Starvin Larry

WASHINGTON — Fresh off a string of election victories, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control group is gearing up for a “significant” legislative push in more than a dozen states to curb gun violence, its leaders say.

First up: Nevada, where election officials could certify this week that the group and its allies have collected enough signatures for a 2016 ballot initiative that would impose stricter background checks on people buying firearms from private sellers and at gun shows. Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety also is weighing similar background-check initiatives in Arizona and Maine.

It also plans to back legislation in several states that would either expand background checks for gun purchasers, remove guns from the hands of domestic abusers or give family members the power to seek court orders to temporarily confiscate firearms from people they fear may commit gun violence — modeled on a “gun-violence restraining order” law signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this fall following a shooting rampage in Santa Barbara.

The California law, the first of its kind, is one of a slew of little-noticed victories gun-control groups have scored at the state level — even as Congress has rebuffed expanding background checks on all commercial sales of guns or restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

Six states have enacted measures that make it harder for people convicted of domestic violence to have firearms. In Colorado last month, two legislative seats lost in the state’s historic 2013 recall election over the state’s stricter gun-control laws moved back to Democratic control. One of the victors, Michael Merrifield, once worked for a Bloomberg gun-control group.

On Thursday, meanwhile, a voter initiative that expanded background checks in Washington state will take effect — joining six other states and the District of Columbia that require background checks on all firearm sales, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The successes come as the second anniversary of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school approaches. The massacre left 20 schoolchildren and six educators dead and sparked a national debate about gun laws.

“This is a huge amount of movement in two years on an issue where Republicans and Democrats ran for the hills for more than a decade,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “We’re going to build on the successes of 2014 and do more.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/02/bloomberg-plans-gun-control-push-in-states/19785161/

WOW ! Common sense prevails in the virulently anti-gun state of New Jersey?

BOSTON — Jaime Caetano was beaten so seriously by her former boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.

Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but she now finds herself at the center of a Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Police found Caetano’s stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself against her ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.

During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the stun gun and he “got scared and left me alone,” she said.

She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.

In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of “arms” under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a legal brief that the state’s ban “cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.” He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.

Massachusetts is one of five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional-law professor at UCLA who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law-enforcement agencies around the country.

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2025125177_stungunxml.html

Today, November 26, California Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris filed a request for en banc review of the Ninth Circuit’s denial of her request to intervene in the NRA supported case of Peruta v. San Diego, which produced a landmark decision striking down as a violation of the Second Amendment San Diego County Sheriff William Gore’s policy of refusing to issue licenses to carry firearms in public unless an applicant could demonstrate a special need for one.

The AG’s latest request comes after the Court denied the AG’s and several gun ban advocacy groups’ requests to join the case once they learned Sheriff Gore had decided not to further appeal the case.  The anti-gun rights groups have also filed a similar request for en banc review of the Ninth Circuit’s denial of their requests to intervene in the case.

If Harris is successful in overturning the Court’s order and is allowed to intervene in the Peruta case, all Ninth Circuit judges will then vote on whether to re-hear the Peruta case itself before an 11 judge en banc panel. If they decide to do so, the panel will either uphold the current decision supporting the Second Amendment or overturn it. The court could, however, simply vote not to rehear the case, thereby allowing the three-judge panel decision to stand.

http://www.nraila.org/legislation/state-legislation/2014/11/california-attorney-general-seeks-en-banc-review-of-ninth-circuit%E2%80%99s-denial-of-her-request-to-intervene-in-peruta-case.aspx