When life hands you crap, make crap-ade!
Paul Helmke, trying to save his job, writes of Heller:
Because of this Court decision, proposals such as Brady background checks on all gun sales, limiting bulk sales of handguns, restricting access to military-style assault weapons, and strengthening the power of law enforcement to shut down corrupt gun dealers can now be debated on their merits without them being seen as a “first step on the road to gun confiscation.”
Generally, you lose based on the merits too.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Ah, unless I read the decision wrong, didn’t the Court say that things like “assault weapon bans” would not meet constitutional muster?
June 28th, 2008 at 9:23 am
It is fun watching the anti-gunners try to put a happy face on this, but in fairness to Helmke’s organization, they’re the ones who have always claimed they only wanted to control handguns, not ban them outright. That distinction has always been the fig leaf to justify the National Coalition to Control Handguns (now the Brady Center) and the National Council to Ban Handguns (now the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) are two separate organizations.
It will be interesting to see how the overt banners like CSGV and VPC will continue to try to justify their separate existence from the Brady Center.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:01 am
The victory the Brady Campaign really gets out of this is that the Brady Act is, in all probability, in no danger of being ruled unconstitutional. Regulations that cover point of sale will probably stand, and will become a settled issue.
Of course, if everything the Brady’s could possibly achieve has already been achieved, that doesn’t speak too well for their group’s current mission.
June 28th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Hey, Helkme, have you emailed Rebbecca Peters over at IANSA yet to tell her you may be interested in a career change…a job with a more “international” flavor…I would suggest a move to England, but that would be kicking a people who are already down.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
We’ve been beating them on the merits for the past 20-30 years. Occasionally they slip something through after a wave of hysteria, but the political backlash always hurts them more than they gained.
June 28th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
“When life hands you crap, make crap-ade!”
A fine one sentence assessment of the situation. My son and I nearly peed our pants in laughter.
Our new buzzword is “crap-ade”.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Smoothies!
That blender will never be the same again.
June 28th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Are you inferring that Helmke may have just been Zumbo’d?
June 28th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Helmke is now pounding sand as are all anti gunners. They look forward to spending millions defending themselves from gun rights lawsuits.
Good. It’s good to be on the offensive. Sweet as a matter of fact.
Helmke is pissing into a stiff wind on semi autos.
As to NFA weapons, sbr’s, MG’s etc, it’s status quo for now as Scalia at first glance chose to throw them under the bus in a seeming nod to US v Miller.
But if you read the decision it was a very clever manuver to subvert and destroy the “sporting purposes” bludgeon used frequently by politician and the ATF, and replace it with the term “in common use”.
In doing so, Scalia’s opinion would seem to bar governments from outlawing whole classes of weapons including semi auto rifles, making “assault weapons” bans a difficult ditch to dig.
With everybody and his brother in the AR-15 business including Remington and Smith and Wesson, and with SKS and AK variants profligate, you couldn’t really make a very sound arguement that these rifles are uncommon. And the only reason some specific types are less common is because of ATF and executive order parts and complete weapon import bans. An arguement could be made that such bans interefere and infringe upon 2A RKBA. If THAT arguement were sucessful, then it could be argued that CL3 and NFA weapons aren’t common only because of the 86′ law and previous NFA restrictions.
While hardly assuring victory, at least scalia provided a path to follow. It will take a couple more conservative originalist justices on scotus I think.
What to watch: The most intersting initial court fight is going to be the San Francisco gun ban, which will without doubt make it to the most liberal- left court in the land, the 9th circuit court of appeals. Are they radical enought to defy a fresh scotus opinion, with all members of scotus involved in that ruling still serving?
Oh, and, just when is the ACLU going to take up it’s first gun rights case?