22nd Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference

by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Our GRPC 2007 report is divided into sessions for easier reading.
Click on the desired section to read.

October 6, 2007
October 7, 2007

“You are one election away from losing your Second Amendment rights.”

NO’s Great Gun Grab
Author Gordon Hutchinson was able to attend the GRPC to plug his gripping new book The Great New Orleans Gun Grab, and he kept the audience riveted with details of what happened after Katrina hit, and how SAF and the NRA joined forces to stop it.

Hutchinson, a shooting sports writer from Louisiana, gave credit to both SAF and NRA for “coming down to New Orleans immediately after the hurricane” to investigate reports of gun confiscations that were launched by police under the authority of then-Police Supt. Eddie Compass.

In the two years since those gun confiscations and the filing of the landmark lawsuit, reports in most publications have given the false impression that NRA took on the gun grab by itself, ignoring SAF involvement. Hutchinson’s book details how both organizations, responding to complaints from outraged members living in and around the stricken city, locked shoulders, retained local counsel and launched an investigation that exposed long-running abuses of gunowners in the Crescent City.

“If it hadn’t been for these two organizations,” Hutchinson said of gun confiscations, “they’d probably be doing it still.”

Hutchinson said the hurricane’s aftermath “proved to be the greatest real life test of the Second Amendment in American history.”

“America,” he lamented, “failed miserably.”

Hutchinson’s book relates stories, some of them previously told in the pages of Gun Week, about citizens who were disarmed, often at gunpoint, and who occasionally suffered other abuses. He also related the harrowing tale of flamboyant attorney Ashton O’Dwyer, whose outspoken criticism of the city administration allegedly resulted in his arrest, being held incommunicado for several hours, shot repeatedly with beanbags and sprayed him with pepper spray.

The final outrage, in Hutchinson’s opinion, occurred months after the hurricane, and after then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco had signed legislation outlawing gun confiscations like the one that happened in New Orleans. In June 2006, Police Supt. Warren Riley, who succeeded Compass, was asked about how police would respond to a future disaster, and he insisted that once again, police would confiscate firearms, though he said it would only be from people on the street, and not from the homes of residents.

Global Threat
From the chaos of New Orleans, the next panel took the audience to the choreography of global gun control efforts. Leading the discussion, author and gun rights authority David Kopel, senior policy analyst for the Independence Institute, detailed how the United Nations (UN) is continuing its push for world disarmament of private citizens.

Even though an attempt to push gun control was turned back at the UN in 2006, that world body has not changed course. Guided by the anti-gun International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), the UN effort ignores the right of self-defense, and—according to Kopel—even suggests that American self-defense laws are a violation of human rights.

Only the “strong gun culture” in America prevented the UN so far from pushing its agenda, but that could change with a significant change in leadership.

Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action—the Canadian Shooting Sports Association’s equivalent of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action—told the audience that “for the past ten years we have fought like tigers and we have not lost one gun.” Canadian gunowners now have the government “at bay” on its gun control program, and that is largely due to the election of a more rights-friendly federal government north of the border.

He cautioned the audience that “You are one election away from losing your Second Amendment rights.” He also said gunowners “owe George Bush a much bigger thank you than some might think.”

The Bush Administration, he said, sent John Bolton to the UN as its ambassador, and the pro-gun Bolton stopped the IANSA effort. But Bolton’s confirmation as UN ambassador was derailed by anti-gun Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), who is running for his party’s presidential nomination.

Bernardo described the UN as an environment in which falsehood is commonplace. He said non-governmental organizations line up against gun ownership are being funded by various foreign governments. Spokespersons for these groups are being “trained and coached,” he said, “under the guise of being experts.”

Bernardo called the United States “an island totally surrounded by enemies that describe themselves as your friends.” These “friends,” he warned, “are after your Second Amendment.”

SAF founder Alan Gottlieb related how he got deeply involved with a World Forum on the Future of Shooting Sports two years ago, and it has been an eye-opening experience. This group meets at least annually in Europe, and they focus on international firearms activities.

Gottlieb said the governments in Canada, Great Britain and Germany are all involved in the international gun control movement, and funding for anti-gun activities has been provided by Switzerland and other governments.

“If Hillary Clinton becomes president,” he predicted, “your money will go to UN projects to fight for more gun control...You will have a US delegation at the UN working to take your rights.”

He also said there are efforts to ban ammunition to make firearms useless.

Hostile Lawsuits
If the UN is hostile territory, so are the US courts in many instances, according to the next panel that discussed litigating cases in a hostile environment.

Virgil McVicker, president of the Madison Society Foundation and a California attorney, described legal problems faced in the Golden State.

Trouble begins with state legislatures, and in California, McVicker said, state lawmakers have authored legislation that notes, “It is the intent of the legislature to create a new crime.”

The Madison Society’s purpose is to participate in litigation protecting the Second Amendment rights at local, state or federal levels, he said. One of the group’s goals is to create of a “National Litigation Trust Fund” for the purpose of funding lawsuits aimed at litigating Second Amendment cases.

Veteran gun rights attorney and scholar Don Kates took the audience back over several years, explaining why the NRA had not mounted a Second Amendment challenge several years ago. He recalled that the NRA had researched the potential of bringing such a case to the Supreme Court, and estimated that just to reach the high court, it would cost $1 million.

“It caused a lot of people some concern,” Kates said. “And it added weight to a question that had been asked by law professor advisors to NRA, and that question was: Why should an organization with the best lobbying record in American history and one of worst litigation records in American history take a million dollars from lobbying and devote it to litigation?”

NRA’s record in the lobbying arena has been good enough to get concealed carry laws adopted in some 40 states, and in only one of those states was that accomplished by litigation, Kates said.

Kates said a Second Amendment victory now would be very narrow, and only open the door to further challenges expanding the scope the amendment’s protections.

“Yes we live under a constitution,” he observed, “but the constitution is what the judges say it is, and unfortunately all too often the judges are highly hostile to us. Basically we are like black people litigating in Alabama in 1890. That’s our situation and you need to understand that.

He recalled that “The last time I litigated a case before the Supreme Court, I thought I was going to win 8-1 and I lost 6-3.”

Attorney Robert Winston, vice president of the Madison Society, joined the panel at the last minute and explained how he has worked for people who had been arrested for some crime in California. He does not do federal law or appellate law, instead working on cases at the local level.

The cases he takes typically deal with local violations, such as that of an older man who was stopped at a drunk driving checkpoint and found to have a handgun on his lap. He did not have a license to carry the gun, and he was arrested. Winston represented the man, ended up getting the charge reduced to a misdemeanor, but that still is a black mark on an otherwise spotless record.

“Of course you can appeal,” he said, offering up a dose of reality, “all you need is money and years, and no great expectation of success.”

A third California attorney, Chuck Michel, explained that the practice of gun law in that state deals with “day-to-day gun law.” It is hardly ever a high profile Second-Amendment case, and even if it were, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has already held that the Second Amendment only protects a “collective right” of states to organize militias.

Michel described California’s criminal courts as “a screwed up mess.” He said many female prosecutors “don’t know the difference between a target shooter and a gang-banger.”

However, should the Supreme Court ultimately rule that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, Michel said it would only be “another tool” rather than a “Second Amendment bullet.” Bans like the one in Morton Grove, IL, would fall, but elsewhere, Michel said such a high court ruling would amount to “the lawyers’ full employment act.”

California attorney Donald Kilmer, a constitutional issues litigator, recalled the Nordyke case that dealt with banning possession of firearms on county property, which effectively banned gun shows on county fairgrounds. It became a vehicle for an anti-gun federal judge on the 9th Circuit to write a majority opinion supporting the collective rights view of the Second Amendment.

In a dissent, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld argued that the court had erased 10% of the Bill of Rights for 20% of the American people.

Kilmer said the hostility toward the Second Amendment that exists in the 9th Circuit reflects the view of a large segment of the population that the individual right to keep and bear arms does not exist.
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