Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 George the Gun Controller
Goes to the Big House Tom
Shafer
Speaking at the SCRA Meeting 12/3/07 January
2008 GunNews
As you may or may not know, former governor George Ryan is now an inmate. Many have served, many more will serve. I've got his inmate number if you want to write to him. There's no rush, you have six and one half years. He's not going anywhere. Remember just before the assault weapons ban when it was in the news in 94, George Ryan took a machine gun out to the Springfield police range, fired it off and said, "it was awesome, it was just awesome!." They were trying to ban semi-automatic rifles. George took that opportunity before the meeting to shoot off a machine gun and tried to cut into our rights in Illinois. I never forget those kind of political moves and political shenanigans. George is now an inmate in the federal correctional system. You can drop him a line, a postcard, a picture of yourself at the range, etc., an obscene gesture, etc. However, I would say it's going to the feds so keep it nice, be courteous. If by chance you ever get a return, I've never had the luxury of getting a return on my voluminous cards and letters, I demand that you tell me what they wrote back and said whether it's Mel Reynolds who got re-indicted while in prison, Rostenkowski, Peter Rodino, Metzanbaum, Ryan, etc. The list is long and not very distinguished. If you're not on the Pacer system which is public access to court electronic records you can get on it on your internet computer. From your home computer you can access court electronic records and find out their case, their charges, their convictions, their sentence, their inmate number and what facility they are housed in. The federal system is very efficient. You can sign up at your local courthouse. In fact I think you can sign up over the internet and they'll give you a password so you can access any federal court case, civil or criminal, anywhere in the country that's firearms related. It's a fascinating afternoon where you can keep up on all the political gun grabbers, their court cases and when they go to the slammer. It's much better to do it as a voyeur than a defendant. That's an update on King George and his fall from grace. Stolen Guns Returned? I'm still following up on Tim Davlin's rummage sale, that is the Springfield gun buy back where 526 firearms were turned in on our dime. They claimed they were going to return any stolen firearms and I'm going to hold them to that because I'm going to keep asking through the Freedom of Information request if any of them, even one of them was stolen. The whole focus of their buy back was they were going to return any stolen ones. I don't believe any of them were and I'm going to force them to tell me if any of them were stolen and returned to their rightful owners. Gun Stories in the News Shawn Taylor, a football player for the Washington Redskins, was killed in his own home. In the middle of the night these four thugs chose it to burglarize claiming it was a random home invasion. Taylor surprised them with a machete and one of the thugs took a couple pot shots at him from behind, struck him in his thigh, nicked a femoral artery and he bled to death. They caught the thugs and two or three of them have confessed so they know what happened. It's a shocking, brutal, home invasion crime that is totally gun related. I'm going to follow it to it's very last detail and it may end up as an episode on my TV show. Major Supreme Decision Due The Supreme Court is going to make a major ruling on Second Amendment in our lifetime, one of the dreams I have had for a long time. A definitive Second Amendment resolution to the gun issue by this Supreme Court in our lifetime. It's something that I can hardly believe is actually occurring. The Supreme Court has agreed which is called certiorari which means, yes we'll hear the case. If you're familiar with case law, you get a trial. If you're convicted you get one appeal guaranteed. They must hear your appeal. That's all you're guaranteed. If you lose there you're not guaranteed any other appeals. The Supremes might hear your appeal or they might not, it's up to them to decide, they get to pick and choose. They've decided to hear an appeals court case on the Second Amendment. There will be arguments oral and written probably in the spring with a decision put down in June because the next Supreme Court session ends in July or August I believe. They'll rule on this case in June and it will be a jaw dropper whatever the ruling is. It can go about four ways. DC's gun ban which is what is being appealed says no handguns whatsoever, totally banned in the whole District of Columbia, a total, complete and absolute handgun ban. My own personal crystal ball says that will be knocked down. You can't delineate one whole entire group of firearms and say nobody can have them. That's unconstitutional as well as it should be found. The other part of the DC law was not only total and complete handgun ban but that you could not have any long guns, rifle or shot guns assembled in your home. They must be disassembled, unloaded and locked away. In that state they're not a firearm. They're no defense whatsoever. They're not a weapon or firearm of any type, they're nothing. All the legal scholars and all the reading I've done on this, clearly indicates that this is going to be struck down. We're going to win on that. That's totally unconstitutional. If that's upheld that means they can just ban everything that's a firearm in your home. We could win totally on both counts. We could lose on the handgun count and win on the rifle/shotgun count or in your own home, carry in your own home count, or we could lose on both counts. If they reaffirm individual right, which just happened in the case at the appeals level, the judge who issued the appellate decision said that we hold the Second Amendment to be an individual right, that means that a lot of the laws like the Morton Grove handgun ban, Cook County, San Francisco and Chicago handgun bans will be struck down as unconstitutional, a violation of one of your individual Bill of Rights. Obviously its going to be covered by a lot of the media, its going to be dissected by all the pundits and all the political thinkers on the gun issue so I'm saying it will come out in June of 08. They're going to give us a total hands down, unequivocal, huge, lifelong, in our lifetime victory. Remember this D.C. law has been in effect for 31 years. It's taken 31 years to get a constitutional ruling on a law like this. That is in of itself outrageous. I don't know anyone in D.C., I've only been there one time as a tourist for two weeks, to think about people like us living in that district, laboring under such a ban in the high crime and murder capital of the country. It's absolutely unbelievable. I have no doubt the way the Supreme Court will rule. They'll say, "Are you guys nuts?" This thing is going to be overturned, both parts of it. It's going to set the anti-gunners back on their ear and we're going to live to see it. We ARE Winning When you look at who's winning, clearly it's us. We affected the last two presidential elections. You don't see or hear the gun issue being talked about by any frontrunner candidates whatsoever. In fact if anybody's talked about it at all, its the republican candidates saying, "I'm a big pro-gunner. I'm a big, big pro-gunner," is what they're saying. It's the opposite way, it's not anti-gunners talking about any kind of gun bans because they realize you can't get elected nationally with the gun ban talk. If anybody's got some kind of momentum here it's us. From the Capitol Index Return to SCRA Home Page |