Law-abiding gun owners no source of fear

Aug 4, 2011

It was going to be a bloodbath. Disputes at soccer games were going to turn into shootouts. Michigan was going to turn into the Wild West — or worse.

Those were some of the more draconian claims made 10 years ago when state lawmakers in a lame-duck session slipped through a law that made it easier for Michigan residents to legally carry a concealed weapon.

The law did make getting a license easier. Before the law was passed, about 52,000 Michigan residents were authorized to carry concealed weapons. Since the law's passage, that number has mushroomed to more than 275,000.

Yet, as recounted in a recent Detroit Free Press story, there has been no appreciable impact on crime in this state. There certainly has not been an upsurge in gun violence traced to the increase of concealed-weapons permits.

In retrospect, that shouldn't have been a surprise. Many states already had more liberal concealed weapons laws than did Michigan — and they weren't experiencing the type of gun violence that worried the law's opponents, including many of the state's county prosecutors and police officials.

"We were all a little too caught up imaging what might happen," Ionia County Prosecutor Ronald Schafer told the Free Press.

Proponents of the more liberal law argued that the old method of granting concealed-weapons permits was tilted in favor of those who had connections with the county gun boards. Indeed, permits did seem to be limited to retired police officers and those who could demonstrate a need, such as businesspeople who carried cash.

Not only did the system encourage favoritism, but proponents of change said it also ran afoul of a state constitution that, they said, clearly indicates that carrying a weapon is a right, not a privilege to be granted.

That's pretty much how the law now works. To get concealed-weapons permit, an applicant basically must be 21 or older, be a citizen of Michigan for six months, successfully complete a handgun safety course, not have a recorded history of mental illness, not have a felony conviction in the last eight years and not have a dishonorable charge from the military.

Once someone has a permit, there are some limits. Even with a license, a person can't carry a concealed weapon in schools, day-care centers, sports arenas or stadiums, taverns, places of worship, hospitals, college living quarters or casinos.

Some have argued that the increase in concealed-weapon permits would actually create safer communities. Such positions are sometimes rooted in the belief that "an armed society is a polite society." Or, some would argue that armed law-abiding citizens are a defense against shooting rampages such as the recent outrage in Norway.

Such a position is debatable. What's not up for argument is that there have been no negative consequences now that 220,000 more state residents have the right to carry a concealed weapon.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard has a rational reason for that. He says that the people likely to cause trouble aren't the type of people who willingly go through the legal requirements to get a permit.

"My position was, and still is, that the people we have a problem with guns aren't the people who are willing to follow the law and go through the hoops and training," he told the Free Press.

That's a good point. Not everyone likes guns. Those folks have the right not to own one. Nor should their safety be jeopardized by others. But the evidence is so far clear that whatever risk there is from guns, it's not coming from the law-abiding people who have obtained concealed-weapons permits.
http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20110804/OPINION01/108040312/Law-abiding-gun-owners-no-source-fear?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cp

N.R.A. Sues Over Bulk Gun Sales Rule

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, contending that the Obama administration exceeded its powers by imposing the rule last month without Congressional permission.

The N.R.A. is bringing the lawsuit in the name of two firearms dealers in Arizona. Its complaint asks a judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda through back-door rule-making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun rights group.

But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department would “vigorously oppose” the N.R.A. challenge.

“We think that the action we have taken is consistent with the law,” Mr. Holder told reporters on Wednesday, “and that the measures that we are proposing are appropriate ones to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.”

The rule requires licensed firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to report within five days whenever someone buys more than one weapon like a variant of the AK-47 assault weapon. The rule covers any semiautomatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine and ammunition larger than .22 caliber.

The rule is meant to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain military-style weapons and smuggle them to Mexico, where they are illegal to sell to consumers. American weapons — often bought by “straw buyers” who have a right to buy them for themselves — have been flooding across the Southwest border for years, fueling drug violence in Mexico.

Firearms dealers across the United States have long been required to report similar bulk sales of handguns. But the N.R.A. suit notes that the reporting rule for handgun sales was enacted by Congress as part of the statute that sets rules for licensed firearms dealers. That statute also says dealers shall not be required to report information “except as expressly provided by this section,” and the N.R.A. contends that the firearms bureau has no authority to impose a reporting requirement on long guns.

But Scot Thomasson, a spokesman for the agency, said the N.R.A. was wrong. The licensing statute requires dealers to keep records about gun sales generally, he noted, and it also says that the attorney general may require dealers to report to the government whatever information from such records as he “may specify.”

Mr. Thomasson said the courts had upheld similar regulations in the past, and noted that the rule requiring dealers to report bulk handgun sales had been imposed by the firearms agency for several years before Congress, in 1986, passed legislation codifying it as a statute.

While the suit is being paid for by the N.R.A., it is being brought in the name of the two Arizona dealers, J&G Sales of Prescott and Foothills Firearms of Yuma. The complaint said that about 8,479 licensed dealers were in the four states affected by the rule.

The two dealers had received a letter from the director of a federal firearms tracing center directing them to start reporting bulk long gun sales made after Aug. 14. But the court complaint said that complying with the rule would be costly and that the dealers could lose business from customers who would be deterred because of the loss of privacy.

The complaint also contended that the tracing center, in compiling the reports of bulk sales, might violate a separate prohibition imposed by Congress that prevents the Justice Department from keeping a centralized database of gun purchase records.

The dispute over the regulation comes at a time when the firearms bureau’s efforts to investigate straw purchasing and smuggling across the border have come under sharp Congressional scrutiny related to Operation Fast and Furious, an effort by the agency’s Phoenix division to uncover a large network of cartel-linked gunrunners.

In that operation, federal agents monitored straw buyers who bought about 2,000 guns, but did not intervene to arrest them or seize the weapons because they were trying to identify higher-ups in the network. But the bureau then lost track of many of the guns, some of which were smuggled into Mexico and two of which later turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona where an American Border Patrol agent was killed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04guns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Miranda Lambert upset over being asked about views on weapons

 

By Zev Singer, Ottawa Citizen

Texas country singer Miranda Lambert was already slated to open for Carrie Underwood at the Capital Hoedown a week from Friday. The unexpected part is that now, in a different way, she's serving as an opening act for the fall Parliamentary session and the reopening of the great Canadian debate on gun ownership.

Lambert, a Grammy winner and major star of the country music scene, is an outspoken gun enthusiast. Her logo, tattooed onto her arm, is a pair of winged pistols.

No stranger to publicity, she has graced the cover of Garden and Gun magazine and has been honoured by Field and Stream magazine for her deer hunting hobby; she has at least three stuffed heads mounted at home.

But over the past few days, country music news websites have been running stories about a run-in Lambert is reported to have had with a Canadian journalist over her views on guns.

The stories grew from a couple of tweets of Lambert's last week: "Dear mr writer at the Ottawa Citizen: next time u interview me, let's keep it about the music and not about your view on my stance on guns ... I don't talk politics period. I'm Not sure all Canadians would like to Be put in your category. Speak for yourself not your country.

Thx!"

Few were as surprised by the growing media sensation as Patrick Langston, the freelance music writer for the Citizen who interviewed Lambert last week.

Langston, whose story on Lambert will run in the paper this weekend, said he was "totally surprised" by the tweet and the avalanche it caused after what he described as a friendly interview mostly about her music and her development.

Langston said he asked her about her cover version of Time to Get a Gun by Canadian singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith, which is on her third album, Revolution.

Eaglesmith's lyrics describe a man who hears about crime close to home and ponders getting a gun. Critics have spoken about the way Lambert's version strips the irony from the Canadian song and makes of it a straightforward gun anthem.

Langston said he asked Lambert about that and Lambert, a self-described "lifetime member of the NRA" said she did mean it without irony.

"It's time to get a gun," she told Langston, explaining her message.

It was at that point that Langston says he asked her about her views, and she said she didn't want to get political.

Then the web lit up, with country music media on the story and Langston doing a radio interview on Y1010 this morning.

Meanwhile, Fred Eaglesmith himself, reached by the Citizen Tuesday night in Kindersley, Sask., where he was readying to play a 100-seat community centre, said he was fine with the Lambert version of his song, even if it is different from his.

Eaglesmith said his mid-'90s song is not anti-gun, but it does come from a place in the Canadian psyche.

He explained that the song reflects a real moment he had where he contemplated the idea of getting a gun. He said the feeling behind the song, though, was the surprise he felt when he arrived at the point where such a thought actually entered his head.

"I sort of went, 'Wow, I am thinking this.' "

Although he's had a long gun at his farm at various times in the past, he did not have one at the time that he wrote the song and writing it did not lead to his going out to buy one.

"Oh, no. Of course not," he said.

At the same time, Eaglesmith said he thinks Canadians are often much too smug about American gun culture.

"We think we're sort of above that."

He said when he plays in Texas, he sometimes asks how many people in the crowd have a gun with them. The count has been as high as 12 at a small venue.

"You know when you go to a concert, like at the Black Sheep (in Wakefield) or somewhere in Ottawa and there's that rude guy talking in the back and yelling and screaming and heckling the artist, you know that? You never see that in Texas."

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=5196424&sponsor=

 

At 16, Fowlerville shooting champ is a top gun

By FRANK KONKEL
Livingston County Daily Press & Argus (Howell)
12:20 PM CDT, August 1, 2011
MARION TOWNSHIP, Mich.

Jason Jonckheere is a surgeon with his shotgun.

Only 16, the Fowlerville resident broke 198 out of 200 targets with his trusty Beretta 12-gauge shotgun at the Michigan Trap Association's state shoot in early July, earning himself a junior state championship.

Set to enter his junior year at Howell High School, Jonckheere spends most every day shooting, either with the Monroe Pride shooting team, at the Howell Gun Club in Livingston County's Marion Township, where he built his shooting skills, or on his own, which he prefers.

"Shooting is something that doesn't require a team to do; it's something I can push myself to do," Jonckheere said. "It's something I have to make myself work to do, and that's what makes me enjoy it. That way, when I do succeed, I know it's my work that's gotten me there and nobody else's. I like that."

Jonckheere's work has taken him to a lofty position as one of Michigan's best young trap shooters.

In winning the title, Jonckheere hit 99 percent of the clay targets. By almost any standard, even those of professional marksmen, Jonckheere is a heck of a shot.

In trap shooting, 5.25-inch-wide targets are launched from a machine a minimum distance of 48 feet away from a shooter. By Jonckheere's estimation, he fires his shotgun when the airborne target reaches a distance of about 120 feet from him.

That means each time Jonckheere readies, aims and fires, he's attempting to hit a moving circular clay target just over 5 inches wide at a distance of 120 feet with a bunch of pellets that spread out "3 to 4 feet" in width at that distance, Jonckheere said.

"It's a sport that people think you don't have to be that precise, but you really have to be spot on if you want good scores," Jonckheere said. "I try to calm myself, clear my mind and focus on what I'm doing. If I miss, I try to calm myself because when you're mad, you make mistakes."

Jonckheere's approach to minimizing mistakes is simple: Treat every 15-minute round of shooting like a life-or-death situation, then relax when it's over.

"It only takes 15 minutes to get through a round," Jonckheere sad. "All I need to do is focus for that long."

Chances are, if Jonckheere's not shooting, he's reloading shells, a cost-effective method for someone who blows through 100 shells or more per day.

It does take some time, though; Jonckheere spends three hours reloading a day's worth of shells.

On bad-weather days or when he's bored, Jonckheere will hole up in the basement with his Dryfire electronic practice system, which helps him hone his aim.

Jonckheere doesn't play high school sports and he doesn't participate in extracurricular activities, but give him his gun and some shells, or some time to fish out on Bishop Lake or to hunt in a local woods, and he's happy.

Jonckheere holds professional marksman Leo Harrison III, who made a living shooting guns and teaching marksmanship, as a role model.

Jonckheere is not sure if he'll go to college after high school or what he plans to study, but he does know one thing: He wants to see where shooting takes him.

He plans to continue competing in regional, state and national shooting tournaments, and said his results could go a long way toward what he does in the future.

"It would be really cool if I could make a living off (shooting)," Jonckheere said. "Pretty much all my time is devoted to this."

------

Information from: Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, http://www.livingstondaily.com/

AP-WF-08-01-11 2006GMT

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More gun licenses, more debates

Right to carry concealed weapons revisited

-- The right to carry a concealed weapon in Michigan -- 10 years ago a red-hot topic -- is pretty much uncontested. No one is talking about rolling back the CCW changes of 2001, or enacting new gun restrictions.

But the argument over whether authorizing more people to carry concealed guns was a good idea continues unabated. The number of CCW permit holders has quintupled to nearly 276,000 in Michigan in 10 years. Advocates of gun rights and gun control don't agree on the facts.

"The case is clear," said Dennis Henigan, interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "The premise that (so-called 'shall issue' CCW laws) would make you safer is false. Those laws have been an abject failure."

Hardly, counters John Lott, an economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime."

The number of permit holders committing crimes is tiny, he said. And the evidence that jurisdictions like Michigan with permissive laws experience a lower incidence of violent crime is "pretty overwhelming," he said.

Data inconsistent on CCW's effects on crime, violence

Some of what passes for research and analysis of the effect of permissive concealed weapons laws on crime and violence is pretty crude.

Take, for instance, the anti-gun Violence Policy Center's Web page called "Concealed Carry Killers." ( www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm )

It purports to tally the carnage that results when states, such as Michigan, authorize ordinary citizens under most circumstances to be licensed to carry concealed guns.
Concealed carry licensees "routinely" kill cops, perpetrate mass murders and other gun homicides, writes VPC. The center counted 308 "Private Citizens Killed By Concealed Carry Killer" since 2007. A lot of them -- 78 -- were Michiganders.

A closer look at VPC's data doesn't necessarily confirm a CCW crime nightmare scenario. The overwhelming majority of Michigan victims the center cites (62) were licensees who committed suicide. Michigan's concealed weapons law requires the State Police to report annually on deaths by suicide of license holders.

But the reports contain no information about how the licensee died or whether a firearm was involved.

Several other "victims" in the VPC report appear to have been criminals themselves, shot attempting to rob legally armed citizens. But with 276,000 concealed pistol license holders, even the unscrubbed VPC numbers hardly establish evidence of a crime wave.
One of the few pieces of relative consensus about concealed weapons and crime is that licensees, who in most states, including Michigan, undergo background checks and training, tend to be more law-abiding than the adult population at large.

Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, no fan of permissive CCW laws, concedes as much.

But on the broader question of whether such laws make the wider society more or less safe, nothing close to consensus exists.

Henigan said Michigan and other states were sold a bill of goods by the National Rifle Association about how criminals would modify their behavior when they couldn't be sure which potential victims were armed.

"Criminals don't act that way," Henigan said, "They're not cowering in fear about running into someone else with a gun. There is blood in the streets."
But has the amount of blood been affected by a change in concealed weapons licensing?

Henigan said academic research nationally shows "no downward effect" on crime rates in jurisdictions with liberal concealed carry regulations. Further, he said, the evidence of an increase in aggravated assaults in such jurisdictions is "very clear." Claims to the contrary, he said, have been "thoroughly debunked."

Not surprisingly, the leading claimant to the contrary, economist John Lott, thoroughly disagrees.

During the past 15 years, more than two dozen peer-reviewed analyses of the effect of right-to-carry laws on crime have been published in academic journals, Lott said.

Sixteen found that concealed carry reduced crime; 10 suggested no discernible impact. None showed crime to have increased in right-to-carry jurisdictions, Lott said.

Lott recently published the third edition of his 1998 book "More Guns, Less Crime," in which he addresses many of the attacks made upon it in the last decade. But the difficulty of sorting the effects of permissive concealed carry from hundreds of other factors (some of them unquantifiable) that affect crime will remain.

Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie, who opposed the 2001 CCW reforms, said it has worked out better than he expected. But maybe, he said, that is because changing the law did not change the number of guns on the street as much as it changed the number of people licensed to carry a gun on the street.

"I wonder how many of them actually carry," Mackie said "Hauling a gun around with you everywhere can be a real pain."
Maybe. Just don't look for a consensus on it.
Contact Dawson Bell: 517-372-8661 or dbell@freepress.com

http://www.freep.com/article/20110801/NEWS06/108010323/Part-2-More-gun-licenses-more-debates?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE