Candidates on guns
From the AP’s candidates on the issues:
GUN CONTROL:
DEMOCRATS:
_Clinton: Voted for ban on assault-type weapons and to require background checks at gun shows. Favored leaving gun-makers and dealers open to civil suits. Also, in 2000 supported proposals for a federal requirement for state-issued photo gun licenses, as well as a national registry for handgun sales.
_Edwards: Voted as North Carolina senator for ban on assault-type weapons and to require background checks at gun shows.
_Obama: Voted to leave gun-makers and dealers open to suit. Also, as Illinois state lawmaker, supported ban on all forms of semiautomatic weapons and tighter state restrictions generally on firearms.
_Richardson: Signed into law a bill allowing residents to carry concealed handguns.
___
REPUBLICANS:
_Giuliani: Now says states should decide appropriate gun controls. As New York mayor and Senate prospect in 2000, favored variety of federal controls, including ban on assault-style weapons and waiting period for purchases. Also favored a federal mandate to register handgun owners and require handgun buyers to “demonstrate good moral character and a reason to have the gun.”
_Huckabee: Supports state laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons and a national “right to carry” law that would require states to recognize concealed weapons permits issued by other states.
_McCain: Voted against ban on assault-type weapons, but in favor of requiring background checks at gun shows. Voted to shield gun-makers and dealers from civil suits.
_Romney: As governor, supported state’s strict gun-control laws and signed into law one of the nation’s toughest laws against assault-type weapons. Also supported regulatory changes favored by gun owners and sellers, including setting up appeals process for people denied gun licenses. Previously supported federal ban on assault-type weapons and federal waiting period for purchases.
_Thompson: Hostile to many gun control proposals, including mandatory background checks at gun shows. Supported campaign finance changes that gun groups and other activists saw as an infringement of their speech rights.
Heh. Even the AP notes Giuliani’s flip.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I can’t remeber whether NYC sued gun manufacturers while Rudy was mayor.
Does anyone recall?
If he did, we need to know it and proliferate it.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
yes, chris, rudy started it.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
The other candidates should be running ads which focus exclusively on that fact.
It was frivilous litigation that was initiated with the intent to bankrupt the gun manufacturers, not with a monetary judgment against the manufacturers (which was, of course, a long shot based on the inane gravamen of the lawsuits), but through the exhorbitant costs of litigation.
In short, the lawsuits were brought to spend the manufacturers into bankruptcy.
John Edwards, an excellent plaintiff’s attorney, would never dream of taking one of these nonsensical lawsuits on a contingency basis, because he knows that his chances of recovery would be slim to none.
Well, it didn’t work, just like the shameful deal that S & W enterend into with HUD (through then Secretary, and present NY Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo) failed to cause the other gun manufacturers to follow suit.
It only resulted in S & W’s being sold quite cheaply by its British owners to an American company, after its products languished on shelves and it had to lay-off employees.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Ron Paul?
December 19th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
a national “right to carry” law that would require states to recognize concealed weapons permits issued by other states.
Wouldn’t this be unconstitutional? Not that it’s ever stopped anyone, of course…
December 20th, 2007 at 3:27 am
No, tgirsch, not under the “full faith and credit” provisions.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:26 am
You’re new around here, right? 😉
The standard mischief most likely to be used by congress-critters here is funding. They’re always using funding as the carrot and the stick.
Withholding of funding is more than likely what enforces “No child left behind”
Withholding of funding is what forced everyone to go to a 21 drinking age and the 55 mph speed limit.
There’s federal funding for NICS improvement, School lunches, Police Officers, Public Transit local libraries, and Homeland Defense Spending (In this case, trash trucks that could be used to stop a truck bomb or something)
While I don’t feel that the authors of the Constitution ever thought that funds from income tax taken directly out of the pay of some working mom in Idaho would ever be used to buy a trash truck in New Jersey (under any context), that’s where we are today. Funding like this is nothing new.
You don’t expect the federal goverment to limit spending to only delivering the mail and defending the borders, do you?
December 20th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I seem to recall there being a sixth person running for the Republican nomination…
December 20th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Stormy Dragon Says:
December 20th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I seem to recall there being a sixth person running for the Republican nomination…
Yeah, I noticed his absence too. Where’s /20~ p@\/1?
December 24th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I think a national right to carry law would probably be constitutional. The full faith and credit clause may not be enough to require recognition in IL or WI, but it should suffice for all states that allow CCW under certain conditions, or at least for all shall-issue states. Then there’s that pesky commerce clause, which allows Congress to do almost anything it wants, or the tax and spend provision, which allows it to withhold funding for just about any reason that doesn’t violate a specific prohibition in the Constitution.
Then there’s the theory I like better, that a national right to carry law would implement the Second Amendment, incorporated by the privileges or immunities clause of the Fourteenth, which Congress has an express authorization to do per the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment itself. That theory will never fly in court, though, so I’ll take the crappier theories instead.