Daily Digest: Upholding Pennsylvania Law, Radical Empathy in New York, and Nothing New in New Jersey

Pennsylvania, where the law is still the law . . . Gun Bans: Court Reminds Local Governments They Lack Authority to Restrict Guns – “The court rejected the claim that the ordinance was within the authority of a municipality regulating the use of its own property. The underlying basis for the ordinance was the Township’s police power, not proprietary rights, because the ordinance imposed a criminal penalty and authorized officers to enforce the ordinance by removing and prosecuting violators. More generally, the UFA explicitly prohibited a township from regulating firearms “in any manner,” without an exemption that would authorize the township to make rules for its park property. The court also gave short shrift to the claim that the (Uniform Firearms Act) did not preempt a municipality’s regulation of unlawful firearm possession.”

Abbott says Obama-backed arms trade treaty could let U.N. police guns – “Greg Abbott warned in a recent tweet that President Barack Obama seeks Senate ratification of a treaty that could empower the United Nations to regulate guns. The Texas governor tweeted: “This Treaty by Obama could give the UN some authority to regulate guns. Tell the Senate to reject it.” Abbott further pointed to a Guns.com story stating, in part, that the Arms Trade Treaty, recently urged on the Senate by the lame-duck Democratic president, seeks to regulate the world’s annual exchange of $70 billion in conventional weaponry including tanks, helicopters and missiles.” January 20th can’t possibly get here soon enough.

An Experiment in Empathy – “Underwood, Tuft, and more than a dozen others on both sides of the gun debate — a hunter; two Baltimore cops; a criminal-court judge from New Orleans; a couple of high-schoolers who grew up in the ganglands of Chicago’s South Side — had agreed to meet face-to-face, tell each other their stories, and try to understand one another’s points of view, in an experiment in radical empathy organized by New York Magazine in partnership with a nonprofit group called Narrative 4.” Fake manufactured “news.”

Wait, this just doesn’t happen in the UK . . . Bus passenger blasted in head with shotgun while talking on phone ‘thought device had exploded in his hand’ – “A bus passenger suffered serious head injuries after a shotgun was fired at the vehicle. The man was travelling on the number 4 Diamond bus along Weston Street in Palfrey, Walsall, when it came under attack. He had been talking on his phone and initially thought his mobile had exploded by his ear and shattered the bus window.”

Gun confiscation prompts lawsuit – “A Yates County woman is suing the state claiming she should have had legal representation to defend her handgun license after police in 2015 impounded her guns following hospitalization for a night due to a cough syrup reaction. ‘No one facing federal and state disqualification from the ownership, use, and possession of firearms should represent themselves at a license hearing,’ Rochester-area lawyer Paloma Capanna said in a prepared statement about the suit she has filed on behalf of Donna McKay.” Civil rights violation is a feature of the SAFE Act, not a bug.

Christie’s gun gambit shot down, but the vulnerable need help – “The governor had unilaterally changed state gun regulations by expanding the types of people who could carry firearms in public in April, after his handpicked commission decided that the ‘justifiable need’ standard to pack heat was too restrictive. This three-man commission — comprised of Christie’s former legal counsel, his former assistant in the US Attorney’s office, and a law professor married to the governor’s ethics chief — changed the requirement to include ‘serious threats,’ which means anyone who walks out of their house in Camden or Newark could probably qualify for a carry permit. It was an intentionally vague amendment, so lawmakers stonewalled it Monday, using their authority to strike down any executive action that defies legislative intent.” Apparently unarmed New Jerseyans don’t qualify as “vulnerable” as far as nj.com is concerned.