October 2009
I have taken down this site, for a few reasons:
There are two places we can attack this politically: local elections (especially sheriffs, but also city councils) and also at the state legislature level. Both of these are not viable at this time.
At a practical level, the problem with CCW issuance in this state is the sheriffs. They hold the keys to it. City councils also hold the keys because they could demand that the police chiefs they hire issue permits. However these local potentates have various strong motivations to not issue:
Sheriffs are, effectively, elected for life. Sheriff Hennessey, the worst and most anti-gun sheriff in this state, has been in office for over 30 years, and has run several times without anyone else on the ballot. He is the most extreme example, but the others are not far behind. Sheriff Baca of LA is well-known for issuance of permits to celebrities, connections to Scientology, and being more interested in Hollywood parties than in chasing criminals. And he's still undefeatable. Other sheriffs "appoint" their successors by stepping down from office early in their terms.
Meanwhile very few voters understand anything of these issues. They see sheriffs are "top cops" fighting to keep their counties safe, when in fact they are all too often merely "top politicians" fighting to keep their enormous compensation packages and political power, which rests on savvy handling of discretionary CCW issuance.
It would be great to win at the city council level, but there, elections are fiercly contested and many other issues move the voters.
At this time, California's legislature is locked up by a Democratic political machine. This machine rests on various public employees unions, including law enforcement unions, which are strongly anti-CCW. This same machine is the power base for the country's worst anti-gun-rights politicians like Senator Diane Feinstein. This machine has, over the past several years, succeeded in passing some of the country's most absurd (and bad) gun laws, such as California's assault weapons ban, the large capacity magazine ban, the ammo mail order ban (coming in 2010), the 50 BMG ban, and many many others. The sole purpose of those bills is to harass gun owners, for the purpose of driving them out of the state. Driving gun owners out of the state will send away the last small strongly-committed conservative element in this state. As long as that element is here it will pose a threat to the Democratic political machine of California, and so they want it to leave. Gun owner harassment bills are one great way to achieve that, and in fact we hear all the time about hard-core gun rights activists (who tend to also be hard-core conservatives) deciding to leave the state. Having no CCW in California, with easy CCW outside of California, is a very logical approach to maximizing that trend. So we're not going to win in the legislature.
The last time CCW reform was proposed in the legislature here was AB 357 in 2009. It died in committee, as everyone expected.
The previous attempt was in 1998 (I'll add a link and details later). It passed out of committee but died in the final vote. Since then our legislature has moved further to the left and further away from being able to pass such a bill.
California's horribly gerrymandered districts, and the all-powerful Democratic machine, make it impossible to pass CCW reform through the legislature. To win it, we will need a generation-long fight to restore competitiveness to California's state politics, and restore the Republican party to some relevance. That is a much bigger project than CCW reform. I hope everyone reading this will take action to advance that goal. That means going to the vote, and voting Republican, even if there isn't a snowball's chance in the Sahara of the Republican winning. We need to restore competitive politics and a viable Republican party.
Even the LA Times can see there is a connection between our horrible gerrymandering, lack of responsibility in the State legislature, and the Democratic party machine.
It is possible that Obama will lead to a sharp anti-Democratic backlash, which might re-energize Republican activists in this state. Maybe.
California's ongoing budget crisis is caused, in large measure, by the Democratic party machine which "owns" this state. Public employees unions keep demanding, and receiving, more funding and more generous compensation packages, while the service they provide becomes worse and worse. California is already close to the last in the nation in education, and police response times in our big cities are often measured in hours. The state has put off paying the bill mainly with some short-term accounting tricks. But those will soon reach their limits, and the state will face massive cuts, higher taxes, and services will go from bad to non-existent. Voters may start asking hard questions, like, where did all the money go, and why did it go there, and what did we get for it? All of those questions might benefit the Republicans if they could somehow capitalize on them.
It's also possible that we will get some help from the new redistricting system, which kicks in for the 2010 election cycle. That system is designed to fix our legislative districts, many of which look like octopuses, Rorschach blots, or Chile. Maybe.
| California legislative district... or Rorschach blot??? | |
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| How you see it reveals the depths of your political psychology | |
But there's a lot of "maybes" and "possibles" in this section on what could happen to improve things.
There have been multiple national reciprocity bills introduced in Congress every year for the past several years. They get closer and closer to passing every year, although it would be overly-optimistic to think it's going to happen within the next couple of years. The Republicans have tried tactics such as attaching them as riders onto other must-pass bills. So far they haven't succeeded, but a Republican resurgence in 2012 is possible and could bring some viability to these bills. That will happen before the Republican party can be restored in this state.
It's pretty obvious, from looking at these factors, that if we had to wait for politics to give us a victory, we would wait a long long time, perhaps forever. And the longer we wait the more gun culture dies out in the state, and we could easily end up being like in the UK where there is no gun culture.
Keep on working on the political side, but don't hope for victory from it.
As weak as our position is in the legislature, it is strong in the courts. Everyone should be aware of the stunning 2008 Heller case, in which the Supreme Court found (5-4) that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right secured by the Constitution. I know, big shock, it's only spelled out in black-and-white, but that right had never been upheld by the Supreme Court until 2008.
Much like Brown v. Board of Education triggered a series of court cases which spanned decades to define the meaning of "desegregation", Heller has likewised set off a series of cases to fully define what the right means. I expect these cases to go on for a long time, defining the subtle nuances.
Right now, though, they need to work out some big questions to lay the foundations for what the right means.
Strange as it may seem, when the Constitution was first written, the rights generally only restrained the Federal government. For example, under the First Amendment, the Federal government could not establish a church, but the state governments could, because the First Amendment didn't apply to the states.
Over time, the rights have been applied to the states in a process known as incorporation. In particular, after the Civil War, it was evident that Southern states were abusing the newly-freed slaves. The 14th Amendment attempted to give state citizens the same protections against the state and local governments as they had against the Federal government.
Incorporation is a complicated area of law. Most, but not all, of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated. For instance, the First Amendment is incorporated, so states can't force their residents to be members of a certain church. In contract to most of the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment right to indictment by a grand jury has not been incorporated, and so some states do not have a grand jury process.
The Second Amendment has also not been incorporated. In fact, some old and very racist cases (notably Cruikshank) have held that it is not incorporated.
However, those cases were decided in a much different era, and the time is ripe to revise them. It is unlikely that the Supreme Court would decide that there is a right to keep and bear arms, but unlike all the other individual liberties in the Bill of Rights, that right doesn't apply to state and local governments.
The incorporation question is expected to be settled by McDonald v. City of Chicago. This case has gone up through the courts very quickly, and a decision is expected some time around the middle of 2010. California Attorney General Jerry Brown even filed an Amicus brief in favor of incorporation. Five Supreme Court justices voted for Heller and so incorporation seems to be the likely outcome.
Once we have incorporation, we will be able to attack all the state-level laws that might be considered infringing on the Right to Bear Arms.
It would seem the answer is an obvious and inevitable "yes". The word "bear" means "to carry" in this context.
But like everything else, that needs to be proven in court. Fortunately there are a couple of strong cases well on their way to doing so.
The first of these is Palmer v. DC, in which Mr. Palmer (one of the original Heller plaintiffs) is asking the court to recognize his right to carry a functional firearm outside his house, in DC. As you can guess, DC is practically the most anti-gun locality in the US. They have a permit system on the books but they are no-issue. Mr. Palmer is challenging that, with the same excellent legal team that brought the Heller victory. Mr. Palmer isn't asking for any particular mode of carry; he would be satisfied with concealed or open carry, with or without a permit. But he must carry, and it must be a functional (loaded, ready to shoot) gun.
The second of these cases is Sykes v. McGinness, a case right here in California, in which plaintiffs are directly challenging Sacramento Sheriff McGinness' corrupt and unconstitutional CCW issuance regime.
Obviously, a Palmer win + incorporation means we can force sheriffs to start issuing here. Likewise, a Sykes v. McGinnis win would force issuance.
Both of these are going in a good direction. It's hard to imagine the court not incorporating. It's hard to imagine that "keep and bear" could be interpreted as "keep but not bear".
And these are the cases that will finally bring CCW issuance to California, and the other hold-outs, which are Hawaii, the islands of the 9th Circuit (Guam, Saipan, CNMI), DC, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and a few other places..
First, if you live in a Northern California rural county, you should apply. Most of these counties are already issuing. Even if someone there tells you "we don't issue" you should probably apply anywhere. Many of them do issue.
Second, get politically active. We should have competitive politics in this state. Even if you live in San Francisco or some other fortress of ultra-liberalism, get out and vote for gun rights, even if it means voting for a candidate who has no chance of winning. Keep writing letters to your legislative reps, so they know you are out there.
Vote against non-issuing sheriffs, even if they are "undefeatable". Special mention to our worst sheriffs, Sheriff Baca and Sheriff Hennessey.
Make sure you are an NRA member, and teach your non-shooting friends and family how to shoot.
Finally, keep your eye on these court cases. I wish we could have won through the legislature, but we won't. We will win through the courts. I expect to see CCW issuance forced onto this state perhaps as early as late 2010.