Constitutional Carry on the March in Oklahoma, with New Governor

On 25 April, 2018, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed Constitutional Carry by a vote of 59-28.

The bill had passed the Senate unanimously on March 6th, 2018.  Constitutional Carry was part a bill removing wildlife refuges as gun free zones. The amendment process allowed the bill to bypass Senate committees that had blocked Constitutional Carry in the past.

On 2 May, 2018, the Oklahoma Senate passed Constitutional Carry again.  The popular bill had passed both the House and the Senate by veto proof margins. It passed the Senate on a 33-8 vote.

On 11 May of 2018, Governor Mary Fallin vetoed Constitutional Carry in Oklahoma.

Governor Fallin was term limited, and could not run for governor for a  third term. She felt free to violate her campaign promises and veto the popular bill.

On September 4, 2018, governor candidate Kevin Stitt said he would sign a Constitutional Carry bill. From news9.com:

“I would sign it. I am a constitutional conservative. I support the first amendment, the second amendment and I think the best defense for a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun,” said Stitt.

Kevin Stitt, the Republican candidate, was elected on 6 November, 2018, with over 54% of the vote.

The results of the 2018 elections leave Republicans with super majorities in both houses in Oklahoma. In the Senate, Republicans have 39 of 48 seats. In the House, Republicans have 76 of 101 seats.

Senator Kevin Dahm has said he will reintroduce SB1212 this year. The prospects for Constitutional Carry in Oklahoma look good.

The demons dwelling in the details can throw pitchforks into the gears. Many legislators who loudly proclaim they are Second Amendment supporters work hard to derail Constitutional Carry behind the scenes.

Nonetheless, SB 1212 or another version of Constitutional Carry is likely to become law in Oklahoma in 2019. If passed, the statute would go into effect in November of 2019.

The Third Millennium has seen a resurgence in Constitutional Carry.

There are 13 states that already have forms of Constitutional Carry.

Vermont has always been a Constitutional Carry state.

All 18 states were Constitutional Carry states before 1813. In 1833 the Supreme Court ruled the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States. States, especially slave states, accelerated restricting the exercise of the Second Amendment.

The first restrictions of consequence were on concealed carry. By the 1920's all previous slave states had restrictions on concealed carry; by 1950 all states but Vermont prohibited concealed carry without a permit.

 In 2003, Alaska passed Constitutional Carry to restore the exercise of Second Amendment rights.

In 2010, Arizona passed Constitutional Carry.

In 2011, Wyoming passed Constitutional Carry.

In 2013, Arkansas passed Act 746 into law. It is effectively Constitutional Carry, but is disputed by some county prosecutors.

In 2015, Kansas, and Maine joined the Constitutional Carry club.

In 2016, Idaho, Missouri, West Virginia, and Mississippi enacted Constitutional Carry.

In 2017, New Hampshire, and North Dakota were added to the list.

In 2018, South Dakota replaced a governor who vetoed Constitutional Carry with one who promised to sign a Constitutional Carry law. It is uncertain whether South Dakota or Oklahoma will pass Constitutional Carry first in 2019.

If Governor Stitt signs SB 1212 into law, Oklahoma will be the 14th or 15th state to restore Constitutional Carry in the nation.

If both Oklahoma and South Dakota pass Constitutional Carry laws in 2019, 30 percent of the states in the United States will have restored Second Amendment rights with more than mere words.


©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

IN: Robbery Suspect shtot, Killed by Armed Victim

Deayris Perkins died of multiple gunshot wounds, the coroner said, but his death is not being considered a criminal homicide because Perkins was trying to rob the other male, Officer Genae Cook said Monday night. The other male, who has not been identified, will not be charged because he was firing his gun in self-defense, she said.

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TX: Man Attacked by Thief, Shoots, Kills, Same

McManus said the mechanic had left a jack under a car outside his home when he noticed someone attempting to steal it. That's when, McManus said, the homeowner confronted the suspect with a gun just before a struggle ensued.

Police said the homeowner tried to hang onto the car before eventually firing several shots.
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TX: Domestic Defense, Uncle Justifed in Fatal Shooting of Nephew Football Player

The Uncle was attempting to evict the 17 year old football player from the house. The 17 year old had only been there a month.

Police said the fight allegedly started with a phone conversation but ended when Conley arrived at the house.

Conley and his uncle exchanged threats, then the uncle followed Conley into his bedroom, police say.

The uncle told investigators that he was in fear for his life and that's why he shot his nephew in the leg.
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Followup SC: Self Defense, No Charges in fatal Shooting of James Boyer, Jr.

Richland County Coroner Gary Watts says Boyer Jr. was transported to Palmetto Health Richland where he died a little less than an hour after he had been shot. After thorough investigation and consulting with the 5th Circuit Solicitor's Office, that incident was considered to be in self-defense according to the department.
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CO: No Charges for Woman who Shot, Killed , Brandon Sanchez

A woman who admitted to the September shooting death of 26-year-old Brandon Sanchez will not face a murder charge, because the case meets all the criteria for self-defense under Colorado's "Make My Day" law, according to a recent ruling by Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein.


Melissa Pruitt, 34, told investigators she shot and killed Sanchez after he and another man entered a Grand Junction garage where she and three other people were sleeping, and the two intruders beat up one of the people in the garage.
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OH: Disarm, Victim Disarmed Attacker, then Pistol-Whipped Him

During their struggle, the gun discharged two or three times times.

The victim was able to disarm the suspect and “pistol-whipped” him until he fled.
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Opening Paragraph of Texas District Judge Opinion on Obamacare, Link

 The case is Texas, et al., v. United States of America, et al., Defendants, California, et al. Intervenors-Defendants.  Case 4:18-cv-00167-O

Here is the actual decision where Judge O'Conner, of the Northern District Court of Texas, has ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court ruled it was only Constitutional because the individual mandate was a tax.

That tax was removed by Congress during the first year of the Trump administration.

From courtlistener.com:

The United States healthcare system touches millions of lives in a daily and deeply personal way. Health-insurance policy is therefore a politically charged affair—inflaming emotions and testing civility. But Article III courts, the Supreme Court has confirmed, are not tasked with, nor are they suited to, policymaking.1 Instead, courts resolve discrete cases and controversies. And sometimes, a court must determine whether the Constitution grants Congress the power it asserts and what results if it does not. If a party shows that a policymaker exceeded the authority granted it by the Constitution, the fruit of that unauthorized action cannot stand.

 The decision is 55 pages long. I have not converted it into text, because it is in some kind of pdf format, which makes it difficult to convert.

Some on freerepublic have offered methods that worked for them. Unfortunately, I have lost those helpful posts.

Any suggestions and methods would be appreciated.

Here is the link to the decision.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

LA: Domestic Defense, Wife Shoots Hisband

A woman fatally shot her husband as he beat her and tried to strangle her in a Metairie home Friday, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said Saturday. Investigators did not book her with a crime after questioning her.

Jefferson Parish Coroner Gerry Cvitanovich identified the slain man as Ian Mastin, 27.

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MA: Did Violation of Massachusetts Gun Storage Law Save Man from Pit Bull Attack?

On the 2nd of December, 2018, a 25-year-old man was at home with his girlfriend and a pit bull dog they were fostering. All of them were lying on a bed at about 6 p.m. The dog attacked the man. The man attempted to move the pit bull off of the bed. Instead, the dog bit the man on the left arm, and would not let go. From bostonglobe.com:

In a desperate attempt to end the attack, the man reached for a 9mm handgun he had in his nightstand and shot the dog, police said.

“The single shot stopped the attack and the dog died shortly afterwards,” police said in the statement. “The man is fully licensed to have firearms in Massachusetts.”

The man was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital to be treated for his injuries, police said.

Police took the man’s handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, and ammunition found in the home “for safekeeping.” The dead pit bull was taken away by Yarmouth animal control officers, police said.

It is unknown if the legal gun owner will be charged in the case.
 
Massachusetts is the only state in the nation that still requires all firearms in a home to be locked up when not in use. On March 10, 2010, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled the "safe storage" law did not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  From masslive.com:

BOSTON – The highest court in Massachusetts on Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of a state law that requires gun owners to lock weapons in their homes, a case closely watched by both gun-control and gun-rights proponents. 

Massachusetts prosecutors argued that the law saves lives because it requires guns to be kept in a locked container or equipped with a trigger lock when not under the owner’s control. The Gun Owners’ Action League and the Second Amendment Foundation Inc., however, pointed to a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said people have a constitutional right to keep weapons for self-defense. 

The state Supreme Judicial Court, ruling in the case of a man charged with improperly storing a hunting rifle in his Billerica home, unanimously agreed that the Second Amendment does not overrule the state’s right to require owners to store guns safely.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling was based on two premises.

First, that the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government, not to the states. At the time, the McDonald case had been heard, but the U.S. Supreme Court did not deliver its opinion until July of 2010, two months later.

Second, the law in Massachusetts allows a person to have a firearm unlocked and loaded in the home when it is carried by them or "under their control".  From the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling:

Under this provision, an individual with a valid firearms identification card issued under G. L. c. 140, § 129C, is not obliged to secure or render inoperable a firearm while the individual carries it or while it remains otherwise under the individual's control. A gun owner may therefore carry or keep a loaded firearm under his or her control in his or her home without securing it with a trigger lock or comparable safety device. The gun owner's obligation to secure the firearm in accordance with the statute arises only when the firearm is stored or otherwise outside the owner's immediate control.[6]

Exactly what is meant by "the owner's immediate control"? Does the law mean a person may not leave  an unlocked shotgun in their bedroom, while they are in another room of the house? It seems to mean a person who is not licensed, even if they are the gun owners spouse, parent, or child, is not allowed to have access to any of their firearms when they are not present.

The 9mm by the bed was arguably "under the control" of the licensed firearm owner. But what about the shotgun? Perhaps the shotgun was locked up. We do not know.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not heard a gun storage case since Heller, in 2008. No other state has a gun storage law as restrictive as Massachusetts. But San Francisco and other California cities have stricter gun storage laws dating from 2007 and later.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the San Francisco law.  In the Ninth Circuit ruling a judge said that modern safes and gun locks can be opened so quickly as to not interfere with the right to self defense in the home. From sfgate.com:

Because trigger locks and modern gun safes can be opened quickly, a stored or locked handgun “may be readily accessed in case of an emergency,” Judge Sandra Ikuta said in the appeals court’s ruling.

The Ninth Circuit judge said the law serves a government function of reducing gun related injuries and deaths resulting from an unlocked handgun in the home.

The academic literature is mixed on the subject. Research by John Lott and John Whitley concluded the law had a net negative effect. From crime research.org:

It is frequently assumed that safe-storage gun laws reduce accidental gun deaths and total suicides, while the possible impact on crime rates is ignored. We find no support that safe-storage laws reduce either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides. Instead, these storage requirements appear to impair people’s ability to use guns defensively. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones most likely to violate the new law, safe-storage laws increase violent and property crimes against law-abiding citizens with no observable offsetting benefit in terms of reduced accidents or suicides.

Self defense in the home with handguns was ruled to be part of the core of Second Amendment rights, by the Supreme Court in Heller.  Infringement of that right should have been examined under strict scrutiny. Interest balancing was expressly forbidden in this context, by the Heller decision. From Heller:

“We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding "interest-balancing’ approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government – even the Third Branch of Government – the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.

The Supreme Court did not accept the Ninth Circuit case about the San Francisco storage requirement.

It is unknown if the pit-bull victim will be charged with a crime or if he will have difficulty in retrieving his firearms from the police.

A Supreme Court with Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch may be more willing to accept Second Amendment cases.

We should find out in the next few months.  The Court normally recesses in June. The decision to accept, or not accept, a Second Amendment case this term will be made long before then.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

IN: McDonald's Drive-thru Armed Robber Shot by Armed Victim

Police say the victim was in the drive-thru lane about to purchase dinner for his family when the suspect approached his vehicle while allegedly pointing a gun at the victim.

The suspect demanded the victim's wallet and vehicle. The victim then drew his weapon in self-defense and shot the suspect.
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GA: Restaurant Worker Shoots Man Fighting with his Relative, is Arrested

Police say two employees went outside and confronted the customer and they all started fighting.

Investigators said that was when restaurant employee Xin Xing Chen went back into the restaurant, grabbed a gun and shot the customer.

Police have charged Chen with aggravated assault. Investigators said Chen also shot a co-worker by mistake as well.
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New Study Shows no Relationship Between CCW, Homicide or Violent Crime

A new study of violent crime and concealed carry law found no correlation between them. The study compared homicide and violent crime at the state level with changes in concealed carry law over a 30 year period, from 1986 to 2015. During this period there where large changes in the laws regulating the carry of concealed weapons. From the study:

Results

During the study period, all states moved to adopt some form of concealed-carry legislation, with a trend toward less restrictive legislation. After adjusting for state and year, there was no significant association between shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators. Adjusting further for poverty and unemployment did not significantly influence the results.

Conclusions

This study demonstrated no statistically significant association between the liberalization of state level firearm carry legislation over the last 30 years and the rates of homicides or other violent crime. Policy efforts aimed at injury prevention and the reduction of firearm-related violence should likely investigate other targets for potential intervention.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

This study confirms what a number of other studies have found: Having more people without criminal records, carrying concealed firearms, does not increase violent crime.

The study examined the levels of homicide and violent crime when states moved from "no carry" to "may carry" to "shall issue" to "unrestricted carry".

It is a significant finding to be published in a medical journal, as most papers I have read about the subject, in health related journals, make obvious errors in data selection and in the scope of the study.

This study avoids the errors of scope by looking at the data over all the states for a 30 year period.   It avoids selection bias by considering all homicides and violent crime, not just those involving guns.

The study is much coarser than the studies done by Dr. John Lott. Lott looks at data down to the county level, not just the states. Lott examines concealed carry by looking at the number of actual permits issued, not just when the law changed. That level of examination is  likely to find subtle differences.

Only a small number of studies claim that homicides or violent crime go up as more people carry concealed weapons legally. They suffer from limited scope and/or data selection bias.

Dr. Lott has debunked studies that claim more guns equal more crimes.

This study differs from studies done by Dr. Lott. It attempts to examine the effect of  "unrestricted carry" also known as Constitutional Carry.  Dr. Lott's methods have difficulty with measuring the effect of Constitutional Carry. There are no permit numbers to track with Constitutional Carry.

This paper will be used to counter the claims of studies of limited scope, which suffer from data selection bias.

Limiting data to only "gun deaths" or "gun violence" is clear data selection bias. If prevents any consideration of a weapons substitution effect, or of deterrence from self defense cases.

Limiting the scope of research to only one state, or only a few years allows researchers to pick state or years that agree with their favored thesis.

Public health journals have generally been willing to publish poorly done research if it validates preconceptions that "guns are bad".

Perhaps public health researchers will read this paper, and see the effect of biased data selection and limited scope in the other studies.  

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch 

AL: Carjack Victim Uses Phone to Track stolen Car, Shoots at Suspect

It all began Thursday morning when a woman contacted Birmingham police to report her car had been stolen while she was inside a convenience store on Fourth Avenue in Birmingham, said Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba. The victim’s phone was inside the vehicle and she was able to track its movements via a phone tracking app.

The woman contacted a family member who brought her another vehicle which enabled her to locate her car as it was entering Hoover. While calling 911, the victim pulled up beside her stolen vehicle while it was stopped in traffic in the 1500 block of Montgomery Highway. She confronted the suspect and fired two shots into the vehicle as he was pulling away.
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SC: Sheriff Praises Woman in Self Defense Shooting of Escaped Felon

Hailed as a "shining example" by a South Carolina sheriff, a woman who shot and killed an escaped jail inmate who broke into her home is giving firearm advocates fodder in their quest to boost the number of good gals with guns in the United States.

"There is a great disparity of force between a woman and a male. The proper use of a firearm really does kind of equalize that disparity," Carrie Lightfoot, founder of The Well Armed Woman, a nationwide female gun-training organization, told ABC News on Thursday.

"I really see her as an inspiration that women can effectively protect themselves with an equalizer," Lightfoot said of the armed South Carolina women who took on the jail escapee. "It is the only tool that can literally equalize that disparity."
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FL: Armed Man Holds Car Burglar for Police

Police say they responded to a call about a man with a firearm with a suspect on the ground in the first level of the parking garage at the Tuscany. The man told police he walked into the garage to find Kibler exiting the driver's side of his white Ford van.


The man took out his gun from the backpack he carried and ordered Kibler to get out of his car, according to the report. The man also discovered that he was missing his black Apple iPod, which officers later found in Kibler's jean shorts.
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CA: Armed Robber Drops Gun, Victim Grabs it , Shoots Him

Then, things turned bad for the suspects, according to Botti. One of the armed man, identified as Dion Loftis, 22, of Hanford, slipped and dropped his gun. A nearby worker grabbed the weapon, and shot the suspect in the leg once and twice in his backside. Other workers jumped on the bleeding suspect while the other two robbers jumped back in the SUV and began to speed away. The worker who shot the suspect then unloaded the rest of the ammo at the fleeing suspects.
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OH: Homeowner Shot, Killed Intruder

BLUE CREEK, OHIO (WCHS/WVAH) — The Scioto County Sheriff's Office is investigating after a homeowner shot and killed an intruder in Blue Creek, Ohio.
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More Syracuse NY Clerk Shooting: Clerk Shot another Robbery Suspect Six Weeks Earlier

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A tobacco shop owner who shot and badly injured a would-be robber Friday night at his North Side store also shot at and possibly injured a would-be robber six weeks ago at the same shop at the same time of night.

The owner of Alibaba Market on Wolf Street confirmed that he'd been involved in two shootings in as many months during a brief interview at his store on Saturday afternoon.

He declined Saturday to comment more about the shootings, saying he was shaken up from having nearly killed a man who brandished a gun at him in a robbery fewer than 24 hours earlier.

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TN: Armed Men Chase Truck Theif, Hold for Police

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Two men chased a suspected truck thief and held him at gunpoint until police arrived, Memphis police said.

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