**
<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/> 243 House
Members Back Federal Concealed-Weapons Reciprocity
Bill<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/243-house-members-back-federal-concealed-weapons-reciprocity-bill/>
*Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>* |
September 13, 2011 at 6:17 am | Tags:
Constitution<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=constitution>,
gun sales <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=gun-sales>, HR
822<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=hr-822>,
Illinois <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=illinois>, John
Donohue <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=john-donohue>,
lawyers<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=lawyers>,
National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity
Bill<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=national-right-to-carry-reciprocity-bill>,
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Obama<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=obama>,
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Here's some encouraging Second Amendment news after yesterday's downer about
that mayor in New Mexico banning
guns<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/ruidoso-nm-planning-to-ban-all-guns-ignoring-state-constitution-leaving-citizens-defenseless/>in
the village of Ruidoso.
More than half of the members of the House of Representatives have
co-sponsored a bill, requiring any state or jurisdiction that issues
concealed-weapons permits to honor permits granted by any other state or
jurisdiction. It's H.R.
822<http://www.nraila.org/issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=189>:
The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Bill.
John Crewdson
reports<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/concealed-handguns-in-new-york-city-backed-by-243-members-of-u-s-congress.html>for
Bloomberg News, Sept. 12, 2011, that if Congress passes the bill,
Florida’s licenses, for example, would apply to 49 states in all -- allowing
their holders to carry hidden guns in places such as midtown Manhattan,
where the New York Police Department currently rejects most such
applications for “concealed- carry” permits.
Only Illinois and Washington, D.C., where residents aren’t allowed to carry
concealed handguns at all, would be exempt from the bill.
“Law-abiding people are not immune from crime just because they cross over a
state border,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle
Association. The 4 million-member gun-rights group has lobbied state
legislatures to pass concealed-carry laws since the 1980s, and it considers
the federal “reciprocity” bill a common-sense approach to the state-by-state
patchwork of rules, he said.
But John Donohue, a professor at Stanford Law
School<http://topics.bloomberg.com/stanford-law-school/>,
says he thinks the bill would be held unconstitutional because it
“effectively prevents a state from controlling who has guns within the
state, which has always been a core police power function of state
government. It is so ironic that it is the conservatives who are trying to
push this encroachment, since they usually are very active in championing
states’ rights.”
Rules and standards -- including safety-training requirements -- for
granting such licenses vary by state. New
Mexico<http://topics.bloomberg.com/new-mexico/>requires 16 hours of
training. Ohio requires 12, Texas and Louisiana, 10. At
least 10 states require none.
>From 2005 through 2009, U.S. domestic handgun production and foreign-made
imports more than doubled, to 4,600,232 from 1,995,802, according to data
compiled by the National Shooting Sports Foundation <http://www.nssf.org/>,
which represents the firearms industry.
With states’ adoption of concealed-carry laws and U.S. Supreme
Court<http://topics.bloomberg.com/supreme-court/>decisions affirming
the right to keep and bear arms, “it is not surprising
that there has been an increase in consumer demand for firearm and
ammunition products,” said Lawrence G. Keane, the foundation’s senior vice
president and general counsel.
In Wisconsin, where Governor Scott
Walker<http://topics.bloomberg.com/scott-walker/>,
a Republican, signed the nation’s newest concealed-carry law on July 8, the
legislation spurred an immediate increase in handgun purchases, said Eric
Grabowski, who manages the Shooters Shop in the Milwaukee suburb of West
Allis.
A 2007 study by the Harvard School of Public Health, the most recent data
available, estimated the number of privately owned firearms in the U.S. at
283 million -- more than one for each of the 245 million Americans over the
age of 20.
If adopted, the federal reciprocity bill would cause the number of handguns
to “jump significantly,” said Grover
Norquist<http://topics.bloomberg.com/grover-norquist/>,
an NRA board member who’s better known as the president of Americans for Tax
Reform <http://topics.bloomberg.com/tax-reform/>. Among other reasons,
Norquist cited his belief that people who live in one state and travel
frequently to another for work or other reasons would buy more guns.
States can already choose to adopt reciprocity agreements -- Florida has
such pacts with 35 other states, although 4 of them require that the permit
holder be a Florida resident. The federal bill would eliminate states’
discretion. As a result, even the most exacting jurisdictions would be
required to honor permits from the laxest. Stanford University law professor
Robert Weisberg called it a “race to the bottom.”
In 2007, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort
Lauderdale<http://topics.bloomberg.com/fort-lauderdale/>reported that
1,400 people in the state had permits even though they had
been sentenced for major crimes, including assault, drug possession, sexual
battery and manslaughter. Judges had withheld formal convictions under a
state law that allowed the practice.
Since 2007, after the NRA lobbied on the issue, 39 states have limited the
amount of public information that’s available on permit holders -- making
investigations into their backgrounds more difficult.
In 14 states, residents need some form of license, permit or other
prerequisite just to purchase a handgun from a dealer, according to the
NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action <http://www.nraila.org/>. Those
requirements wouldn’t be affected by the federal bill.
The federal legislation, introduced by U.S. Representative Heath
Shuler, a North
Carolina <http://topics.bloomberg.com/north-carolina/> Democrat, and
Representative Cliff Stearns <http://topics.bloomberg.com/cliff-stearns/>, a
Florida Republican, has already attracted 241 other co-sponsors in the
House, enough to guarantee its passage in that chamber.
Two Republican senators, David
Vitter<http://topics.bloomberg.com/david-vitter/>of Louisiana and John
Thune of South
Dakota <http://topics.bloomberg.com/south-dakota/>, are expected to
introduce a companion bill that at least 10 Democratic senators are likely
to support, said Chad Ramsey, a lobbyist with the Brady Center to Prevent
Gun Violence <http://www.bradycenter.org/>, which opposes concealed carry. That
would give the bill 58 votes if all Republican senators supported it, two
short of the number needed to avoid a filibuster.
Obama declared his opposition to carrying concealed weapons during the 2008
campaign. Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, declined to say whether
Obama would veto a national reciprocity bill if it reaches his desk.
The bill, which is scheduled to come up during a House subcommittee hearing
on Tuesday, is opposed by the American Bar
Association<http://topics.bloomberg.com/american-bar-association/>
. At its convention last month, the lawyers’ professional group adopted a
resolution supporting “broad discretion” for local law
enforcement<http://topics.bloomberg.com/law-enforcement/>in deciding
whether to grant permits.
A coalition of 600 U.S. mayors announced its opposition to the bill today in
a news release. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Handguns, is co-chaired by
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent
company of Bloomberg News.
The 22,000-member International Association of Chiefs of Police also opposes
the measure. “Our problem is the potpourri of varied training standards for
each state,” said Scott Knight, the police chief in Chaska, Minnesota, and
chairman of the group’s firearms committee.
Largely because of the differing standards among “shall issue” and “may
issue” states, the bill raises what Harvard University professor of
constitutional law Laurence Tribe calls “interesting and difficult
constitutional questions.” Tribe said the bill is “an unprecedented attempt
by Congress” to require states with more stringent concealed carry laws to
accede to “the more permissive laws of whichever state initially licensed
someone’s carrying of a concealed weapon.”
While the Constitution’s commerce clause gives Congress authority to
regulate commerce between the states, the reciprocity bill probably wouldn’t
fall within that power, said Weisberg, the law professor who serves as
faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Nor would it
fall under Congress’ power to enforce such existing constitutional liberties
as the right “to keep and bear arms,” he said. That’s because the
Constitution is silent about whether there’s a specific right to carry a
concealed firearm outside the home, and the Supreme Court has not yet spoken
on the issue.
Read the full article
here<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-09-12/concealed-handguns-in-new-york-city-backed-by-243-members-of-u-s-congress.html>
.
*~Eowyn*
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