Pirate's Cove

Something about constitutionality

(Bloomberg) U.S. President Barack Obama’s expansion of background checks for would-be gun buyers is being challenged in a lawsuit by a political activist who claims the changes violate the Constitution and the federal rule-making process. (snip)

“It is clearly arbitrary and capricious for the defendants, each and every one of them, to now suddenly adopt and implement a new and different interpretation for no other reason than the political preferences of temporary occupants of elected office,” attorney Larry Klayman said in a complaint filed at the U.S. court in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Klayman, the founder of the political watchdog group Freedom Watch, claims the background-check initiative violates the constitution’s Second Amendment, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said guarantees an individual’s right to bear arms for self-defense.

We’ll see where this goes. Of course, I still wonder whether Obama has some sort of financial stake in gun companies, because his constant anti-gun drumbeat has produced a record number of background checks in 2015.

Related, South Carolina state representative Mike Pitts pitched an idea where journalists would have to register, and, SC would keep a “responsible journalists list”, and create criteria which would determine what qualifies a person as a journalist. There would be penalties for violation. This caused a meltdown among the leftist media, none more than the Washington Post’s Callum Borchers

My visceral reaction isn’t printable but can be summarized thusly: This is a naked attack on the First Amendment — you know, the one that says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” I realize we’re talking about a state legislature here, not Congress, but we’re also talking about one of the nation’s founding principles.

That aside, this kind of law would be completely unworkable. Look, there’s plenty of media garbage out there, but everyone has a different definition of what garbage is. Does anyone want a bunch of self-interested government officials setting the standard? (snip)

Come to think of it, that’s really the great folly here. What Pitts is proposing isn’t just wrong; it simply can’t be done. There’s no stopping people from spreading the news in a digital society — certainly not with some outdated idea for a registry.

Borchers fell into Pitts’ trap, because, had Callum bothered to actually ask Pitts (which is a big failing regarding responsible journalism, as Ed Morrissey points out), he might have learned something

Pitts told The Post and Courier his bill is not a reaction to any news story featuring him and that he is “not a press hater.” Rather, it’s to stimulate discussion over how he sees Second Amendment rights being treated by the printed press and television news. He added that the bill is modeled directly after the “concealed weapons permitting law.”

“It strikes me as ironic that the first question is constitutionality from a press that has no problem demonizing firearms,” Pitts said. “With this statement I’m talking primarily about printed press and TV. The TV stations, the six o’clock news and the printed press has no qualms demonizing gun owners and gun ownership.”

Borchers’ entire screed makes a good case against gun registries, as was the point Pitts was trying to make.