Supreme Judicial Court hears challenge to Mass. law that requires guns to be locked in homes

BOSTON – Gun control proponents argued before the state’s highest court Thursday that a Massachusetts law requiring gun owners to lock weapons in their homes saves lives while gun advocates pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling holding that people have a constitutional right to keep weapons for self-defense.

The case involves a Billerica man whose mentally disabled son allegedly shot at a neighbor with a BB gun. The 18-year-old showed police where his father kept other unlocked guns.

Under the Massachusetts safe gun-storage law, the youth’s father, Richard Runyan, was charged with improperly storing a 12-gauge shotgun, a semiautomatic hunting rifle and ammunition.

But a Lowell District Court judge dismissed the charges, citing a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.

In District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment gives people the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in their homes. The court also tossed out a D.C. requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled.

Middlesex County prosecutors argued Thursday that the Massachusetts law requiring guns to be secured in a locked container or equipped with safety devices when not under an owner’s control is less restrictive than the D.C. law.

“The purpose of the (Massachusetts) statute is to keep the firearms out of the hands of unauthorized users,” said Assistant District Attorney Loretta Lillios. She cited the case of Liquarry Jefferson, an 8-year-old Boston boy who was accidentally killed by his 7-year-old cousin in 2007 after the boys found a loaded 9 mm handgun in a dresser in Liquarry’s home.

But groups representing gun owners argued that the state’s requirement that guns be locked up defeats the purpose of self-defense in the home.

Edward George Jr., an attorney for the Gun Owners’ Action League, said that under the Massachusetts gun storage law, it is virtually impossible for homeowners to quickly access a gun for self-defense.

Prosecutors argued in legal briefs that the Second Amendment allows states to make their own laws regulating gun ownership.

“The current statute strikes a reasonable balance by maintaining a citizen’s ability to defend him or herself in their home while also protecting against the significant dangers to children and others if those guns are not properly secured,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement Thursday.

By: Associated Press

Quebec disappointed with gun registry vote

Quebec politicians, police officers and victims' rights groups are expressing frustration with plans to abolish the federal long-gun registry.

On Wednesday the House of Commons narrowly passed a private member's bill calling on the government to scrap the federal long-gun registry.

The vote comes one month before the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Montreal’s École Polytechnique.

Quebec Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis said he was disappointed but not surprised by the vote: 164 for, 137 against.

The vote is only one step in a long process to abolish the registry for rifles and shotguns, Dupuis said.

Dupuis said he will continue to press Ottawa not to go through with the Conservative government's plan and will testify at upcoming hearings before a Commons committee.

The vote was also a disappointment for Montrealer Suzanne Laplante-Edward.

'It's been a monument erected to our daughters, and we are not about to let is disappear,'—Suzanne Laplante-Edward, mother of Polytechnique shooting victim

Edward’s 21-year-old daughter Anne-Marie was one of the 14 women gunned down at the École Polytechnique on Dec. 6 1989.

Edward said she and the members of other victims' families fought hard for the creation of the registry.

"It's been a monument erected to our daughters, and we are not about to let is disappear," Laplante-Edward said. "Why this government is hell bent — hell bent — on destroying gun control is beyond my comprehension."

Montreal police have also weighed in on the issue.

The registry is checked by police officers across Canada 10,000 thousand times a day, said Insp. Daniel Rousseau.

By: CBC News

Gun Control and subsequent frauds in politics

Governance in this country is really nothing more than service to the electorate. We govern ourselves by way of executives we hire to do things for us on our authority, and it is nothing more. It is not any greater wisdom of theirs, it is not greater information, and it is not greater knowledge. It is in other countries, but not here.

Public servants operate in the United States under supervision and consent; ours. They do not supervise us, we supervise them. When they squawk about this, we have an indicator of a real problem, and more problems to come. Their refusal to honor the wishes and sometimes demands of the electorate signals their intention to rule us and not the other way around.

Some of the greatest frauds in governing the U.S. comes from the servants' practice of insistence on their ideas and defiance of the electorate on our ideas in their what're-ya-gonna-do-about-it attitude. Well, what we do about it is due process and follow-through, but it begins first with understanding that these people depend heavily on an ignorance of civics and of our constitution.

I want to refer you to a perfect example of how the second amendment serves all of America, whether you are a gun owner or not. Please register for the Tenth Amendment Newsletter for a very provocative piece on Civics as a solution to what is happening to us. It's a good personal story, and a great place for us to start in understanding what to do about all of this abuse.

Part of the problem in supervising recalcitrant and stubborn officials is in an ignorance of the true power and authority of the electorate; one of those is in how the second amendment operates in keeping us free from tyranny. Yes, the T-word. Understanding our own civics is what is at the heart of self-rule the way the founders declared it all after they escaped tyranny.

Without knowledge of civics and of the supremacy of the electorate over officials, and without a values system of knowing who properly supervises whom, a host of boondoggles has been unloaded on us. Who gets to say? We do, and no one else.

The fraud occurs when our authority is obscured by bluff, bogus urgency, hard-sell pressure, and other unethical tactics. These come not only from officials, but their minions. Then it is all cemented by abusive attitudes, silence, defiance of investigations and inquiry, and even the Vote.

The result is seen in gun control first before other frauds are crafted. Gun control itself is a fraud, as it claims to fight crime, but actually grows it. First, you create a crisis of violent crime and concentrate on shootings while ignoring other violence. Forget that it's largely crime-on-crime shootings, and forget that a great deal of crime has been stopped by armed citizens. This creates a void in how violence is really best handled and it also creates a real payday for anti-crime measures to develop. Next, still in crises, government works to fill this void with itself, but it never quite does the job nearly as well as the armed citizen. Still, it insists on gun control, and even backs its nonsense with police powers to really teach you a lesson: don't fight back. We've got other things coming, and we don't want you resisting those, either!

Alright, now what? Well, if this works on gun owners and keeps crisis alive, it'll work in other areas of governance in other political topics not even related to gun control. The result is electronic stalking, cameras on every corner, Pass ID and other nonsense, gun bans, bolder and bolder ludicrous programs, changes in law enforcement assets and funding, early release of felons (partly due to overcrowding, partly due to inability to medically treat prisoners) and other solutions to problems which problems should never exist in a nation of self-governance.

The key to the entire formula is to remove working safeguards first against the better judgment of the electorate. It reminds me of the passenger who punches a hole in the life raft just so he can sell you buckets. He won't tell you where the hole is nor how it got there, but he'll sell you a bucket to bail out the water with.

Some states see this as a fraud, and have resolved to invoke the Tenth Amendment in getting out from under this T-word. As I have reported, banning gun control is high on their list, since they see the connection as clearly as I do. No more gun control. It gets our constituents killed and maimed. The police cannot be everywhere, and police have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others anyway, but a citizen is everywhere, and if that citizen is armed with both lethal force and citizen authority (as is hidden from most), then our costs can go down as police and citizen work together (like before). Imagine what that does to the rapport between the government and the governed; imagine what it does to revenues. Imagine what it does for our freedoms.

But independence from public servants doesn't have the official payday of war chest, prestige or legacy the way crisis does.

Maybe it shouldn't.

By: John Longenecker, LA Gun Rights Examiner