From: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com (utah-firearms-digest) To: utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: utah-firearms-digest V2 #70 Reply-To: utah-firearms-digest Sender: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-utah-firearms-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk utah-firearms-digest Wednesday, June 10 1998 Volume 02 : Number 070 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 08:53:01 -0700 From: DAVID SAGERS Subject: The Supremes define "carry" -Forwarded Received: (from smap@localhost) by fs1.mainstream.net (8.8.8/8.7.3) id KAA06690; Tue, 9 Jun 1998 10:37:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 10:37:02 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost(127.0.0.1) by fs1.mainstream.net via smap (V1.3) id sma006505; Tue Jun 9 10:36:18 1998 Message-Id: <357D454F.14EBEC26@netmail3.mnet.uswest.com> Errors-To: listproc@mainstream.com Reply-To: pfosnes@uswest.com Originator: noban@mainstream.net Sender: noban@Mainstream.net Precedence: bulk From: pfosnes@uswest.com (patricia fosness) To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: The Supremes define "carry" X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Anti-Gun-Ban list This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - --------------6C39F21D74DEC248F254E892 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Call me paranoid, but considering how far reaching these types of decisions can be, I think we have a whole new problem associated with this decision. Though I'm not a lawyer, it seems that when a word is defined by the SC, that definition can pass along to other laws. For those of us in Denver who can have a vehicle confiscated for carrying a firearm, this is particularly worrisome. For all the verbal assurances that a gun in the trunk won't be considered a problem, I'd still advise avoiding travel through the city and county of Denver if one has a firearm. The surrounding counties are a better choice. > Gun Law > > Splitting 5 to 4, the Justices traded dictionary definitions and > literary references in interpreting a Federal law that imposes a > five-year mandatory sentence on anyone who "uses or carries a firearm" > in connection with a narcotics crime. > > The question for the Court was whether traveling in a car with a gun in > a locked glove compartment or trunk -- as opposed to carrying a gun on > one's person -- met the law's definition of "carry." The narrow > majority, in an opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, held that it did. > > Justice Breyer traced the word "carry" to the Latin words "carum," for > car or cart, and "carricare," meaning "convey in a car." He said that > modern journalistic usage, as well as works including the Bible, > "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moby Dick," use the word carry in the sense of > "convey in a vehicle." Congress intended the word in its ordinary, > everyday meaning, he said, without the limitation that some lower courts > have placed on the statute of requiring that the gun be "immediately > accessible." > > Dissenting, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found the literary evidence > "highly selective" and unpersuasive. She offered quotations of her own, > from Rudyard Kipling to the television show "M.A.S.H." to Theodore > Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" to show that "carry" is > properly understood to mean "the gun at hand, ready for use as a > weapon." > > The decision, Muscarello v. United States, No. 96-1654, upheld rulings > by Federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Boston. Justices John Paul > Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas > joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion. Chief Justice William H. > Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and David H. Souter joined the > dissent. - --------------6C39F21D74DEC248F254E892 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-ID: <357D4045.B4F8D2D2@netmail3.mnet.uswest.com> Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 08:01:41 -0600 From: Pat Fosness Reply-To: pfosnes@netmail3.mnet.uswest.com Organization: U S WEST X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuck Subject: The Supremes Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit First segment (long) is about extradition between states - the first sentence pretty much says it all.. Last segment (short) is about the definition of "carry". That one could have some far reaching consequences and it's interesting to see who voted which way on it. June 9, 1998 SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP Right of States to Extradite Fugitives Is Upheld - --------------------------------------- By LINDA GREENHOUSE WASHINGTON -- States have an unalterable duty to return other states' fugitives, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a unanimous opinion that gave the New Mexico Supreme Court no choice but to extradite an escaped parolee whom the state court had deemed to be a "refugee from injustice" in the Ohio prison system. Even accepting as "credible" the fugitive's testimony that he faced serious threats of injury at the hands of prison officials if returned to custody in Ohio, the Court said, "this is simply not the kind of issue that may be tried in the asylum state." The unsigned, five-page opinion made no new law; Supreme Court precedents dating to the 19th century have left states essentially no discretion in extradition cases as long as proper procedures are followed and the individual's identity and fugitive status are confirmed. Nonetheless, this was not an ordinary case. By a 4-to-1 decision in September, the New Mexico Supreme Court acknowledged the weight of precedent but declared that it would not give those cases a "mechanical reading" that would have the "intolerable result" of sending a fugitive "back to face death or great bodily harm." The state court characterized the case as "unique" and said its reading of the Federal and New Mexico Constitutions obliged it to shelter the fugitive, Timothy Reed, from Ohio's extradition demand. Reed is a Lakota Sioux who became an active advocate for Native American religious rights while serving a 25-year prison sentence, for theft and robbery in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville. Under the name Little Rock Reed, his articles on Indian affairs and prisoners' rights were published in national magazines and circulated at academic conferences. After some delay, his parole was granted in 1992. Once freed, Reed continued to write and speak critically of Ohio's prison system and was ordered by parole officials to cancel speaking engagements. In March 1993, six weeks before his parole was to end, Reed was in a minor traffic accident in a borrowed car and paid a $105 fine. He got into an argument with the car owner's husband, who complained to parole officials that Reed had threatened him. The incident led to a misdemeanor charge of "terroristic threatening." His parole officer ordered Reed to report to the parole office and told him that he would be returned to the Lucasville prison without a hearing. According to the New Mexico Supreme Court opinion, Reed knew, as an experienced jailhouse lawyer, that United States Supreme Court precedent gave prisoners the right to a hearing before their paroles could be revoked. He believed that Ohio prison officials planned to violate his rights, and his sources among the inmates told him that his life would be in danger if he returned. He fled to Taos, N.M., where he worked as a paralegal and continued to speak out on prison issues until he was arrested in response to Ohio's extradition request in October 1994. While New Mexico officials wanted to return Reed to Ohio, the New Mexico trial court, in a decision affirmed by the State Supreme Court, granted him a writ of habeas corpus and barred his extradition. The state courts found that Reed was not a "fugitive from justice" but a "refugee from injustice," in the State Supreme Court's words, because "the uncontroverted evidence shows that he left Ohio under duress and under a reasonable fear for his safety and his life." New Mexico appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that its state court ruling threatened a "profound expansion" of the role of states in extradition proceedings. Instead of automatically rendering prisoners as demanded, New Mexico said, extradition would become "a process by which asylum states audit the functioning of penal institutions in their sister states." Ohio, which was not a party to the case, filed a brief signed by 39 other states, including New York and Connecticut, that urged the Justices to overturn the decision. The Court issued its ruling Monday, New Mexico v. Reed, No. 97-1217, on the basis of the written briefs, without ever having accepted the case for argument. Omitting nearly all the facts of the case, the unsigned opinion quoted the Constitution's extradition clause, which requires that a fugitive "shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled be delivered up." As long ago as 1861, the Court said, "we held that the duty imposed by the extradition clause on the asylum state was mandatory." The opinion concluded that the Supreme Court of New Mexico "went beyond the permissible inquiry in an extradition case." Within hours of Monday's ruling, the New Mexico Supreme Court complied by revoking its earlier decision. Kay Bird, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico Attorney General's office, said that "the wheels are in motion" to have Reed arrested and returned to Ohio. Reed's lawyer, Stevan D. Looney, said he was trying to reach his client and would have no immediate comment. In a telephone interview tonight, which Reed initiated from an undisclosed location in New Mexico, he said he planned to turn himself in to Ohio authorities "after I am confident that there will be enough publicity that I will be treated fairly." He said he expected to present evidence at a parole revocation hearing in Ohio that he was forced to flee and that his flight should be regarded as a minor parole violation. Gun Law Splitting 5 to 4, the Justices traded dictionary definitions and literary references in interpreting a Federal law that imposes a five-year mandatory sentence on anyone who "uses or carries a firearm" in connection with a narcotics crime. The question for the Court was whether traveling in a car with a gun in a locked glove compartment or trunk -- as opposed to carrying a gun on one's person -- met the law's definition of "carry." The narrow majority, in an opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, held that it did. Justice Breyer traced the word "carry" to the Latin words "carum," for car or cart, and "carricare," meaning "convey in a car." He said that modern journalistic usage, as well as works including the Bible, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moby Dick," use the word carry in the sense of "convey in a vehicle." Congress intended the word in its ordinary, everyday meaning, he said, without the limitation that some lower courts have placed on the statute of requiring that the gun be "immediately accessible." Dissenting, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found the literary evidence "highly selective" and unpersuasive. She offered quotations of her own, from Rudyard Kipling to the television show "M.A.S.H." to Theodore Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" to show that "carry" is properly understood to mean "the gun at hand, ready for use as a weapon." The decision, Muscarello v. United States, No. 96-1654, upheld rulings by Federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Boston. Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and David H. Souter joined the dissent. - --------------6C39F21D74DEC248F254E892-- - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 17:31:02 -0600 From: chardy@ES.COM (Charles Hardy) Subject: [goamail@gunowners.org: Lautenberg: A Line In The Sand] Note that Cannon is listed as a co-sponsor but Cook and Hansen are not. - ----BEGIN FORWARDED MESSGE---- Time to Draw the Line on Repealing Lautenberg Gun Ban Gun Owners of America E-Mail/FAX Alert 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151 Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408 http://www.gunowners.org ACTION: Send the message at the bottom of this page to the Representatives that are NOT listed below. Or call 202-225-3121 and let your Rep. know that now is the time to cosponsor HR 1009! (June 9, 1998) -- Gun Owners of America today put Representatives on notice in Washington that the cosponsorship of H.R. 1009 would be counted as a ratings vote in 1998. Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) is the chief sponsor of this very important bill repealing the Lautenberg gun ban. In a prepared statement, GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt told Congressmen that, "This unconstitutional law must be repealed, and Congress owes it to the people to put Rep. Chenoweth's bill to a vote. "But if Congress doesn't, then Gun Owners of America will rate the cosponsorship of her bill instead of a vote. Those who cosponsor H.R. 1009 will be listed as having cast a pro-gun vote. All the others will be ranked as having cast an anti- gun vote and will have to answer to their constituents in November." The Lautenberg ban, passed in 1996, imposes a lifetime gun ban on those who have committed minor infractions in the home-- "offenses" as slight as shoving a spouse or spanking a child. "So far, only 37 Representatives have taken a stand for freedom and cosponsored H.R. 1009," Pratt said. "This is one of the most important bills in the Congress, and Rep. Chenoweth deserves a lot of thanks from the American people." Current cosponsor list for H.R. 1009: BATEMAN (R-VA) BUNNING (R-KY) CANNON (R-UT) CHAMBLISS (R-GA) CHENOWETH (R-ID) (sponsor) COBURN (R-OK) COMBEST (R-TX) COOKSEY (R-LA) CRAPO (R-ID) CUBIN (R-WY) DICKEY (R-AR) DOOLITTLE (R-CA) GIBBONS (R-NV) GOODE (D-VA) HALL (D-TX) HASTINGS (R-WA) HEFLEY (R-CO) HERGER (R-CA) HILL (R-MT) HOSTETTLER (R-IN) KIM (R-CA) KOLBE (R-AZ) LAHOOD (R-IL) LEWIS, R (R-KY) McINTOSH (R-IN) PAUL (R-TX) PICKETT (D-VA) REDMOND (R-NM) RIGGS (R-CA) SKEEN (R-NM) SMITH (R-MI) SPENCE (R-SC) STUMP (R-AZ) THORNBERRY (R-TX) TIAHRT (R-KS) WATTS (R-OK) WICKER (R-MS) YOUNG, D (R-AK) - -- Clip & Fax -- (see http://www.gunowners.org/h105th.htm for fax numbers and e-mail addresses or call your Rep. and ask) Dear Representative Gun Owners of America has announced that cosponsorship of H.R. 1009 will be considered a pro-gun vote on its upcoming Candidate's Vote Rating. Please become a cosponsor of H.R. 1009, the bill to repeal the Lautenberg gun ban. The Lautenberg law makes a mere misdemeanor grounds for denying citizens, including police, the right to keep and bear arms. It is a grave infringement on the rights of Americans and must be repealed. The Chenoweth bill has the support of gun groups, women's groups, civil rights groups and other organizations concerned with constitutionally guaranteed liberties. Please let me know how you intend to act. Sincerely, *********************************************************** Are you receiving this as a cross-post? To be certain of getting up-to-the-minute information, please consider joining the GOA E-mail Alert Network directly. The service is free, your address remains confidential, and the volume is quite low: five messages a week would be a busy week indeed. To subscribe, simply send a message (or forward this notice) to goamail@gunowners.org and include your state of residence in either the subject line or the body. - ----END FORWARDED MESSAGE---- - -- Charles C. Hardy | If my employer has an opinion on | these things I'm fairly certain 801.588.7200 (work) | I'm not the one he'd have express it. "War to the hilt between capitalism and communism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come in 20 or 30 years. In order to win, we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep, so we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist." -- Quoted by Dmitri Z. Manuisky, Lenin School of Political Warfare (1931). - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jun 98 18:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: Schoolkids aren't using movie bullets - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 14:43:22 -0400 From: "Mark A. Smith" To: SNET , Ray Southwell , PRJ , PIML , Norm Olson , L & J , David Rydel Would all of you write this worthless "reporter"? email him at: Mitch Albom Keep it nice, give him facts, and don't call him names because it will only reinforce his ideas of law-abiding gun owners. http://www.freep.com/sports/albom/qmitch75.htm Schoolkids aren't using movie bullets June 7, 1998 What if someone fired a gun at Charlton Heston? Someone who had a bad day at work. Someone who broke up with his girlfriend. Someone who was mad at his parents. Or a 5-year-old kid who watches too much TV. Perhaps that would change Heston's point of view. The actor has just been chosen as president of the National Rifle Association -- with a personal goal of showing the public who gun users really are. But here, in turn-of-the-century America, this is who gun users really are: the angry worker, the jilted lover, the unloved child and the schoolkid. That's the fact, Jack -- er, Chuck. Now as far as I know, Mr. Heston has never been the victim of a random shooting. He has never been sentenced to a wheelchair by a bullet meant for someone else. He has never lost a child because the kid next door decided to take the family arsenal to school. Yet he says limiting guns would be terrible. He should at least have some experience in what "terrible" is all about. Terrible isn't missing a hunting trip, or canceling a visit to the pistol club. Terrible is finding out that your wife, a schoolteacher, is in a body bag. Heston and the NRA say they don't condone such shootings. Then again, Heston once wrote in Gun & Ammo magazine: "Gun owners know enough to keep children away from firearms." Right. These would be the gun owners whose kids just shot up the schoolyard. Real-life horror Now let's be honest: Gun control is an argument you can never win. This is not the first time I've written about it, and I am prepared for the flood of angry letters that come pouring in from people who half the time don't even read the entire column before they start writing. Some of the letters are intelligent, and I thank you for those. Most of them, however, go like this: "You communist liberal piece of trash! Read your Constitution! Guns don't kill people; people kill people! And if we didn't have guns, all the (fill in ethnic group) would just take over! You jerk!" OK. I lied a little. It's worse than "jerk." But I don't care. At some point in life, you either take a stand, or you do nothing and thereby take a stand anyhow. Doing nothing is what the NRA folks would like. (Actually, they would like to repeal the few paltry gun control laws we've managed to pass.) But mostly, they want to make sure no new laws get through. That's why they've picked Heston to battle what they perceive as a wave of antigun publicity in the wake of school shootings in Arkansas and Oregon. But that should make you suspicious right there. Those dead children aren't a publicity campaign. They're a real-life horror. Any group that worries about public relations in light of that tragedy should be suspect. Think about Heston. He's an image. A handsome face. A movie actor. But these are not movie bullets, folks. And it's not Ben Hur you have to worry about pulling a piece on your 9-year-old. Don't throw gasoline on fire Now, I am not naive. I know that taking guns away does not automatically solve our problems. Until we slow down, value love, stop chasing unsatisfying goals, until we stop alienating youth and abandoning children, until we stop desensitizing ourselves to where we think killing doesn't hurt, then our tango with violence will not end. But you don't throw gasoline on a fire. Why make guns readily available to an angry, tense, hair-trigger society? Yes, I know the rhetoric. "Take away guns and only criminals will have them." The NRA wants you to believe in a massive futuristic black market, where every evildoer automatically knows where to shop. Come on. Right now, they can just go to the gun store. Meanwhile, people involved in the most shocking shootings today are often not criminals at all. They're folks who just snap, and who have access to guns when they do. If the guns weren't available, they wouldn't know where to get them in the heat of the moment any more than you or I would know where to instantly buy a pound of heroin. And please don't quote me the Second Amendment. I know all about the Second Amendment. It was written in 1789. The idea of "right to bear arms" was to keep the states free from invasion -- not to shoot an eighth-grader. Back in 1789, we didn't have TV, movies or the Internet to turn us violent. It's a different world. How come people who so smugly cite the Second Amendment have no interest in going back to using muskets? Maybe we should ask Charlton Heston. People always remember him as Moses in "The Ten Commandments." I remember him in "Planet of the Apes," at the end, when he breaks into tears upon discovering the destroyed Statue of Liberty: "You finally did it!" he wails. "You maniacs." He is talking about killing one another. Maybe he forgot that movie. To leave a message for Mitch Albom, call 1-313-223-4581. All content copyright 1998 Detroit Free Press and may not be republished without permission. - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jun 98 18:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: Schoolkids are using . . . movie themes - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 14:16:38 -0600 From: "Anthony F. Herbst" Reply-To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com To: albom@det-freepress.com TO: Mr. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press Your article suggests more ignorance than malice, or else I would not be writing to you. As a former Detroiter, now happily a Texan for many years, I urge you to try and see the gun issue for what it really is. Don't be afraid, go out and meet some of the fine people who own guns for lawful purposes. Don't get all your information from Sarah Brady and Josh Sugarman as you apparently are doing. Schoolkids may not be using movie bullets, but they are using movie themes in acting out their aggression. Neither the NRA, nor any other mainstream organization that believes that the Second Amendment means what it says, advocates that children have unsupervised access to firearms, period. However, thinking adults realize that a good kid will not become a bad kid because of a gun. To think otherwise is totemism that should be exorcised from a modern society. You attack Charleton Heston, but not Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, et cetera--those who glamorize the use of firearms for murder mayhem and destruction. Don't you think there is a real connection between Hollywood and gun violence? Heston has nver portrayed the misuse of firearms. Yet you attack him instead of those who flagrantly undermine standards of proper behavior regarding guns. That is illogical at best. And it could be labeled in much less kind terms. We have seen several decades of gun laws that impacted on law-abiding citizens while they did little if anything to staunch the criminal use of firearms--just as our drug laws have done nothing to curb drug use. In fact, Federal Government statistics show a reluctance to prosecute those criminals who can be prosecuted under existing laws, while bleating in unison for still more laws that presumably will not be enforced either. To paraphrase you, That's the fact, Jack -- er, Mitch! When I lived in Michigan it was a felony to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, and those were only issued to the polictically well-connected. Is that law being enforced today, against those who are not simply carrying out of legitimate concern for their safety on dangerous streets, but rather against those who are committing other crimes? No? Then why not? Anthony F. Herbst, Ph.D. El Paso, Texas - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jun 98 18:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: The NRA is worse than USELESS - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 04:56:44 -0400 From: agitator To: eagleflt@eagleflt.com, ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com, liberty-and-justice@pobox.com, snetnews@world.std.com I'd like to know why the writer of the [preceding] post -below- was so surprised that Ms. Metaska wasn't interested hearing about how gun possession was prohibited at a gunowner's convention. The NRA has a long, sorry history of never seeing a compromise it didn't like and every time they compromise, we get screwed. As far as I'm concerned, the leadership at the NRA is USELESS. Actually, they're worse than USELESS because they lead well meaning but naive or misinformed gunowners to believe that they actually give a fat rat's ass about your gun rights. The only thing the NRA leadership is concerned with is riding a fine line between a wholesale sellout and raising just enough stink that those checks and money orders keep coming in. If you think that's just too cynical and "they wouldn't do that" - then the only other explanation is that they're IDIOTS. To put it as politely as I can, the people that think the NRA is doing something for them are mistaken because the NRA leadership are COLLABORATORS. The list of NRA SELLOUTS goes on forever but here's a couple of my personal favorites: The NRA leadership was the proximate cause for the setting of the precedent that the federal government can ban the sales of fully-automatic firearms to law abiding citizens in exchange for a worthless crumb. The NRA leadership was the proximate cause for the setting of the precedent that the federal government can require you to pay a tax for the privilege of having your firearms federally registered and eventually confiscated by way of the "Instant Screw" system. If the NRA leadership really gave a about your gun rights, they'd wake up out of their coma and realize that gunowners are engaged in a streetfight, not a collegiate debating event, and the stakes are our lives, not a plastic, $10 trophy. In a street fight, you pick up a garbage can and bash it over your opponent's head. You break a bottle in half and grind it into your opponents face. You do what the Army recommends, which is to "continue to kick and stomp until victim is subdued." The time for Wayne LaPierre and his Sunday coffee klatch presentation is over. In otherwords, it's time to use techniques like blackmail. I can't believe that there isn't enough dirt in D.C. to make more than a few politicians uncomfortable. Why doesn't the NRA stop sending out those stupid hats and start hiring some private investigators with long lenses? Why don't they start going after every Congressrat that votes for gun control and ruin a few marriages with a suggestion that there might be more where that came from? Why don't they let it be known that they'll take some of that hat money and post a "Dirt Bounty?" That shouldn't be hard to do, but nooooooooooooooooooo, doing something effective might get results. God forbid that should happen, they might actually have to stop schmoozing with the pols and go get an honest job. Of course, if "dirty" a.k.a. street fighting against the likes of a tapeworm like Schumer is too much for the somnambulent NRA rank and file, bringing up the subject of where the authority for Executive Orders comes from might be a good start, but don't hold your breath for that to happen (and if *you* don't know where that authority comes from, I would politely suggest putting down your American Rifleman long enough to find out...) Frankly, in my completely un-humble, obnoxious, pissed-off, and un-apologetic opinion, if you're sending any money to those Vichy swine, you're helping them screw this country and you'd be doing America a favor by sending your money to ANYBODY else. Or, you can just keep doing what you've always done - sending the NRA your money - and get what you always get - which is SCREWED. >Major Questions: >Why did NRA choose anti-gun Philadelphia for their convention? >Will monies from convention be used for anti-gun purposes by Philadelphia? >Why didn't the organization properly get advance information? BECAUSE ALL THEY WANT IS YOUR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAKE - UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Also, telnet agitator.dynip.com] "I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." - Thomas Jefferson Letter to William Ludlow, 1824 - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jun 98 18:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: NRA Posts Signs at Philadelphia Convention "NO GUNS" -- Here is full story. - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Thought this might be of interest to Second Amendment Supporters-- My name is H Howard Lewis Bloom and I am the listowner of pa-rkba@listbox.com .. Pennsylvania's only pro-gun mailing list. This post concerns the NRA convention and the "no guns" signs at convention. Here are the players: NRA James Land, NRA Secretary Tanya Metaska, Director NRA/ILA Tom Wyld, Director of Public Affairs and ILA Communication Bill Powers, NRA Spokesperson .. works for Wyld Convention Center Kelly Lynch, In charge of entire convention The Philadelphia Inquirer Article: http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/98/Jun/05/city/CARR05.htm NRA Secretary Jim Land knew in February of this year of a new regulation put forth by the convention center concerning the carrying of concealed weapons on the property. The convention was booked 4 years ago, and during the February meeting to go over logistics, Ms. Kelly Lynch told Jim Land and his people about this so-called regulation. Mr. Land had put together conventions in cities with laws against carrying of firearms in public buildings. According to Mr. Land, "I got so used to the laws, that I never checked whether it was a law in Philadelphia." Herein lies the problem: Mr. Land admitted to me, that he goofed big time on the issue. I informed him that the convention center was indeed public property, not private property and that there is no prohibition against carrying a firearm concealed with a permit. None. I asked Jim Land why he didn't use NRA/ILA and the lawyers on staff to research this. He claimed no excuse. He did tell me that he would not be fooled again and would take better care to find out all facets of so called laws. I thought he was sincere. If I opened his eyes and made him a bit more careful, then it was worth the legwork by me on Friday afternoon. I spoke to Kelly Lynch of the convention center about the signs. According to Ms. Lynch, the signs were printed a month ago by NRA for the convention. I asked her about this regulation concerning firearms in the building. She claimed that the employee manual states very clearly ... I reminded her that patrons to the building aren't on her payroll. She then told me that patrons aren't allowed either. I wanted her to fax me a copy of this document that states this, but to date she has not faxed it. The crux of the matter is that this is a public building. Lynch went on about the board of directors and they could make rules ... blah blah blah .. I reminded her that this building is owned by Pennsylvania and that there are no laws concerning the carrying of concealed firearms. Ms. Lynch admitted that there has never been an occasion to place a sign in the convention center before the NRA came to town, and the signs will come down as soon as NRA closes the doors on Sunday. Sound like discrimination to you? You bet your a** it is. I presented my concerns to Ms. Tanya Metaska on Saturday afternoon during a lull in her book signing activities. Ms. Metaska is in charge of NRA/ILA. She said she wasn't going to argue with me, that I was always right, and she was finished speaking with me. I was very courteous to Tanya, I introduced myself, shook her hand and told her of my concern. She showed mild animosity and gave me the impression that she didn't give a d*** about the entire concern. When you look at the article above, remember, that the premise is that NRA doesn't trust people with guns at its own convention. A black eye for sure that we didn't need blackened. Something which could easily have been avoided. Major Questions: Why did NRA choose anti-gun Philadelphia for their convention? Will monies from convention be used for anti-gun purposes by Philadelphia? Why didn't the organization properly get advance information? - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Jun 98 18:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: NRA chief Heston confronts Clinton on gun laws - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 00:28:53 -0400 From: Leroy Crenshaw To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com NRA chief Heston confronts Clinton on gun laws 11.26 p.m. ET (326 GMT) June 8, 1998 PHILADELPHIA -- Actor Charlton Heston became president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Monday and challenged the federal government to enforce more strictly the gun laws it already has on the books, rather than enact new ones. Heston, the star of popular Hollywood epics who says he wants to bring the NRA back into the "mainstream'' of American politics, said President Clinton should choose a "model city'' where federal gun control laws would be fully enforced. "I promise never to say anything mean about President Clinton if he'll give us one model city where the federal laws will be enforced ... criminals will be prosecuted and punished,'' Heston told reporters. Heston said he had no particular city in mind but ''Philadelphia would be pretty good.'' "There are 20,000 gun laws on the books, but they don't do any good unless we prosecute the ones who bust them,'' the Oscar-winning actor said. The man who portrayed Moses in the classic "The Ten Commandments'' said the U.S. Justice Department viewed the enforcement of gun laws as a nuisance and that the federal judiciary thought the crimes were beneath them. Heston said Philadelphia police officers told him during the NRA's 127th annual convention in the city that they would like nothing more than to have gun laws enforced so that criminals would be prosecuted and jailed. Some 80 percent of the 425 homicides in Philadelphia last year were committed with handguns, police report. As Heston was being elected president at a raucous meeting, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell met with gunmakers to ask them to voluntarily implement safety features like trigger locks. He also asked that they support pending Pennsylvania state legislation limiting gun purchases to one a month. Rendell has threatened to sue gunmakers the same way the attorneys general in more than 40 states have sued the tobacco industry for the harm their product cause. Asked about Heston's model city suggestion, Rendell said he did not think it would have much impact on crime. "We ought to do what Mr. Heston suggests, but that will have a marginal impact,'' he said. The NRA is hoping that the square-jawed action hero will be able to counter images that the organization is filled with gun-loving extremists who are out of touch. "I think it's a question of restoring the image that the NRA has enjoyed for...127 years,'' he told reporters. On Saturday, he told NRA members: "Too many gun owners think we've wandered to some fringe of American life and left them behind. We will win back our rightful place in the mainstream of American political debate.'' A recent rash of shooting rampages at U.S. public schools has also put gun advocates on the defensive. Heston said teen-agers who shoot at their schoolmates are, in most cases, already hardened criminals. "They're already career criminals, or trembling on the brink,'' he told reporters. In a convention speech, Heston blasted President Clinton for signing gun control measures including a ban on the manufacture and importation of assault weapons. "Mr. Clinton, sir. Americans didn't trust you with our health care systems, and Americans didn't trust you with gays in the military, and we don't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters. We sure Lord don't trust you with our guns,'' Heston told hundreds of cheering NRA members. The White House shot back Sunday. "Mr. Heston is entitled to his opinion. But he has once again proven that he is out of the mainstream in American political thinking,'' White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told USA Today. Heston will serve a one-year term of the organization which claims some 3 million members. He can be elected to a second term next year, an NRA spokesman said. - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jun 98 08:11:00 -0700 From: scott.bergeson@ucs.org (SCOTT BERGESON) Subject: Right Wing Press Nuts - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 01:19:13 -0700 From: Ed Wolfe To: piml@mars.galstar.com Subject: Right Wing Press Nuts The Scourge of the Free Press by John Pittman Hey "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." That poorly punctuated, confusingly written 26-word section of the Constitution is at the center of the heated debate over "freedom of the press." There is a great deal of disagreement over who or what "the press" is. Most people mistakenly believe that the Constitution guarantees the right to print whatever one pleases, without government interference. Still others have noted that "the people" are not mentioned in the "free" press clause. This amendment was created by the Founding Fathers to protect the government's sole authority to print money and regulations. The phrase "the press" refers to the Government Printing Office's press in Washington. One historian claims that "the press" actually refers to the wine press, which is why the Prohibition Amendment was passed to remove the First Amendment right of the people to distill liquor. We all know there is no such thing as a "free" press. Go ask any printer in town, and he'll tell you he paid good money for his printing press. Even Xerox machines aren't free. Much closer to the truth is the old saw, "Freedom of the press is for those who own one." Here we see the true motives of the "free press" nuts, mostly newspaper publishers, who use the high-sounding words of the First Amendment to justify what are merely commercial enterprises. We hear a lot about "the people's right to know", but really it's all about the publisher's right to make money. Newspapers never have room for the real news; somehow it gets crowded out by all those paid advertisements. Some legal scholars still claim that the "free press" clause protects the people's right to publish whatever they like. Nonsense! The courts have repeatedly upheld restrictions on newspapers, including laws against litter, fraud, and libel. To properly interpret what the Founding Fathers meant by a "free press," we must at least place their ideas into the proper historical context. The press was an essential tool of the colonists against King George 220 years ago. But it was a primitive instrument at best. Presses could only print two pages a minute. The colonists never envisioned our modern high-speed presses, much less the ready availability of xerox machines and laser printers. Today's presses can reproduce lies, destructive ideas, and hatred, at the rate of thousands of pages an hour. The Founding Fathers never meant to permit the public to wield so destructive an instrument. The modern press is dangerous: it is widely known that the newspapers were responsible for whipping up the Spanish-American war. How many times have newspapers printed lies that destroyed the honor of innocent people? The press prints all types of destructive literature; just think of the children whose lives have been ruined by their finding printed works of Marx, Sartre, Anthony Lewis, or Bill Minor, left lying about by some thoughtless adult. The press helps spread hate. If only the government had prohibited the press from printing the news about Limbaugh, or Liddy, or David Duke, or the Ku Klux Klan, no one would be attracted to those causes. We must debunk the myth of the "free" press. The newspapers have attracted many readers by spreading misinformation and fear. They have perpetrated a lie, which many in the public swallow, that if the government is allowed to regulate the press in any manner, confiscation of all printing presses will soon follow. Journalists have a formidable lobby. One such shadowy organization is called the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the RCFP. Politicians and judges dare not cross the RCFP. In fact, they actively court the press, because they want good coverage of their political campaigns. The courts use presses themselves to print their opinions. Supreme Court justices were recently caught taking favors from the West Publishing Company. These conflicts of interest help explain the lack of proper regulation of the "free" press. But the Court and the Congress also fear the press. When gun regulations are imposed, no gun nut has ever dared pull one on a congressman or a judge in retaliation. But you let just one congressman or judge attempt to reign in the free press, and every editorialist in the country will scream "Stop the presses!" and then launch a full attack against that brave soul. Indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword. That is why we must begin regulating the press immediately. The integrity of our public institutions is compromised by the "free" press run amuck. The news is too important to entrust to unregulated private enterprise. The public has a right to know that what it reads is the truth. Only government regulation can make that possible. Many Americans take the middle ground on the issue of regulating the press. They read the comic page in their home town newspaper, and have no intention of confiscating printing presses. But they see no reason why any ordinary citizen needs to own one. Radical gun and "free" press nuts actually think it's up to them to protect our freedom. Cooler heads realize it's the Government's job to do that, since the Government is the source of all our liberty in the first place. What we don't need are these "weekend warriors," guns ablaze, presses awhirl, galloping across the political landscape, to "protect" us from the government. We'd be better off trusting the government to do that. - - ------------------------------ End of utah-firearms-digest V2 #70 **********************************