by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
It was the year that pushed presidential politics into the gutter and made gun rights v. gun control a centerpiece argument not only in the White House campaign, but in every race for Congress, state legislatures and, in a few states, the initiative process.
Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump supporters “deplorables,” to which Second Amendment activists replied by calling themselves deplorable.
The prelude to all of this can be traced back to December 2015, when political races were beginning to take shape. In an interview with GQ magazine, President Barack Obama admitted that he hoped gun control would be a “dominant issue” during the campaign. That was weeks prior to the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of the 2008 Heller ruling that defined the Second Amendment as protective of an individual civil right.
Filling Scalia’s empty chair on the high court became a pivotal issue in the election debate, at least where Second Amendment advocates and gun prohibition lobbying groups were concerned.
But something else happened in December 2015 that went by with less notice outside the gun community. Early in the month, as then one-year anniversary of Washington State’s Initiative 594 arrived, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued a scathing critique of the measure’s many failures to keep guns out of the wrong hands. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb looked at the first year of the “background check” law and declared, “The only discernible impact of the law has been to inconvenience honest gun owners and add more red tape to gun shows.”
The Washington experience was not lost on gun rights activists in Maine and Nevada, where similar “background check” measures were on this year’s ballots in those states.
Two other events in late 2015 influenced this year’s activities on several different levels. There was the Paris terror attack in November and the San Bernardino outrage in December. Suddenly, many Americans realized that tough gun control laws, whether they are in France or California, offered no protection or prevention. They merely kept honest citizens disarmed and vulnerable.
That didn’t stop anti-gun politicians from doing the wrong thing. In December, anti-gun Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced he would sign an executive order prohibiting anyone on the federal government’s “terrorist watch list” from obtaining a gun permit to buy firearms.
All of this may have contributed to the continuation of a “seller’s market” for the firearms industry as the 2016 SHOT Show unfolded in Las Vegas. Another smashing success with tens of thousands of industry professionals in attendance, the annual event also was an opportunity for gun dealers and manufacturers to meet with leaders of the gun rights movement.
When President Obama announced his new gun control push, Gottlieb and National Rifle Association chief lobbyist Chris Cox both had blistering reactions.
When Virginia Attorney General Mark W. Herring, a Democrat, announced in December he was ending concealed carry reciprocity agreements with 25 states, reaction was swift. Virginia activists immediately took action, as did the NRA and other gun rights groups. It was a short-lived decision, however, as anti-gun Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe quickly reached an agreement with pro-rights Republicans in January.
‘Gun tax’ upheld
When a King County, WA Superior Court judge upheld a special “gun violence tax” adopted by the City of Seattle in late December, he set the stage for an appeal by the Second Amendment Foundation, National Shooting Sports Foundation and National Rifle Association. As this issue went to press, that case was still winding its way through the courts, having essentially been “booted upstairs” by the state appeals court to the state supreme court.
At the time, anti-gun Seattle Mayor Ed Murray justified the tax by asserting, “Guns now kill more people in the United States than automobiles.” But that wasn’t true. According to the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), in 2014 there were 33,599 firearms-related fatalities in the United States. Of those, 21,334 were suicides (63.5%) and 10,945 were homicides (32.6%).
That same year, 33,736 people died in traffic accidents, according to CDC data.
When TGM Senior Editor Dave Workman submitted a public records request to the city for the first quarter tax revenue figure, the city declined to provide the information. After amending his request to protect the privacy of individual taxpayers, the city still refused to turn over the figure, so TGM and the Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit to force the city to provide the data.
While that legal battle was continuing, a battle for public safety was in progress. Carter County, OK Sheriff Milton Anthony sent a public note to his constituents suggesting that in the wake of terrorist attacks, they should start carrying guns if licensed to do so. It was a sentiment shared by other lawmen around the country, hitting a nerve with an increasing number of armed American citizens.
Today, more than 14 million people are licensed to carry, and that number has been steadily going up for many months.
In another court case, this one in Maryland, an appeals court ruling that remanded Kolbe v. Maryland back to the lower court for consideration under “strict scrutiny.” The Fourth Circuit Court panel ruled 2-1 on that case, and Chief Judge William B. Traxler noted in the majority opinion that in this case, which challenged Maryland’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity magazines that “strict scrutiny is the applicable standard of review for Plaintiff’s Second Amendment claims.”
More court action
It took a few years, but federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled against the White House and President Obama in their attempt to use executive privilege to withhold subpoenaed records from Congress related to Operation Fast and Furious.
And in Cook County, IL, a judge abruptly ended an attempt by a coalition of Chicago community activists to use a state civil rights law to force suburban communities to regulate gun shops more stringently.
A surprising venue provided another Second Amendment court victory, this time in the Marianas Islands. A federal judge for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands declared that the commonwealth’s ban on handguns was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The Marianas are governed under “a Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America.”
The US Supreme Court reversed and remanded a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that upheld the state ban on “stun guns.” The ban was not nullified outright, but the action did raise questions that such devices might be protected by the Second Amendment.
But all glory is fleeting, as Gen. George Patton once noted. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco delivered an astonishing 7-4 en banc ruling in a pair of cases that challenged the way California’s concealed carry law is administered. The court ruled that concealed carry is not protected by the Second Amendment. The majority opinion was written by Judge William A. Fletcher, a Bill Clinton appointee.
But then the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the dual cases of Binderup v. the US Attorney General and Suarez v. the US Attorney General that individuals convicted of certain non-serious misdemeanor crimes do not lose their rights under the Second Amendment.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled unanimously Aug. 31 that a federal ban on the sale of firearms to medical marijuana card holders does not violate the Second Amendment.
The case involved a Nevada resident named S. Rowan Wilson. She attempted to purchase a gun in 2011, after having obtained a medical marijuana card, and the gun shop refused to sell the firearm. Although several states have legalized the use of medical marijuana and in some cases even recreational marijuana, it is still a controlled substance under federal law.
Ironically, according to the ruling, Wilson alleged that while she obtained a medical marijuana card, she never actually used pot “for various reasons, such as the difficulties of acquiring medical marijuana in Nevada, as well as a desire to make a political statement.”
A Connecticut Superior Court judge tossed out the lawsuit against Remington Arms and Bushmaster that had been filed by several families of Sandy Hook Elementary victims, upholding the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in the process.
The lawsuit came in a challenge to the federal act, passed during the Bush administration as a way to stop frivolous “junk” lawsuits against the firearms industry in an effort to hold gun makers responsible for crimes committed by people over whom they had no control.
Judge Barbara Bellis’ 54-page ruling noted that, “Based on the clear intent of Congress to narrowly define the ‘negligent entrustment’ exception, Adam Lanza’s use of the firearm is the only actionable use. Accordingly, the plaintiffs have not alleged that any of the defendants’ entrustees ‘used’ the firearm within the confines of PLCAA’s definition of the term. To the contrary, the plaintiffs have alleged facts that place them directly in the category of victims to which Congress knowingly denied relief.”
Oregon Protest
It was not gun rights but a dispute over federal lands that ignited the armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January. By the time that incident ended, several people had been arrested and one man, Robert Lavoy Finicum, had been killed by Oregon State Police.
But the incident fired up many people in the “Patriot” movement, and when Finicum was killed at a roadblock, he became something of a martyr. The protest came to an end only after a tense discussion between the last remaining protester and a Northwest activist that unfolded live over social media.
Months later, in a stunning setback for federal prosecutors, an Oregon jury acquitted all seven defendants including Ammon Bundy, Shawna Cox, David Lee Fry, Jeff Wayne Banta, Kenneth Medenbach and Neil Wampler on all charges. Ryan Bundy was acquitted on two counts and a jury did not reach a verdict on a third charge of theft, according to the Seattle Times.
Continued high gun sales volumes strained the National Instant Check system. It was so bad at one point that appeals had to be halted with personnel shifted to handle the volume.
And then came a remarkable political coup for gun rights organizations in Washington State. Championed by Gottlieb and the Second Amendment Foundation, and supported by the NRA, the Suicide Awareness and Prevention Education for Safer Homes Act was passed almost unanimously by the state legislature. What made this such a victory is that it took a major issue usually exploited by anti-gunners and turned it into a program that involves firearms retailers, suicide prevention and mental health experts, and firearms instructors.
Almost entirely absent from the effort were gun control groups. Their agenda was stalled, and participation was minimal.
West Virginia lawmakers overrode a veto of “constitutional carry” legislation by Democrat Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, the first of such actions this past year. In September, Missouri lawmakers did the same thing to Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon. In both cases, anti-gunners essentially declared an end of the world as we know it, with the accompanying predictions of increased violence and danger to police.
It didn’t take a veto override to accomplish permitless carry in Idaho, however. The gun-friendly state legislature and pro-rights Gov. Butch Otter put that into law in the spring. Otter’s action was hailed by gun rights organizations, especially because of serious efforts backed by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg to prevent it from happening.
Likewise in Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant inked HBG 786, which expanded permitless carry options. That legislation became effective immediately.
Pew Research reported something that Second Amendment movement and the firearms industry have been suggesting for a long time: a growing number of households now have guns.
The survey put the number at 44 percent, which is quite a bit higher than the low 30-percent range suggested lately by the anti-gun lobby.
Continued strong gun sales over the past few years have been dismissed by anti-gunners as the result of existing gun owners buying more guns. But that explanation simply lacks credulity among gun rights advocates, considering all the new interest in gun ownership according to many published reports. Anecdotal evidence from across the landscape suggests more women are buying guns than ever before.
In Self-Defense
When a lifelong Seattle-area resident fatally shot a hatchet-wielding man at a convenience store south of that city, it made national news but was roundly ignored by gun control organizations, both locally and nationally.
TGM actually scored an interview with the armed citizen, who was simply having a cup of coffee with the store proprietor one Sunday morning when the crazed would-be killer came through the door. TGM viewed a video of the incident, which was clearly a case of self-defense. The armed citizen was released without charges and happened to be a longtime member of the Washington Arms Collectors. At the time, he was carrying two compact Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers.
Not surprisingly, Americans have continued “arming up” this year, with women emerging as the most active demographic in this effort to carry firearms in self-defense. In June, TGM reported on the phenomenon based on a story that appeared in Marie Claire magazine earlier in the year. Still fresh in everyone’s minds were the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub. All seemed to be the work of radicalized Islamic extremists.
When a man went on a stabbing rampage at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, MN, he was fatally shot by an off-duty part-time police officer who also is a firearms instructor for legally-armed private citizens. During his attack, the man allegedly asked one or more people if they were Muslim before he attacked.
In another incident, in Kansas City, an unidentified armed citizen came to the rescue of a 39-year-old local woman who was being attacked by two men as she was placing a child in a car safety seat. The Good Samaritan killed one of the pair, identified as John W. Simmons III. The second suspect was arrested and charged.
Media personality Katie Couric was forced to defend herself from critics over a documentary titled “Under the Gun” that aired on Epix. An edit in the program made it appear that gun rights activists were speechless when she asked them about keeping guns away from potential terrorists.
In reality, people spoke up right away, and it was caught on audio by a member of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. As a result, VCDL sued Couric and her producers for $12 million, alleging defamation due to “intentionally manipulated and misleading footage.”
Exploiting tragedy
Predictably, after the Orlando terror attack that left 49 people dead, anti-gunners quickly moved to exploit the tragedy, and that included Hillary Clinton. At a campaign stop in Cleveland on the day after the massacre, Clinton opened her remarks stating that “today is not a day for politics.” She then immediately went political on guns, pushing her “no fly, no buy” philosophy asserting that, “If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked.”
But the Orlando gunman had gone through a background check when he bought his guns at a Florida gun shop.
This added fuel to the “no fly, no buy” rhetoric, although the Orlando gunman was not on any such list. Gun rights leaders contended that anyone on a terror watch list who tries to purchase a firearm should be thoroughly investigated. Still, due process must be recognized in any such process, they insisted.
When a gunman opened fire on Dallas, TX, police officers during a “Black Lives Matter” protest, President Obama couldn’t resist complaining about how “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer.” It was nonsense, because it is illegal for teens to legally purchase handguns at retail, and the gunman, identified as Micah Johnson, used a rifle.
He reportedly told a police negotiator that he intended to kill white people and especially white police officers. He murdered five cops before police sent in a robot armed with an explosive device and killed the gunman.
There was less of an effort to exploit the terror attack in Nice, France, because the weapon of choice in that attack was a large truck. Eighty-four people were killed before terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was fatally shot by police.
Notable passages
This year saw veteran gun rights activist Weldon H. Clark, Jr. “step on a rainbow” following a bout of pneumonia in March. A former member of the NRA Board of Directors, Clark was a Georgia native who became involved in the gun rights movement in South Carolina, Maryland and on the national level.
An ally of the late Neal Knox, Clark had degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland. He had also served on one county planning commission and jail commission.
SAF’s special projects coordinator Ray Carter lost a two-year battle with cancer on May 29. The founder of Washington CeaseFear, a grassroots effort to counter the local CeaseFire anti-gun group, Carter worked for SAF for several years. He had also worked with the Pink Pistols, a gay gun rights group, and had also been involved in Seattle’s Pride Parade and festival.
A key participant in the annual “Blogorado” event for gun bloggers in Colorado, he also worked with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
TGM lost its intrepid national correspondent, Bob Lesmeister, also in May. A one-time managing editor of American Firearms Industry, Lesmeister had been a Chief Warrant Officer with 37 years of service in the 12th Special Forces Group (Airborne), with duty in several foreign hot spots.
He began writing for Gun Week and remained through the transition to The Gun Mag. In 2004, he began working for the Department of Homeland Security as an intelligence officer.
Legendary retired Texas Ranger H. Joaquin Jackson passed away in June. A former member of the NRA Board of Directors, Jackson had been a technical advisor on films including Extreme Prejudice and this year’s Hell or High Water, in which actors portraying Texas Rangers patterned their characters after him.
Jackson’s two autobiographies, One Ranger and One Ranger Returns, were big sellers and he was considered the epitome of the modern Ranger.
Mike Vanderboegh, the author/blogger who was instrumental in exposing Operation Fast and Furious nearly six years ago, died after a long battle with cancer.
Police shootings by race
When the issue of police shootings of African-Americans ignited protests, a report appearing in the Volokh Conspiracy column in the Washington Post online put things in perspective.
Writer Heather MacDonald noted, “In fact, as of July 9, whites were 54 percent of the 440 police shooting victims this year whose race was known, blacks were 28 percent and Hispanics were 18 percent, according to The Washington Post’s ongoing database of fatal police shootings. Those ratios are similar to last year’s tally, in which whites made up 50 percent of the 987 fatal police shootings, and blacks, 26 percent. (The vast majority of those police homicide victims were armed or otherwise threatening the officer.)”
This came a week after another Washington Post article, written by Wesley Lowery, noted that the newspaper had “launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year.”
As of Sunday, July 10, Lowery wrote, “1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).”
Threats of gun ban
When liberals say that “nobody wants to take your guns,” they are being disingenuous at best because they are continually pressing for bans on certain classes of firearms, most notably so-called assault weapons. That’s not an outright taking, but a prohibition amounts to the same thing.
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that he will propose legislation in December that would ban semi-autos.
“I have a duty to protect the public,” he said, “as well as uphold the constitution. My proposal will ban some of the deadliest weapons, while respecting the Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
But the announcement got a quick reaction from Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
“Unfortunately,” Gottlieb told TGM via e-mail, “Washington State has an attorney general that attacks constitutional rights instead of defending them. He is bought and paid for by the gun prohibition lobby.”
Ferguson’s announcement came on the heels of a similar threat by two gun prohibition lobbying groups in the Pacific Northwest. However, an analysis of long-term crime data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report suggests they are offering a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
In the decade running from 2004 through 2014, rifles of any kind were used in a tiny fraction of the homicides recorded in both states, according to FBI statistics. Overall, firearms of all types were responsible for just roughly 53 percent of the murders in Oregon and about 57 percent of slayings in Washington.
For example, in 2014, the most recent year for which complete FBI data is available, Oregon reported 39 firearms-related slayings out of 73 total murders. Of those, 16 involved handguns, two were committed with rifles and two more with shotguns. Fourteen were committed with knives or other cutting instruments and 18 were committed with “other weapons.”
Likewise, in neighboring Washington, 94 of the 172 homicides in 2014 involved firearms, including 54 with handguns, six with rifles and four with shotguns. Meanwhile, 25 were committed with knives or other sharp instruments and 42 involved “other weapons.”
Respectively, according to the FBI data, Oregon saw 19 slayings committed with firearms of an undetermined type, while 30 Washington murders involved an unidentified firearm.
Nationwide that year, again according to the FBI, there were a total of 11,961 murder victims. Of those, 8,124 were killed with firearms, including 5,562 with handguns, 248 with rifles, 262 with shotguns, and 1,567 with knives or other sharp instruments. Another 2,052 were killed with firearms of an unknown type.
Gun Rights Conference
In Laate September, the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference set a new record for the number of speakers on the agenda, and it dodged the hurricane bullet. This year’s event was keyed to the November election, but there were updates on Second Amendment legal activities, court rulings both good and bad, and advice on what actions gun rights activists can take as state legislatures and Congress open new sessions in 2017.
The speaker lineup was impressive, with representatives from major gun rights organizations including CCRKBA, SAF, NRA and Gun Owners of America, plus several state and local groups. Among the speakers was author John Lott, who told the audience that the press deliberately tries to marginalize and alienate gun owners.
About the time the conference wrapped up, a study by the Associated Press and USA Today network claimed there are annually more accidental firearms-related deaths among American youngsters and teens drew immediate skepticism from one of the nation’s largest firearms civil rights organizations.
The report, according to CBS News, used information from the Gun Violence Archive, identified as a “non-partisan research group,” plus news reports and public sources.
But SAF’s Gottlieb noted the CBS story quoted an official with the Centers for Disease Control.
The story quoted Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics stating that the agency’s apparent undercount “is significant and important” but not surprising. According to CBS, Anderson said the CDC “has long suspected that its statistics on accidental firearms deaths are too low.”
“If the Associated Press and USA Today network data is accurate,” Gottlieb said, “and the CDC actually admits it has questioned its own statistics, this opens the agency up to questions about other data that it produces. It is no wonder that firearms organizations and industry groups have long questioned the CDC in its attempts to make firearms a public health issue.”
According to the AP/USA Today network report, injuries and fatalities among children under age 5 apparently spike, with 3-year-olds being the “most common shooters.” It spikes again in the 15-17 year age group, the report said.
“The most alarming aspect of this report is that it looks like one more attempt to make firearms ownership a public health issue,” Gottlieb said. “And what are the solutions offered by so-called ‘gun safety’ advocates? More gun control. They seem more interested in punishment than prevention; holding people accountable rather than educating people.
“You cannot treat a civil right like a communicable disease,” he said.
FBI Crime Report
When the FBI released its 2015 Uniform Crime Report in late September, it revealed that murders were up sharply last year, jumping to 13,455 reported slayings. Still, the data showed that firearms-related homicides remained below 10,000 for the year, putting the lie to claims by anti-gunners that 33,000 people die annually from “gun violence.” Homicides involving firearms were up, too, from the 8,124 posted in 2014 to 9,616 last year.
The data also continued showing that rifles are involved in a fraction of homicides. Last year, according to the FBI data, 252 people were killed with rifles, which is only four more than were murdered with rifles the previous year, and this takes into account the victims of the December 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino.
Last year saw 885 more murders committed with handguns than in 2014. And there were only seven more shotgun-related slayings in 2015 than in the previous year. Yet anti-gunners want to ban semi-automatic rifles.
Interestingly, if one were to subtract the homicides from just seven cities, the number of firearms-related murders would actually have been lower. Take away the 2015 murder counts for Chicago (468), New York (350), Baltimore (344), St. Louis (188), New Orleans (164), Milwaukee (145) and Newark (104) – a total of 1,763 slayings – and the increase would disappear leaving a lower number of killings overall than in 2014.
Criminal cases unfolding against an alleged cop killer in Palm Springs, the accused mall gunman in Burlington, Washington and a suspected “straw purchaser” in Seattle once again underscored the failure of gun control laws in both states.
Cascade Mall rampage suspect Arcan Cetin allegedly tried to purchase a .45-caliber handgun at an Oak Harbor gun store hours before the shooting. He was deterred by the prospect of a background check – which he would not have passed because he is only 20 years old, and federal law prohibits commercial handgun sales to anyone under age 21 – but he wasn’t stopped.
A couple of hours after he left the store discouraged, he showed up at the mall with a Ruger 10/22 semi-auto rifle in .22-caliber. It’s a sporting rifle that had been fitted with an after-market 25-round magazine. He apparently took the gun without permission from his step-father.
Almost immediately after the Wall Street Journal revealed that federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement “persuaded” local police officers in Southern California in 2010 to scan the license plates of gun show customers, the Second Amendment Foundation called for a Congressional investigation.
SAF’s Gottlieb called the surveillance effort “a civil rights outrage.” He suggested that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigate. In a strongly-worded statement, he said the effort appeared to have been “one more gun control affront launched during the Obama administration.”
According to the WSJ story, once the plates had been scanned, “Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation.”
Toddler attack ad
The gun prohibition lobby reached a new low in its campaign for stricter gun control laws by launching a new video advertisement called “Toddlers Kill” that showed several images of youngsters with guns.
Although NBC News described the spot as “tongue-in-cheek,” the 60-second message produced by a New York advertising agency for the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was not getting any laughs from Second Amendment activists or firearms safety advocates.
Surprisingly, the video came just days after USA Today reported that “A new analysis from the Associated Press and the USA Today Network has found minors are dying from accidental shootings at a pace of one every other day nationwide during the first half of this year. That’s a far greater pace than indicated by federal data.”
However, according to the NBC News story, “Researchers say that the number of accidental firearms deaths — among children and overall — has been declining steadily,” and it had numbers to back up that statement.
“Shootings involving small children is a tiny percentage of the total number of shootings in America,” NBC News reported. “Of the 33,599 people shot to death in 2014, the last year for which government data is available, 56 were children ages 3 and younger.”
As the year ends with new challenges on the horizon, TGM will remain on top of the action with news and analysis of on-going issues. In the meantime, enjoy the holidays and celebrate the New Year.
