In September of last year, Ryan Jerome, a jeweler from Indiana, traveled to New York with $15,000 of gold that he planned to sell to a refinery on Long Island. He checked a website about gun laws to make sure it was okay to bring his gun, for which he had a concealed carry permit. He interpreted the site as saying it was okay, so he took along the .45 caliber Ruger to protect himself and his gold. He and his girlfriend stayed in New York longer than they planned in order to ride out a dip in gold prices. One day they visited the Empire State Building to pass the time, where he asked a ticket seller what he should do with his gun and was directed to the security office to check the weapon. When he did that, however, security called the police, who charged him with illegal weapon possession and threw him in jail for two days before he was released on bail. He now faces 3 and 1/2 to 15 years in prison. The problem? Jerome’s Indiana concealed carry permit was not valid in New York.
To punish a person who did not hurt or even endanger anyone, who took precautions to make sure he wasn’t breaking the law, and is a Marines veteran to boot, is clearly unjust. As his lawyer said, ”Ryan Jerome is neither a criminal nor someone with an illegal gun.”
Jerome’s supporters are trying to get Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance (whom you may remember from the DSK case) to dismiss the charges. Visit their Facebook page to learn more and support him.
The TSA has gotten some (deserved) bad publicity in the past few days due to a couple of very questionable airport security decisions.
On Thursday, a teenage girl was stopped and ordered to check her purse because it had a gun design on it:
“A teenage girl’s sense of style got her in trouble at the airport.
Vanessa Gibbs, 17, claims the Transportation Security Administration stopped her at the security gate because of the design of a gun on her handbag.”
The agents said that it could be considered a replica weapon, which have been banned on airplanes under federal law since 2002. It’s bad enough for governments to trample on people’s right to bear arms…but now they ban gun designs, too? Ridiculous.
In somewhat related news, an elderly lady is claiming that TSA agents strip searched her at JFK Airport in New York:
“An 85-year-old woman said Saturday that she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at an airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner, allegations that transportation security officials denied.
Lenore Zimmerman said she was taken to a private room and made to take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening because she worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one 2 1/2 hours later, she said.”
It’s worthwhile to point out that the TSA is denying these allegations…but if they are true, then this is just another example of security gone way too far, at the expense of liberty.
Last week federal judge Marcia Cooke overturned the Firearms Owners’ Privacy Act, a Florida law restricting doctors from asking people about guns unless there is a compelling medical reason.
The debate over this law involves an interesting conflict between the First and Second Amendments. The founding philosophy of America (and one that I strongly believe in) is that people have the right to live their lives however they please, as long as they don’t interfere with anyone else’s right to do the same. The right to bear arms is part of this and is specifically protected in the Bill of Rights, and so is freedom of speech. One person’s right to free speech should only end when another person’s liberty begins. But where exactly do you draw the line?
In my opinion, speech designed to pressure another person into acting as you want them to violates that person’s right to live their life as they please. Doctors, motivated by the desire to make people healthier, are one of the biggest culprits of this. When doctors ask people questions, or tell them what to eat, how much to exercise, or what medical tests to have, they are not using physical force, and people are not obligated by law to comply. But I still believe that this is coercive and therefore should not be protected by the First Amendment. Due to doctors’ elevated status in our society, it is difficult, if not impossible, especially for shy people, to refuse to answer a doctor’s questions or to decline medical procedures that a doctor firmly instructs them to have. Doctors need to treat their patients more like customers, only performing the medical procedures that the customers indicate they want and only giving advice when it is asked for. This might sound like a radical proposition, but a customer’s gun ownership is not a doctor’s business, nor are their eating habits, exercise, emotional state, sex life, drug use, or really any aspect of their life. What we need are more laws restricting doctors, however well-intentioned, from using their authority to pressure people into giving up their privacy rights or their freedom to live as they choose.
The Firearms Owners’ Privacy Act doesn’t even go as far as the laws that I would support – it still allows doctors to ask about guns if there is a compelling medical reason, and it doesn’t outright ban such questions but merely says that doctors “should” refrain. It was wrong to overturn this law. Florida Governor Rick Scott is appealing the decision, and I hope he prevails.
Clint Cornelius, 33, was sentenced to a year in jail today. His crime? Parking his car, with guns and ammunition inside, at Mount Holyoke College.
He was initially charged in 2007 with three counts of possession of a firearm without a license, six counts of possession of a large-capacity firearm, and possession of ammunition without a license. A student had seen the guns in the car and, even though they were not hurting anyone and are supposed to be protected by the Second Amendment, decided to alert campus police. The officers then searched his car. He and his lawyer challenged the search and sought the dismissal of the charges because Cornelius,who had recently moved to Massachusetts from Georgia, should have had 60 days to obtain firearms permits, but the Supreme Judicial Court rejected these arguments.
He agreed to plead guilty to the ammunition charge, and his lawyer and the prosecutor agreed to a sentence of one year in jail. The judge said that the sentence “causes me some pain,” and I agree with him. In fact, I would go so far as to say that sentencing Cornelius to jail is an injustice. Nothing that he did was the least bit immoral or violated anyone’s rights. There was no evidence that he planned to use the guns to cause anyone harm. To investigate, prosecute, and imprison him for having guns in his car is an utter waste of law enforcement resources, causes suffering to an innocent man, and benefits no one. Clint Cornelius did nothing wrong and deserves to be free.
…is opinions like those expressed in this letter to the editor, which appeared in today’s Boston Globe:
“GREGORY BARISON’S letter suggesting that a responsible civilian gunner might have halted the slaughter in Norway is exactly, totally the wrong answer…Norwegian police are not normally armed; they should be to protect the public. Norwegian civilians are not armed and should not be. American civilians should not be armed, either. The credo we should seek to adopt is ‘arm the police, not the public;’ the irresponsible armed public is where the thousands of annual gun deaths in the US come from. Let’s grow up.”
Every statement in this letter is completely wrong. A state where the police are armed and the people are not is a state where the people are powerless to fight back if the government attempts to violate their rights, which, if this hypothetical government is anything like a typical government in today’s world, is a certainty. Additionally, it does not violate the rights of anyone for a person to be armed; therefore, no one has the right to say that other people “should not be armed.” It is each person’s decision whether to be armed or not. Personally, the more civilians that are armed, the safer and more free I would feel.
Also, I dislike when people write or say things like “let’s grow up,” because a person’s beliefs have nothing to do with their age. But if being grown up means calling for one’s own means of self-defense against government aggression to be taken away, I am proud to be childish and immature.
