On January 15th, 2013 New York State passed the SAFE Act without a single legislator reading the document first. The act modified a number of existing laws, expanding some and creating new penalties in others. And it created the most hostile environment to gun owners in the entire United States. Days after the act passed, James Tresmond filed a number of lawsuits challenging the newly expanded laws. TTAG had the chance to interview Mr. Tresmond and his son Max (a legal researcher) and get some inside information about the cases . . .
As Max said, “The SAFE Act is not really one law, and that’s what’s so difficult for people to understand. It came down like an omnibus bill.” While the SAFE Act was one bill, instead of creating a new section in the penal code it simply updated existing sections of the criminal procedure law, the penal law, the mental hygiene law and others.
The biggest of those changes is in the penal law, where the requirement was added for law abiding citizens to register their firearms with the police, and the new penalty for ownership of standard capacity magazines. According to James, “what it does is ban ‘large capacity ammunition feeding devices’ which are magazines that accept more than 10 rounds, and prohibits the sale of these, prohibits the sale or transfer of ‘assault rifles,’ and prohibits the sale of guns that hold in excess of seven rounds.”
The sticky wicket here is that while it would appear that the magazine capacity only applies to semi-automatic guns, in reality the prohibition on magazines that can accept more than seven rounds applies to every kind of firearm. “The problem with this law” according to Max “is that it is over broad, in so far as it outlaws the sale or transfer of commonly owned pump action shotguns.” That includes the bone-stock Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun, which has a permanently attached tube magazine that can accept more than seven 1.75 inch mini-shells. The ability to accept more than seven rounds means that the shotgun is now illegal for sale in New York State.
“The law also bans any such magazine that could be readily converted to accept more than 10 rounds, which is virtually any shotgun with a magazine extension tube [available for sale].” In fact, the term “readily converted” could be taken to include drop-in magazine conversion kits for the Remington 700, the most popular hunting rifle in the world.
Since the magazine ban is separate from the AWB, as such the pump action exemption doesn’t apply. “They say that the law wasn’t intended to affect pump action shotguns. It does.”
That’s their first angle of attack. The law restricts citizen’s ability to purchase commonly used and owned firearms, which is exactly the same central point as the Heller and McDonald decisions settled not too long ago. As Supreme Court Justice Scalia put it, common firearms cannot be banned. And the effect of both the New York “assault weapons” ban and the magazine capacity ban is that the most common firearms available on the market are in effect being banned by the State of New York.
Thanks to Heller and McDonald, the right to bear arms outside the confines of militia membership is an established fundamental right. So the idea that guns are only for militia members has once and for all been thrown out, thanks to the Supreme Court. But it also means that any law that infringes on the right to keep and bear arms needs to meet the requirements for “strict scrutiny” — namely that the law is narrowly defined, has a compelling government interest, and is the least restrictive means of meeting that government interest. And according to Tresmond, the law meets none of those requirements.
The good news for gun owners is that Tresmond isn’t just challenging the SAFE Act extension of the AWB, but the entire premise of the law. So, if all goes well, the Empire State will soon see a flood of flash suppressors and pistol grips right along with standard AR-15 rifles as sold everywhere else in the United States.
As for the magazine restriction, it looks like the 7 round prohibition is the Achilles heel of the whole thing. There’s a shortcut in the New York legal proceedings that allows the court to issue an injunction for laws that are arbitrary, and since no one in the entire world has done any research on magazine capacity and mass shootings (much less a cost benefit analysis for magazine size) the number they chose was indeed completely arbitrary. There’s no getting around that fact, and thanks to the 7 round limit it looks like the injunction on magazine restrictions (at least) is a done deal.
Going forward, the intent is to challenge the magazine restrictions based on the fact that the constitution requires that seizure of citizen’s property must either be compensated or be for the use of the state. Since the magazines are required to be either sold (not for the use of the state) or destroyed (not compensated), their taking meets none of those criteria.
That challenge is the one that has gotten all of the attention lately. The judge in their case ordered the State of New York to prove that the law is constitutional, and if unable the judge will issue an injunction to stop the police from acting on the law. Its the first step to getting the law completely thrown out.
The other major challenge they’re facing is the “assault weapon” registration requirement, and the way they’re going about challenging the law is actually pretty interesting.
“Historically, since 1968” says Max, “these registries have been unenforceable. The famous case, which was a landslide 7 to 1 decision, Haynes v. US, it declared that people who are in criminal possession of a firearm cannot be compelled to register their firearm because doing so amounts to self incrimination, which is a violation of their fifth amendment rights.
“What people have been asking on the internet is how this Haynes case relates to New York State. […] The first way is that the registry is unenforceable. People who do not register, they’re going to be breaking the law. If they break the law, then that will put them in possession of an unregistered firearm, which would be a crime under the penal law. The state cannot compel them to register the gun due to the fact that such a registration would constitute incrimination, which the Haynes decision held that a person cannot be compelled to do that because it would violate your fifth amendment rights on self incrimination.”
But what about an amnesty period? Surely if the state allows people to register their “assault weapons” without any ill effects like the NFA amnesty in 1968, and they refuse, then it should pass constitutional scrutiny, no? “The difference is in 1968 the gun control act was passed in response to the Haynes decision, and it did not compel those people who were already in possession of an NFA firearm to register their guns pursuant to the NFA. It created the registration at the point of manufacture. So, basically what happens here is New York State has no amnesty provision and we are litigating the law as it is and not as it might be.”
The argument that the registry is unenforceable is a compelling one, but there’s another facet to their case. Since the registry would create two classes of people (those who register and those who don’t) with no legal ill effects for either (as registration cannot be compulsory), those two classes of people have different levels of privacy. One class of people are on a government list that will probably be published like the Journal news in Westchester County did recently, and the other will remain private. That’s where they get into the equal protection argument, namely that the law forces an inequality of privacy on the population and therefore the lack of equality makes the law illegal. I’m not entirely sure if I understand that argument, but it sounded damn good on the phone.
James Tresmond sounds like a man who has everything under control, and everything going his way. His lawsuits are on solid legal ground, and slowly but surely working their way through the courts despite every attempt by the New York attorney general to derail the proceedings. And when he’s done, the SAFE Act will rightly be in tatters. But that’s not the end of the road for the Tresmonds. Their plan is to take their show on the road, challenging unconstitutional laws wherever they stand. And if their success so far in New York is any indication, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.
Remember a few years back when the media was having an aneurism squawking like headless chickens about terrorists buying .50 cal “anti-aircraft” sniper rifles and blasting planes out of the air from 5 miles away? Yeah…
One of the great things about flying with the Marines is that you can carry all sorts of knives, bayonets, pistols, rifles and light machine guns and no one tries to hijack the plane.
They’ve tightened up a bit. I remember in 2005 we flew into Shannon, Ireland and they hadn’t yet set up a screening checkpoint for getting off the plane into the terminal for us, so we all wandered about the terminal with our knives discretely tucked in our belts and pockets. We left the firearms on the plane under watch.
I went back through in 2011 and they had a new process to screen us before we went into the terminal. I suppose that’s okay, but it’s funny how no planes were hijacked or stores robbed by the military flying through before they did.
Bill, and all you gun owners:
You are the domestic terrorist enemy, according to them.
Face it. The die is cast.
The anti-gunners are doing everything they can to make sure all gun owners are vilified. Even the cadets at West Point are being taught this.
http://wr2a.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/the-ctc-at-west-point-you-domestic-terrorist-support-constitution/
Long Live the Republic, indeed. I fear the worst is yet to come, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. But I hope for peace, prosperity, and the healing of our Nation.
Got a Mosin M44 in the LGS here for around $200 I think. Was still there Wed anyways.
Got 3 revolvers. Love them all. Right next to my 91/30!!!! And my lovable little 1911.
Why does Mr. Junkyard Dog record his videos while driving? Is that his schtick? Or maybe he lives in LA or NoVA and needs something to do during his 90-minute commute?
.308? Get a FAL. Much better than an AR platform. (It beat the original AR-10 and M-14 in trials multiple times.) Sub MOA accuracy, Better durability, More reliable, adjustable gas system, less expensive for a high end FAL than a high end AR-10. During the .308 era of NATO arms the FAL was used by 91 allied countries. DSA arms is built with the original STG-58 tooling and is probably the best FAL made today. Another system to look at would be the Robison XCR system which has evolved from the Stoner 63 & 64 systems. It incorporates the best features of the AR & FAL systems without the drawbacks from either.
Muslim to flight attendant, “OK, where do I put my shite”?
He’s the man! The only thing I take issue with is 150LB women… jeesh. 🙂
I own a small Pink .22 rifle I use to train small girls. It is a very effective way to make young girls feel comfortable shooting a gun for the first time.
For a long time I have been wanting to get a pink .38 spl from Charter Arms. The women will like it… plus I get to piss off more anti-gunners.
Another day, another coward trying to shirk off personal responsibility to the nanny state. If your kid’s stupid enough to mistake a real gun for a toy gun, that’s a failing of you, the parent. Maybe if you had the guts to teach your kids about guns rather than plunk your fat can in front of Idol while public schools warped their minds, this wouldn’t be an issue for you.
“Shellshock”: How Post-Traumatic Stress Became a Disease
When people have suffered a violent or horrifying experience, the trauma can follow them around for years — and we call that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). From soldiers to accident victims to rape survivors, tons of people have found themselves haunted by their terrible experiences.
But PTSD didn’t enter our vocabulary until 1980, when it was added to the DSM-III. Before that, there were many terms for the condition, and many people wrote about it, including Dickens and Shakespeare. How did people describe PTSD before 1980, and how did it come to be recognized as a syndrome, separate from grief or regular depression? Here’s the secret history of trauma and recovery.
Top image: World War I soldier receives treatment from the “Bergonic chair for giving general electric treatment for psychological effect, in psycho-neurotic cases.” Via Otis Archive/Flickr.
——————————————————————————–
Early reports
Many ancient religious texts talk about the terrible aftermath of trauma — including the Book of Job, in which Job appears to be suffering from mental disturbance after his horrible experiences. And the Mahabharata describes the combat-related stress of warriors in the Mahabharat War.
The Greek historian Herotodus writes a lot about PTSD, according to a presentation by Mylea Charvat to the Veterans Administration. One soldier, fighting in the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, reportedly went blind after the man standing next to him was killed, even though the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” Also, Herotodus records that the Spartan leader Leonidas — yes, the guy from 300 — dismissed his men from combat because he realized they were mentally exhausted from too much fighting.
Also, some experts think the Iliad is describing PTSD when Homer says Ajax went mad under Athena’s spell, slaughtering a herd of sheep that he thought were the enemy, and then killing himself.
Shakespeare writes a pretty dead-on description of PTSD in Henry IV Part 2, as Michael R. Trimble points out in Trauma and its Wake Vol. 1. Lady Percy observes Harry Percy having terrible nightmares in which he murmurs “tale of iron wars,” and talks to his “bounding steed.” And when he’s awake, Harry is like a ghost. She says to him:
Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
There’s also that speech in Macbeth, where he asks, “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased/Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?”
Likewise, Trimble notes, Samuel Pepys describes his trauma after the Great Fire of London, which left him with “dreams of the fire and the falling down of houses.” He had a hard time sleeping due to his “great terrors of fire,” and actually considered suicide.
Charles Dickens writes about being “curiously weak… as if I were recovering from a long illness,” after a traumatizing railway accident in which the front of the train plunged off a bridge under repair and 10 people died, with another 49 injured. Dickens wrote in letters to people: “I begin to feel it more in my head. I sleep well and eat well; but I write half a dozen notes, and turn faint and sick… I am getting right, though still low in pulse and very nervous.” Dickens also writes about being unable to travel by rail, because he keeps getting the feeling that the train carriage is tipping over on one side, which is “inexpressibly distressing.” Dickens was never as prolific after this incident, and he died on the fifth anniversary of the train crash.
But it’s also true that PTSD wasn’t fully recognized until around 100 years ago — and there are a few factors, including: 1) the rise of modern psychology, 2) modern warfare, with all of its huge explosions and ever-more-efficient killing machines, and 3) the rise of things like worker’s compensation and lawsuits, making people more likely to report when they’ve been traumatized after an incident. So what did people call this condition in the past?
——————————————————————————–
Many Names
According to psychologist Edward Tick, PTSD has had more than 80 names over the years. Here are just some of them:
Nostalgia This is the diagnosis given to Swiss soldiers in 1678 by Dr. Johannes Hofer. In 1761, Austrian physician Josef Leopold Auenbrugger wrote about the widely diagnosed condition of nostalgia in his book Inventum Novum, writing that soldiers “become sad, taciturn, listless, solitary, musing, full of sighs and moans. Finally, these cease to pay attention and become indifferent to everything which the maintenance of life requires of them. This disease is called nostalgia.” French physicians in the Napoleonic wars believed soldiers were more likely to suffer nostalgia if they had come from a rural, rather than urban, background. They prescribed such cures as listening to music, regular exercise, and “useful instruction.”
Homesickness Around the same time, German soldiers were calling the same condition heimweh, and the French called it “maladie du pays” — both terms basically mean “homesickness.”
Estar Roto Spanish physicians came up with this term for PTSD, which means “to be broken.”
Soldier’s Heart
Internal medicine doctor Jacob Mendez da Costa studied Civil War veterans in the United States, and discovered that many of them suffered from chest-thumping (tachycardia), anxiety, and shortness of breath. He called this syndrome “Soldier’s Heart” or “Irritable Heart.” But it also came to be called “Da Costa Syndrome.”
Neurasthenia/Hysteria
These classic Victorian descriptions for anybody who suffered from excessive neurosis or nervousness included many symptoms that would now be considered signs of PTSD, judging from James Beard’s definitive text on neurasthenia, published in 1890.
Compensation Sickness or Railway Spine
As railroad travel became much more common in the late 19th century, so did railroad accidents — and psychologists started noticing a lot of cases of trauma among survivors of those accidents. (Just like Charles Dickens.) Psychologist CTJ Rigler coined the term “compensation neurosis” to describe these cases — with the “compensation” part referring to a new law that allowed people to sue for compensation for emotional suffering. Rigler believed people were more likely to report their traumatic symptoms — or possibly exaggerate them — if they were going to get paid. Victims of railway accidents were also referred to as having “Railway Spine,” as if their spinal cords had suffered a concussion that caused them to be more nervous or tramautized afterwards.
Shell Shock
Dating from World War I, “shell shock” is probably the most famous term for PTSD. By December 1914, up to 10 percent of officers were suffering from shell shock, and 40 percent of casualties from the Battle of the Somme were shell-shocked.
Combat Exhaustion
That’s what it started being called during World War II and the Korean War. People also called it “combat fatigue.” The Army studied the problem, and decided that “unit cohesion” was a crucial factor in surviving this syndrome, and replacement soldiers were more prone to it because they were new to their units. And as Charvat notes, there’s an ad in the September 17, 1945 issue of Life Magazine touting Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ products in treating both colic and “battle reaction and mental trauma.”
Stress Response Syndrome
That’s the term it was given in the DSM-I in 1952. And that’s the condition that Vietnam War soldiers were diagnosed with. In the DSM-II this syndrome was lumped in with some others, in a new category called “situational disorders.”
——————————————————————————–
Clinical Debates
Once it was recognized as a medical condition, the nature of PTSD was still up for a lot of debate, including:
Was it physical or psychological?
The term “shell shock” sort of conjures an idea of someone’s brain getting rattled inside its skull by exploding shells. And indeed, that’s pretty close to what the term meant. Similarly, as we mentioned above, “railway spine” was based on the notion that railway accidents caused damage to the spinal cord, even if the patient appeared physically unharmed.
One of the first experts on “shell shock” was Frederick Walker Mott, who believed that explosions caused physical lesions on the brain, perhaps exacerbated by carbon monoxide or changes in atmospheric pressure. (Although Mott did believe that psychological trauma was part of the problem as well.) He writes in his landmark 1919 study:
Physical shock accompanied by horrifying circumstances, causing profound emotional shock and terror, which is contemplative fear, or fear continually revived by the imagination, has a much more intense and lasting effect on the mind than simple [physical] shock has. Thus a man under my care, who was naturally of a timorous disposition and always felt faint at the sight of blood, gave the following history. He belonged to a Highland regiment. He had only been in France a short time and was one of a company who were sent to repair the barbed wire entanglements in front of their trench when a great shell burst amidst them. He was hurled into the air and fell into a hole, out of which he scrambled to find his comrades lying dead and wounded around. He knew no more, and for a fortnight lay in a hospital in Boulogne. When admitted under my care he displayed a picture of abject terror, muttering continually, “no send back,” “dead all round,” moving his arms as if pointing to the terrible scene he had witnessed.
Image via Alistair Hobbs/Flickr.
But Charles Myers, who wrote about “shell shock” in a 1915 Lancet article, contended later that proximity to an explosion was not a key cause of the condition. Rather, these were cases where “the tolerable or controllable limits of horror, fear, anxiety, etc. are overstepped.” In 1940, at last, Myers published his groundbreaking study of 2,000 cases of shell shock, and was able to identify many cases which did not directly involve explosions.
Another World War I researcher, Millais Culpin, described dissociative states that were linked to extreme terror. When he asked a soldier to close his eyes and describe his first experience of fighting, he “seemed to be living his experience over again with more than hallucinatory vividness, ducking as shells came over or trembling as he took refuge from them.”
Meanwhile, as for “railroad spine,” a surgeon named Herbert Page who worked for the London and North West Railway published a whole book in 1890 called Injuries of the Spine and Spinal Cord Without Apparent Mechanical Lesion, in which he contended these patients were really suffering from “nervous shock,” not physical injury.”
Full sizeWas it short-term or long-term?
Starting after World War II, psychologists started classifying all of these cases of trauma, based on loads of notes that the Armed Forces had been collecting since 1933. There was just one trouble: the military shrinks were working on the assumption that all of these cases were “transitory” or “acute.” Meaning that otherwise normal people would have a short-term problem, after they got back from combat, but that by its nature this wouldn’t last long. Image via Kimadababe/Flickr
Because the psychological studies were based on the military data, which all made this assumption, psychologists also assumed that cases of PTSD would be short-term or temporary in nature.
After the Vietnam War, countless veterans were diagnosed with “stress response syndrome” — but the VA declared that if the problem lasted more than six months after the soldiers returned home, then it obviously was a pre-existing condition and had nothing to do with their wartime service. And thus, it was no longer covered.
It wasn’t until DSM-III in 1980 and ICD-10 in 1992 that the clinical guidelines started to acknowledge that these problems could be chronic. And that this problem could be an “anxiety disorder” rather than a short-term adjustment. This change came in the wake of researchers working with a large number of Vietnam veterans — like World War II, the Vietnam War was a huge boost to PTSD research, and you could find a large number of people suffering from the same symptoms within the same city, so you had tons of ready data.
A big proponent of reclassifying PTSD as an anxiety disorder, rather than an adjustment disorder, was Boston University’s David H. Barlow. He theorized that when people who have psychological and physiological vulnerability get exposed to a stressful event, they develop the belief that these stressful events are unpredictable and uncontrollable — and they will become fearful about the repetition of this stress. This leads to a cycle of “chronic overarousal” and “anxious apprehension.” These, in turn, lead to people being excessively vigilant, with shortened attention spans, and the way people process information gets distorted.
In short, they have major stress as a result of a trauma they’ve experienced. Hence, PTSD.
Sources:
Trauma and its Wake: The Study and Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Charles R. Figley, ed.)
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by Edward Tick, PhD.
“Shell shock, Gordon Holmes and the Great War” by A.D. Macleod, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
“History of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in Combat,” presentation by Mylea Charvat, MS to Veterans Administration
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Malady Or Myth? By Chris R. Brewin
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pillarofsalt 04 Apr 2012 3:38 PM
thank you, Charlie, for this article. It was hard to read, what with my heart thumping out of my chest, but I’m glad I live in a time and a place where therapists have good training and supportive and compassionate friends and family. I’m hoping the DSM-V will provide an even better diagnosis and more accessible help for people who are dealing with their own “rooted sorrow.” (Edit comment)
promoted by c.stark bookwench @pillarofsalt Is that yours? Is it a tattoo? It’s amazing. (Edit comment) Charlie Jane Anders @bookwench That totally is an amazing tattoo. (Edit comment) bookwench @Charlie Jane Anders It’s very simple and very intense. (Edit comment) pillarofsalt @Charlie Jane Anders Thanks! the text is the last line from Hubert Selby’s novel “the Willow Tree,” which is more or less about a Holocaust survivor taking in a kid fleeing from gang violence. I drew the Sisyphus part right after finishing the book/starting to deal with my PTSD. (Edit comment) pillarofsalt @bookwench yes! I got it about 7 years ago. I think it’s my favorite one. (Edit comment) bookwench @pillarofsalt Right, thank you – I’ve got that in my wishlist now. What an amazing line. And you drew that? That’s incredible. (Edit comment) pillarofsalt @bookwench my original drawing was much scribblier and the lovely fellow who put it on me cleaned it up really nicely. thanks! (Edit comment) Show earlier discussions Show promoted discussions only
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You are wrong in an important point: loving guns does NOT divide along party lines. In other words, no matter what MR Reid says, there are plenty of democrats who like to shoot. I, for example, am one… And it turns me off when I see NRA going so blindly after morons that have as their main title only to be “democrat-bashers”.
I really think that until the gun movement understands this, it will only get worse…
The misguided people who propose these measures haven’t a clue on how ridiculously difficult (if not impossible) tracking and enforcement would be. The prisons are too full as it is, without having to accommodate thousands of innocent, law-abiding firearm owners.
Mike Bloomberg is either sniffing glue or totally oblivious to reality…