Month: May 2005

Then There’s This,.

(Via Say Uncle)

I May Have Hooked a Live One!.

I’ve been commenting over at Banana Oil! on Ian’s post A Challenge, sparring with another commenter, Alex. If you’re interested in the exchange, it starts here. Well, Alex has taken up the gauntlet, and I’ve invited him to post here at TSM. We’ll see.

I love doing this.

I’m weird, aren’t I?

I Imagine This Post May Be Unpopular.

I just took the time to read the Bach v. Pataki decision. (A day late and a dollar short.) Several bloggers have commented on it. Yosemite Sam of The Ten Ring wrote:

Now via Alphecca we have a decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that pretty much takes a crap on the Bill of Rights. The case is Bach vs. Pataki in which a Virginia man argued that his Virginia carry license should be valid in New York State, just like a driver’s or marriage license.

But this “Court” decided that New York has a compelling reason to crap on the Constitution and said that the state’s restriction of permits to New York residents was valid. They justify their decision using the totally bogus 2nd Amendment collective rights argument that even Lawrence Tribe says is utter bullshit.

The referenced piece by Jeff contains:

Once again we see judges who should be figuratively tarred-and-feathered for their astounding lack of knowledge concerning current thinking on constitutional law. Even such liberals as Lawrence Tribe have come around to believe that the Second Amendment refers to a personal right, just as all the other amendments do. Here we have (in my opinion) incompetent judges attempting to twist the original meaning of the Bill of Rights to suit their activist positions.

Most bloggers, though, were more circumspect. David Hardy wrote:

In the 1980s, the 2d Circuit easily waved the Second Amendment away. For example, in U.S. v Toner, 728 F.2d 115 (2nd Cir. 1984), an equal protection question was raised with regard to the Gun Control Act’s ban on possession by illegal aliens, and the Circuit disposed of the “fundamental right” criterion (if a fundamental right is involved, a court must use a higher level of scrutiny in determining whether equal protection has been violated) with a sentence: “….the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right, cf. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939) (in the absence of evidence showing that firearm has “Some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” Second Amendment does not guarantee right to keep and bear such a weapon)…”

Today, the Circuit has to spend a lot of time hedging, and it declines the obvious opportunity simply to adopt the district court ruling. This suggests it sees the Second Amendment question as up in the air rather than settled.

Countertop Chronicles is pessimistically enthusiastic:

Boy, I’d love to see the Supreme Court knock this one out of the park. Unfortunatly, its probably a very good delaying tactic on part of the GFW’s on the 2nd, because if the Supreme’s were to take the issue up, they likely would limit their review to the error of relying upon Presser. Once reversed, they would simply send it back down to the Second Circuit and avoid any discussing of the underlying Second Amendment concerns that are really at issue.

And, finally, Crime & Federalism was more encouraged:

This is almost a model test case on the incorporation question. Some have speculated that the reason four Justices haven’t voted to grant cert. in other Second Amendment cases resulted from the lack of a good “test plaintiff.” Well, Bach is the perfect plaintiff.

You know what a decade of reading legal decisions has done to me? It’s made me appreciate it when judges actually follow the law. A while back I wrote “Game Over, Man, Game Over” when I was disillusioned at 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski bowing to the precedent of that circuit’s Hickman v. Block when it so obviously went against what he believes. I said then:

Mike Spenis said “the future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court’s willingness to periodically reexamine the law,” but the evidence is plain that the courts will not do that. They will use obviously flawed precedent so long as it “comports especially well with our notions of good social policy.” And even if it doesn’t, the courts will often bow, as Kozinski does here, to precedent they abhor. We depend upon the honor and intellectual honesty of the judges who make up the Justice system, yet it seems that those who are truly honest and honorable are outnumbered by those who are “willing to bury language that is incontrovertibly there.” The honest and honorable ones abide, under the rule of law, by precedent that is otherwise insupportable. The middling honest ones, the ones Justice Brandeis labled as “men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding” “build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text.” And those decisions stand, without review, periodic or otherwise, to serve as the next step down the road to Hell.

I stand by those words still, but I do so because if the honest and honorable judges did not abide by precedent, we would not have even the semblance of rule of law.

This is what caught my attention in the Bach ruling:

Although the sweep of the Second Amendment has become the focus of a national legal dialogue, we see no need to enter into that debate. Instead, we hold that the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” imposes a limitation on only federal, not state, legislative efforts. We thus join five of our sister circuits.

Our holding is compelled by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886). In 1879, Herman Presser led four hundred armed members of a society called the Lehr und Wehr Verein through the streets of Chicago. Illinois’s Military Code required that any “parade with arms” be licensed by the Governor. Presser lacked a license, and was charged and convicted under the Code. Presser argued to the Supreme Court that Illinois had exercised a power “forbidden to the States by the Constitution of the United States.” He relied on both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Supreme Court rejected Presser’s argument. Justice Woods explained, “[A] conclusive answer to the contention that [the Second Amendment] prohibits the legislation in question lies in the fact that the amendment is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the States.” The Court quoted Chief Justice Waite’s opinion in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875). “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms ‘is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment declares that is shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.’” Presser, 116 U.S. at 265 (quoting Cruikshank, 92 U.S. at 553). The Court affirmed Presser’s conviction.

Presser stands for the proposition that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, whatever else its nature, is a right only against the federal government, not against the States. The courts are uniform in this interpretation. Just as Presser had no federal constitutional right “to keep and bear arms” with which to challenge Illinois’s license requirement, Bach has none to assert against New York’s regulatory scheme. Under Presser, the right to keep and bear arms is not a limitation on the power of States.

Like it or not, that’s sound legal reasoning, and here’s why:

We must follow Presser. Where, as here, a Supreme Court precedent “has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to th[e Supreme] Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Rodriquez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989); see also id. at 486 (Stevens, J., dissenting). The Court has cautioned, in the context of constitutional interpretation, that “courts should [not] conclude [that] more recent [Supreme Court] cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.” Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 207 (1997); see also id. at 258 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). Even if a Supreme Court precedent was “‘unsound when decided’” and even if it over time becomes so “‘inconsistent with later decisions’” as to stand upon “‘increasingly wobbly, moth-eaten foundations,’” it remains the Supreme Court’s “prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents.” State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 9, 20 (1997) (quoting Khan v. State Oil Co., 93 F.3d 1358, 1363 (7th Cir. 1996) (Posner, J.)). Thus, “regardless of whether appellant[] agree[s] with the Presser analysis, it is the law of the land and we are bound by it. The[] assertion that Presser is illogical is a policy matter for the Supreme Court to address.” We cannot overrule the Supreme Court.

Quite right. To do otherwise means that the system of rule of law falls apart. Both Cruikshank and Presser, while bad decisions, are clear on what they meant – and they stated in no uncertain terms that the Second Amendment didn’t protect against STATE infringements on the right to arms. Inferior courts do not have the legal power to overturn those decisions. Individual Appeals Court judges do not have the power to overturn en banc Circuit decisions, either.

The metaphorical crap was taken on the Bill of Rights by the justices in the Cruikshank and Presser courts. The judges sitting on the 2nd Circuit bench are not the clean-up crew, nor should their decision be grounds for tarring and feathering. They’re doing their job, as far as I can see. It’s up to the Supreme Court to fix this one, and while I hope they’ll do the right thing, or at least what Countertop thinks likely, I would not be surprised if they deny cert. on this case as they did on both Emerson and Silveira. It is, after all, easier to dodge uncomfortably bad decisions than correct them.

They’ve been doing that since 1939.

Range Report!!.

Cowboy Blob has the pictures and details. The malfunctions I was experiencing with my Kimber were new to me. I just added Cylinder & Slide’s Safety Fast System. Among other things, it came with a new slide release. Well, it seems to work too good, locking the slide back when it shouldn’t be. I was shooting Federal 230gr hardball, and several times the slide would lock back, and I’d look to see the cartridge about 1/4 of the way forward. Drop the slide release and everything was copacetic. Very odd. But the SFS works great! Might have to go back to the original slide release, though.

The 25-round Butler-Creek 10/22 mag seems to have surrendered, but the factory 10-rounders still work perfectly.

Both the Garand and the AR-15 were flawless.

But by 10:30 it was already too damned hot, so we packed it in. Good day, though.

Damn, It’s Hot!.

This hot:

Summer took its time getting here, but it’s here with a vengeance.

Here’s an Interesting Complaint About British Policing.

I wonder what David Copperfield has to say about it? From The Telegraph, in its entirety:

‘Police aware’ – but not, apparently, of you and me

By Charles Moore
(Filed: 21/05/2005)

Driving along, you see a car, possibly stolen, abandoned by the side of the road. You slow down to look, perhaps intending to report the vehicle. A piece of paper is stuck on the windscreen which says “POLICE AWARE”. This reassures you. But suppose you drive past again next week, and then again next month, and the vehicle is still there, your attitude to the notice changes. If the police are aware, you think, why aren’t they doing anything about it?

Gradually, a still more irritating thought dawns. You realise that the police declaration that they are “aware” is considered enough. It is not a prelude to doing something about a crime: it is a substitute for it.

This does not apply only to cars. You or a friend or a family member report a fairly minor but upsetting crime – a bag snatch, a break-in, a drug deal on the corner. Oh yes, you are told, there’s a lot of this around, we think we know who’s doing it, it’s just a matter of getting the evidence. POLICE AWARE.

Sometimes this goes on for years, and with much more serious crimes. Several people I know suffered from a spate of very nasty antique thefts in the South-West. The gang were expert, and violent. They carefully chose elderly people in quite remote places, came in the small hours, and sometimes let off smoke bombs to confuse their victims into thinking their house was on fire. For ages, the police said they knew the large criminal family behind it all, but they were reluctant to close in. They did so only after determined and prolonged protests from rich and influential people in several counties. So how much worse it is for “your poor, your huddled masses”.

Again, crime late at night in the West End of London is huge because of the people who go there to get drunk. The police are “aware”, of course, but they believe that the problem is so great that their only practical tactic is dispersal of the troublemakers rather than large-scale arrests. An eccentric and brave Westminster city councillor called Ian Wilder has made a habit of photographing crimes being committed. Recently he snapped an attack in which an innocent passer-by died: Wilder’s lens captured the poor man lying on the ground. Far from thanking him for his public service, many police were furious at his drawing so much attention to the trouble – POLICE AWARE, but they do not want others to be.

I do not believe this happens because British policemen and women are useless people. Most of the officers one meets try to be helpful and some are outstanding. It is a problem deep in the way public services – not only the police force – are run.

A friend of mine is a police officer at “the sharp end”, though, far more often than he wants, he is actually at a desk. The Home Office targets come down to him and his colleagues. They demand, for instance, X numbers of detections per month. So it is hard not to go for those detections that are easy rather than the ones that are most important. And once a force has these targets imposed, it turns inwards upon itself, setting itself targets for its targets, reprimanding people not for failing to go on patrol, but for failing to write the necessary report in the prescribed time.

In real life, explains my friend, the proper pursuit of crime can play havoc with targets. Suppose, to take an extreme example, that the police were after a psychopathic killer of six children. That would require, rightly, huge amounts of money and men but, if successful, it would show up simply as six detections.

All the other detections that were put on one side to concentrate on the crime that mattered most would skew the statistics: so the force that caught the murderer would fail to meet its targets.

My friend and his colleagues were also compelled to do long hours of “community awareness training”.

He thinks it is important not to offend ethnic minorities through ignorance, but the area he polices is more than 98 per cent white and so it may not matter very much to know the difference between a Buddhist and a Dravidian. When the police “stop-check” someone in the street, they have to ask them their ethnicity, and send the record to the Home Office. Funnily enough, says my friend wryly, stopping people in these circumstances is not like market research: “Most of them don’t want to stand around and have a chat about ethnic issues.” You don’t get proper answers and so you end up consuming your energies in “a process just to show you’re doing it”.

Now the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, admits to the Police Federation that his office imposes too much bureaucracy on its members. But this is not the sinner that repenteth so much as the alcoholic who promises to reduce his intake to one bottle of whisky a day. For the fault is not in Mr Clarke’s civil servants, or even in Mr Clarke, or even in New Labour (though none of these helps). It’s in the system. It’s the question of who’s boss.

The Met’s case is the most extreme. It is accountable to the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership, the Community Safety Plan, the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Home Secretary. So the confusion is complete. The only clear thing is that the Met is not accountable to the public through their votes.

It follows from this, with an iron logic which no amount of personal niceness by individual officers can break, that the public become a nuisance to the police. Their orders don’t derive from the public, and no punishment comes from displeasing them. The top jobs come from pleasing Mr Clarke, not the widow cowering behind her window grille or the corner shop owner watching the youths sprinting off with his takings.

That is why the police like to say that it’s not crime but the fear of crime that is the problem: it’s a polite way of saying that the customer is always wrong. Thus Neighbourhood Watch becomes a bore, private security becomes a menace, concerned citizens who ring the police with information are just clogging up the switchboard, “have-a-go” heroes are breaking demarcation lines. Go away – POLICE AWARE.

They can only say that because they are not answerable to the customer – not in the Met, neither in leafy Surrey, nor in gritty Liverpool, not in the outer Hebrides. From time to time, you see television interviews with American lawmen – a sheriff in Arizona who has chain gangs, a Mr Big from New York who has cut crime in half. They are presented strangely – half-mocking their sheer American-ness, half-admiring their tough talk. But the real point is not that these men are better or worse or braver or cruder than our own: it is that their careers as policemen depend on the communities they serve. Ours don’t.

My friend the police officer says that the police need to “find out who the local community are and what they want”. How poignant, how tragic, that, for all their efforts, they don’t know already. We must be given the power to tell them.

I can’t add anything to that.

Stand Up To the Yobs, Get Attacked.

Great society they’re building over there in Britain. Once again, an armed man who confronted a group of teens ends up with a severe head injury.

Father of four ‘critical’ after confronting yobs in street

A father of four was critically ill last night after being attacked by a gang of youths who he confronted after a stone was thrown at his car.

Phil Carroll, 48, suffered serious head injuries. He was struck twice and knocked to the ground.

His assailants, two boys and a girl, may be as young as 14.

As he remained in a critical but stable condition at Hope Hospital, Salford, Greater Manchester, Mr Carroll’s wife, Jean, appealed for the public’s help in catching his attackers.

“We are all devastated by what has happened,” she said. “Phil is such a good person and is well liked.

“He went out to his car and a minute later he was lying in the street. Somebody must know who did this.”

Mr Carroll’s brother, John, 34, who witnessed the attack, said: “We need to know who these people are to get them off the streets.

“Phil said youths in the area were always causing unruly behaviour during the night. Being the person he is, he will always confront them and now it has ended up like this.”

Mr Carroll, a company director, went to his brother’s house in Lower Broughton, Salford, to help with his car satellite navigation system.

“He was due to start work on a large contract for Barclays Bank in Aberdeen today and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get lost in the city.

“As we walked towards the car for a test drive Phil spoke to a girl and two lads he felt were trespassing as they were stood inside his gate. The youths walked off without any problems but when Phil asked them to close the gate the girl told one of the lads not to.

“One of the lads threw a stone at the garage which ricocheted and hit the car. Phil ran over to the youths who had been joined by a group of around 20 who were hanging around in the street.

“He only went to find out who threw the stone but before he could do anything one of the lads punched him in the face and as he fell backwards he was hit again by another youth.

“Phil hit his head really hard on the pavement and just lay there. I wanted to confront the lad that hit my brother but by just looking at him I knew he was in a bad way.

Juuuust marvelous.

Hey, gang, let’s try England’s crime-control methods here! They’re so successful, after all.

In a related piece, read Mark Steyn’s analysis of why the “hoodie culture” has grown across the pond. Here’s a taste:

From my own personal observation of sullen teens in ghastly clothing loafing about dreary British shopping malls, I’d say a lot more of them seem to be hooded than their equivalents in dreary American or dreary Canadian shopping malls. It’s some while since I’ve been to a dreary Fijian or dreary Uzbek shopping mall, so I don’t want to overstate my case but there seems to be some indication that the United Kingdom is becoming a world leader in hooded teenagers. Why should this be?

Obvious answer: CCTV. The British are the most videotaped people in the history of mankind, caught on camera by official surveillance devices as they go about every humdrum public manoeuvre. If you’re a grown-up, this might not seem a big deal: you can go back to your pad, collapse on the sofa and pick your nose far from Tony Blair’s prying eyes, though doubtless this chink in the 24/7 monitoring system will eventually be rectified.

But, if you’re an adolescent, far more of your social rituals take place in public – meeting friends at the bus stop, enjoying a romantic moment by the non-operative ornamental fountain outside the KwikkiJunk Centre, etc – and it seems entirely reasonable that adolescent garb has artfully evolved to provide its wearers with such privacy as can be found under the constant whirr of the Big Blairite Brother’s telly cameras.

This is the usual law of unintended consequences. Just as the increasing sophistication of home-security systems has led burglars to conclude that it’s easier to wait till you’re in, knock on the door and punch you in the face, so the ever-present 24-hour surveillance devices have ensured that, even if you get a look at your assailant, you’ll never be able to pick him out of a police line-up.

RTWT. It’s worth it.

Goin’ Shootin’.

I’m headed out to the range this morning to burn a little cordite with Cowboy Blob. This afternoon my family is having a birthday picnic to celebrate my daughter’s 26th. And it should only be about 103º! What a great plan!

Anyway, no posting until this evening, if then. See ya!

This is the Result of a “Decades-Long Slow-Motion Hate Crime,” Ms. Whittenburg

I have said that sometimes gun owners are our own worst enemies, but I have to admit that this story I ran into last week in Houston left me ambivalent:

Gun ‘bullies’ spread fear in Augusta

© 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

She knows that simply asking the question is enough to set them off. But Cathie Whittenburg, executive director of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, can’t help herself.

“What ever happened to civility?” Whittenburg asked Tuesday as her group’s legislative agenda – or what’s left of it – limped toward the end of the session. “There’s a level of anger here that you don’t see with other bills. And these people, you know, are armed!”

Yes, and you’re pissing them off! It’s been going on for decades now, and all of us are tired of it. We’ve figured out that “sensible gun laws” means “gun bans” and some have decided that “civility” isn’t going to stop it, so perhaps harsh language might be called for.

I don’t feel that way myself (often), but I certainly understand the sentiment.

Responsible gun owners, step away from your computer keyboards. Whittenburg is the first to acknowledge that the nasty e-mails and telephone messages surrounding Maine’s never-ending debate over firearms come not from mainstream hunters or target shooters or collectors. Rather, she blames them on “the bullies” who attack anything they consider a threat to their beloved Second Amendment.

I suspect that more than a few of them are mainstream hunters or target shooters or collectors. They’re the ones, after all, actively engaged in the shooting sports.

But lately, those bullies have Whittenburg worried. Last week’s story out of Augusta – that state Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, had forwarded three pieces of hate mail to the Attorney General’s Office, including one from the “No Warning Headshot Photo Lab for Freedom” – is but one example of what Whittenburg calls a stepped-up offensive against anyone who dares submit a bill containing the word “firearm.” (Strimling apparently put himself in the cross hairs by proposing that Maine adopt a statewide ban on assault weapons.)

And you wonder just exactly what the Second Amendment was put there for, don’t you, when you get a reaction like that?

Let me be clear here: I neither advocate nor endorse such actions. They’re stupid, they’re illegal, and anyone who does it to that extent ought to be arrested. But on the other hand I used to think that Claire Wolf’s statement about government, “It’s too early to shoot the bastards,” was on the money. I no longer do. I’m conviced now that Jefferson, as radical as he was, had the right of it:

And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.

It’s not too early, it’s too late. We’ve passed the point where it would be at all effective. Too much of the population would reject any such action, and it would result in more government interference, not less.

“It’s really unfortunate for people who are brave enough to sponsor these bills,” Whittenburg said. “If your name is on a (firearms) bill, you get slammed.”

But not shot. Yep, you certainly are brave to be bearding the lion in its den, aren’t you?

“Absolutely,” agreed Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, during a break at the State House. It wasn’t long after she submitted a bill last January calling for a 10-day waiting period on firearms sales to anyone younger than 22, Craven said, that she began getting cryptic calls and e-mails telling her, “You’re going to be sorry you did this.”

Granted, that could mean her bill, which by Tuesday had been watered down almost beyond recognition, could cost Craven re-election. Or it could mean something else.

“I grew up in Ireland, where you get very sensitive to threats and anything involving weapons,” said Craven. When the first threats began showing up on her phone machine and computer last winter, she said, “I became very concerned. I remember thinking, ‘Gee, I even have these legislative plates on my car . . .’ “

And we all know just how effective gun control laws have been in Ireland, don’t we?

So “let’s do it over here” strikes you as a good idea?

Rep. Deborah Pelletier-Simpson, D-Auburn, knows the feeling. She sponsored a bill this session that would tax firearm sales and use the money to improve security in Maine’s courthouses. As a victim of domestic violence six years ago, Pelletier-Simpson knew firsthand what it’s like to sit in the courthouse lobby afraid that all hell might break loose.

I imagine she knows all too well what it’s like to sit in her home, afraid that “all hell might break loose.” Yet she seems to think that attempting to disarm other people will somehow make her safe. Sheesh. And she’s an elected representative of the People. She should read TFS Magnum. Maybe she’d get a clue.

Earlier in the session, Pelletier-Simpson’s response to one nasty e-mail about her bill (the tax part has been stripped out, she said, while the rest of the proposal is “on life support”) found its way to an ultra-conservative Web site. She came home from a weekend away to find her answering machine full of messages – all from men, all screaming, all saying “I had no right to represent people. I should resign my office …”

I understand the sentiment. I disapprove of the style.

“They were all kind of veiled threats,” said Pelletier-Simpson. “By the time I finished listening, I was in tears. It was frightening.”

But I bet you’ll be brave as hell next session, and try to introduce more gun-control legislation, won’t you?

Then there’s Rep. Carole Grose, D-Woolwich, who co-sponsored Strimling’s assault-weapons bill – but isn’t sure she’d do it again.

Hmmm…

Perhaps it’s more effective a tactic that I gave it credit for…

The bill died before a legislative committee on Friday – yet Grose’s telephone rang every 15 minutes all weekend (“Sometimes I listened. Other times I just held the phone out and let them go.”) and her e-mail inbox was still smoking as late as Monday night.

“One of them called me an ‘enemy of the country,’ ” Grose said, adding that by the time she had waded through the page-and-a-half diatribe, “I felt like I had a target on my back.”

“For what we get paid up here, it’s not worth it to me,” said Grose. “How do I know there isn’t some radical person out there who’s actually going to do something?”

And aren’t those the ones you’re trying (with complete lack of success) to disarm? No, you’re trying to disarm people like me.

It’s not a rhetorical question. Whittenburg, of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, has a story in her news archives about 20-year-old Michael Breit of Illinois, who in November was convicted of illegally receiving explosive materials with intent to kill, injure or intimidate people.

It seems Breit accidentally discharged his AK-47 in his apartment a year ago, and police who responded found a hit list of public figures who were, he later told police, “marked to die” for their liberal or anti-gun views.

“I truly believe we’re talking about a minority here,” Whittenburg said. “But it can be a real threat.”

That’s exactly what Strimling thought when he forwarded his hate mail to the AG’s office last week. The postcard from the “No Warning Headshot Photo Lab for Freedom” not only called him a “treasonous Jew,” he said, but it also ended with the words, “Triangulation squad at hearing on Monday 10 a.m. In your face debate, traitor.”

“I didn’t get it until after the hearing,” Strimling said. “Had I gotten it before, I probably wouldn’t have gone.”

Back in 2000, Dr. Michael S. Brown of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership wrote The Radicalization of America’s Gun Culture from which I got the “decades-long slow-motion hate crime” quote. Dr. Brown said then:

Members of the great American gun culture who actively enjoyed their sport and celebrated their firearms heritage were once considered the backbone of America, both for their militarily valuable shooting skills and for their patriotism. Decades of deliberate attacks by politicians and the media have slowly relegated this important group to the status of a subculture that now feels out of place and at war with its own government.

—

Since the National Firearms Act was signed into law in 1934, the number of gun control laws at all levels of government have multiplied exponentially. So has the overall crime rate, which some argue is a direct result of gun control laws that discourage self-defense.

Although none of these laws reduced crime, each new law creates another way that a well intentioned gun owner can inadvertently end up in prison or ruined by legal costs. Some have been killed in raids by government agents. Much like laws passed to promote the failed war on drugs, each new gun law gives the police additional powers that threaten basic constitutional rights.

America’s lawful gun owners are painfully aware of these facts. Since gun laws don’t reduce crime, they wonder, what is the real purpose? This question has led to numerous theories that attempt to explain why the “ruling elite”, which includes the media and many politicians, would want to eliminate civilian gun ownership in America.

American gun owners feel as if they are being slowly crushed. One writer recently described this decades-long campaign as a slow motion hate crime.

Frustration has been building in the gun culture for thirty years and has been accelerating with the faster pace of anti-gun attacks and the dramatic improvement in communications. Stories of outrageous persecution by government agencies now circulate like wildfire via the internet. Anti-gun bills introduced in any legislature are instantly made known to millions.

—

Some observers of this cultural war wonder why large numbers of gun owners have not yet resorted to violence to preserve their way of life. Civil wars have started over less.

—

Nobody knows if, when or how this group will reach its breaking point, but one must question the wisdom of infuriating millions of armed citizens.

You want to know where civility went, Ms. Whittenburg? Ask Eleanor Holmes Norton. Ask Joseph Pelleteri. Ask Lester Campbell. Ask Bruce Louis Bartos. Ask Christopher and Trudy Sherburne. Ask Al Woodbridge. Harry & Teresa Lamplugh. Jerry Michel. (And read the follow-up.) Ask…

Well, you get the idea. The list is nearly endless. And infuriating.

You reap what you sow. Sow the wind, …