Legislature
Firearms
Industry Hails Court Victory
-- The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) - the trade association for the firearms industry - hailed today's United States Supreme Court 5-4 decision written by Justice Scalia that determined authoritatively that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
"Today's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is a major victory for all Americans," said NSSF President Steve Sanetti. "The Heller decision reaffirms the wisdom of our founding fathers in creating the Bill of Rights to protect and preserve individual rights, the cornerstone of our democracy. Furthermore, this decision solidifies an historical fact, the commonsense understanding that governments have powers, not rights -- rights are reserved exclusively for individuals."
Demonstrating the strong grassroots support for the individual rights thesis, the nation's leading gun control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, conceded defeat prior to the High Court's ruling. In an interview with ABC News last week, Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke noted, "We've lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means. Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it's an individual right."
The U.S. Supreme Court agrees that the public is correct.
The importance of having a uniform and legally accepted definition of the Second Amendment is particularly important to the firearms industry, as noted by Sanetti. "The products that our industry manufactures are the means through which our Second Amendment rights are realized. Clearly sportsmen, hunters, responsible firearms owners and the industry are all heavily vested in this groundbreaking ruling."
Though the Heller decision is the first time that the High Court has declared in absolute terms that the Second Amendment is an individual right, the nation's leading historians, legal scholars and constitutional experts have long been on record supporting such a conclusion.
Renowned scholars, including Lawrence Tribe of Harvard, Akhil Reed Amar of Yale, William Van Alstyne of Duke and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, have been vocal in their assertion that the Second Amendment, like all the other rights of the people recognized in the Bill of Rights, secures an individual's right to keep and bear arms.
"Today's decision lays to rest the specious argument that the Second Amendment is not an individual right and marks the beginning of the end of repressive gun laws that have infringed upon individual liberty and done nothing to make America safer," said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel."
NSSF filed a friend of the court brief in support of the respondent, Mr. Heller.
BACKGROUND:
In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia, in striking down the District's gun ban,
held in Parker, et al., v. District of Columbia that "The
phrase 'the right of the people' . . . leads us to conclude that
the right in question is individual."
This was the second time in recent history that a federal circuit court upheld the longstanding belief that the Second Amendment was an individual right. In 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in the case of U.S. v. Emerson that "All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans."
The mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian M. Fenty, filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, setting the stage for the high court to rule. The case became known as District of Columbia v. Heller. According to FBI statistics, Washington D.C., with its gun ban, ranks as one of the most dangerous cities in the United States and maintains one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the country.
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Make Your Voice Heard On Right-to-Carry in Our National Parks! |
| Friday, May 09, 2008 |
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As we reported last week, the U.S. Department of the Interior has issued a proposed rule to eliminate the prohibition on Right-to-Carry in national parks and wildlife refuges. The National Rifle Association led the effort to change this policy and we are very close to winning this important battle. However, the new rules cannot take effect until after a period of public comment. Our opponents will take advantage of this time to try to convince the Secretary of the Interior to reverse his decision. NRA members must take action now so that the anti-gunners are not allowed to sway this process. It is always best to write in your own words. Here are some talking points to assist you:
It is critical that gun owners and sportsmen submit comments during this process. Comments can submitted online by going to this web site: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648053d497 Comments can also be mailed to the following address: Public Comments Processing |
Alert: Bullet
serialization threat in Arizona
Bill Status: Under review by three House committees
Action: Contact committee members and state representatives
Bullet Serialization Threat in Arizona
Legislation (HB 2833)
that would mandate, as early as 2009, bullet serialization -- the
process by which each individual round of ammunition is identified
and marked with a laser-engraved serial number -- has been
referred to the Arizona House Natural Resources and Public Safety
Committee, Appropriations Committee and Rules Committee. The
National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association
of the firearms and ammunition industry, has made clear that
serializing ammunition on a mass production basis is not feasible
from a practical standpoint and any legislation mandating such
action could rightfully be considered a de facto ban on
ammunition.
NSSF is encouraging all sportsmen, hunters and firearms
enthusiasts to contact members of the Natural Resources and Public
Safety Committee, Appropriations Committee, and Rules Committee
immediately urging them to strongly oppose this would-be
ammunition ban.
In addition to contacting individual members of these Arizona
committees, please consider contacting your own state
representative urging him or her to voice their opposition to any
bills that would mandate bullet serialization.
"If manufacturers had to comply with bullet serialization,
NSSF estimates that it would take almost three weeks to
manufacture what is currently made in a single day," said
NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane.
"This massive reduction in ammunition would translate into
substantially lower sales and profitability, and ultimately force
major ammunition manufacturers to abandon the market. In turn,
there would be a severe shortage of serialized ammunition and all
consumers, including federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies, would be faced with substantial price increases.
Ammunition will go from costing pennies to several dollars per
cartridge."
The domestic small arms ammunition industry, utilizing modern
manufacturing processes and distribution practices, produces
between 10 – 12 billion ammunition cartridges a year at already
low-profit margins. The three largest domestic manufacturers (who
collectively account for the vast majority of the market) produce
an estimated 15 million rounds of ammunition in a single day.
Ammunition manufacturers could not serialize their product without
hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment to build the
new factories that would be needed in order to meet the
requirements of bullet serialization. At the same time, hundreds
of millions of dollars of existing plants and equipment, and
decades of manufacturing (cost-saving) efficiencies, would be
rendered obsolete.
"Bullet Serialization is dangerous and not practical,"
continued Keane. "As legislation that would mandate bullet
serialization not only threatens law-abiding gun owners but our
industry's ability to supply the nation's law enforcement officers
and military with high-quality ammunition, we encourage all
citizens of Arizona to contact members of the Natural Resources
and Public Safety Committee, Appropriations Committee and Rules
Committee and urge them to oppose these bills."
More information on bullet serialization.
Update On Right-To-Carry In
National Parks And Wildlife Refuges
The current regulations on possession of firearms in national parks--which generally prohibit possession, carry or transportation of loaded or uncased firearms--were proposed in 1982 and finalized in 1983. Similar restrictions apply in national wildlife refuges. It is now time to amend those regulations to reflect the changed legal situation with respect to state laws on carrying firearms.
The effect of these now-outdated regulations on people who carry firearms for self-protection was far from the forefront at the time these regulations were adopted. As of the end of 1982, only six states routinely allowed average citizens to carry handguns for self-defense. Now, 48 states have a process for issuance of licenses or permits to carry firearms, and 40 of those states provide the opportunity for average citizens to legally carry firearms for self-defense.
Starting in 2003, NRA staff began meeting with officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior to change this regulation and allow state law to govern the carrying and transportation of firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges -- as it does in national forests and on BLM lands. There was little resistance to such a policy change but also little action to make this change. Bureaucrats involved in this issue would move on and others would replace them, needing to be educated from scratch about the need and importance for this change.
As the second term of the Bush administration began in 2005, there was more of a sense of urgency to get this regulation changed given the uncertainty of the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. NRA asked several key Members of Congress, by virtue of their leadership roles as committee or subcommittee chairmen, to write letters to then-Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton in support of this policy change. All of those letters went unanswered.
After the 2006 elections, NRA asked House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Ranking Member Don Young (R-AK) to write another letter in March of 2007 requesting revision to the Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) to apply state law regarding concealed weapons statutes in National Park Service (NPS) areas and National Wildlife Refuges. Eight months later, they finally received a “thanks but no thanks” response from National Park Service Director Mary Bomar and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall.
In January of 2007, NPS Visitor and Resource Protection Associate Director Karen Taylor-Goodrich wrote in a letter that “(1) Parks are safe places,” “(2) 'Right to carry’ laws do not reduce crime,” and “(3) ‘Right to carry’ laws do not protect visitors from wildlife.”
On December 14, Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) and 46 of his Senate colleagues (including eight Democrats) sent a letter to former Idaho Governor and now Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne asking for the restoration of the right of law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm for self-defense in national parks and wildlife refuges. (NRA-ILA initiated and worked closely with Senator Crapo on this letter.)
Two months later, there had been no response from Kempthorne. So on February 11, four more Senators sent another letter to Kempthorne requesting this same policy change. Now 51 Senators -- a majority of the upper chamber of the United States Congress -- have publicly sought this regulatory change.
Finally, Kempthorne appeared on February 13 before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and on February 14 before the House Natural Resources Committee, for the annual department oversight hearings. Members of both committees asked Kempthorne about the delay in responding to the letters from 51 Senators, and the Department’s position on allowing those with valid state licenses or permits, to carry firearms in national parks. Following his admission that some parks are unsafe due to drug trafficking, Kempthorne was pressed on the need to allow law-abiding citizens the opportunity to legally carry firearms in national parks for personal protection and whether he believed that Right-to-Carry doesn’t reduce crime.
Congress has rightly become frustrated over the years of inaction at Interior. Members of both houses have introduced legislation -- H.R. 5434 by Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Doug Lamborn (R-CO), and S. 2619 by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) -- within the past week to change the policy relating to carrying and transportation of firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges.
The U.S. Congress and NRA are anxiously awaiting a response from the Interior Department.
Bullet Serialization
(Registration) Scheme Lands in Arizona!
Please Contact Your State Legislators Today!
House Bill 2833, introduced by
State Representative Martha Garcia, (D-13), would require
that all handgun and "assault weapon" ammunition
manufactured or sold in Arizona to be coded with an
individual serial number, and entered into a statewide
database at the time of sale. Encoded ammunition would
be registered to the purchaser and would include the date of
transaction, the purchaser's name, date of birth, driver's license
number, and the serial number of the ammunition.
This dangerous legislation could be bound for a hearing this
legislative session if a handful of anti-gun legislators
have their way. Similar legislation failed several
years ago in California and just today Hawaii failed to pass one
of two Senate versions after NRA and the Hawaii Attorney
General testified against the measure.
HB2833 seeks only to harass law-abiding gun owners as criminals
are not likely to purchase their ammunition through legal
channels. Please take a moment to contact your
State Legislators and voice your opposition to House Bill
2833. Contact information for your State
Legislators can be found here.
Bullet serialization efforts are making their way
across the country looking for a foothold and it is vital
that Arizona not be the first!