Disappointed with Sotomayor

By Jeff Knox

(August 7, 2009) The confirmation of extreme leftist (and unimpressive jurist) Sonia Sotomayor to a seat on the Supreme Court is bad news to supporters of the Constitution in general and the nation’s gunowners in particular.  Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated throughout her career on the Federal Appeals Court bench that she has much more regard for her own "feelings" and "sensibilities" than she has for the Constitution or even court precedent.  Judge Sotomayor has repeatedly dismissed important constitutional questions out of hand, with no constitutional review and total disregard for established precedent or accepted principles of jurisprudence.  Judge Sotomayor has made clumsy attempts to conceal this cavalier behavior behind flawed and incomplete citation of precedents which fall far short of supporting her decisions.  What’s worse, she has routinely been supported in her disingenuous practices by one or more of her colleagues in the Second Circuit where she has served for the past 15 years.  As Federal Appeals Courts standardly operate with three-judge panels, Judge Sotomayor’s erroneous decisions could only prevail if one or both of the other judges on the panel agreed.

Continue reading Sorry Sotomayor →

History Matters

Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War  is History

By Chris Knox

(August 3, 2009) Most readers of this column knew my late father, Neal Knox, as a Washington lobbyist and gun-rights hard-liner.  And most of you also know that his family – particularly my brother Jeff and I, along with our mother Jay – continue the work he started with The Firearms Coalition.  But in my travels, I’ve been dismayed to discover that many of "our guys" – from shooters at the range to industry types at the trade shows –  don’t really know or understand who Neal Knox was and what a significant impact he had on their rights.  More importantly, they don’t know or understand the history of the fight which has brought us where we are today.  Imagine a west-bound wagon train with no one among them who had ever forded a river with a wagon or crossed a difficult mountain pass.  Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War is the journal of an experienced guide and wagon master.  He wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t always right, but he had a good compass and was always trying to move in the right direction. 

Continue reading GRWHistory →

Defining Firearms

By Jeff Knox

(July 30, 2009) When a New York City police officer caught a .32 caliber slug in his ribs last week, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was quick to question how the career criminal and convicted felon was able to obtain the gun.  I’m afraid that the question is going to lead to attempts at broader restrictions on more items in New York and elsewhere because it’s possible that the gun involved in the shooting might not be a firearm.

That might not make much sense, but firearms laws generally don’t. 

Depending on when the gun was made and/or whether the cartridges is considered "obsolete," a .32 caliber revolver might not be legally considered a firearm and might not be illegal for a felon to purchase or possess.  On the other end of the spectrum, a plastic bottle cap can be a firearm as can a shoestring.

Continue reading Defining Firearms →

Hoplophobia Defined

(July 16 2009) Recent rights victories in the Senate have caught the attention of the hoplophobes and they’re not happy.  I received the following "URGENT ACTION ALERT" from the inappropriately named "Freedom States Alliance" this afternoon and I couldn’t think of a better way to explain the level of irrationality and ignorance which defines hoplophobia than to do exactly as they asked and pass the "Alert" on just as they wrote it (typos and all.)  While I sometimes complain about the over-hyping and exaggeration engaged in by some of our brethren in the rights movement, our guys can’t hold a candle to the outrageous fear-mongering of these hoplophobes. 

Be sure to contact your Senators and Harry Reid and tell them not to surrender to irrational fears.  You might also consider making a donation to The Firearms Coalition to help us counter this nonsense.  — JAK

Continue reading Hoplophobia Alliance →

Appeal to the Supreme Court

(July 9, 2009)  This fall, when the Supreme Court begins its next session, one of the questions they are likely to address is the "incorporation" of the Second Amendment to apply to the states.  Most Americans would be surprised to learn that their constitutional rights are only selectively recognized as applicable to state and local government, but that is the case.  While there might have been some understanding regarding the application of the finer details of the first 10 amendments, the fundamental rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights were clearly intended and universally recognized to apply to all authorities at every level of government, but the Supreme Court shifted that understanding with several rulings culminating in decisions bolstering Jim Crow laws in the South after the Civil War.  Two famous cases clearly illustrate the shift:

In Dred Scott v. Sanford, Justice Taney declared that blacks could not be citizens of the United States in part because citizenship "would give to persons of the negro race, …the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, …the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."

Continue reading Back to SCOTUS →

The Knox Update

From the Firearms Coalition

Politics is Simply Complicated

By Jeff Knox

(June 25, 2009) The surprise introduction and passage of a pro-rights amendment attached to a credit card bill this spring could be a hopeful sign of things to come.  In a beautiful bit of political surgery, Dr. Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma put forward an amendment repealing the troubling National Parks firearms ban.  Coburn’s amendment was far superior to the new regulations adopted by the NPS toward the end of last year.  Those minor improvements were short-lived though as they were halted by an activist judge worried about the "environmental impact" of law-abiding park visitors possibly possessing guns.  Under the Coburn Amendment, National Parks and Federal Wildlife Refuges assimilate the firearms laws of their host states just as National Forest and BLM units have done without serious problems for decades.  Once Senator Coburn was able to introduce the amendment, there was little opponents could do to stop it because too many of their colleagues are from districts full of GunVoters and Senators didn’t want to go on record supporting any gun ban.  The bill passed with Senator Coburn’s amendment by a vote of 90 to 5.

Since the underlying credit card legislation was being strongly supported by the White House, the anti-rights leadership in the House couldn’t just bottle it up.  The die-hard anti-rights members who wanted to vote for the credit card legislation convinced Pelosi and company to offer the amended bill up in two separate votes, one for the main bill and one for the amendment.  That was probably a mistake because the amendment passed by a vote of 279 to 147 so now many of those 147 are going to have some explaining to do to GunVoters back home.

Continue reading Politics →

The ATF Software Company?

By Jeff Knox

 (June 17, 2009) About a year ago, James LaMonte, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Coloseum software, was ready to release an innovative software package.  He had a client in Idaho, Red’s Trading Post, who wanted to install the software to reduce the number of minor errors on 4473’s and other federally mandated records.  But ATF rejected the variance request and asked for more information about the software.  They issued conflicting opinions, and generally held up the process for several months before finally requesting a meeting with LaMonte.  

If ATF wouldn’t approve dealers to use the software, Coloseum’s run would be a short one so LaMonte agreed to the meeting.  When they met, ATF assured LaMonte that they were not working with any other software developers and that any information he shared about his program would be held in the strictest confidence.  They said they needed more detailed information before they could grant the requested waiver to Red’s or any other dealer wishing to use Coloseum’s products. 

An ATF employee was assigned as liaison between ATF and Coloseum, studying Coloseum’s software, asking lots of questions, and implying that open cooperation would lead to ATF support for Coloseum’s products.  After several weeks of this, ATF called another meeting with Coloseum to discuss the release of the software.  At that meeting, LaMonte learned that ATF wasn’t working with other companies, they were developing their own software for filling out 4473’s and the ATF employee who had been studying Coloseum’s software was the head of ATF’s development team.

Continue reading The ATF Software Company? →

Third-World Policing in Nation’s Capital

By Jeff Knox

             (June 11, 2009) News reports were somewhat conflicted, but information suggests that officers of the federal Park Police, members of a special, FBI managed, "Safe Streets" taskforce, responded to a report of a "man with a gun," in the Trinidad neighborhood of the District of Columbia at about 8:30 on a recent Monday evening.  Witnesses say that the suspect ran into an alley where the plain clothes officers caught him, but a moment later he broke free and tried to run, at which point the officers opened fire, mortally wounding the fleeing suspect in the back.  A gun was found at the scene.

            This is the same neighborhood in DC where Metro Police have been setting up roadblocks requiring people to prove residency or a "valid reason" before entering the neighborhood.

            It seems that local and federal authorities think they’re operating in a third-world country rather than the nation’s capital.  

Continue reading Third-World DC →

Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War

A new book from the Knoxes

        July 4, 2009 marks the 25^th anniversary of The Firearms Coalition and our bi-monthly newsletter The Hard Corps Report.  It also marks the release of a long overdue book, Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.  Dad always wanted to write a history of the gun rights movement and it turns out that he had already done so in his columns and articles while the history was being made.  Now, thanks to a lot of hard work by my brother Chris, it is finally about to be released. (See the cover copy here)

As we prepare for the book’s July 4 debut, we thought it appropriate to reprint the story of Neal Knox’s personal rights epiphany.  Chris chose this story as the prologue to the book and we offer it now to remind us all just what we’re fighting for.

The Belgian Corporal

by Neal Knox

In the summer of 1955, I was a young Texas National Guard sergeant on active duty at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.   A corporal in my squad was a Belgian-American named Charles DeNaer.  An old man as far as most of us were concerned, being well over thirty, Charley commanded a certain amount of our respect, for not only was he older than the rest of us, he had lived in Belgium when the Germans rolled across the low countries by-passing the Maginot Line on their way into France.   He had seen war.  

One soft Oklahoma afternoon, sitting on a bunk in the half-light of an old wooden barracks, he told me his story.

Continue reading The Gun Rights War →

Attention Ranges and Clubs:

A Call to Arms!

(May 20, 2009) On Independence Day 2009 we will celebrate several things in addition to celebration of the 233rd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we at The Firearms Coalition will be celebrating our 25^th anniversary as an organization.  We’ll mark the occasion with the release of the new book The Gun Rights War, a compilation by my brother Chris of highlights from Neal Knox’s extensive writings stretching from 1966 to 2000.

July 4 also marks the inauguration of a new event, National Training Week.  National Training Week is an opportunity for experienced shooters and gunowners to share their knowledge with newcomers.  During the week between July 4 and July 11, ranges and gun clubs all over the country will host events and offer special deals geared to new shooters. 

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