Department of Interior updates regulations to allow concealed carry

I wrote this post for Radio Vice Online, and am crossposting here. …

Maybe we should include a feature called “Second Amendment Tuesday” here on the blog and the radio show. There are quite a few stories that have popped up during the last couple of weeks concerning boisterous buying at our local Second Amendment shops, but here are a couple of stories that have been below the fold and under the radar; and one from a commentator who’s plain wrong.

First, we have the lost soul of the week. Dan Thomasson over at the Boston Herald comments on the Department of Interior’s decision to allow those who can lawfully carry a firearm elsewhere, carry in national parks. His piece is titled One needn’t pack heat for day in park.

From the Department of Interior Web site.

The final rule, which updates existing regulations, would allow an individual to carry a concealed weapon in national parks and wildlife refuges if, and only if, the individual is authorized to carry a concealed weapon under state law in the state in which the national park or refuge is located.

OK, I guess it’s time for people like Thomasson to freak out.

As a parting shot from the Bush administration, courtesy of the gun lobby, those who seek the solitude and beauty of some national parks and wildlife refuges will face the fact that the visitor standing next to them just may be packing heat and is ready to use it at the first sign of any unfriendliness, such as an argument over a camping space.

Thomasson is one of the many delusional, but well intentioned folk who fail to realize that yes, he could be standing in line at a grocery store next to someone who, God forbid, is packing heat.

I hope you have less than 13 items in the 12 item-or-less check out lane.

Did he miss the laws that are already on the books allowing carry and concealed carry in at least 39 states? Only two states outright deny the right to carry a weapon, and he’s got the guts to say that the District’s gun laws were not strict enough.

Please don’t try to find a sane rationale for much of anything advocated by firearms worshipers. In the nation’s capitol, which should be a sanctuary from violence, one can hardly find a day when someone doesn’t die from a shooting. Yet the pistol-whipped, one-vote majority on the Supreme Court has decided the solution to this is to abrogate Washington’s strict gun law.

Are you nuts Dan? The problem is the criminals, who don’t give a crap about the law, are free to roam the streets of Washington D.C. and pray on citizens with the comfort of knowing law abiding citizens did not have the right to protect themselves with a pistol.

Violence on D.C. streets will continue Dan. Want to know why? The criminals know that it’s against the law  for citizens to carry concealed and protect themselves!

Unbelievable.

More…

Story 2: From the Volokh Conspiracy, District Court Upholds Ban on Machine Gun Posession…

U.S v. Hamblen – …The conclusion that the Heller Court did not extend Second Amendment protection to machine guns, in particular, is supported by the lower federal courts that have addressed the issue. In United States v. Fincher, 538 F.3d 868, 873-74 (8th Cir. 2008), the Eighth Circuit held that the defendant’s possession of a machine gun was not protected by the Second Amendment under Heller: “Machine guns are not in common use by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes and therefore fall within the category of dangerous and unusual weapons that the government can prohibit for individual use.”

Story 3: Next, another story from Volkh, who brings us word of the Dec. 4 ruling in Lund v. Salt Lake City Corp. District Court Suggests Second Amendment May Protect Possession of Firearms in Public…

This [the Lund decision] doesn’t contradict the Heller Court’s assertion that concealed carry might be limited on the historical grounds that “the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.”

From the decision…

By itself, mere possession of a firearm in public is not unlawful and may well represent the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, § 6 of the Utah Constitution (recognizing the “individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state, as well as for other lawful purposes,” subject to the power of the Legislature to define the “lawful use of arms.”). See District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2799 (2008) (“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”) ….

Story 4: One of our commenters at Radio Vice Online reminds us of this story from Oklahoma. Hat tip to Sister Toldjah and Gateway Pundit. An off duty Oklahoma state trooper, who really is never off duty, took action to stop a possible nutcase from shooting up a Burger King and the occupants in the fast food joint.

Even though the suspect was praying to Allah and was threatening to kill people with a weapon on the table, I will not go as far as saying the trooper stopped a massacre, I’m just thankful for his service and that everyone is OK.