Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, was the specal lunch speaker at the National Firearms Law Seminar yesterday at the NRA Annual Meeting. Professor Reynolds gave an interesting talk derived from an article he wrote for the Tennessee Law Review last year, “The Second Amendment as Ordinary Constitutional Law.” He covered a variety of topics, but said one thing I thought really interesting (which I hastily scrawled on my napkin, so apologies if the wording is not exact): “If a premises owner bars me from possessing a gun on those premises, he should be liable if I suffer as a result of it, as if he had done it himself.” . . .
I have actually been thinking about this idea for a while, too, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Although I understand the motive behind them, I am reluctant to support laws that dictate what owners can or cannot do with their private property where civil rights are concerned. Prof. Halbrook observed earlier in the seminar that there are at least 40,000 possible offenses in the federal code, each one a legal land mine that the ordinary citizen has to be careful to avoid. After all, what shall it profit us to protect the right to keep and bear arms at the expense of other rights?
The idea proffered by Prof. Reynolds, however, may be an elegant solution to the issue. If the problem is one of personal security, then banning the citizenry from going about armed for their own protection on your property is your right as the premises owner. But I think it’s axiomatic that by doing so, you are thereby implicitly taking responsibility for the security of the people who you are welcoming.
On balance, I like the fact that this idea forces the party that bans its invitees from possessing firearms to take responsibility for the consequences of that decision. And while the plaintiffs’ bar tends to skew to the left, there are, no doubt, plenty of plaintiffs attorneys that would be willing to jump into the fray on that score.
Nothing’s without cost, though. As in all things, there may be unintended conseequences. If their hand is forced, I could easily see boards of directors uncomfortable with the idea of the unwashed masses walking around with firearms in their establishments pouring money to research (for instance) ways to passively detect firearms. There may be long-range implications for privacy here. And there may be other consequences I am not seeing.
But at least initially, I’m on board. You?
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/04/johannes-paulsen/glenn-reynolds-hold-property-owners-liable-when-they-ban-guns/Ben Carson STILL Trying to ‘Clarify’ His Stance on Guns
One of possible GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson’s problems is his mixed message on the Second Amendment. In some discussions he seems to be for restrictions and in others says he is 100 percent supporting of the right to bear arms. And this weekend at the NRA convention Carson is again trying to “clarify” his stance on guns.
Over the past year, neurosurgeon Carson has said things that brought criticism from gun rights advocates and caused some to even wonder if he knows how guns even work.
Only a few weeks ago, for instance, Carson told Glenn Beck that he felt that guns should be restricted in urban areas but not rural areas. He also felt that Americans have no right to semi-automatic weapons.
“It depends on where you live,” Carson told Beck. “I think if you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I’m afraid that that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it.”
In Dec. of 2013 Carson again angered gun supporters when he intimated that guns should be treated like drivers licenses and some “intelligent” restrictions should be enacted.
In his December op ed, Carson conflated a Constitutional right to driving, which is not right.
But Carson has also tried to spin his way out of the gun control argument by also saying that the Second Amendment was created as a serious check on the power of government. In March of 2014 he used this tactic when he said that guns in the hands of the people might help keep government from turning toward tyranny.
A few months later he was again saying that guns allowed the people to “protect themselves from an overly aggressive government.”
Now, this weekend as he addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual convention being held in Nashville, TN, Carson again leaned on the originalist idea that the Second Amendment is a guard against tyranny.
“For the record let me make it extremely clear that I am extremely pro-Second Amendment and that I would never allow anyone to tamper with that right,” Carson told the skeptical crowd.
“We will never let the right to keep and bear arms be removed from those [generations] who follow us in this great nation,” he added.
Regardless of his repeated attempts to mollify gun rights supporters, though, he will continue to be looked on with suspicion on the issue because he has shown his lean toward restrictions just as often as he’s tried to say that he is a supporter of the Second Amendment. After all, it should be noted that even as he’s danced around the matter at times, he’s never refuted his past ideas that restrictions are warranted.