Though it’s a few days after the fact, the first appeal brief has been filed in Richards v. Prieto, the case challenging the constitutionality of California’s discretionary handgun-licensing system—or at least the administration thereof. At this point, Richards is no longer in the vanguard of right-to-carry litigation, thanks to an accomplished bit of judicial stalling surrounding the once related case of Nordyke v. King. However, there is now a raft of cases throughout the federal court system that will likely demand a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court within the next two years.
Even after a right-to-carry victory at the high court, there will probably be holdouts in California and the other restrictive states. Much like the long aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, subsequent enforcement actions will be required if that proves to be true. Richards v. Prieto may ultimately become the first such action here.
Sponsored by the Calguns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation, a lawsuit has been filed in federal court to challenge California’s ban on so-called assault weapons. Richards v. Harris attacks the ban itself on Second Amendment grounds and as a bonus also challenges the constitutionality of warrantless gun-related searches under the Fourth Amendment. The lawful possession of a firearm is not probable cause that a crime has occurred.
As I have noted before, “assault weapons” do not actually exist. They are an artificial and arbitrary category of weapon, functionally identical to many non-banned semi-automatic firearms, and much of the legislation passed against them was done through subterfuge, exploiting their superficial resemblance to machine guns, which have been tightly controlled since A.D. 1934 and effectively banned since A.D. 1986. Even in California, there are hundreds of thousands of firearms that have been modified to comply with the law’s confusing definitions.
The time has come to strike down this unconstitutional statute that prohibits firearms “in common use for lawful purposes.”
As a libertarian, I advocate for individual freedom and responsibility. However, I focus mainly on the personal aspects of this and am fairly content to let economic matters wait. While economic freedom is tremendously important and has far-reaching implications, the route to more libertarian economic policies must first pass through such subtler points as the right to privacy and the freedom of association.
Nevertheless, economic questions have been impossible to ignore in the face of the most recent financial crisis. When jobs are lost and financial security evaporates, emotions naturally run high and hot, and frightened, angry people look for someone or something to blame. Predictably, capitalism and free markets end up taking much of that blame.
The irony is that we don’t actually have free markets. Even in nominally capitalist countries such as the United States, the markets are managed, regulated, influenced, and manipulated by governments. This often, if not usually occurs with the participation or at least the tacit approval of powerful corporate interests, which are happy to see a regulatory status quo that protects their profits from potential competitors. In the latter respect, a private company can be as unfriendly to free markets as any state socialist.
In fact, free markets have never really been given a fair shake. While the young United States embraced the idea of capitalism after throwing off the legacy of British mercantilism, the federal government was still quick to regulate international trade. The industrial and banking magnates that rose to prominence after the Civil War also sought to control markets by building monopolies when possible or by colluding with their competitors when not. The legislation and regulation that followed, though born of good intentions, created new problems, especially for organized labor.
Regulations or rather bad regulations helped turn the recession of A.D. 1929 into the Great Depression. As with the latest crisis, easy credit fueled bad investments and outright speculation. Governments worldwide tried desperately to solve the problem through deficit spending, increased taxation, and ultimately warfare. When prosperity began to return after the Second World War, this had the curious effect of appearing to be successful. Government intervention in the economy had surely ended the depression!
The corollary observation was that capitalism and free markets had failed—though it’s hard to imagine that the economy wouldn’t have recovered naturally after nearly two decades. If greedy bankers and speculators had triggered the depression, then obviously the government needed to keep these dangerous “capitalists” in check by maintaining an active regulatory role and to help their victims by providing generous social welfare supported by significant taxation. This became the framework that encloses “free markets” today.
Therefore, it is now effectively a given that governments should step in to “fix” economic problems caused by “failures” of the free market. Indeed, many high schoolers learn about John Maynard Keynes, but few college graduates have even heard of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman. Public education has framed the discussion very thoroughly, if incompletely in this regard.
Of course, under the right fiscal circumstances, Keynesian economic policies make perfect sense. We should set aside some funds in the good times and spend them in the bad times, smoothing out the ups and downs of the “business cycle.” However, governments are almost always spending beyond their means, abusing fiscal power for political favor. In the end, rampant Keynesian interventionism provides the would-be socialists with the power they crave and the so-called capitalists with the wealth they cherish.
When both of the factions that would destroy free markets are happy, I have to worry.
Seeming to deliberately misread the Heller and McDonald decisions, Judge M. C. England has ruled in favor of Yolo County in the case of Richards v. Prieto at federal district court. Citing the fact that it is not yet technically illegal to openly carry an unloaded firearm, Judge England concluded that the county’s arbitrary licensing policy is “constitutionally valid.” However, in an ironic coincidence, the California Assembly voted to eliminate this technicality earlier today.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns sounds like an innocuous organization. Who isn’t against illegal guns? Illegal guns are those used by criminals in the commission of their crimes … right? Not exactly.
Michael Bloomberg’s pet gun-control group operates on the standard prohibitionist model. Not only would these mayors make owning and using firearms more difficult for law-abiding citizens in a vain attempt to thwart criminals, they would manufacture even more “illegal guns” by broadening the already broad categories of prohibited persons. Maybe that’s not so bad, you think? However, they would also circumvent due process of law and proper adjudication in order to do so, which is the much graver threat to personal freedom and civil rights.
This week, Mayor Bloomberg brought his show to Los Angeles, and that is how I found myself at a rally sponsored by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Under a blue but slightly cloudy sky, I joined fellow civil-rights proponents in front of the dilapidated headquarters of the Los Angeles Times. For a weekday event scheduled with short notice, it was fairly well attended, given that these were working people who had to use vacation credits or sacrifice a day’s pay to be there.
Gene Hoffman, Jr., of the Calguns Foundation spoke to the news media and addressed the public. Contrasting the Bloomberg group’s focus on the dozens of daily gun-related homicides, he cited conservative statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice that estimate more than 2,100 defensive gun uses per day. In other words, guns save far more lives than they take.
The gathering was also somewhat noteworthy in that rallying and demonstrating are not things gun owners usually do. Instead, we let our factors (such as the National Rifle Association) in Washington or Sacramento do the talking for us … and grumble quietly when things don’t go our way. Expectations are clearly changing, even if today’s event was little more than an exchange of propaganda.
As it often is, the “after party” was as interesting, if not more so than the event itself. I had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Hoffman discuss the constitutional, judicial, and legislative factors that should firmly recognize the right to carry a firearm within the next two or three years. He even let us in on the ironic but nearly foolproof method that should soon moot California’s ban on so-called large-capacity ammunition-feeding devices.
Like the skies over Los Angeles, so much has changed since I met with the NRA’s California leadership in early A.D. 2008, several months before the Heller decision. Gene Hoffman was there then too and ever more diplomatic than I in explaining to the old guard how the information revolution had affected the situation and our ability to organize and motivate people. I saw that again today, with renewed confidence that while there may still be minor setbacks, the overall victory appears inevitable.
Right-to-carry reform inched forward in California today as oral arguments were heard for Richards v. Prieto. Arguing for the plaintiffs, Alan Gura challenged the constitutionality of the state’s arbitrarily applied discretionary licensing system (and specifically how such discretion is exercised in Yolo County). With very narrow exceptions, the only legal way to carry a functional firearm for self-defense or other lawful purposes in California is to have a concealed-handgun license issued by the county sheriff or local police chief. As Gura argued, for these licenses to comply with the Second Amendment right to bear arms, they must be provided to all applicants not prohibited from owning firearms and cannot be denied for arbitrary reasons.
Regardless of how the judge eventually rules, appeals are expected.
