“At least 72 employees at the Department of Homeland Security are listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to a Democratic lawmaker.” [Adam Kredo, Free Beacon] Critics, including the ACLU, have complained that the list inadvertently sweeps in large numbers of innocent persons who are given no legal right to contest their inclusion.
More:”My Fellow Liberals, Don’t Support Obama’s Terror Watch List Gun Ban” [Cathy Gellis, The Daily Beast]
David Kopel writes that “background check” laws pushed by the Bloomberg anti-gun campaign in states like Colorado and Washington have weird effects, whether intended is not entirely clear, on such topics as safe storage of firearms, the sharing of firearms during informal target shooting, and the legality of handgun possession by 18-21 year olds. This might be a sub-instance of a related problem noted by Glenn Reynolds at USA Today: “Gun-control laws have a tendency of turning into criminals peaceable citizens whom the state has no reason to have on its radar.”
Recommended by Eugene Volokh, the National Constitution Center’s “Interactive Constitution“. Its description:
On this site, constitutional experts interact with each other to explore the Constitution’s history and what it means today. For each provision of the Constitution, scholars of different perspectives discuss what they agree upon, and what they disagree about. These experts were selected with the guidance of leaders of two prominent constitutional law organizations — The American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society.
The writers include many familiar names and every contribution I’ve read so far, on both sides of questions, has been of high quality.
The topic came up again at Tuesday’s Democratic debate, and even if Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) hesitated to defend his vote in favor of the gun-lawsuit-curbing Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), I’m happy to defend it for him at Cato. More: David Freddoso, Washington Examiner, Adam Lidgett, International Business Times. Earlier on PLCAA and Hillary Clinton last week and more generally on the law.
P.S. Although some critics of PLCAA describe it as if it were some sort of absolute and across-the-board bar to liability, the law in fact is carefully crafted to permit liability across a range of situations. Taking advantage of one of those exceptions, plaintiffs just obtained a $6 million verdict against a Wisconsin gun dealer that they argued had winked at evidence that a customer was really a “straw buyer” purchasing a firearm for someone else. More: Jacob Sullum; George Leef/Forbes.
“Stop and frisk” in New York City has a Right valence; “getting guns off the streets,” a Left. But what if in practice they mostly amounted to the same thing?
The gun-control Brady Center put a grieving family up to a meritless suit over the Aurora, Colo. theater shooting. Will it leave them high and dry now, following a predictable award of court costs? [Bearing Arms, Reuters Legal Solutions Blog, Knoxville News, earlier]
“Kentucky man shoots down drone hovering over his backyard” [Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica]
A Chicago gun-control group sues suburbs claiming that firearm sales in shops there display “disparate impact” in violation of discrimination law. [The Trace, WTTW]