Time: Thu Sep 11 07:27:31 1997
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Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 07:23:48 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Concealed Weapons - Vermont Style

<snip>
>
>>Forwarded by The Word Warriorette -
>>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>>
>>Forwarded by The Word Warriorette - Some people who are pro-life believe
that
>>the 2nd amendment issue is far removed from them.  Read the "Note**"
directly
>>below, then please read the entire article.  Joel 3:10  "Beat your
plowshares
>>into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, 'I am
>>strong.'""  DK
>>
>>**Note the following in the article below:  "c. Revoke for politically
>>incorrect speech -- In Oregon, officials have been known to revoke concealed
>>carry licenses because of one's political views. In one case, a permit
holder
>>had his license revoked because he was the editor of a pro-life newspaper.
>>(5) (Footnote:  5. In a court hearing to have the license returned, the
judge
>>in the case admitted that the individual did not meet the criteria for a
>>revocation (i.e., he had never engaged in acts of violence or made
threats of
>>violence) but agreed to uphold the revocation anyway. The justification the
>>judge gave was that the abortion issue was "a volatile one" and people
>>involved in it should not be allowed to carry guns. A friend of the
>>"defendant" made a routine inquiry to the sheriff's department to see if any
>>abortion doctors or activists had their licenses revoked. By Oregon law this
>>is public information. He was immediately visited by four FBI agents who
>>demanded to know the reason for the request.
>>Statement by Kevin Starrett, Oregon Representative for Gun Owners of
>>America, August 21, 1995.)
>>
>>>From an Internet source.Begin Forwarded Message:
>>
>>
>><< Why Adopt a Vermont-style CCW Law?
>> 
>> 
>> Several states are considering adopting "Vermont-style" concealed
>> carry legislation. Most of the Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) laws in
>> the country require citizens to first get permits. But in a couple of
>> states, like Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting
>> permission . . . without paying a fee . . . or without going through
>> any kind of government- imposed waiting period. There are many
>> benefits to adopting a genuine right to carry law:
>> 
>> 1. Carrying a firearm is a "right" not a "privilege"
>> 
>> The Second Amendment guarantees that "the right of the people to keep
>> and bear arms shall not be infringed." This means that law-abiding
>> citizens should not need to beg the government for permission to carry
>> a firearm. That would turn the "right" to bear arms into a mere
>> "privilege." Likewise, one should not have to be photographed,
>> fingerprinted, or registered before they can exercise their Second
>> Amendment rights. Criminals certainly do not jump through these
>> "hoops." The Second Amendment is no different than any of the other
>> protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights. That is, honest citizens
>> should not need a government issued permission slip; rather, they
>> should be able to carry as a matter of right.
>> 
>> 2. The issuing of permits can be abused by officials
>> 
>>      a. Refuse to issue
>> 
>>           * New York City: Officials in New York City routinely deny
>>           gun permits for ordinary citizens and store owners because
>>           -- as the courts have ruled -- they have no greater need for
>>           protection than anyone else in the city. In fact, the
>>           authorities have even refused to issue permits when the
>>           courts have ordered them to do so. (1)
>> 
>>           * Gary, Indiana: Then-Mayor Richard Hatcher let it be known
>>           in 1979 that he would not be approving any citizens'
>>           concealed carry applications. He then said if they wanted to
>>           challenge his authority, they were welcome to take him to
>>           court. It took citizens over 10 years (and thousands of
>>           dollars in legal fees) to get any relief. (2)
>> 
>>           * San Jose, CA: Joseph McNamara, a former police chief and
>>           anti-gun spokesman, bragged in his 1984 book, Safe & Sane,
>>           that "in San Jose, I have made it considerably tougher for
>>           residents to get handgun permits." (3)
>> 
>>      b. Require fingerprints -- Virginia applicants for concealed
>>      carry permits were forced to submit to FBI fingerprint background
>>      checks without any authorization requiring such checks. (4)
>> 
>>      c. Revoke for politically incorrect speech -- In Oregon,
>>      officials have been known to revoke concealed carry licenses
>>      because of one's political views. In one case, a permit holder
>>      had his license revoked because he was the editor of a pro-life
>>      newspaper. (5)
>> 
>>      d. Print licensee holders' names in newspapers -- In several
>>      states, newspapers have frequently printed the names of concealed
>>      carry permit holders, which are almost always public information.
>>      (6)
>> 
>> 3. Officials can "raise the hurdles" in order to get a permit
>> 
>> * The power to license a right is the power to destroy a right
>> 
>>      a. Arbitrary Delays -- While New Jersey law requires applications
>>      to be responded to within thirty days, delays of ninety days are
>>      routine; sometimes, applications are delayed for several years
>>      for no readily apparent reason. (7)
>> 
>>      b. Arbitrary Denials -- See the examples above from New York
>>      City, Indiana and California.
>> 
>>      c. Arbitrary Fee Increases -- In 1994, the Clinton administration
>>      pushed for a license fee increase of almost 1,000 percent on gun
>>      dealers. According to U.S. News & World Report, the
>>      administration was seeking the license fee increase "in hopes of
>>      driving many of America's 258,000 licensed gun dealers out of
>>      business." (8) This example clearly shows how easily government
>>      officials can abuse the issuing of carry permits. Instead of
>>      using lower fees to merely pay for the processing of permits,
>>      officials can raise the fees to keep people from exercising their
>>      rights.
>> 
>> 4. Vermont has a genuine right to carry law (i.e., requires no
>> permits) and yet boasts the lowest crime rate in the nation (9)
>> 
>>      a. Nationwide, concealed carry laws have worked to drop crime
>>      rates. Indeed, a comprehensive national study in 1996 determined
>>      that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry
>>      concealed firearms. (10)
>> 
>>      b. The results of the study showed:
>> 
>>           * States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their
>>           murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7%
>>           and robbery by 3%; and
>> 
>>           * If those states not having concealed carry laws had
>>           adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders,
>>           4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies
>>           would have been avoided yearly. (11)
>> 
>> 5. Waiting periods of any kind threaten honest people's safety. (12)
>> 
>>      Note: Criminals usually don't bother to go through the waiting
>>      period since they don't apply for permits.
>> 
>>      a. New York. In 1983, Igor Hutorsky was murdered by two burglars
>>      who broke into his Brooklyn furniture store. The tragedy is that
>>      some time before the murder his business partner had applied for
>>      permission to keep a handgun at the store. Even four months after
>>      the murder, the former partner had still not heard from the
>>      police about the status of his gun permit. (13)
>> 
>>      b. Colorado. Talk show host (Alan Berg) was gunned down in 1984
>>      after being denied a concealed carry permit. (14)
>> 
>>      c. Wisconsin. In 1991, Bonnie Elmasri inquired about getting a
>>      gun to protect herself from a husband who had repeatedly
>>      threatened to kill her. She was told there was a 48 hour waiting
>>      period to buy a handgun. But unfortunately, Bonnie was never able
>>      to pick up a gun. She and her two sons were killed the next day
>>      by an abusive husband of whom the police were well aware. (15)
>> 
>>      d. Los Angeles. USA Today reported that many of the people
>>      rushing to gun stores during the 1992 riots were "lifelong
>>      gun-control advocates, running to buy an item they thought they'd
>>      never need." Ironically, they were outraged to discover they had
>>      to wait 15 days to buy a gun for self-defense. (16)
>> 
>>      e. Virginia. In 1993, Marine Cpl. Rayna Ross bought a gun (in a
>>      non-waiting period state) and used it two days later to kill an
>>      attacker who was armed with a bayonet. (17) Had a 5-day waiting
>>      period been in effect, Ms. Ross would have been defenseless
>>      against the man who was stalking her.
>> 
>> 6. CCW licenses register gun owners -- and licensing can lead to
>> confiscation of firearms
>> 
>>      a. Step One: Registration -- In the mid-1960s officials in New
>>      York City began registering long guns. They promised they would
>>      never use such lists to take away firearms from honest citizens.
>>      But in 1991, the city banned (and soon began confiscating) many
>>      of those very guns. (18)
>> 
>>      b. Step Two: Confiscation -- In 1992, a New York city paper
>>      reported that, "Police raided the home of a Staten Island man who
>>      refused to comply with the city's tough ban on assault weapons,
>>      and seized an arsenal of firearms. . . . Spot checks are planned
>>      [for other homes]." (19)
>> 
>>      c. Foreign Countries -- Gun registration has led to confiscation
>>      in several countries, including Greece, Ireland, Jamaica and
>>      Bermuda. (20) And in an exhaustive study on this subject, Jews
>>      for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership has researched and
>>      translated several gun control laws from foreign countries. Their
>>      publication, Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" is the Key to Genocide,
>>      documents how gun control (and confiscation) has preceded the
>>      slaughter and genocide of millions of people in Turkey, the
>>      Soviet Union, Germany, China, Cambodia and others. (21)
>> 
>> 7 . Officials cannot license or register a constitutional right
>> 
>>      The Supreme Court held in Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965)
>>      that the First Amendment prevents the government from registering
>>      purchasers of magazines and newspapers -- even if such material
>>      is "communist political propaganda." (22)
>> 
>> 8. Citizens, even when untrained, show amazing accuracy and
>> self-restraint with firearms
>> 
>>      Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as
>>      police do every year (1,527 to 606). (23) And readers of Newsweek
>>      learned in 1993 that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings
>>      involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal.
>>      The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more
>>      than five times as high." (24)
>> 
>> ---------------------------------------
>> 1. David Kopel, "Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control,"
>> [Cato Institute] Policy Analysis 109 (July 11, 1988): 25-26. 2.
>> Supreme Court of Indiana, Kellogg v. City of Gary, 1990. 3. Joseph
>> McNamara, Safe & Sane, (1984): 74. 4. Peter Finn, "FBI Stops Checking
>> Va. Gun Applicants," The Washington Post, 12 July 1996. 5. In a court
>> hearing to have the license returned, the judge in the case admitted
>> that the individual did not meet the criteria for a revocation (i.e.,
>> he had never engaged in acts of violence or made threats of violence)
>> but agreed to uphold the revocation anyway. The justification the
>> judge gave was that the abortion issue was "a volatile one" and people
>> involved in it should not be allowed to carry guns. A friend of the
>> "defendant" made a routine inquiry to the sheriff's department to see
>> if any abortion doctors or activists had their licenses revoked. By
>> Oregon law this is public information. He was immediately visited by
>> four FBI agents who demanded to know the reason for the request.
>> Statement by Kevin Starrett, Oregon Representative for Gun Owners of
>> America, August 21, 1995. 6. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia
>> are just three examples where local newspapers have printed the names
>> of concealed carry permit holders. 7. Kopel, "Trust the People," at
>> 26. 8. U.S. News & World Report, (17 January 1994): 8. 9. Morgan
>> Quitno Press, Crime State Rankings 1996, at iv. 10. John R. Lott, Jr.
>> and David B. Mustard, "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed
>> Handguns," University of Chicago, (13 July 1996). See also Lott, Jr.,
>> "More Guns, Less Violent Crime," The Wall Street Journal (28 August
>> 1996). 11. See supra note 9. 12. Any waiting period -- whether the
>> wait to buy a gun, or the wait to get a carry permit -- can have
>> disastrous consequences. While most of the examples listed here relate
>> to gun purchase waiting periods, the principle is the same. Waiting
>> periods put one's rights on hold; and when one is in immediate danger,
>> the result can be death. 13. Senate, "Handgun Violence," at 107,
>> citing Novae Russkae Slovo, Vol. LXXII, No. 26.291, (6 Nov. 1983). 14.
>> Stephen Singular, Talked to Death: The Murder of Alan Berg and the
>> Rise of the Neo-Nazis, (1987): 137-138. Since he was shot from behind,
>> one could possibly argue that a gun might not have helped him. Of
>> course, had Berg received a carry permit, one can never be sure if his
>> being armed would have served as a deterrent to the killer, who had
>> stalked him for some time. Regardless, the point is that he should
>> have been able to defend himself. 15. Congressional Record, 8 May
>> 1991, pp. H 2859, H 2862. 16. Jonathan T. Lovitt, "Survival for the
>> armed," USA Today, 4 May 1992. 17. Wall Street Journal, 3 March 1994
>> at A10. 18. On August 16, 1991, New York City Mayor David Dinkins
>> signed Local Law 78 which banned the possession and sale of certain
>> rifles and shotguns. 19. John Marzulli, "Weapons ban defied: S.I. man,
>> arsenal seized," Daily News, 5 September 1992. 20. David Kopel, "Trust
>> the People: The Case Against Gun Control," [Cato Institute] Policy
>> Analysis 109 (July 11, 1988):25. 21. Jay Simkin, Aaron Zelman and Alan
>> M. Rice, Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" is the Key to Genocide,
>> (Milwaukee: Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, 1994).
>> 22. Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 85 S. Ct. 1493, 14 L.
>> Ed. 2d 398 (1965). 23. Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in
>> America, (1991):111-116, 148. 24. George F. Will, "Are We 'a Nation of
>> Cowards'?," Newsweek (15 November 1993):93.
>> 
>> ****************************************************************
>> Chris W. Stark
>> Gun Owners of America - Texas Representative
>> e-mail: gunowner@onramp.net
>> 
>> Visit our Web Page at: http://rampages.onramp.net/~gunowner
>> 
>> ****************************************************************
>>    "No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share
>> of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic
>> and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans
>> who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.
>> ....the 63% of the German people who expressed their opposition
>> to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against
>> a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them
>> unless they united, HOWEVER TEMPORARY, to stamp it out."
>> 
>>  -William L. Shirer, author of "The rise and fall of the Third Reich"
>>   p.259
>> .....they who do not learn from History are DOOMED to repeat it!!
>>  >>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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