Guns And The Laws That Govern Them

Then I guess u don t wanna see my nice new holster.
Its good for concealment.





David

Even if you were my best friend I would not accept an armed dining occasion. I am not interested at all in seeing guns or holsters.

I've dined with David, Rex...and I am assuming he was carrying at the time. I can tell you that he is a gentleman...and quiet. You would enjoy the dinner...even with the heat.

I'll take your word for it Frank. Not sure that Portland Maine businesses would agree though. I have never seen a civilian with a gun in the 20+ years living here in the city.

I know whatcha mean, Rex.

If David had his gun on him at the 2nd Street Deli that day...I didn't see it. In The Big Apple, it is not advisable to dine with a gun visible.

Even Crazy Joe Gallo would not have done it...although I suspect one day, at Umberto's, he regretted the absence.

This is all theoretical.
I have never been to the State of Maine.
I 've heard that thay have good sea food.
If one of the groups to which I belong
has a convention up there, then I might attend it.
Some jurisdictions require the citizens to keep their guns exposed
and it is a crime to conceal them. Other jurisdictions require
concealment of guns, and it is a crime to expose them;
(that includes Florida [except briefly, by accident]).

Sometimes I wonder whether in an earlier life,
I was killed trying to reach a defensive gun, but I did not get to it.

Maybe some fiend used a gun to kill Rex,
or
he used one and it mis-fired, to his dismay; that can be frustrating.

Thanks for the kind words, Frank.
By NY law guns must be kept concealed, unless u r wearing a uniform.





David

WASHINGTON – A Washington state-based gun rights group is steadily
persuading cities and towns across the country to repeal local firearms
regulations and give that power back to the states.

The organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, is working to
invalidate city ordinances by arguing that they're in conflict
with looser state regulations. So far, it seems to be working.
The group says it's been able to overturn more than 100 gun-related
ordinances this way, most recently in Utah.


“We’re going state by state, going through every single ordinance of
every city and county in every state and finding where the cities and
counties have ordinances enacted that are in conflict with state law,”
Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the SAF,
told FoxNews.com.

Usually this means repealing local ordinances that run afoul of state
law which, in turn, gives almost all gun-regulating power to the state.
These cities and local communities still have the authority to outlaw
someone shooting a gun but not necessarily possessing or carrying them.

“It’s pretty clever,” Florida State University College of Law Professor
Franita Tolson told FoxNews.com. “If you can’t change it on a federal level,
you attack it on a local level.”

So far, Gottlieb’s group has helped overturn gun rules in nine states,
including Illinois, California, North Carolina, New Mexico and Nevada.
SAF’s Legal Preemption Project latest target is Utah.

The organization recently mailed letters to 49 municipalities in Utah --
one of the most gun-friendly states in the country. Three years ago,
Utah became the first state in the nation to recognize an official state gun
-- the M1911 semi-automatic pistol.

That doesn’t matter to SAF.

With the precision of a marksman, the group, which has been called
the legal arm of the gun-rights movement, has already gotten several
cities in Utah to change their codes.

West Point, a small community located about 30 minutes north of
Salt Lake City, swapped out their current law banning guns in the city
cemetery earlier this week and replaced it with one that prohibits
firing a gun in the graveyard.

Twenty miles south of Salt Lake in the city of Draper, a ban on guns
in the amphitheater and local parks was also lifted. An ordinance
prohibiting anyone from firing a gun at those locations was put in its place.

“By and large most of the jurisdictions have amended their ordinances,”
Gottlieb said. “We have a reputation and a track record. We do file
lawsuits and we do win.”

Currently, SAF has more than two dozen active lawsuits around the country.

In May, the group sued the city of Tallahassee, its mayor John Marks
and City Commissioners Nancy Miller, Andrew Gillum and Gil Ziffer.

The lawsuit claims that under the city’s ordinance, which criminalizes
the discharge of firearms and airguns, there is no provision that carves
out an exception for the lawful use of a firearm in self-defense.

“Tallahassee has way over-stepped its authority under state preemption,”
Gottlieb said when filing the suit. “The Florida Legislature has
exclusive domain over firearms regulation. When the law was passed,
it nullified all existing, and future, city and county firearm ordinances
and regulations.”

“This is not the first time we have had to take a city to court for
violating a state preemption law,” Gottlieb added. “Why municipal
governments still don’t understand the concept of preemption is a
mystery to us.”

Tolson, who teaches in Tallahassee, says fighting it out in court isn’t
the smartest option for some. “If you are a small municipality, it may
not be worth it for you to fight,” she said. “Why fight if you think you’ll lose?”

David Kopel, an adjunct professor of law at New York University, agrees.
He told FoxNews.com cash-strapped cities and towns don’t have
the budget to fight groups like SAF and would have to explain to their
residents why so much of their taxpayer money was being used for a legal battle.

As it racks up wins, the foundation is moving on to bigger targets.

SAF sued the city of Seattle over a regulatory ban on guns in city park
facilities, and was also instrumental in the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court
case that challenged Chicago’s handgun ban. In that case, the Windy
City’s 28-year-old ban on handgun ownership was ruled unconstitutional.

With a full-time staff of one lawyer, SAF harvests much of its research
from law school students on internships.

“We run lean and mean,” Gottlieb said.

LAKE PARK, FLORIDA —
Shots were fired Saturday afternoon at a Lake Park jewelry store,
the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said.
A person walked into the store in the 900 block of Federal Highway,
south of Northlake Boulevard near Hawthorne Drive, just before 3 p.m.,
asked to see an item and got out a firearm. The owner also got out
a firearm, and shots were fired, the sheriff said.

The suspect ran off in an unknown direction.

Why do we even need judges and juries, when a citizen can haul out a gun and be judge, jury and executioner in a split second?

If you are white it is self defense and if you are black it is a crime... (cynical)

No handcuffs, no incarceration, no questioning as to who is the actual aggressor, just shoot...

Pin the tail on the donkey...

Gun possession is a privilege not a basic right.

Thay r needed to adjudicate the law and to adjudicate equity, Rex.

Self defense is a different function.
Successful self defense enables a victim
to live long enuf to receive an adjudication.


Everyone has the equal right to fight back
against dogs in the streets or against criminals.
Every predatory event is a dispute of DOMINANCE,
in which the more powerful party will prevail and survive.
The victim NEEDS to have and to apply greater power
than the predator has. When I watch Nature programs on TV,
I like it when an elk breaks a lion's jaw with a back kick.
I love it when victims of crime kill criminals
who are committing violent felonies on them.
Years ago, a robber took a shot at me, as I was driving along.
Their car remained abreast of mine UNTIL MY OWN GUN CAME OUT,
whereupon thay screamed & decided that thay had someplace better to go.
Criminals don t like it, when their victims fight back, Rex, because thay think
thay coud get hurt on-the-job, and many of them don t have Workman's Compensation Insurance.

Gun control is O.S.H.A. for violent criminals
protecting them on-the-job from the defenses of their victims.




I'm pretty sure that George Zimmerman
woud have shot a white who was slamming his head on the cement
as quickly as he 'd shoot a black that was doing it. He 'd not say:
"Well, OK, u r a white so u can slam my head on the street 7 times more ofen
than u coud, if u were a black. I'll wait, before I start shooting." Do u agree with that ?



The victim already KNOWS
who the actual aggressor is.




George Zimmerman did that; so also did Officer Wilson.
I am sure that thay were both VERY GLAD INDEED,
that thay had remembered to strap on their respective gun belts
when thay got dressed on those 2 days.




No, no, not at all, Rex.
The US Supreme Court disagreed with u, declaring in the famous Cruikshank case
that the rights of Free Speech and of defensively Bearing Arms
are natural rights that are OLDER than the Constitution, and
that when this Republic was created, it found those rights
already in existence, and it sought to protect them in the Bill of Rights.
US v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 US 542 - Supreme Court 1876

The US Supreme Court also held in McDONALD v. CHICAGO, 561 US 742 (2010)
that the citizens have a fundamental RIGHT to keep and bear arms.





David

David what I do not understand is, you are against police militarization 'for the exact same reason' you are for an escalation of civilian armament.

Self defense... Police are people too...

It only makes sense that the less civilians are armed the less cops need to be armed...

Overly arm a population and you then need to overly arm the police...

And who gets caught in the middle? Law abiding citizens.

The military needs to start melting down these old military tanks and guns (privatize with the steel industry) instead of giving them to the police and turn them into wheelchairs for the soldiers they have maimed. I don't think it is bad if the police have, say, one tank. Since when did the police not be our friends? I still like the police.

I also don't mind the stop and frisk, in certain urban areas, only for the sake of finding concealed weapons on felons...

Police have been OK
thru out the 1900s without heavy armament.
Thay need to recognize us as being their EMPLOYERS, not their enemy.
Thay work for us and we pay them for their service.

On jurisdictional grounds, I deplore the War on Drugs.
Where do u stand on it ?



Yes. I dont begrudge them the equipment
that is necessary to defend their lives.
That does not include battle tanks nor artillery.
Thay never even asked for that.



Any shoeshine boy has as much right to defend his life
as any police officer or any banker. This is not medieval Japan.
We do not have an elite Samurai class who has a monopoly
on the right to defend its lives.



The population arms itself, privately from within.


Again, thay have been OK with their equipment for a long time.
Their bulletproof vests are fine. Typically, criminals are very lightly armed
only with pistols or revolvers; not many heavy machineguns.
The federal government just likes to throw money around,
preferably in support of authoritarianism.


My quest to end government interference with any citizen's possession
of defensive guns is in furtherance of the ideal that a victim shud win,
when he is beset with predatory violence, either from animals
or from criminals. Every predatory event is a contest of power
wherein the party who applies the greatest force will control
that emergency. I want the good guy to win. I empathize with him.

When I have seen movies of homicidal maniacs trying to kill groups of
teenage students, I have rooted for the victims, and wanted them to
get better weapons than the bad guy has so that THAY can control the situation.
Most of the time, the teenagers are running around un-armed, helpless
when thay need more defensive power against the lunatic who is using
garden implements to kill them. To me, that is emotionally frustrating.
I don t actually yell: "shoot the bastards!" but I feel tempted.


If U and your favorite person were ever attacked by animals
or by criminals, I 'd want U to come out on top,
defeating the nasty aggressors. I hope that u will have
the necessary equipment for that, to make that possible, if the need arises.




David

How many cops were killed in the line of duty last year compared to Germany, UK and Japan? Keep it even Rex.

Police are killed and attacked all the time.

According to this site there were over 100 officer deaths in 2013:
http://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2013

This year so far there have been 67 officer deaths:
http://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2014

Any comment on my last post, Rex??
about wanting the good guy to defeat the aggressor ?