Neal Knox - The Gun Rights War
July 4, 2009 marks the 25th
anniversary of The Firearms Coalition and our bi-monthly newsletter The Hard Corps Report. It also marks the release of a long overdue
book, Neal Knox - The Gun Rights War. Dad always wanted to write a history of the gun
rights movement and it turns out that he had already done so in his columns and
articles while the history was being made.
Now, thanks to a lot of hard work by my brother Chris, it is finally
about to be released. (Order Here!)
As we prepare for the book's July
4 debut, we thought it appropriate to reprint the story of Neal Knox's personal
rights epiphany. Chris chose this story
as the prologue to the book and we offer it now to remind us all just what
we're fighting for.
The Belgian Corporal
by Neal Knox
In
the summer of 1955, I was a young Texas National Guard sergeant on active duty
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. A corporal
in my squad was a Belgian-American named Charles DeNaer. An old man as far as most of us were
concerned, being well over thirty, Charley commanded a certain amount of our
respect, for not only was he older than the rest of us, he had lived in Belgium
when the Germans rolled across the low countries by-passing the Maginot Line on
their way into France. He had seen
war.
One
soft Oklahoma afternoon, sitting on a bunk in the half-light of an
old wooden barracks, he told me his story... Read the Story
Harold Fish Conviction Overturned
AZ Legislature Passes Retroactive Self-Defense Law
The Arizona Court of Appeals has thrown out the conviction of
Harold Fish and chastised the judge who tried the case. Fish was the
retired school teacher who shot a man who charged at him swinging his
arms and yelling threats. Fish was convicted of Second Degree Murder
in 2006 and has spent the intervening three years in an Arizona State
Prison. The Appeals Court ruled that Fish should have been allowed to
introduce evidence of his attacker's violent past and the vicious
histories of the man's dogs which triggered the tragic event.
The Arizona State Legislature passed a law shifting the burden of
proof in self-defense cases from the defense to the prosecution, but
the judge tried the case under Arizona's previous law which required
the defense to prove that the defendant acted in self-defense. This
week the Arizona Legislature passed another bill clarifying that the
new self-defense standard should have been applied to the Fish case.
News of both the Appeals Court decision and the Legislature's
action broke within 24 hours of each other on Tuesday and Wednesday,
June 30 - July 1, 2009. The news means that at the very least Fish
should receive a new trial and could be set free without a trial if the
Coconino County Prosecutor's Office chooses not to retry the case. It
is possible that the State Attorney General's Office could appeal the
Appeals Court decision to the State Supreme Court, but that is not
considered likely by most observers. If the case goes to a new trial,
it is likely that it would be tried under the newer proof standards
even without the Legislatures new bill, but that is not guaranteed
unless the Governor signs the pending bill; something her predecessor,
now Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, vetoed in 2007.
Meanwhile, Harold Fish remains in prison as he waits for the
Attorney General and County Prosecutor to decide how they are going to
proceed - which they probably won't do until well after the
Independence Day holiday. Something Fish supporters say is sadly
ironic.
Politics is Simply Complicated
The surprise introduction and passage of a
pro-rights amendment attached to a credit card bill this spring could be a
hopeful sign of things to come. In a
beautiful bit of political surgery, Dr. Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma
put forward an amendment repealing the troubling National Parks firearms
ban. Coburn's amendment was far superior
to the new regulations adopted by the NPS toward the end of last year. Those minor improvements were short-lived
though as they were halted by an activist judge worried about the
"environmental impact" of law-abiding park visitors possibly possessing
guns. Under the Coburn Amendment,
National Parks and Federal Wildlife Refuges assimilate the firearms laws of
their host states just as National Forest and BLM units have done without
serious problems for decades. Once
Senator Coburn was able to introduce the amendment, there was little opponents
could do to stop it because too many of their colleagues are from districts
full of GunVoters and Senators didn't want to go on record supporting any gun
ban. The bill passed with Senator
Coburn's amendment by a vote of 90 to 5.
Since the underlying credit card legislation
was being strongly supported by the White House, the anti-rights leadership in
the House couldn't just bottle it up.
The die-hard anti-rights members who wanted to vote for the credit card
legislation convinced Pelosi and company to offer the amended bill up in two
separate votes, one for the main bill and one for the amendment. That was probably a mistake because the
amendment passed by a vote of 279 to 147 so now many of those 147 are going to
have some explaining to do to GunVoters back home. (Read theArticle )
The ATF Software Company?
About a year ago, James LaMonte, founder
and Chief Executive Officer of Coloseum software, was ready to release an
innovative software package. He had a
client in Idaho, Red's Trading
Post, who wanted to install the software to reduce the number of minor errors
on 4473's and other federally mandated records.
But ATF rejected the variance request and asked for more information
about the software. They issued conflicting
opinions, and generally held up the process for several months before finally
requesting a meeting with LaMonte.
If ATF wouldn't approve dealers to
use the software, Coloseum's run would be a short one so LaMonte agreed to the
meeting. When they met, ATF assured
LaMonte that they were not working with any other software developers and that
any information he shared about his program would be held in the strictest
confidence. They said they needed more
detailed information before they could grant the requested waiver to Red's or
any other dealer wishing to use Coloseum's products.
An ATF employee was assigned as
liaison between ATF and Coloseum, studying Coloseum's software, asking lots of
questions, and implying that open cooperation would lead to ATF support for
Coloseum's products. After several weeks
of this, ATF called another meeting with Coloseum to discuss the release of the
software. At that meeting, LaMonte
learned that ATF wasn't working with other companies, they were developing
their own software for filling out 4473's and the ATF employee who had been
studying Coloseum's software was the head of ATF's development team... Read the Story
Third-World Policing in Nation's Capital
(June 11, 2009) News reports were
somewhat conflicted, but information suggests that officers of the federal Park
Police, members of a special, FBI managed, "Safe Streets" taskforce, responded
to a report of a "man with a gun," in the Trinidad
neighborhood of the District of Columbia
at about 8:30 on a recent Monday
evening. Witnesses say that the suspect ran
into an alley where the plain clothes officers caught him, but a moment later
he broke free and tried to run, at which point the officers opened fire,
mortally wounding the fleeing suspect in the back. A gun was found at the scene.
This is the
same neighborhood in DC where Metro Police have been setting up roadblocks
requiring people to prove residency or a "valid reason" before entering the
neighborhood.
It seems
that local and federal authorities think they're operating in a third-world
country rather than the nation's capital... Read the Story
The Second Amendment in the Courts
There have been three important Appeals
Court decisions on the Second Amendment since the
beginning of the year and together they set the stage for another major
decision from the Supreme Court.
When the Court decided Heller last
June, they did not address the issue of "incorporation," the application of the
amendment to state and local governments.
While most of us think it's just common sense that the rights expressed
in the Bill of Rights are fundamental and universal, legal doctrine says
otherwise. Basically, a constitutional
right is only recognized by the federal government until it is specifically "incorporated"
by the Supreme Court. In the three Second
Amendment cases decided this year by Appeals courts, two rejected incorporation
of the amendment while one supported incorporation. This means that the Federal Appeals Court
Circuits are split on this issue and that makes it much more likely that the
Supreme Court will agree to review one or more of these cases and make a ruling
as to whether the Second Amendment protects your rights from state and local
laws and regulations.
Getting this question in front of
the Supreme Court was the objective of the many lawsuits filed around the
country by NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation in the wake of the Heller
decision. In Heller, the Justices
commented on incorporation and the precedents which restrict the Second
Amendment's effect to only the federal government. Some read those comments as an invitation to
the lower courts to send up a case that the Court can use to incorporate the
Second Amendment. Let's hope that's
really what the Court was saying.
The NRA has already filed a request
for Supreme Court review of their Chicago
case. It is expected that the Court will
announce their decision on whether to hear the case by early fall and a
decision could come down by this time next year.
Attention Ranges and Clubs:
A Call to Arms!
(May 20, 2009) On Independence Day 2009 we will celebrate
several things in addition to celebration of the 233rd anniversary of the
signing of the Declaration of Independence, we at The Firearms Coalition will
be celebrating our 25th anniversary as an organization. We'll mark the occasion with the release of the
new book The Gun Rights War, a
compilation by my brother Chris of highlights from Neal Knox's extensive writings
stretching from 1966 to 2000.
July 4 also marks the inauguration
of a new event, National Training Week. National
Training Week is an opportunity for experienced shooters and gunowners to share
their knowledge with newcomers. During the
week between July 4 and July 11, ranges and gun clubs all over the country will
host events and offer special deals geared to new shooters... Read more here
| Keywords : DHS, militia, rightwing, extremist, federal, SPLC, MIAC, terrorist, domestic terrorist, military, veterans, Tom Gresham, Jeff Knox, Gun Talk, GunTalk |
|
|
|
