ARMED-M

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The Armed M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers, and not of American Mensa, Ltd., which has no opinions. This newsletter is linked to the Mensa web page WWW.Mensa.org as WWW.2Asig.iqhost.net Almost all editions are on the web site. It takes about two minutes to download each of the sixty editions using dial up.

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May 2003 I have moved and am now in Wilmington North Carolina. My E-Mail address is Smith705@Juno.com. I can always use contributions to the newsletter. If you write something or find something e-mail it to me I'll put it in the newsletter as space and theme allows. Bob Smith -----

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Gun-rights supporters believe Locker, a Democrat who plans to run for California governor in 2006, is pushing the issue to make a political point and highlight the differences between the Bush administration and his own record on gun control.

The National Rifle Association said the NICS databank appears clearly designed for use by gun dealers, not for police investigating crimes. The other databanks, they said, can be used to track down criminal records in other states.

"It seems to me that they are trying to make this into a political issue," said Andrew Arulanandam, NRA spokesman.

Georgia officials say federal authorities also have threatened them over interpretation of U.S. law concerning criminal background checks. Georgia was denying gun purchases to people arrested for crimes but not charged or convicted.

In a letter last year to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the FBI warned that the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act and Georgia law do not allow "naked arrests" without an indictment or conviction to be used to deny a gun purchase. The FBI said it was "very interested in the status of any corrective action."

Georgia complied with the FBI, and the number of firearms denied to suspected felons dropped significantly. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimated that every day an average of 17 or 18 people facing felony charges now are given permission to buy a gun in Georgia.

"We viewed it as a threat," John Bankhead, spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said about the FBI's letter. "We had done this for six years without an issue until the new administration came in, and they pulled this on us."

Handguns Entering Domestic Market

Manufactured Exports Imports Domestic

1986 1,427,627 120,547 231,000 1,538,080

1987 1,658,832 158,800 342,113 1,842,145

1988 1,745,722 131,859 621,620 2,235,483

1989 2,031,425 118,470 440,132 2,353,087

1990 1,838,895 178,018 448,517 2,109,394

1991 1,838,266 189,520 293,231 1,941,977

1992 2,010,032 189,130 981,588 2,802,490

1993 2,824,809 148,721 1,204,685 3,880,773

1994 2,581,961 172,891 915,168 3,324,238

1995 1,722,930 229,603 706,093 2,199,420

1996 1,484,477 154,184 490,554 1,820,847

1997 1,406,505 107,838 474,182 1,772,849

1998 1,240,460 44,593 531,681 1,727,548

1999 1,331,230 83,279 308,052 1,556,003

Notes:

Manufactured and exported are sum of the pistol and revolver

Catagories in ATF exhibits 1 & 2

Net Domestic = Manufactured - Exports + Imports

Data for 2000 manufactures was not indicated

While the total indicates the number of new handguns entering the Market, that is only an approximation of the numbers of new guns actually purchased (it is off by changes in inventory)

ATF note for imports: Statistics prior to 1992 are for fiscal years; statistics after 1992 are for calendar years; and 1992 is a transition year with five quarters.

Anway, it's clear that that the number of handguns entering the market peaked in 1993 and has been declining since (at least through the years for which figures are available.

Mike Rosenberg www.saneguns.org

Guy Smith wrote:

" . . . handgun sales have long been on the decline in the United States . I don't have my files handy, but I don't think this is correct, at least in terms of annual unit sales. Can anyone cite data on per capita sales based on adult population?

 

Subject:      The attorney question
To: FIREARMSREGPROF@listserv.ucla.edu

(2d Try) I apologize for again coming in late on a topic prior. But the concept of the police being able to allege a crime, force an answer by someone, and arrest or search without warrant is anathema to defense attorneys.

No law (yet) forces us to show the police what we have lawfully purchased and own. The fact of ownership of  lawful items is not enough to justify a search warrant. (Yet)

Refusing to admit anything to a police officer falls squarely within the ambits of the 5th Amendment. When I taught my courts classes and firearms classes to college students and to new federal agents it was sometimes an effort to educate them that warrants are not handed out like candy for a "fishing expedition" by law enforcement officers. The cases that follow the 4th Amendment are still good law...as they should be.

Search warrants are not "hunch warrants".  They require probable cause - admittedly a low standard of proof, but there must be an allegation of a crime committed - based on facts,  and an articulation by the swearing officer of the same or other facts which suggest it is more likely than not evidence of that crime will be found at the location to be searched.   The allegation of a suspected crime alone is not enough. 
 
The issue of what if some handguns are recovered in crimes and are traced to a registered owner - who refuses to tell the police what he/she did with the guns is factually different. In that case the police might have sufficient probable cause to justify a search warrant to look for evidence of illegal firearms sales. (Receipts, checks, cash, customer lists, etc.) The search warrant will not allow looking for legally possessed firearms unless the police can also show the registered owner is engaged in the business of illegal firearms dealing. Then, by inference, firearms kept with the intention of being used  in illegal activity may be seized. (See 18 USC 924(d)(1))

We must defend the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as vigorously as we defend the Second.
--
Jess B. Guy Santa Clara County-Deputy Alternate Defender 408-299-7218

Editor’s note: The following two books sound like "must have" books, I’m ordering them and hope you all do also. Wouldn’t use all this space if I didn’t think they were very important.

People frequently ask why we are so dedicated to our cause? This book answers that question by collecting the key facts and arguments in one place.

People have asked us to present the whole JPFO argument in one place. We have done it. Available now in an easy-reading format and a handy size, the new book is entitled Death by Gun Control: The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament.

The message is simple: Disarmed people are neither free nor safe - they become the criminals' prey and the tyrants' playthings. When the civilians are defenseless and their government goes bad, however, thousands and millions of innocents die.

Professor R.J. Rummel, author of the monumental book Death by Government, said: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth." For power to concentrate and become dangerous, the citizens must be disarmed.

What disarms the citizens? The idea of "gun control." It's the idea that only the government has the right to possess firearms, and that citizens have no unalienable right to use force to defend against aggression.

Death by Gun Control carefully examines the "gun control" idea: its meaning, its purposes, its effects. It comes in many forms, but in every form it enables the evildoers and works against righteous defense.

The Mother of All Stats

When the gun prohibitionists quote a statistic about how many people are killed by firearms misuse, the discussion sometimes bogs down into whose crime stats to believe and how to count crimes vs. the defensive firearm uses. Death by Gun Control works on a level that nobody can dispute: documented world history.

In the 20th Century:

Governments murdered four times as many civilians as were killed in all the international and domestic wars combined.

Governments murdered millions more people than were killed by common criminals.

How could governments kill so many people? The governments had the power - and the people, the victims, were unable to resist. The victims were unarmed.

Truth They Cannot Refute

Death by Gun Control delivers the essential - and gut wrenching -- truth that the anti-self defense "gun control" advocates never try to refute. They simply cannot refute the facts or the formula.

Here's the Formula: Hatred + Government + Disarmed Civilians = Genocide

What makes the argument so powerful? Two factors. First, it makes common sense: unarmed defenseless people have no hope against armed aggressors. Second, it states the historical truth: evil governments did wipe out 170,000,000 innocent non-military lives in the 20th Century alone.

Using the facts in Death by Gun Control, you can take down the enemies of the Bill of Rights. The rights-destroyers have no answers to these facts. They have no excuses for their killer ideas.

JPFO's work has already borne fruit. John R. Bolton, an under-Secretary of State for the United States, this year urged the United Nations to recognize how an "oppressed non-state group defending itself from a genocidal government" will need ready access to firearms. Mr. Bolton might have been the first U.S. official in modern history to have argued to the UN that private citizens might need to be armed against their own killer governments.

Paul Harvey, the world-renowned and much admired radio commentator, last year reportedly broadcast the JPFO-produced facts linking "gun control" to the genocide of millions of unarmed civilians. Country by country, Mr. Harvey counted the murdered victims of civilian disarmament policies.

Our new book could inspire other opinion-makers to join the chorus. Chapters in the book teach about:

The essential meaning of "gun control"

The Genocide Formula

The laws and policies that led to mega murder in Cambodia, China, Nazi Germany, Guatemala, Rwanda, Ottoman Turkey, Uganda, USSR

Zimbabwe's land invasions and firearms confiscations

Soaring crime in Britain after gun prohibition

Violence and police state polices in Japan

The right and duty of armed self-defense in Judaism and both Protestant and Catholic Christianity

Racist roots of "gun control" in America

The United Nations program to disarm civilians worldwide

Police state polices that condition Americans to accept victim disarmament

Contributors: Leading Lights for Liberty

There is much more. Death by Gun Control features articles contributed by:

James Bovard (Introduction): "Not every firearms regulation leads inexorably to genocide. ... But there is no trigger guard on political ambition."

Stephen Halbrook, Ph.D. (Chapter 9): How Nazi firearms laws disarmed German Jews -- the whole story.

Jacob Hornberger (Chapter 10): Retelling the tragic, inspiring tale of The White Rose Society, college students who paid the ultimate price for freedom of mind.

Larry Pratt (Chapter 18): What the Bible says to Christians and Jews about self-defense and victim disarmament.

Endorsed by Experts

Honestly, is this book any good? Ask David Kopel, scholar at the Independence Institute and author of several books and many articles on firearms ownership and public policy. Mr. Kopel honored our book, saying that Death by Gun Control is "one of the best books ever written about the right to keep and bear arms."

There are many excellent books that advance our understanding of the right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment and the American liberty philosophy. Death by Gun Control is unique because it alone drives directly to the heart of the matter: that "gun control" ideas kill - both overseas and here in the U.S.A.

Breaking News: Wave good-bye to the era when Americans could say "it can't happen here." After the September 11 terror attack that killed 3,000 people, Americans no longer ignore "foreign" nations and the history of the world. America has been plunged deep into a perilous world, and our citizens are learning about war and invasion and attack and defense. The lesson of the 20th Century genocides cannot be dismissed any more. The logic of personal self-defense is hitting home. Death by Gun Control is perfectly timed to influence people during this window of opportunity. Order extra copies to spread the word.

Death by "Gun Control" provides a vital and neglected argument for the right of private gun ownership: namely, that people with guns can defend themselves against government criminals as well as against common ones. Zelman and Stevens present the argument eloquently and with meticulous scholarship. Although the stories of governmental persecution are heart breaking, this book is a pleasure to read because of its clear-sighted and humanitarian concern for the victims who were stripped of self-defense.

Wendy McElroy
Author, editor of the forthcoming anthology Women and Liberty (Ivan R. Dee publisher, winter 2001), and regular columnist for FOXNews.com.

 

Death by "Gun Control" explains the fundamentals in such a lucid, accessible way that you could give the book to your middle schooler as a first primer on the value of an armed citizenry. At the same time, it's so packed with well-organized information that experienced gun-rights activists and researchers should keep it close at hand for intellectual ammunition. I thought I'd read a lot on this topic; but Aaron and Richard taught me things I'd never known and gave me new ways of looking at familiar concepts. This is a seriously valuable book.

Claire Wolfe
Author of 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution and co-author of The State vs. the People

 

Zelman and Stevens tell the story we all must know -- how successful twentieth century tyrants knew they had to disarm their people before they could torture and kill them. The power of their story makes clear our imperative -- to preserve at all costs the natural right of self defense and its corollary, the right to keep and bear arms.

Timothy Wheeler, MD

Special Offer

Order Death by "Gun Control" for just $16.95 (shipping and handling included -- 10% more in Canada) and receive two of JPFO's famous "Gran'pa Jack" educational booklets in comic format: Gran'pa Jack #6: Will "Gun Control" Make You Safer?, by Aaron Zelman and Gran'pa Jack #7: Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem?, by Dr. Sarah Thompson and Aaron Zelman (a total $6.00 value, absolutely free when you order Death by "Gun Control" today.

Have your credit card ready -- it will not be charged until the books are shipped -- and call 1-262-673-9745, or toll-free 1-800-869-1884

Print the Order Form to fax or mail (Fax: 1-262-673-9746)

Or order by mail by writing to:

JPFO
P.O. Box 270143
Hartford WI 53027

Dial 911 and Die
by Richard W. Stevens
With an Introduction by James Bovard
Author of Lost Rights and Freedom in Chains

Click for a large image of The Cover.

Call 1-262-673-9745 or toll-free 1-800-869-1884,

Or use our secure On-Line Order System:

BUY NOW: 1 copy $11.95 postage paid

 

© 1999 JPFO < webmaster@jpfo.org

Jury Rights: Reconsidering Relevance

Clay S. Conrad

Published 02. 23. 03 at 23:51 Sierra Time

 

Edward Rosenthal was prosecuted for growing and distributing medical marijuana in compliance with the California Compassionate Use Act. At his Federal trial, District Court Judge Charles Breyer refused to let the jury learn that Rosenthal was growing marijuana for medical use. Breyer ruled evidence concerning medical marijuana was irrelevant, because federal law does not recognize medical uses for marijuana. Implicit in the ruling was a concern that evidence about medical marijuana would lead to jury nullification. As nearly eighty percent of San Franciscans voted for passage of Prop. 215, it was unlikely a San Francisco jury would willingly convict one of their neighbors for helping to implement State law.

 

Most legal commentators agree that Breyer made the correct legal decision. This judgment is based on traditional notions of legal relevance: if evidence does not make any element of the crime (in this case, knowingly growing marijuana) more or less likely, the evidence is irrelevant. Under this theory, evidence that serves no other purpose than to undermine the moral underpinnings of the law is inadmissible. Such evidence only encourages jury nullification of applicable law and unfairly hurts the Government's case.

 

Many of Breyer's brethren find this notion of relevance overly confining. Judge Jack Weinstein has noted that courts cannot and should not try to prevent, by restricting evidence unduly or by leaning on jurors, a certain degree of freedom of the jurors to come in with verdicts which may not reflect, in an abstract way, what the facts and the law are. Similarly, Judge Kenneth Hoyt has written that, as part of the deliberative process is to determine the moral 'rightness' of the result reached, the justice system must be flexible enough to permit acts of mercy by a jury where the facts dictate morally and ethically that mercy is appropriate.

 

This expanded concept of relevance has struck a sympathetic chord with nothing less than the United States Supreme Court - but to date, only when it helps the Government. In Old Chief v. United States, the Court held that Government evidence in a criminal case has fair and legitimate weight if it convince[s] the jurors that a guilty verdict would be morally reasonable. This is because what a defendant has thought and done can accomplish what no set of abstract statements ever could, not just to prove a fact but to establish its human significance, and so to implicate the law's moral underpinnings and a juror's obligation to sit in judgment.

 

It seems grossly unfair to allow the Government to present evidence implicating the moral underpinnings of the law - and deny Ed Rosenthal a reciprocal right. If, as the Court holds, evidence which shows a conviction is morally reasonable is relevant, then evidence that a conviction is morally unreasonable is relevant. Are the scales of justice so unbalanced that the only relevant moral concerns are those that assist the Government?

 

Certainly, not all judges think so. While Judge Breyer operated within his discretion, such lopsided rulings allow for mechanical, unjust and tyrannical application of federal law. If Rosenthal was selling joints to schoolkids, Breyer would have let the jury know. Evidence that Rosenthal was causing no harm, and in the eyes of his community was accomplishing significant good, should have been considered by the jury. Such evidence may have inspired the jury to nullify the law - but, as Judge Weinstein noted, jury nullification is one of the legitimate outcomes of a criminal trial as anticipated by our Founding Fathers.

 

Jury nullification occurs when a criminal trial jury decides not to enforce a law because they believe it would be unjust or misguided to convict. This allows average citizens, in deliberative bodies, to limit the scope of the criminal sanction, so that acts not broadly condemned are not widely punished. History shows juries have taken this enormous power very seriously, and have used it responsibly.

 

Rosenthal's jurors agree. Jury foreman Charles Sackett has said the jury probably would have nullified the law and acquitted, had they known this was a medical marijuana case. Half the jury appeared on NBC's Dateline, decrying having been kept in the dark and manipulated into returning a verdict which does not reflect their conscientious judgment. Eight of his jurors apologized to Rosenthal, and petitioned Judge Breyer to grant a new trial.

 

This sort of thing is just not supposed to happen. If being a juror means anything, it should mean never having to say you're sorry. If the law is just and justly applied, jurors have no reason to apologize to those they convict or to feel they have been used by their Government to commit injustice. Our jurors should hear and be empowered to act upon evidence which implicates the moral underpinnings of the law, regardless of which side benefits.

 

Mr. Conrad is the author of Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine (Carolina Academic Press, 1998), Chairman of the Fully Informed Jury Association (http://www.fija.org) and a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. © 2003 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted)

 

Permission to reprint/republish granted, as long as you include the name of our site, the author, and our URL. www.SierraTimes.com All Sierra Times news reports, and all editorials are © 2003 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----

  ENDNOTES

  [1] This and other similarities to criminal wiretap requirements were essential to the review court’s holding that  “FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable.”  Id. at 56.  The ACLU does not agree with that conclusion, but simply notes that even a court with the broadest view of the government’s surveillance power has found the requirement that the government show probable cause that a target is acting for a foreign power is constitutionally based.

  [2] Richard Reeves, PRESIDENT NIXON: ALONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 335 (2001).  The plan was apparently not implemented, despite President Nixon’s order, but certainly contributed to the pattern of abuse that finally lead to the Watergate break-in and cover up.

  [3] In the absence of such a process, a party could well be barred from challenging the lawfulness of the underlying order in any proceeding to enforce contempt sanctions.  See Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 317 (1967) (holding civil rights marchers could not challenge the lawfulness of an injunction forbidding a peaceful march in proceedings to enforce contempt sanctions).

  [4] THE FEDERALIST No. 84 (Hamilton) (emphasis in original)  (quoting 1 Blackstone, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND 335).

  [5] See American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey v. County of Hudson, No. HUD-L-463-02 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. April  12, 2002), rev’d on other grounds, 779 A.2d 629 (N.J. Super.  App. Div. 2002); Center for National Security Studies v.  United States Dep’t of Justice, 215 F. Supp. 2d 94 (D.D.C.  2002) (appeal pending before D.C. Circuit).  [6] “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him;  [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor . . ..”  U.S. Const. amends. 6.  [7] See Testimony of Barry Sternward, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, March 23, 2000 (reporting an American Management Association survey in 1997 that reported that six out of ten employers responding use genetic screening information for employment purposes.)

  [8] The National Immigration Forum has posted on its website a list of statements by local and state police from across the country, all opposing any attempt to enlist them in the enforcement of immigration laws.  See Opposition to Local Enforcement of Immigration Laws, updated October 1, 2002, available at: 

  http://www.immigrationforum.org/currentissues/articles/100102_quotes.htm  [9] See Letter from White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzalez to Migration Policy Institute, June 24, 2002, available at:  http://www.migrationpolicy.org/files/whitehouse.pdf  [10] See United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 751 (1987)  (holding that pretrial detention is constitutional “[w] hen the Government proves by clear and convincing evidence that an arrestee presents an identified and particularly threat to an individual or the community”).

  [11] See INA § 237(a)(4)(B) (“Any alien who has engaged, is engaged, or at any time after admission engages in any terrorist activity . . . is deportable.”)  [12] USA PATRIOT Act, § 412, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 321  (2001), codified at INA § 236A.

  [13] Another court-stripping provision, in Section 504(d), would give the government power to deport people before a federal judge could hear their challenges, even where the law clearly allows judicial review, by posing serious barriers to the judge's ability to stay deportation while considering the case.  The provision would overturn rulings of four federal appeals courts that found that the very stringent standard that applies for a judge to grant a request to stop deportation altogether under by INA § 242(f)(2) does not apply to a court’s ability to temporarily delay deportation while it considers the case.  See, e.g., Mohammed v. Reno, 309 F.3d 95  (2d Cir. 2002) (on appeal from habeas review of removal  order); Beijani v. INS, 271 F.3d 670 (6th Cir. 2001); Andreiu  v. Ashcroft, 253 F.3d 477 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc); Lal v.  Reno, 2000 WL 831801 (7th Cir. June 26, 2000) (unpublished);  but see Weng v. Attorney General, 287 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir.  2002).  As one court noted, in rejecting the interpretation the DOJ is now seeking to enact in this legislation, “This would effectively require the automatic deportation of large numbers of people with meritorious claims, including every applicant who presented a case of first impression.”  Andreiu,  253 F.3d at 48