NEWSGUN CONTROL

Brian Aitken will be spending New Year's Day with his family this year, a surprise to him and his family alike as they expected him to spend the next several holiday seasons behind bars. His release came last Tuesday after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) announced he would be commuting Aitken’s seven year prison sentence on gun charges. Spurred by activists on the left and gun rights advocates on the right, Christie took a noble step and exercised his power in a manner not seen very often these days.

Aitken’s case was one of confusion and misunderstanding. He had recently moved to New Jersey from Colorado and was transporting his small gun collection from his parent’s house to his own. The guns were locked and unloaded in the trunk of his car. But Aitken didn’t have a carry permit, as required by New Jersey statutes. So despite good intentions, he was arrested.

Aitken had just left his parents house, making some despondent comments to his mother on his way out. His ex-wife had denied him a visit with his son and he was upset. His mother, being a typical mom and also a mental health worker, was worried and called police as a precautionary measure. At the direction of the police, Aitken turned his car around and returned to his mother’s home. It was when he got there that they searched his vehicle and found his guns.

Congratulations, handgun fans. States, cities and other localities are now constitutionally barred from protecting their citizens with common-sense gun regulations, including banning handguns in crowded metro areas wracked by gun violence.

Today, in McDonald v. Chicago, the most conservative elements of the Roberts Court banded together to "incorporate" the Second Amendment, meaning that the right to bear arms now trumps the ability of local government to protect local residents from such weapons.

As interpreted in the 2008 D.C. v. Heller opinion, the Second Amendment provides individuals the right to keep and bear arms. It was the first time in American history that the Second Amendment had been applied as an individual right, and a shocking ruling for the few that expected intellectual honesty and consistency from the originalism- and textualism-obsessed wing of the court.

The Supreme Court's decision in McDonald is no surprise for Court-watchers. The ruling marks the latest triumph for conservative judicial philosophy struck by the five most reactionary justices. And though today marks just the official announcement of a widely predicted result, there's no doubting that McDonald is a landmark decision.

If you think that states and cities should be hog-tied in the face of gun violence, then Monday might just be your lucky day.

Just one criminal justice case remains on the Supreme Court's docket this year, and it'll be a blockbuster. In McDonald v. Chicago, the justices are set to announce their first gun rights decision since the landmark 2008 decision that created an individual right to bear arms.

The Court's 2008 decision in Heller v. D.C. recognized, for the first time in our Constitution's history, that the right to bear arms applies to individuals rather than "a well regulated militia," as stated in the Amendment. Since that decision dealt with gun regulations in the federal District of Columbia, however, the question remained as to whether the Second Amendment should be "incorporated" — legalese for "applied against state and local laws."

A decision in McDonald is anticipated on the final day of the Supreme Court's term this Monday. After the justices announce their decision — likely incorporating the Second Amendment — expect local gun regulations to fall left and right in a flood of litigation from coast to coast.

To put it bluntly, one of the only things Americans need less than gun deregulation is another hole in the head. Thanks to House Democrats, we may receive more of both.

Under pressure from the gun-rights lobby, House Democrats might exempt the National Rifle Association from pending campaign finance legislation. As you might recall, earlier this year, the Supreme Court upended 100 years of campaign finance restrictions, determining for the first time in the 223-year history of our Constitution that corporations are equivalent to human beings under the First Amendment. It was a startling chapter in the Roberts Court's embrace of conservative judicial activism — one that disgusted the American public and earned a central role in coverage of President Obama's second State of the Union address.

Since that remarkable demonstration of judicial prerogative, Democrats have included campaign finance reform among the planks in a populist platform that they hope will mitigate losses in the mid-term elections. That political calculus, however, is giving way to pressures from the NRA.

While conservative politics undergoes an identity crisis, with moderates losing out to the looniest elements of the hardcore right, Democrats on Capitol Hill seem bent on sacrificing their principles to maintain the broad tent that brought them electoral landslides in 2006 and 2008. The latest lamb sent to the slaughter? Common-sense gun regulation.

There are some things you wouldn't want a convicted felon to get a hold of — keys to the back door, bank account information, deadly weapons. While banks are getting better and better at protecting your accounts — even I have some trouble remembering if my site key is a teddy bear or a blue heron — the federal government is still allowing convicted felons to buy guns.

Since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, it's been illegal for a convicted felon to possess a firearm. The next logical legislative step is to make it illegal for convicted felons to buy guns, which the federal government did. Well, partly did. It required arms dealers to register with the government and conduct background checks. But what they left out were the private sales at gun shows, meaning that anyone — regardless of criminal history or mental condition — can go in, find a private seller and walk away with a gun.

Watch this video from ABC to get a sense of how easy it is. They accompanied the brother of one of the girls slain at Virginia Tech to a gun show, where he bought a trunk-load of guns. When the murdered girl's brother goes to buy a semi-automatic assault weapon, he was told, "Cash is all you need."

According to Sam Paredes, Gun Owners of California's executive director, the mother in Johnny Cash's song "Don't Bring Your Guns to Town" was wrong. Do bring your guns to town. Bring them to work, out for a coffee, to walk the dog. Bring them everywhere. Dangle them out in plain sight to make sure everyone knows you have one.

Paredes was talking to KTVU about a bill San Diego Democratic Assemblywoman Lori Saldana is sponsoring to end the insane situation in which gun owners can legally brandish guns as they walk down the street. If the bill is successful, California would join the District of Columbia and only seven other states that prohibit the "open carry" of firearms.

That fact comes courtesy of opencarry.org, a "pro-gun Internet community focused on the right to openly carry properly holstered handguns in daily American life." Virginia founders John Pierce and Mike Stollenwerk say they started the community after the Washington Post ran a "series of very scathing articles and editorials attacking the practice of open carry." (The 2004 article they link to is a balanced explanation of how people openly carrying guns in Virginia were confusing police and startling community members.)

Opencarry.org says it is out there to protect the right to openly bear arms for every law-abiding American citizen who wants to have a firearm holstered to their hip while they perform mundane tasks. Yes, I wasn't kidding. We are talking about walking the dog, driving a car or having coffee at Starbucks with a gun.

Notice something about those police? That's right, they don't have guns. Unlike American police, most Japanese cops don't have guns, tasers or other lethal weapons. (These are Japanese police and the picture was taken in Japan — the McDonald's pictured is deceptive.)

Returning from a long trip always brings revelations about home. Last month as I journeyed back from Japan, the realization was that America is inundated with, addicted to and plagued by guns.

By and large, the Japanese do not own, use, murder with, shoot drunkenly, or obsess about guns. The family I was visiting was shocked when I explained how easy it was to obtain a shotgun, handgun or (in some states) even a machine gun.

Japan has incredibly low crime rates and strict, straight-forward weapons regulations: "No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords." Lo and behold, Japan has not only incredibly low gun homicides, but crime rates in general.

Lack of crime is a little more complicated than a simple correlation to firearm ownership (in a crowded bar late one night in Tokyo, I saw a woman leave her entire wallet open, stuffed with cash and credit cards, on a table while she went out for a smoke). But statistics on gun death in the two countries tell a pretty unambiguous tale. Check out this statistic from the Global Gun Epidemic, a 2006 study on international gun use. In 2001, there were 3.8 homicides with a firearm for every 100,000 people in the U.S. During the course of a year in Japan? .02 homicides per 100,000. The shocking disparity continues when you compare muggings, robbery with a firearm and general firearm possession.

Sure, the argument can be made that U.S. criminals have firearms and so U.S. police need to have them as well. I'm not saying every police department should throw away their guns and immediately go out and buy "Japanese Law Enforcement: Self-Defense Techniques." At $27.95 it's much cheaper than even the flimsiest firearm! (Jokes aside, it wouldn't hurt for U.S. cops to brush up on non-violent ways to diffuse violent situations.). But there's no arguing against the fact that the U.S. would benefit immensely if we were to scale back the proliferation and use of guns by criminals and cops alike.

Information Unlimited, a "future technology" company out of Amherst, New Hampshire, sells some pretty wild gadgets. There are wand-shaped energy probes for those wishing to monitor the "E fields produced by electrical activity and other unknown anomalies" (as seen on paranormal research TV shows); 2,000-volt fish stunners for all of us too lazy to use a lure (check for legalities on use in your area!); and last, but not least, a modest selection of ion ray, magnetic, coil, and plasma thermal guns. (My personal favorite product is the microwave cannon — it reminds me of a childhood experiment with a potato.)

These toys aren't exactly designed for the average Discovery Channel watcher, and they aren't as harmless as sticking various foods into a household microwave, either. The adjustable ion ray gun, for example, "uses a variable duty cycle clocked oscillator driving a FET field effect transistor in turn switching into a resonant transformer. " Not 100% sure on what that means, but as they point out, if used incorrectly, ion ray guns "can be hazardous" and "induce electric shocks."

Sound like science fiction? Well it's not all as "Star Wars" as you might think. The U.S. military has been invested in laser weapon technology for decades. Just recently, the navy tested a new laser gun designed to destroy incoming cruise missiles. What happened to good old muzzleloaders?

Still, though, if you ask the federal government, these aren't weapons worthy of regulation. Why?

Lasers and magnets aren't what I think of when I hear the word gun or cannon

It doesn't take an advanced business degree to know how important it is to choose the correct sponsor for your product. The wrong person can sink an entire advertising campaign — look at Tiger Woods. Advertisers sometimes bank on the wrong person, but they usually try to start with the right one — someone who represents their product, someone appealing, someone who sells.

Taser International seems to have missed the business lesson. They've chosen Joe Arpaio, one of the country's most notoriously inhumane sheriffs, to promote their product.

I thought tasers were supposed to save lives, not be used to terrorize immigrants, torture prisoners and split up families. Joe Arpaio is a symbol of everything tasers shouldn't be used for. We've written about his crimes here on Change.org, but don't just take our word for it. Amnesty International and the ACLU have been documenting his misconduct and he's under a federal investigation to boot: not exactly a Mr. Clean.

Taser International knows his reputation full well — the voice-over in their advertisement calls him "the world's toughest sheriff." The montage pans through one of Arpaio's tent prison compounds, including a shot of prisoners wearing the emasculating pink clothing that are an often-criticized trademark of his jails.

Dick Heller just won't go away.

In the summer of 2008, Heller became the hero of Second Amendment advocates when the Supreme Court used D.C. v. Heller as a vehicle to create an individual right to handgun possession.

It was the first time ever in our Constitution's history that the Court used the Second Amendment to invalidate a law. But in unprecedented fashion, the conservatives reached across the supposed separation of branches into the land-of-the-legislature invalidating a democratically enacted law. Powered by Justice Antonin Scalia's brash pen, the Court's five-justice majority united to out-vote the four left-leaning justices.

The fact that the conservative justices effectively eviscerated the first 13 words of the 27-word Second Amendment, which limit the right to bear arms to "[a] well regulated militia," seemed not to bother conservatives, who are often so eager to shout out Judicial Activism! at even the scent of liberals "creating" rights. Nay, say the conservatives. It's only judicial activism when you do it!

But I digress.

Today, edging into the previously uncharted legal waters of individual gun rights, a federal judge upheld three of D.C.'s new gun regulations over Dick Heller's latest challenge. Granted: the gun regulations Heller challenged this time were about as uncontroversial as can be. Heller sought to strike down D.C.'s requirement that guns are registered, a ban on assault weapons and a prohibition on large-capacity bullet-feeding devices. That doesn't mean, though, that we shouldn't celebrate.