Guns And Porn: Comming To A Car Near You

The folks in Tallahassee are at work. The Florida Senate is protecting our rights once more. This time a bill has passed a key Senate Committee, 7 to 1, that will let you keep guns and porn in your car (but out of sight) as long as they are licensed and legal. The bill will punish employers if they bar guns and other material, deemed to be offensive to the employer, from cars in its parking lots. The bill will subject employers to prosecution if they question an employee about the contents of his or her vehicle.

So if this remarkable piece of legislation passes, when you go to yell at those workers in the parking lot behind Truman Annex, better take your gun and porn with you with you to equalize your odds.

With An Idea And Some Good Clients

"But I live in Naples, Florida, in a gated community. I don't feel real threatened down here." So says the architect of the lawsuit that did away with the District of Columbia gun-control law. The lawyer who conceived the attack on the gun control law is not some radical militia man. He does not even own a gun, but thinks he might want one if he were living in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill. Nor is he a member of, as he has put it, "one of those pro-gun groups." No, he's a guy who says his only interest is "in vindicating the the Constitution."

Once a D.C. native, he now is a constitutional fellow with the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank, and works out of his expensive Naples condo. His successful suit against the D.C. gun law was the result of carefully selecting the plaintiffs in the suit and carefully crafting their desired outcome.

He is one of three lawyers involved with the case, which is probably headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, since the District of Columbia says it will appeal. You would think that would be expensive. Yes, it is. "To take something like this all the way through the Supreme Court, you're talking about several hundred thousand dollars," he has said. Because, however, his counsel are charging a reduced rate, "it hasn't been nearly that much."

Hum . . . , where was this guy when TAMPOA needed him?

More Guns For The Keys?

A week ago, a federal appeals court for the District of Columbia overturned Washington, D.C.'s long-standing ban on handguns. In doing so the Court rejected the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.

The 2-1 decision held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right [to keep and bear arms] contingent" on being part of a militia.

In a city with a previous reputation as the murder capital of the country, this is no small matter. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the city cannot prevent people from keeping handguns in their homes. The ruling also invalidated a requirement that owners of registered firearms keep them unloaded and disassembled. The court did not deal with provisions of the law that prohibit people from carrying unregistered guns outside their home.

This decision is the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a portion of a gun law on the ground that it violated the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

It's hard to know whether and in what manner other courts may follow suit. It is too early to tell whether the case will get to the U.S. Supreme Court. The harder question is what do you suppose all this means for the Florida Keys?

The Police Executive Research Forum in a recent study noted that the biggest factor in the spike in violent crime is easy access to guns and a willingness to settle disputes with them, especially among young people. This report comes along at the same time there is the divergent holding by the D.C. Court of Appeals mentioned above.

It may be that judges are no longer likely to be persuaded by the notion that denying guns to everyone will result in a safer situation for law-abiding citizens, since access to hand guns (even by those who should not be able to get them) seems relatively easy. Public opinion may also be changing. As law enforcement encounters more difficulty in controlling gun possession and violent crime, a change in public opinion that favors gun ownership based on notions of protection may likely occur. After all, when you think everyone else except you has a gun, it is not very hard to justify the idea that you need one too.