Volume 8, No. 2 www.foac-pac.org February 9, 2008

Firearms Owners Against Crime

“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.” -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787) Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle, 111.

E-Newsletter & FOAC Meeting Notice

February 10, 2008

Meeting Agenda Issues:

Invited Guest Speakers: **None

9.0 NEW BUSINESS

9.1 Harrisburg Political Developments & Preliminary Retirement Forecast

9.2 Board of Director Elections

9.3 Questionnaire finalization and authorization

9.4 Anti-Gun Group Developments

9.5 Philadelphia Mayor and Council Plans to Control Guns

9.6 Pro-Gun Agenda Developments

9.7 Political Events Review and Summary

9.8 2008 Banquet Plan Developments

9.9 Membership committee developments

Federal issues:

9.10 Heller v. D.C. Court Case Arguments Scheduled for March

Events:

**Upcoming Event—ACSL Sport Show: February 13^th – 17^th (ExpoMart in Monroeville)

**Upcoming Banquet—ACSL: March 8^th (Guest Speaker—Attorney General Tom Corbett)

**Upcoming Banquet—FOAC: April 6^th (Greentree Radisson)

For more information on FOAC efforts to ‘Protect YOUR Rights’, the most current voter’s guides, donating to or becoming a member of FOAC please click on this link: http://www.foac-pac.org/

FOAC - 2008 Meeting Schedule

Jan 13, 2nd Sunday, Feb 10, 2nd Sunday, Mar 9, 2nd Sunday, Apr 13, 2^nd Sunday, May 4, 1st Sunday, Jun 8, 2nd Sunday, Jul 13, 2nd Sunday, Aug 10, 2nd Sunday, Sep 14, 2nd Sunday, Oct 12, 2nd Sunday, Nov 2, 1st Sunday, Dec 14, 2nd Sunday

**Time of Meeting: 10:00 AM

**Location: Whitehall Borough Bldg (off Rt.51 – ask for directions)

****Coffee and Donuts will be provided

***Primary Election – Apr. 22

***General Election – Nov. 4

Gun Control Continues to be Focus of Certain PA Legislators

In what can only be considered as a clear indicator of the year ahead for the law-abiding citizens of Pennsylvania who value their right to keep and bear arms, Philadelphia area House of Representatives members continue to introduce legislation that focuses on the instrumentality of crime and not the act itself.

The newest addition to this flawed and failed mentality is house Bill 2228 which calls for encoded ammunition to be sold in Pennsylvania and the creation of a database to track said ammunition. Despite the fact that the nationwide record of this legislation and this issue has shown a complete and utter failure of its benefit to the solution of crime or even to assisting law-enforcement in tracking a criminal in the three states that have implemented this concept certain inept Pennsylvania legislators continue to try to reinvent the wheel as is somehow they can magically make this concept work. What this concept will do is mandate that any ammunition not so encoded must be disposed of or the individual possessing it will be committing a crime. Interestingly the level of criminal punishment for intentionally damaging the markings on ammunition is only a misdemeanor 2 level of punishment which in and of itself is not indicative of the importance of this measure to authorities when attempting to solve crime.

It is the height of irony that Pennsylvania legislators will pursue this when even the liberal state of California to find this measure as unworkable and refuse to implement. The fact is that this legislation will not have a future as a viable measure however it does demonstrate the unwillingness of certain legislators to understand that they must go after the criminal element if they truly intend to reduce violent crime and since this is not being pursued by these individuals one must question their motivation.

Allegheny County District Attorney Admits Defeat

Just this past week a startling series of events culminated in the Allegheny County District Attorney, Stephen Zappala, vowing to retake Allegheny County from the criminals and the gangs who are perpetuating in perpetrating indiscriminate shooting throughout certain communities. This is the very same District Attorney who continues to lobby for more gun control that would place restrictions on law-abiding citizens when at the same time the record is clear that his office does not impose the current laws against the criminal element that he is obviously from his statements lost the ability to control in Allegheny County.

The remarkable series of events that we have witnessed this week has seen authorities sit down with known gang members to work out some sort of compromise thereby legitimizing their existence. It is incomprehensible that we will as a society and not deal with terrorists and yet somehow we can reach out to violent criminally motivated gangs to seek some sort of peaceful resolution to the violence that they instigate. Several years ago the violent crime with guns was examined in Allegheny County by a task force of local state and federal authorities and they were able to determine that roughly 150 individuals were responsible for the vast majority of violent gun crime in this county. Yet there is no documentation that any substantial effort was made to determine why these individuals were still on the street and what was being done to control their activities since it is obvious that they are very effective at navigating the revolving door justice system we have done at the courthouse.

Logic and common sense beg the questionthat if it is wrong for parents to allow a child access to a firearm that is it not also wrong for a District Attorney to allow criminals access to us when he does not apply the laws that currently exist and seek their strict and strident enforcement?

DoJ brief on DC case inflames activists

by Dave Workman, (GunWeek) Senior Editor

Slapping President Bush and the Republican Party with blame, gun rights activists were outraged over a Department of Justice (DoJ) brief filed in the District of Columbia gun ban case that supports the Second

Amendment as an individual civil right, but encourages the Supreme Court to remand the case back to the appeals court.

That fury grew when gunowners across the country learned that many local mayors had signed onto a separate amicus curiae brief supporting the District ban that was produced largely by the San Francisco- based Legal Community Against Violence, an anti-gun attorneys' organization.

Popular gun rights forums and Internet chat groups were dominated by discussions about the DoJ brief, signed by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. Signing on was Stephen R. Rubenstein, chief counsel for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, giving even more ammunition to some activists that the brief amounts to confirmation that the Bush Administration has turned on gunowners.

At one point, the brief attempts to defend gun laws by noting that Congress has the authority to prohibit certain firearms, such as machineguns. However, this case has nothing to do with machineguns, and arguments on gun rights forums were quick to point this out.

Even former National Rifle Association (NRA) president Sandra Froman, an Arizona attorney, got in on the act, writing on TownHall.com, "The Justice Department has not gone far enough to support the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment, and so those who aspire to lead our nation must step up and call on the Supreme Court to affirm the judgment of the DC Circuit striking down the ban."

Other voices have also called for the presidential candidates now competing in primaries and caucuses for their parties' nominations, to speak out clearly on the case before the Supreme Court. While some commentators had predicted last year that the Supreme Court decision to review the case would put the gun issue squarely in the presidential and congressional elections this year, none had foreseen such a launching pad from the Republican White House.

Gun Owners of America (GOA) launched an effort to pressure the Bush Administration to retract the brief.

Largely at the request of GOA, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) is asking President Bush to order the Justice Department to submit a brief in a US Supreme Court case that supports the rights afforded US citizens under the Second Amendment.

Goode sent Bush a letter I late January about the DoJ arguments.

"If this view prevails, a national ban on all firearms—including hunting rifles—could be constitutional, even if the court decides—on ample historical evidence—that the Founders intended the Second Amendment as an individual right," his letter said.

"I would ask that you direct the Justice Department to withdraw this unfortunate brief and to replace it with an opinion which reflects the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms," Goode wrote.

Goode also is circulating his letter among colleagues, asking for their support on the issue.

Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, also fired off a column to several newspapers that accused Clement of engaging in "a transparent exercise of political pandering" for arguing in favor of an individual right, but asking the high court to remand the case back to the lower court. (See the column on Page 4 of this issue.)

"Legal slight of hand is being used to make the Second Amendment a right 'in name only,'" Gottlieb wrote. "And Mr. Clement appears to suggest that the longer the Supreme Court can put off deciding whether a restrictive gun law violates that important civil right, the better."

Gottlieb, with senior editor Dave Workman, released that column a few days before the nation celebrated "Dr. Martin Luther King" day in January. It appeared on the King holiday in The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

And Ken Blackwell, a Fellow at the Family Research Council and American Civil Rights Union, also wrote on Townhall.com that, "It appears that the Justice Department is trying to say this is a right that should be protected, but the level of protection should be low enough to allow government to broadly restrict or maybe even eliminate your ability to exercise that right. They try to split the baby of having a right but letting government do almost whatever it wants to that right.

"The problem with splitting a baby in half," Blackwell continued, "is that the baby usually dies. If our rights can be regulated to the point that we can't exercise them in our own homes, then they've been regulated out of existence. So much for civil rights."

More than a dozen amicus briefs have been filed by supporters of the 31-year- old District gun ban, and more were anticipated from opponents of the ban.

And that is largely the reason outrage has spread among activists, as they discovered mayors in their regions signed onto an amicus supporting the District's appeal. Those cities were Baltimore, MD, Cleveland, OH, Los Angeles, CA, Milwaukee, MN, New York, NY, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, CA, Philadelphia, PA, Tren- ton, NJ and Seattle, WA.

"Let's be honest," Gottlieb noted in reaction to the mayors' amicus. "Mayors and police chiefs are fearful of an affirmative high court ruling on the Second Amendment as a fundamental individual civil right because they know such a ruling will jeopardize an area of public control they have enjoyed for generations. The cities claim that they 'need flexibility to respond to the serious threat of gun violence,' but they're really arguing in support of a bankrupt social philosophy that leaves the public defenseless against dangerous criminals."

The Clement brief repeatedly mentioned machineguns, which have nothing to do with the Heller case. Pro- gun activists generally felt that Clement was trying to add unnecessary alarm and "muddy the waters" on what they believe is a fairly clear-cut case challenging a handgun ban that has no relation to fully automatic weapons.

But this does suggest to some in the gun rights community what supporters of the gun ban, and other gun laws, believe is at stake. If the high court affirms the March 2007 ruling by District Appeals Court Senior Judge Laurence Silberman, that the Second Amendment affirms an individual right and the District's gun ban violates that amendment, the gun control lobby fears legal challenges to every other restrictive gun law, particularly in Chicago and surrounding suburbs that have banned handguns.

Clement's brief argues that the Supreme Court should lower the standard of review for laws regulating gun ownership, yet other civil rights infringements are typically subject to a "strict scrutiny" standard, which is a very high threshold. Gun rights proponents contend that all civil rights challenges should face the same degree of scrutiny. One civil right is no less or no more important than another. The New GUN WEEK, February 15, 2008

DoJ Brief on DC gun rights case ignores King's lesson

by Alan Gottlieb, Gun Week Publisher, and Dave Workman Gun Week Senior Editor

Martin Luther King put it best: "A right delayed is a right denied."

The lesson appears to have been lost on the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in the amicus curiae brief submitted recently for the government in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which challenges the city's 31-year-old handgun ban, a horrible gun law that has had its day in court, and lost.

In a transparent exercise of political pandering, Clement and his colleagues named on the brief have strenuously, and correctly, argued that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right, yet they insist that every restrictive gun law currently on the books should stand. They want this case sent back to the lower courts for further consideration. Translation: Legal sleight of hand is being used to make the Second Amendment a right "in name only." And Mr. Clement appears to suggest that the longer the Supreme Court can put off deciding whether a restrictive gun law violates that important civil right, the better.

While it is gratifying that the government properly holds the Second Amendment to be protective of an individual right, that gratification is greatly diminished by the argument that this case requires further review. That would be a great injustice, and as Dr. King once noted, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The good citizens of Washington, DC, have waited long enough for this Draconian law to be challenged, and to further delay a ruling is to spit in the faces of all of those people who have waited for years to simply exercise their right of self-defense. The ban has been an utter failure, with violent crime actually rising after its inception.

By Mr. Clement's logic, the high court should have ruled that women have abortion rights, but they would be forever waiting to exercise those rights while their cases would be remanded back down the legal chain for further consideration.

By Mr. Clement's logic, segregation laws would still be under lower court review, and Rosa Parks would still be sitting in the back of the bus.

Many District residents are African American. Aren't they as deserving of the same rights as black citizens in Cleveland, Ohio? In our new book, America Fights Back: Armed Self- Defense in a Violent Age, we recount the story of Damon Wells, a Cleveland resident who was targeted by teenage street thugs illegally armed with a handgun, as legions of violent criminals now running the streets of Washington, DC, are armed. The difference in Wells' case was that he was also armed, and when the punk with the gun threatened to kill him, Wells shot first. Cleveland's black community rallied around Wells, with whom they identified as an "everyman" faced with the genuine threat of being victimized in his own neighborhood by predators that live there.

Perhaps the Clement brief should have come as no surprise. After all, the current Department of Justice has not been friendly toward individual rights— portions of the Patriot Act, for example, have horrified civil libertarians and conservatives alike—and it appears DoJ is simply trying to delay a ruling it fears will challenge what they describe in their brief as "the government's interest."

Here's a news flash: We're talking about a constitutionally-protected civil right, and the only interest government should have is enforcing that right, not eroding it. The Clement brief reflects cowardice on the part of the Justice Department, and a desire for expediency over what is right when an insidious, but politically correct gun law just might be struck down.

Dr. King put this philosophy in its proper perspective when he wrote, "Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." The New GUN WEEK, February 15, 2008

Stats Show MA ’98 Gun Control Act a Failure, Reports GOAL

by Dave Workman, Senior Editor

Statistics on firearm and airgun assaults produced by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) dating back to 1994 suggest that the Bay State's 1998 Gun Control Act has been a dismal failure in reducing crime- related firearm injuries.

Although crime-related gun injuries dropped significantly from 1994 to 1998, from a high of 625 to a low of 291, respectively, figures have steadily marched upward to 2006—the most recent year for which data is available— with 519 firearm injuries and 67 airgun injuries were reported by the agency's Weapon Related Injury Surveillance System (WRISS).

The sharp rise in crime-related gun injuries occurred during a period when the number of state gun licenses dropped significantly, primarily due to a failure by state agencies to monitor licenses and notify license holders to renew, noted James L. Wallace, executive director of the Massachusetts Gun Owners' Action League (GOAL).

"The national social experiment of gun control is now over," Wallace said. "We have a decade of proof here in Massachusetts that not only does gun control not solve the crime problem, it actually increases the crime problem."

Restrictive gun laws in the Bay State are nothing new, and they have always been sold by their advocates as a legislative means to reduce crime. The MDPH and WRISS data suggests that quite the opposite has been the case under the state's sweeping 1998 gun control measure.

Unintentional Injuries

Gun rights activists could show how unintentional firearm injuries since 1994 have steadily declined, from a high of 69 in 1994 to a low of 26 reported in 2006. Data for 2007 is not yet available.

In 1998, a total of 520 gunshot wounds were reported to the WRISS, and in 2006, that figure had climbed to 899. The number of injuries blamed on "sharp instrument wounds" declined from 1,885 in 1994 to 1,253 in 1998, but by 2006, that figure had also climbed back up to 1,346 injuries, according to WRISS data.

During only one year, 2000, was there a notable drop in crime-related gun injuries, the data shows.

The licensing problem to which Wallace alluded to first came to light in 2002 when the state House Post Audit and Oversight Committee reported that the state agency whose job it is to keep records for every licensed gunowner in the state had failed to notify nearly 750,000 gunowners that their Firearms Identification (FID) Card would expire prematurely.

At the time, the Criminal History Systems Board and Firearms Record Bureau acknowledged that more than 1.2 million of the known 1.5 million pre- 1998 firearms licenses could not be accounted for, GOAL recalled.

Massachusetts has a multi-tiered licensing system that ranges from a simple license that allows only for the possession of a chemical spray, to a "Class A" license to carry. Wallace told Gun Week that without a valid license, a Massachusetts resident cannot legally have a firearm. He said anti-gun lawmakers have done "everything possible to make it as complicated as possible for gunowners here in Massachusetts but they don't want to admit they made huge mistakes."

"They don't want to turn back the clock," he stated.

Cambridge Overcharge

A good example of ratcheting down on gunowners, Wallace said, is what GOAL learned has been going on in the city of Cambridge, where gunowners were illegally being overcharged.

In November, GOAL called upon the state Inspector General to investigate the situation, in which it was discovered that the Cambridge Police Department had been overcharging for all gun licenses by $20. For example, the department was charging $120 for Class A and Class B licenses to carry, and $45 for a Restricted Firearms Identification card. State statute sets those fees at $100 and $25 respectively.

The Inspector General put a stop to the overcharging, but now GOAL wants the city to refund the excess fee charges back to the gunowners who paid them. Wallace sent a letter to Gov. Deval Patrick on Dec. 31 asking for the refunds plus penalties and interest.

Wallace also wants the governor to remove the licensing authority from the city of Cambridge and make the state police responsible for that function. Further, he wants "disciplinary action" to be taken against the city, and he believes the governor's office should launch a statewide investigation to determine whether other cities are also overcharging for licenses.

"We want to know if any other town has been doing this," Wallace said.

The problem, he explained, is that the state does not appear to be taking responsibility or exercising any control over the process. Local police chiefs, who wield great power over issuance of licenses to carry, "work under a cloak of darkness," Wallace complained.

"Gunowners can be denied their licenses to carry a handgun for no reason at all," he said. "No one at the state level thinks they have the authority to tell these guys what to do."

Straightening out the licensing situation is only part of the problem, Wallace suggested. The fact that gun- related crime has risen when law- abiding gunowners have had their rights increasingly restricted is proof positive, in his opinion, that the 1998 gun law is nothing short of a disaster.

He has debated and discussed the issue several times, but always, anti- gunners refuse to admit that passage of the gun law correlates with the upward swing of gun-related crime. The New GUN WEEK, February 1, 2008

MI data show lower crime, fewer gun deaths since CCW

by Dave Workman, Senior Editor

Gun rights activists are justifiably crowing over a recent revelation in the pages of The Detroit Free Press that in the six years since adoption of that state's liberalized right-to-carry statute violent crime has declined from where it was in the six years prior to the law's passage.

On top of that, the newspaper confirmed, firearm suicides and fatal gun accidents have also declined, even though more than 155,000 Michigan residents are now licensed to carry.

The data clearly refuted gloomy predictions from anti-gun organizations that opposed adoption of the concealed carry statute. They uniformly had predicted increased violence, including an "OK Corral" mentality among citizens who would settle even minor grudges with gunsmoke.

But it didn't happen, and according to Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin, quoted by the newspaper, "I think the general consensus out there from law enforcement is that things were not as bad as expected."

Martin, who is co-chair of the Legislative Committee of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, while not clearly admitting that earlier concerns were off base, did acknowledge, "I think we can breathe a sigh of relief that what we anticipated didn't happen."

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, was more direct.

"Michigan's armed private citizens have provided the evidence we knew would come," he said. "Lawful concealed carry reduces crime and does not result in mass mayhem as the anti-self-defense crowd wanted us believe."

Gottlieb recalled the furious debate that preceded enactment of the new law in 2001. At that time, gun control proponents—whom Gottlieb calls "victim disarmament advocates"—actively opposed adoption of the right-to-carry statute, predicting gun battles at traffic stops, increased danger to children and police officers, and an upswing in both fatal and non-fatal gun accidents. He was particularly critical of newspaper editorialists who went along with those predictions, without challenging their veracity or the record of similar laws in other states.

"Six years ago," he said, "anti-gunners pulled out all the stops, fabricated every dire prediction they could imagine, and essentially told lies about concealed carry and passed them off as truth, and too many in the media ate it up as if it were manna from Heaven."

According to The Free Press report, slightly more than 1% of the permits issued since 2001 have been revoked or suspended for assorted reasons. The newspaper also cited one state police report that said 175 Michigan permit holders had been convicted of a crime between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006, the majority of them nonviolent, and as a result their permits were suspended or revoked.

That correlates with national statistics, that suggest the number of concealed carry permit holders or licensees that get into trouble with the law is very low.

Gottlieb said the data show that police have nothing to fear from legally-armed, law-abiding citizens. He said armed citizens frequently serve as a deterrent to crime, and on occasion, they are the "true first responders."

He said the experience now reported in Michigan is the same for other states where right-to-carry statutes have been adopted, and the bloody forecasts of anti- gunners have been consistently proven wrong. Gottlieb said the history of this debate shows a pattern of deceit by the anti-self-defense lobby.

"It begs the question," he observed, "that if anti-gun extremists were so dishonest about this, what else have they been lying about?" The New GUN WEEK, February 1, 2008

YET ANOTHER MASSACRE IN A GUN-FREE ZONE

There is breaking news that five people have been shot to death at a city council meeting near St. Louis, Missouri.

Missouri does not allow law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm into a government building or place where a government meeting is being held.

That is a big mistake.

The perpetrator shot a police officer at the entrance to the building, shot and killed a second officer inside the building, and then had free rein on the helpless, government-disarmed victims inside. He was finally stopped when someone else with a gun showed up - more police officers.

A citizen carrying a gun in that meeting room might have been able to stop that criminal, saving lives.

Score more death and mayhem because of a gun-free zone, brought to you care of groups like the Brady Campaign.