It is a good day for Liberty.

 

          We have nine months until Hillary Clinton's campaign for president kicks into high gear.  She has announced an exploration committee as if the idea has just occurred to her and she is checking to see if there is support.  She has support; the question is what we can do to stop her.

 

          The terrorist organization ETA operating from the Basque area of Northern Spain has announced that its cease-fire is still in effect, but also claimed responsibility for a recent bombing.  This is why I always check the definitions section of a statute.  Some people have very different ideas of what words mean.

 

          In a similar development the Democratic leadership of Congress has demonstrated that when they said they would strive for bipartisan solutions they meant they would work with both leftist and liberal Democrats.  When they said they would find common ground, they meant that we could help chose where to bury our rights.

 

A burglar in Ft. Worth Texas passed a sign saying Warning, Nothing inside is worth risking your life for.  Owners of this property are highly skilled to protect life, liberty and property from criminal attacks.  He passed a second sign saying, No trespassing.  Violators will be shot.  Survivors will be shot again.  He was shot in the abdomen.  I strongly advise against such signs as they are likely to be used against the citizen if he is forced to shoot an intruder.

 

Anne Stinnett is our Board's Recording Secretary.  This is actually a very powerful position, if she were to record that we had declared war on North Korea, that would be the official record.  People might be upset; North Korea might fire a missile at Kansas City and utterly destroy some part of the Pacific Ocean.  Anne has recently announced that she will not accept bribes to make us sound good in the Board minutes.  This combination of absolute power and incorruptibility could be a problem.  We shall have to watch what we say; of course, I shall deny saying so.

 

On 12 February, 2007 the Judiciary Committee of the Missouri Senate held hearings on all of the gun related bills before it, and it was a good day for Liberty.  A bill to prevent confiscation of firearms during states of emergency received a very favorable treatment from the committee.  This bill would prevent a repetition of the wholesale confiscation of legally owned guns seen in New Orleans after Katrina.  Even members who were not our friends seemed to favor this bill.  One Senator asked what would happen if the governor or a mayor declared martial law.  There was a slight but perceptible growl from audience.  Chairman then allowed that if a mayor declared martial law there might be other problems with his action. 

I testified for the Castle Doctrine reform bill.  Current law only allows shooting an intruder as he crosses the shattered perimeter of the home.  If the homeowner misses that Goldilocks moment, he cannot shoot the intruder until attacked.  Since the intruder is then inside the home, this places him dangerously close to the homeowner and gives him the initiative.  This bill would allow the homeowner to assume that any intruder did not have his best interests at heart.  The prosecutor's association tells us that the bill is unnecessary.  I recounted the case of Dr. Sweet who defended his Detroit, Michigan home from a mob in 1925.  It took the eloquence of Clarence Darrow to save him from a murder charge.  Less than fifteen years ago a client killed a burglar who attacked him in the living room of a house he owned.  The prosecutor told me that he would not have prosecuted if he had killed the burglar as he was breaking in.  His crime was that he waited too long.  Prosecutors call such cases an anomaly; I call them people.  There is a form letter floating around prosecutors that this bill allows a clever person to commit murder and get away with it by claiming self-defense.  This is nonsense.  People have made false claims of self-defense as long as the defense has existed.  When Jack McCall killed Wild Bill Hickok in 1876 he claimed self-defense.  Even the primitive forensics of the time showed that Wild Bill had been shot in the back.  The court gave the claim the justice it deserved.  The average person does not know what a crime scene is supposed to look like and improvises one badly.  Forensics hang these pretenders.  When a jury suspects that it has been lied to, it punishes the offender. 

There was also a bill to repeal the Permit To Acquire law.  A senator expressed some displeasure at being told this was a Jim Crow era law.  He was told that he might not like it, but it was the last such law, passed in 1921 after race riots to limit handguns to persons the sheriff thought possessed the requisite moral qualities.  An African American told the senator that if he had tried for a permit in St. Louis in 1966, and looked like me, then you would know.  This check is now redundant to the federal NICS check.

There was a bill to restrict stun guns like handguns.  The KC Police Department sent Captain Lewis to lobby in favor of this bill.  The sponsor's complaint was that these devices are powerful and available on the internet.  This bill is probably dead on arrival. 

There was another attempt at a lock up your safety bill.  This bill mandates that guns be locked up.  The sponsor, Senator Bray of St. Louis, justified it due to a recent incident in which a child of 8 found a gun and shot a 3 year old.  Later testimony showed that the gun was brought to the child's home by a convicted felon.  The committee was asked to punish responsible gun owners for the acts of negligent and even criminal gun users.  Senator Justus of Kansas City asked Wouldn't this law be another tool?  She was not clear on a tool for what.  It is already a federal felony for criminals to have guns  Actually, this law is intended to fail.  The mandated locks will not be used by the careless and criminal.  There will be a notorious event in violation of the law.  Instead of admitting a mistake, the proponents will demand additional restrictions, which will not work, and there will be demands for more restrictions until our guns are locked up in the police station, at our expense, for our safety, until we have a good reason to remove them, or it.  This has happened in other countries.  President Sheila described this bill as a criminal protection act, as it takes away one's right to defend oneself.  The bill was swarmed.  More people testified against it than any other.  In reality, 56 kids under the age of 15 are killed each year and the number is going down because of gun owners conducting safety training.  Some described the bill as mandating common sense some as punishment.  One senator asked which it was. The bill takes away our right to use own common sense.  It prevents us from using our own common sense based on our superior knowledge of our own situation, children, and threat.  It punishes us with a government version of common sense.  The government is not famous for common sense. 

The hearing was long but provided us with some lessons in advocacy.  Prepared comments made testimony short and sweet.  Rambling improvised statements lost focus and bored the committee.  The hearing went well, and it was a good day for Liberty.

 

The last Supreme Court justice to represent an ordinary person was Thurgood Marshal, appointed over forty years ago and dead for fifteen.  Ruth Ginsburg did appeals for the ACLU but for an appellate lawyer the client is a file not a person and the name on the file may be that of an association.  The current crop of Supreme Court Justices have never been called at two in the morning by a terrified client, never had to collect a bill from a client who was only a paycheck from the streets, never been the only shield a high school dropout has from the vague terrors of the system, never had to explain the consequences of the Worst Thing that ever happened, never had to look a confused man in the eye and explain the effect of a judge's order on his life, never counseled a family with the neighbors from Hell or a woman with a stalker.  As we take the Great Second Amendment case through the courts, I think this is something we should keep in mind.

 

The 7-year-old child of a St. Louis area couple took a .22 handgun to school.  Police found 80 guns in the house.  The newspaper reports this as a reason for their arrest on child endangerment charges.  This gun in the child's possession at school indicates a problem of judgment or training, but I fail to see how the number of guns owned amounts to felony child endangerment.

 

I am told of a Southern Sheriff who pursued a criminal who had killed a law-enforcement officer, shot another, and killed a police dog.  When cornered the criminal tried to increase his law-enforcement body count and was shot eighty times or more.  When asked why he was shot so many times the sheriff replied, That was all the ammunition we had.  While this may have been an accurate answer, I strongly advise against such answers as it will be taken as evidence of vigilante revenge rather than justified shooting.  The number of times the evildoer is shot must be related to how long he remained a threat.  Criminals have remained threats with enormous numbers of bullet wounds.  The record appears to have been an armed robber in Chicago who was shot 33 times in the chest and head with 9 mm, once with 12 gauge buckshot, and once with 12 gauge solid shot before he went down.  He was NOT on drugs.

 

I took a trip to a business on the Kansas side.  I did not have to unload my gun and put it in a locked container first, I just drove over there, the large steel comfort under my vest.  We have reciprocity with Kansas.  The Kansas law is a handgun only law.  We cannot bring over concealed rifles, shotguns, knives, blackjacks or any other weapon; only handguns.  Certain cities are trying to ban concealed weapons, but this is a big improvement.

 

The recent mall shooter in Salt Lake City was stopped because an off-duty police officer disrupted his plans.  The officer pinned him down until a SWAT team arrived to permanently solve the problem.  This is something any armed citizen could do, killers of this sort are not prepared for opposition, it confuses them and they frequently commit suicide.

 

I went in for a physical.  The doctor refused to pronounce me dead, although given plenty of opportunity to do so.  The prostate exam was done by a blood test and not digitally.  When doctors say digitally it means something very different than when digital camera salesmen say it.  Still, even in those cases where it is advisable, it is much less intrusive than prostate cancer.

 

          At the last membership meeting the entire board was re-elected.  The board then re-elected the same officers.  This might be taken as a lack of imagination or as satisfaction with performance, or Anne could have just told people how to vote, never can tell.  This way she doesn't have to learn to spell any new names or have to intimidate any new board members.

 

          A recent study has found that law offices are almost germ-free, unlike most offices.  I'm sure there will be speculation as to why germs cannot survive in a legal atmosphere, but I leave that to others.

 

          I am hearing more cases of persons being arrested for being intoxicated and in possession of guns.  Possession of a loaded gun while intoxicated is a felony now, and an unloaded gun a misdemeanor.  Both charges are to be avoided.  A man in central Missouri tells me that he was arrested for brandishing a firearm following an anonymous and erroneous report to the local police.  Intimidated by the felony charge he pled to being intoxicated and in possession of an unloaded gun.  At the time the revolver was locked in the trunk of his car, unloaded, with a lock through the cylinder.  Legally he should have been given back his gun, but the police would only show him torched fragments which they claim were its remnants.

 

          The possession while intoxicated statute does not specify what amounts to intoxication.  It is assumed that the DWI standard will be used, but that is not necessarily so.  I know of one man who was charged under this statute for taking prescription medication.  While there are side effects to prescription medication, this is not the same thing as a junkie with a gun.

 

          I have not mentioned the Anna Nichole-Smith case, for which I think I should receive some credit.

 

          On 21 April, 2007 Old Town Station will auction off my 35-year collection of knives, bayonets, swords, guns and weapons and accessories.  Other people are also contributing to the auction.  Call them at (913) 492-3000 for a catalogue.

 

We shall overcome.