Doyle Veto Stands for Concealed Carry - Good or Bad for Wisconsin Gun Owners?

The veto override vote today in the Assembly failed by 2 votes - Democrats (Steinbrink (D-65) and Terry Van Akkeren (D-26)) caving in to partisan politics and voting to sustain Doyle's veto when they initially supported the bill.

Is this bad news? Maybe, but not necessarily.

Supporters of the bill claimed that putting "concessions" (more on that later) to the anti-gun left into the bill was necessary in order to pass any type of concealed carry. These concessions included things like a list of permit holders held by the DOJ, access to the list by law enforcement, excessive (in my opinion) fees, and more. Wisconsin Gun Owners (WGO) lists at least 8 major anti-gun provisions in the bill.

The strategy, supporters claim, is to get something - anything - passed regardless of the anti-gun concession involved. Later, work can begin to gut the bill of anti-gun provisions, and eventually end up with a Vermont style carry law (no permits, fees, etc.).

Those against passage of this bill as it was written claimed that there should be no anti-gun provision whatsoever. As Corey Graff, Executive Director of WGO, wrote in the latest WGO news (Winter 2006, Vol II No. 1), in order to compromise, you need to be giving something up. Every time the pro-gun side "compromises" by accepting some of the anti-gun demands of the left, they are in fact giving up some of our Second Amendment rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. What does the left give up in this compromise?

NOTHING! They gain ground every time.

So anyway, although I want Wisconsin to legalize concealed carry, I would rather wait until such time as we can get legislation passed that is not loaded down with fees, mandatory training, DOJ registration lists and other such anti-gun provisions. Once lists get started (my biggest objection to the bill as written), they can be very hard to get rid of later.

If you really think about it, why burden the honest citizens of this state with red tape and fees when the criminals running around are already carrying concealed? I mean really, it's not like the criminals are going to apply for a permit if this would have passed...

Self Defense a Privilege, not a Right in the State of Wisconsin

I was reading through the Senate Bill SB 403 on concealed carry today, and came across the following in Section 37:

2. Instruction on the privilege of self-defense and the defense of others under s.939.48

The privilege of self-defense?? I thought that was our right! So I looked it up here, and found out that sure enough, the State considers it a privilege to defend yourself.

After reading through s.939.48 it seems that the intent was to make it clear that if you provoke someone into attacking you you can't claim self defense as part of your legal defense. That makes sense, but it really bothers me that the idiots in Madison didn't word it differently - that we have the right to defend ourselves, but we can't claim self-defense if we provoke the attack.

The next section (s.939.49) uses the same flawed logic in defending property - that it's a privilege, not a right.

Makes you wonder how many more of your rights the politicians in Madison turned into privileges...

Petition Congress: "NO United Nations GUN CONTROL"

The National Association for Gun Rights has an on-line petition that will be sent to Congress in support of Senator Vitter's bill (S.1488) protecting our Second Amendment by withholding funding from the UN if they continue to move forward with their "Small Arms Control" initiative. Full text of Senator Vitter's bill can be found by searching:

"Issues and Legislation ---> Legislation Sponsored by Sen Vitter" on his website.

The related bill in the House of Representatives is H.R.3436.

I urge everyone to sign the ON-line petition at the NAGR website.

Judge Samuel Alito Hearings Begin, and the Democrats Still Don't Get It...

Today at work I was listening a bit to some of the opening statements in the Alito hearings, and I could only shake my head and wonder how some of these people ever got to the Senate in the first place.

For example, Senator Feinstein (D-CA) wondered (these were opening statements, not questions yet) how Judge Alito would vote regarding the Senate's authority under the Protection of Interstate Trade and Commerce to pass anti-gun legislation:

"Let me give you one example here – and that’s the Rybar case. Your dissent argued that Congress lacked the authority to ban the possession and transfer of machine guns, based essentially on a technicality that Congressional findings from previous statutes were not explicitly incorporated in the legislation." ....

"I am concerned that the Rybar opinion demonstrates a willingness to strike down laws with which you personally may disagree by employing a narrow reading of Congress’s constitutional authority to enact legislation."

Basically, I got the impression that Sen. Feinstein wants to know if he will begin to limit Congress' ability to throw damn near anything they want under the Commerce Clause, including things that were never intended by the Framers to be controlled by the Federal Government, like firearms. It should be obvious that the Congress is overreaching, and that anything that appears out of reach to them is put under the Commerce Clause. It seems Sen. Feinstein doesn't want to lose this power, and feels very threatened by Judge Alito - his "personal opinions"are her scapegoat.

Senator Biden (D-DE) had the following to say:

"I cannot imagine, notwithstanding what many of my colleagues who I have great respect for believe, I can't imagine the founders when they sat down and wrote the document and got to the appointments clause said: You know what? The American people are entitled know before we make him president, before we make her senator, before we make him congressman what they believe on the major issues of the day.

But judges, Supreme Court nominees, as long as they're smart and honest and decent, it really doesn't matter what they think. We don't have to know.

I can't fathom -- can't fathom that that was the intent of the founders. They intended the American people to know what their nominees thought."

Well Senator, they were a lot smarter than you are because they realized that the Supreme Court is not a place for new ideas - it is a place to apply the Consitution, as it is written, to today's court cases. The reason the Founding Fathers put it that way is because they assumed that the appointments to the bench would be impartial, regardless of their personal beliefs. You obviously believe that the Court is where your own personal agenda and ideas of how things should be can be put into action.

Other common threads from the Democrats were abortion (how will he vote????!!!!), playing of the "minority card" since he will be replacing a woman Justice: "And it's also important to note that you're slated to replace the first woman ever nominated to the Supreme Court. We can pretend that's not the fact but it is. And through no fault of your own, we're cutting the number of women in half on the court. (Sen. Biden), and upsetting of the "balance" of the court.

All of these points brought up by the Democrats are nonsense, and have no business being discussed in this context.

I only hope that if the Democrats decide to fillibuster this nomination, that the Republican majority takes action and does not allow it - for that is another thing the Founding Fathers never intended: a filibuster of Judicial nominees.