I was going to do an update on the proposed Austin/Travis County gun show ban, but Dwight has already hit the highlights.
Quick tl:dr summary:
If you live in Travis County, I’d advise you to call, email, and writer your County Commissioner/City Councilman, if you haven’t already.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the SuperGeniuses on the Austin City Council (along with allies among the Travis County apparatchiks) have gotten it into their heads that it’s just a swell idea to ban gun shows within the city and county limits. Because I’m sure so many criminals are buying their guns legally at a gun show. (Hint: NICS is not, in fact, a misspelling of that TV show with the hot Goth chick.)
Over at Whipped Cream Difficulties, Dwight has taken the bull by the horns, and provided not only a list of reasons why that’s a really bad idea, but a list of contract addresses for City Council critters, allowing those of you who live within the limits of the City of Austin (I don’t) a chance to express your extremely displeasure with this noxious and ill-advised gun-grabbing regulatory gambit.
Oh wait, did I say noxious and ill-advised? Add to that one more adjective: illegal.
As Dwight notes, a gun show ban “will expose the city to legal action under section 229 of the Texas local government code.” Let’s take a look at 229, shall we? The relevant portion states:
(a) Notwithstanding any other law, including Section 43.002 of this code and Chapter 251, Agriculture Code, a municipality may not adopt regulations relating to:
(1) the transfer, private ownership, keeping, transportation, licensing, or registration of firearms, ammunition, or firearm supplies
Now, I’m not a simple country lawyer (or a simple hyperchicken from a backwoods asteroid, either), but banning gun shows sounds precisely like adopting regulations pertaining to the transfer of guns to me.
They’d have done better listening to this, er, guy.
It’s like the entire Austin City Council parading through the center of the state capitol wearing KICK ME signs. And the state legislature just might take them up on it.
On the other hand, if The People’s Republic of Austin is foolish enough to push this through, I’m sure there are venues in Williamson County that would love to have that business…
Thanks to Dwight, here’s some contact information for Travis County officials, who are evidently voting Tuesday:
And Austin City Council Critters:
Back during the Clinton Administration, I joined the National Rifle Association. With the “Assault Weapon Ban” passed and other anti-Second Amendment legislation under consideration, it seemed like a good time to join the one organization capable of slowing the Democratic Party’s gun-grabbing agenda.
When I let my membership lapse, it was obvious new gun control legislation was going nowhere with George W. Bush in the White House and Republicans controlling the House of Representatives. But the main reason I let it lapse was that I was pissed off that the NRA had sent me a video tape (younger readers: ask your parents what a “video tape” was) I hadn’t asked for, and expected me to go out of the way and return it at my expense if I didn’t want to subscribe to whatever video series it was.
Over the years I’ve had differences with the NRA, especially their willingness to compromise on other fundamental freedoms by cutting deals with Nancy Pelosi. But as Sebastain at Shall Not Be Questioned noted:
You still need what NRA can bring to the table, which is specifically a huge network of people who tend to only be peripherally involved in this issue (and this goes beyond their 4 million dues paying members), and access to lawmakers that no other gun rights groups can match, and really no or few other lobbies in DC and the 50 state capitols can match….
NRA is the only organization that has the capability to fight on this ground. So if you have some money to donate to NRA, or can spare the dollars to buy a membership do it!
We’re going to war, and this is the NRA we have, and more importantly, this is the NRA we can win with. But only if we hang together, because our alternative is to surely hang separately.
And that’s why I sent my check in this week to rejoin the NRA. American’s fundamental Second Amendment rights are under siege right now. If you care about maintaining America as a nation whose freedom is guaranteed by its’ citizens inalienable rights, then this is the fight you need to join. It’s a fight we can and should win. The NRA is an integral part of that fight.
If you care about liberty and the Second Amendment, you should seriously consider joining as well.
“A federal court has struck down an Environmental Protection Agency rule that forces cuts in soot- and smog-forming power plant emissions that cross state lines, dealing a major blow to the White House’s air quality agenda. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.”
This is great news for Texas, as the original rules could have resulted in Texans dying during the height of summer due to shutting down existing Texas power plants before new ones had come online. Those rules had already been stayed early this year, but have now been struck down entirely.
From the news stories, it’s unclear whether the Obama Administration’s EPA will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Edited to add: TPPF now has a memo up celebrating the ruling. For once I was ahead of them!
The U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals ruled for Texas and against the EPA on the latter’s rejection of Texas’ Flexible Permit program.
In November 1994, Texas submitted a proposed amendment to its State Implementation Plan that included the Flexible Permit program. The Clean Air Act required that EPA approve or disapprove the amendment within 18 months. However, the EPA did not announce its rejection of the program and the permits issued under it until July 2010 – more than 14 years after its statutory deadline to act.
Just think: Thanks to ObamaCare, soon that same lightning-fast efficiency exhibited by the EPA will be coming to your doctor’s office.
Note: This is not the cross-state border emissions rules that was threatening to shut down power plants at the height of the summer (which, thankfully, hasn’t happened so far). Texas’ appeal on that is still pending.
Time for another roundup of Texas vs. California news:
Gov. Jerry Brown insists those who say California is unfriendly to business are wrong. But Mr. Brown, of course, is not the chief executive officer of a private business. He is the top executive of a deficit-burdened, intrusive, bloated government bureaucracy that has perfected squandering other peoples’ money while botching delivery of services such as education and lavishing public employees with unaffordable pay and benefits.
California public school teachers are the nation’s highest-paid, while their students’ performance ranks among the worst. The state’s various unfunded pension and retirement health care benefits promise to bankrupt the already overextended government.
Or, to be more specific, George Will summarizes the same case made in Mark Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken’s Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know. It focuses on the sheer economic idiocy of continuing the War on Drugs:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, although a few years ago Washington, D.C., dealers earned an average of $30 an hour, today they earn less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25).
I oppose the War on Drugs for reasons of general principles (it’s not the purpose of government to save people from themselves), the specific application of constitutional federalism (the Commerce Clause should not apply to the regulation of drugs manufactured and sold within the confines of a single state), and for reasons of budgetary philosophy (making drugs illegal has expanded the size and power of the federal government while increasing the budget deficit; legalizing, regulating and taxing drugs would reduce both the deficit and the harm to individuals and society). Frankly, I’d be for the immediate legalization of methamphetamine tomorrow if it meant we could stop ID-ing people with colds trying to buy Sudafed.
There has been slow but steady progress in the conservative movement for saner drugs laws, from William F. Buckley arguing for the decriminalization of marijuana, to National Review declaring that “The War on Drugs is Lost” in 1996, to Republican Presidential candidates like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson (who, like Paul once did, bolted for a doomed Libertarian Party run) making the same case.
Despite growing sentiment, almost no legislative headway has been made on the issue because there’s no consensus in the Republican Party (or the American people) for that change. When an initiative for the total legalization of marijuana fails in California (though poor wording helped contribute to the defeat), where can it succeed? But the lack of a consensus for legalization is no reason to avoid fighting for saner laws at the state or national level or trimming funding for the DEA.
Another question is how come we never hear anything about legalization from the supposedly pro-freedom Democratic leadership? If Obama, an admitted recreational drug user in his youth, has ever made a speech as President supporting legalization or decriminalization of any drugs, it’s evaded my attention. Indeed, not only does he not support decriminalization, he’s actively hostile to the idea.
George Will thinks more seriously and clearly than Barack Obama on the issue of drug legalization. Then again, the first ten words in the preceding sentence are pretty much true all the time,,,
First, the ubiquitous Richard Epstein, on why Justice Kennedy’s million dollar question might restore our understanding of the Commerce Clause to the pre-NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin and Wickard v. Filburn reading that held sway from the founding of the United States to the imposition of the New Deal.
Second, Ramesh Ponnuru examines Dmeocrats’ magical thinking that the overturning of ObamaCare would lead inevitably to a groundswell of support for a single payer system (presumably including a mass march on Washington by Americans of all walks of life coming together, firsts clinched high and singing “The Internationale”):
Reality-check time: When Obamacare became law, Democrats had more power in Washington than at any time since the Carter administration in the 1970s. They had the presidency and lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress. Because conservative Democrats have declined in numbers, it was probably the most liberal Congress since 1965-66. They were still barely able to pass the law. And that was with important medical industries either neutralized or in favor of the legislation, which they would not be in the case of single payer.
(Sorry for the delay, the James interview took a lot of time to whip into shape and post.)
Day 3 was all about severability and medicaid expansion:
Texas wins another skirmish in the war the EPA is waging against the state’s prosperity, this one over “minor pollutants.” The EPA was suppose to file any objection to the state’s plans within 18 months, but instead, displaying the lightning speed the federal government is known for, they waited four and a half years to object. The actual 6th court ruling is here.
As far as I can tell, this doesn’t affect the Cross-Border Rules (i.e., the one EPA ruling most likely to kill Texans in a heat wave, since it requires closing down power plants), which are (last time I checked) currently stayed.