and require that existing examples be registered under the NFA rules.  And here I was thinking that the Democrats had figured out that gun control was a losing issue; not that I ever thought they weren't lying through their teeth about "supporting" the 2nd Amendment, I'm just surprised that they are willing to go back to their same old tricks openly.  Speaking of old tricks, he's also trying to resurrect the so-called Assault Weapons Ban.

Well, perhaps it's not quite so backwards as all that; apparantly the only organization willing to share the press release upon which this story was obviously based was the "Virginians Against Handgun Violence".  Notably absent are the Violence Policy Center, the Million-Mom-March-United-With-Somebody, and the Brady Bunch. 

I'm not too concerned about either bill with the current makeup of Congress.  The House is probably secure enough even if the Senate would be a close vote on the Assault Weapons Ban.  I'm a bit more concerned about what happens after the November elections.  If the Democrats take back some ground with anti-gun rhetoric, and both sides feel like that is the new winning formula, we could see Republicans caving to cowardice and some losses.

Time to start saving up for that Barret .50, just in case.

... the government is now requiring firearms dealers to include a child safety device ("trigger lock") with all handgun purchases.  This will have little practical effect as many manufacturers and dealers were doing so voluntarily, but it was passed into law as part of the compromise required to get the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act through the Senate.  My feelings are mixed.  On the one hand, it is a compromise; on the other, it was a worthwhile one, with small cost to our side and badly needed protection to manufacturers.
We must be vigilant, however, and ensure that we do not lose the benefits of the compromise later on.  

A while back I posted a hypothetical question about what should be done concerning Class-III weapons (machine guns) that were captured from an invading army.  The weapons would be illegal to possess -- well, technically illegal to transfer across state lines, I suppose, but for all practical purposes illegal to possess -- and the people possessing them would be instant criminals, quite possibly without ever knowing it.  The problem of war trophy firearms is not entirely hypothetical, however, and it seems the NRA is taking steps to address it. 

While the bill's provisions, which provide a 90-day amnesty period for registration of firearms acquired overseas between 1934 and 1968, are better than nothing, they aren't nearly broad enough. 

You might want to write your Congressman in support of the bill anyway.  If they get favorable attention from this they'll be more likely to expand it later.

UPDATE: FreedomSight is more critical of the bill.  I don't disagree with his arguments (but see the note below on the surrender provision), but if we want our legislators to support the 2nd Amendment, we need to get that message across loud and clear.  Unless you are very lucky (or own a lobbyist), your representative doesn't actually listen to anything you say, or read anything you write to him or her about; instead, their staffers take messages from the constituents and try to categorize those messages into a simple binary value on each topic the representive is tracking: yes, or no.

So, if the representative is paying attention to comments about this bill, his staffers will be trying to characterize all the comments they receive on the bill as either a yes vote or a no vote.  They're not reading any deeper than that, and any information you write in with that doesn't fit readily into that paradigm is probably lost. 

The way to get support from Congress on gun issues is to write in to support positive firearms legislation even if it has philosophical flaws.  Like it or not, we won't be seeing Congressional repeal of most current gun control any time soon.  When something positive does become available, we need to support it in order to encourage more positive legislation in our favor. 

Finally, while I understand Jed's reluctance regarding the surrender provision the NRA didn't bother to mention, you only need to look at the alternatives to understand why it's there.  Right now, people possessing Class-III weapons affected by this bill are subject to prosecution for a severe federal felony; there is no way they can get out of that, no matter what they do with the gun.  The bill will provide an amnesty period, and after that amnesty period, it will provide an out for veterans in that situation, by allowing them to surrender the firearm upon notification that continued possession is illegal.  The alternative for the veteran at that point is a federal felony conviction, prison time, and confiscation of the firearm at gunpoint, not continued peaceful existance.

That strikes me as an improvement, albeit a small one.

The Senate proposal is mixed news.  It's not bad, but it's not perfect, and it has a fairly long list of exceptions:

Under Senate Bill 62, the taking of private property through eminent domain lawsuits for economic development purposes or to be turned over to a private developer mostly would be prohibited.

Approved exceptions would include transportation projects such as railroads, highways, ports and airports; water supply projects; pipelines and utility projects; flood control projects; and community sports arenas, such as the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington.

Citing the exceptions as proof the measure would have wider impact than predicted, foes criticized it as a legislative wolf in sheep's clothing.

I don't think those exceptions should be necessary under the "public use" standard, but they may help avoid litigation.  I'm nervous about the exceptions for flood control projects, and the community sports arenas exception is obviously wrongheaded.  It's also implemented as legislation, rather than a Constitutional amendment, meaning that the legislature can ignore it with a simple majority vote any time they feel like adding an exception.

The Texas House is working to put an amendment on the ballot instead.  That may be a better approach.

The Democrats are arguing in favor of eminent domain, of course; it's hard to believe that they really are this deaf to public opinion:

Whitmire and others warned that the wording of the measure would prevent or impair such projects as San Antonio's new Toyota plant and a hotel-parking-conference center proposed at the University of Texas.

Yes, a new Toyota plant is a taking for economic development.  Toyota should buy the land.  A new hotel at the University of Texas is a taking for economic development, even if the university will own the land, and the university should buy the land (or preferably, get out of the hotel business!  Sheesh). 

There are a number of amendments, and a final vote is scheduled for July 11th.  Some of the amendments are nasty; for example, exceptions for .22 caliber "assault weapons" were removed, and "assault weapons" purchased before the ban must be registered within 90 days, and normal-capacity magazines can only be possessed in conjunction with a registered assault weapon.

Scary stuff.

It looks like death was just the beginning for the never-introduced "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as "PATRIOT II." As the Associated Press, LA Times, and Washington Post reported last week, lawmakers are circulating draft legislation that breathes new life into some of the most threatening provisions in PATRIOT II. The draft legislation is meant to implement intelligence reforms as recommended by the 9/11 Commission Final Report, but goes far beyond those recommendations -- including giving federal agents the power to use secret foreign intelligence warrants and wiretap orders against people unconnected to any terrorist group or foreign nation. In other words, it proposes lowering the legal standards for surveillance so that the government has the same leeway to spy on people like you and me as it does those suspected of being international agents or terrorists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us that the government is trying to bring PATRIOT-II back from the dead... as predicted. They keep telling us that these things aren't coming back, and they keep coming back. It's like a bad zombie film, where the creatures just won't die.

The governor of California exercised both his pen and his veto on Monday, resulting in a mixed return for the issues I've been watching. Here's the bad news:

Schwarzenegger signed two gun control measure. One, SB 1858, prohibits public display of fake guns that look real. He also signed AB 2431, which will require police to return firearms seized if owners pass a background check showing they can legally own a gun.

SB 1858 is silly -- it's another measure banning toy guns to help the police avoid shooting kids playing cowboys and indians. While I don't really have much problem with regulating toy guns, is it too much to ask for the police to evaluate the situation before shooting a kid? Who is the real threat to our children in this scenario?

AB 2431 seems like common sense, especially since the police seem to have a habit of holding on to any guns that enter their grasp whether they have a legal right to confiscate or not.

There was also some good news:

The governor vetoed two gun measures by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena: SB 1152 would have required stores that sell bullets to keep information about buyers; SB 1140 would have made it a crime to store a handgun where a child can easily find it.

Both SB-1152 and SB-1140 were pretty bad bills. I lobbied Arnold to veto both of them, so I'm pleased that he did, but I also lobbied him to veto AB-50 (passed by the infamous "ghost vote") and he has already signed that. I think he's trying to play both sides of the issue, and frankly, that's doomed to failure. But we only got one of three really horrible bills, which is better than three of three.

Some lawmakers are introducing a bill that Hollywood is not happy about ? one that would allow consumers to make personal copies of digital entertainment like DVDs to be played on whatever device they want.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., author of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, says consumers should not always have to worry about being slapped with a lawsuit every time they make a copy of their favorite videos.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which this bill is intended to loosen, says in essence that it is illegal to understand the technology that operates the media you buy. It is, in other words, a bill designed to maintain the role of large "media" companies in the distribution channel for artist's work, in a time when the Internet has rendered the old distribution channels obsolete.

It's not as urgent as some other things... but if you have a chance to tell your representatives about this bill, and that you support it, many engineers will be thankful that their desire to tinker with technology will not put them in jail.

Altering specified requirements for the issuance of handgun permits; repealing the requirement that the Secretary of State Police find that an applicant seeking a permit has a good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun; establishing a 45-day period within which the Secretary must issue a permit to carry a handgun after an application is approved; requiring that an individual be certified by a qualified handgun instructor before receiving a permit; etc.

Maryland considers shall-issue. Only a few states left!

While CNN and other media outlets are rejoicing because of the capture of Saddam Hussein, Bush again introduced new legislation last Saturday which increased the federal powers to investigate and reduces the privacy rights of American citizens

:Comments of Ron Paul, Congressman for Texas on HR 2417 : It appears we are witnessing a stealth enactment of the enormously unpopular "Patriot II" legislation that was first leaked several months ago. Perhaps the national outcry when a draft of the Patriot II act was leaked has led its supporters to enact it one piece at a time in secret. Whatever the case, this is outrageous and unacceptable. I urge each of my colleagues to join me in rejecting this bill and its incredibly dangerous expansion of Federal police powers.

What we have here is a House bill that effectively allows a collection of facts (for example, a database of phone numbers, like the phone book) to be treated by the courts as property. I can perceive their motivation -- that is, corporations want to have some property right with respect to the information they collect on their customers -- but there are a lot of potential problems with this rule.

The law also covers "collections of data" like, for example, building codes. Yes, laws can become the private property of businesses, off-limits for personal reproduction and use. It's apparantly fairly lucrative if you can secure a monopoly on the right to publish the legal code of your city, county, or state! In the case of building codes, anyone who wants to build a new building or modify an older one needs to come to you and buy a copy of the laws they are required to follow.

And that's not even getting into issues like the AMA owning the billing codes hospitals use on itemized bills, so that if you want to decode your hospital bill you need to talk to -- and probably pay -- the AMA.

Read this good summary of the issues. And if you don't like what you see, complain to the committee members.

The MPAA wants to make it illegal (in Ohio) to use a recording device if a movie is being shown. At first glance, this seems a reasonable thing -- they're trying to fight people who bring camcorders into movie theaters, right? But that's not all. The law doesn't just apply to camcorders in movie theaters, but anywhere a movie is being shown. Including, say, in a store selling both TVs and cameras. And it gets better. The law includes an arrest power for the owner of the establishment. But wait, there's more! The first offense is a misdemeanor; the next one is a felony.

You heard that right, folks. Over a year of hard time for turning on a camera where a movie is being shown.. whether or not you recorded some or all of the movie.

The way I see it, everyone has a right to record -- and to share, for that matter -- anything that their eyes and ears take in. People will pay for a better experience for their own eyeballs than the second-hand view from someone else's. Unless, that is, your product is overpriced in the first place. Like, say, most movies?