> The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits
So for the concealed carry there is a background check involved, but it has to be done in a certain way, and the police instead were being more "thorough" and were digging through more databases than they were supposed to? I guess they do have access to those databases, but are only supposed to check them if they suspect a crime was committed.
What's the personal motivation there? It seems like they were going out of their way to be more "thorough", wouldn't it save them time and grief not to check more than needed. Is some higher political figure asking them to be more "thorough". I don't quite get the whole picture. Of course, they broke the law, but just wondering about their motive.
The issue at hand is despite federal rulings forcing all states to have some level of "shall issue" concealed permits, and laws on the books, California's process has left it to county sheriffs to follow the evaluation criteria. Some, like San Bernardino, practically rubber stamp them if you pass the background checks. Others, like Ventura, Riverside, LA, etc. try their hardest to find ways to reject them - even circumventing the law to do so.
They've also tried to implement strong arm policies like "We will notify your employer you have a license" knowing most large employers in California are fairly liberal and anti-gun and might look at that negatively to try to dissuade people from even exercising the right.
And others still, like Santa Clara County, have the sheriff sell them for personal enrichment. Ah, but I should not allege falsehoods like that. They simply have those who donated to the sheriff's campaign get them at 90%+ and those who didn't at less than 10%. Once this was identified, she retired and gets to keep her multi hundred thousand dollar pension.
Aha, that's the kind of nuance I was missing. Something just didn't add up. One would like to believe these are all just hard-working officers, going above and beyond their "call of duty" to keep the guns out of "bad citizens'" hands, but that seemed a little too naive of an idea.
The CLETS database LACSD used includes non-conviction records, investigative records, gang affiliations, and other data that aren’t part of the proper background check process. For example, if you were arrested but never charged, or if you’re a known gang member without any convictions, those records would be in CLETS but not in the system they’re legally supposed to use for concealed carry permits (CCPs).
State law doesn’t allow this kind of non-conviction information to be used in CCP decisions, so this was an overreach. (previously you had to be of "good moral character" and have "good cause" to get a CCP, but these have been replaced with objective criteria)
You could argue that having more information might lead to better decisions on who gets a permit, but that’s not what the law allows—and letting police pull extra data whenever they feel like it creates obvious risks of abuse.
I think the most likely good faith version of this is that the LACSD wants to prevent people that are bad actors from obtaining the licenses.
Where this touches on abuse are people who are not convicted of any particular criminal offense related to firearms, or people that have had negative contact with the LACSD.
So on the "positive" side this might allow them to prevent a person who they strongly believe is a gang leader but has not been convicted of any offense from obtaining a permit.
On the "negative" side this might be people like defense attorneys, anti-police activists, or private investigators who have a tendencious relationship with the police from obtaining such a permit. Or in some cases maybe even people who have simply had a negative interaction -- filing reports critical of officers, etc., who are being spitefully targetted.
The law attempts to strike a balance between the concerns and law enforcement overreach and exists for a reason.
Probably also Wilhoit's law some too "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." So not only do some people not get the right to own a gun effectively, but specifically certainly kinds of people arbitrarily.
There has been documented corruption and abuse in basically every state that uses a "may-issue" firearms permit scheme that allows official "discretion" about "suitability," as opposed to a "shall-issue" one where issuing a permit is mandatory to anyone who meets the qualifications.
Theoretically all states are shall issue because of that case. In practice they just went from handing out definitive "no, you can't, because I feel like it" denials as was their discretion to soft denial via bureaucratic runaround.
Yeah I would be very interested in the demographic makeup of those people who were checked in this database compared to those who weren't. Maybe cross-referenced with who accepted/reviewed/received their application.
To "bear" means to carry. "You may have this firearm but you cannot carry it in a manner which is fit for purpose anywhere other than your own private property" is a pretty tough sell to anyone who believes in the second amendment.
I'm happy to get into a 2A debate (as funny as it sounds it is a hobby of mine!) but it seems like a tangent for this thread specifically. I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written. The next thing you'll say is that "well-regulated" means regulated by the government which is also 100% incorrect.
Militia is the people - it's everyone, individually. Well-regulated means well-functioning, fit for purpose. In order for individual people to be fit for militia/defensive service, they cannot be deprived of their right to make, purchase, own, use, and/or carry firearms.
My favorite quote related to this:
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." - George Mason, address to Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
George Mason was an anti-federalist arguing his opposition to the Constitution. When he says "They consist now of the whole people" he is referring to the present moment under the Articles of Confederation. He goes on to argue his opposition to the constitution, saying:
> If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected.
He very clearly believed that the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to determine who did and did not belong to the Militia which is one of many reasons he voted against ratification. He also clearly believes that the federal government has the task of regulating it given the talk of punishments and fines, though he seems fine with that as long as they are reasonable. That it was ratified in that form makes your referenced quote an argument against your reading of the second amendment.
That particular quote does not really support the presumption here. In that debate, as with most ratifying debates around the constitution and the bill of rights, the concern is that the federal government not usurp the ability of states to arm their militias.
That quote in context [1] clearly is about who the members of the militia are drawn from, not the implicit militia-ness of all citizens. He even states this explicitly later in the same argument: "Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty".
In the end, they wrote what they wrote and they ratified what they ratified -- "the right of the people" and not the right of the "several states" or the "militia of the several states" as is used elsewhere in the document. So it's a right of the people, period, and "keep and bear" has a plain meaning (Scalia wrote something to the effect of "you cannot interpret 'he filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'he filled the bucket and died').
Some state constitutions (contemporaneous and known to the authors of the constitution) carved out an explicit self-defense or individual right to arms, but this language was not encoded into the second amendment.
Whenever I encounter quotes from the constitutional ratification debates that purport to claim an individual right to keep and bear arms, on closer inspection in context, they are arguing about states vs. federal authority, not an individual right. If you choose to respond by offering other supporting quotes, please give a link to the full context and due consideration of it, because I have yet to see an actual quote that holds up.
I'm happy to debate or discuss this in good faith but this isn't a good faith argument.
"Arms" meant (means) state-of-the-art, military-level hardware. The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military, to the extent that you were issue anything and weren't just expected to bring your own. Throughout all of American history, perhaps with the exception of nuclear arms and vehicles like tanks and submarines, firearms research and development has occurred in private industry and made its way into the military later.
But the specifics are irrelevant, the spirit is clear.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Sam Adams, address to Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
Finding an article that says, essentially, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and then goes on to talk about government licensed privateers - akin to the modern setup of a security guard licensed to carry in a state that doesn't otherwise permit it. Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons? (Let alone of a widespread nature?)
Do we think Sam Adams would advocate personal ownership of nuclear bombs, or do we think he'd perhaps see such things as a category slightly different than the muskets of his time?
We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is. We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now and pointing there is IMO another explicitly bad faith argument, in part because it's clear you don't particularly care what the founders' intentions were because there are thousands of pages of discussions and arguments showing that regular every-day people were allowed to - encouraged to, in cases required to - own weapons on par or better than military armaments of the day. And despite that, my guess is you have a problem with people owning or carrying AR-15s, or with people carrying handguns on them when they go to a restaurant, etc. I'm happy to be proven wrong though!
The start of this little digression was private citizens carrying their personally owned handguns outside of their home as is plainly meant by the word "bear" in 2A. So rather than moving the goalposts to Sam Adams's opinion on private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatever other bad faith things you want to bring up, I'd rather focus on that.
> We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is.
"Nothing like machine guns exist, let alone in private hands, let alone widely so" is part of that historical context, yes.
> We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now...
As the apocryphal Churchill quote about whores goes, "We've already established that [some arms don't fall under the 2nd]; we're merely haggling over [which]..."
Puckle guns existed about 60 years before the revolution and you could absolutely own them privately and they were developed by a private citizen, although they're closer to a Gatling gun than a machine gun.
If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
> its operation does not match the modern use of the term... It was never used during any combat operation or war... Production was highly limited and may have been as few as two guns...
I'm not sure this works any better than the privateers example.
> If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
It has exactly the same sorts of widely-supported exceptions. I can't exercise my freedom of speech via threats, fraudulent claims, false advertising, lying to a FBI agent, etc. I can, and should be, arrested for such things.
(I also like to think modern social media and its societal impact would give the Founders some pause.)
> If that argument holds truth, than the entire internet should be exempt from 1A protections, shouldn't it?
Frankly, I think if the Founders had anticipated its rise, they'd have put a few more qualifications on the First. I think we're in the fuck-around-find-out phase of the technology outpacing the societal capacity to cope with it.
Because it is the law, and when you're interpreting the law you can interpret the text in the historical context in which it was written ("the letter") or - when the letter is not 100% clear - what the people who wrote the law were trying to achieve ("the spirit").
Are we arguing we just start ignoring laws when we don't like them. The Constitution has a very clear means for changing it, which we've done dozens of times in the past. If we want to change it we can, nobody is holding onto it for the sake of it. We're following the law.
People are not holding on to it like it's written in stone like it's a biblical text? That's pretty funny.
My argument is that it's old, doesn't really apply well to the modern world. You say you can simply change it if you want to but your system doesn't really allow for that anymore. You have multiple 9/11 in dead schoolchildren and you still don't care.
What it does is putting guns in everyday situations, a road rage incident that ends in deaths rather than some bruises. Since there's no room for any exceptions to this right state lawmakers cannot make any laws that excludes people that should not be able to buy guns either.
There was no law about revenge porn, either, until it became a societal issue. Most things we ban or regulate when they become a problem.
The Founding Fathers existed in a time where gun control was “they are big, heavy, and don’t shoot very fast”. That they did not anticipate a Glock with a 100 round drum is fairly understandable.
Cannons and grapeshot were an essential part of marine commerce at the time and tons of them were privately owned. The only control on who could own what back then was wealth.
Cannon and grapeshot were legal then and are legal today. Though if it's not specifically a muzzle-loading black powder cannon, you need to pay a $200 tax.
I agree! But one of the more prominent Founding Fathers disagreed!
This is why I find "but the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own an AR-15" uncompelling. It's fairly clear evidence they thought the First was way less comprehensive than we currently interpret it, yet people interpret the Second the opposite way.
If one is to cite what the Founding Fathers intended as justification for an absolute individual right to bear arms, one must confront the fact that they clearly didn't consider the fairly simply written First Amendment to be absolute. That points to an attitude of "well obviously we're not gonna be stupid about it" for other amendments introduced at the same time... like the Second.
If they felt the Alien and Sedition Acts complied with the First Amendment, I think it's reasonable to believe they'd consider the assault weapons ban to comply with the Second.
Given Jefferson's remarks to Abigail Adams after pardoning everyone ever prosecuted under them, I don't know how you can draw that conclusion:
"I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to: but I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered & now consider that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest it’s execution in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship their image."
Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
> Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
That’s fair! But also a challenge for guessing their intents with the Second.
(Notably, one of them is still on the books. Jefferson didn’t repeal. He had a personal dislike of Adams for quite some time.)
What they’d think of today’s weaponry would probably vary somewhat. The Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases of the Court would rather not confront that. They seem certain of their crystal balls.
That is why originalists advocate the use of original public meaning, not original intent. The meaning of a law when passed as understood by a reasonable person of the era, not the intent or understanding of those who passed it.
If you read Scalia's book, he goes into great detail about this but it boils down to a) you can't read minds as a judge and b) different people voted to pass the law for different reasons, so which ones are valid?
I don't understand why if they used the words 'well-regulated militia' that so many pro-gun people argue that what _they actually meant_ was "any random person". They had words for that and they chose the words 'well-regulated militia'.
If you're interpreting Shakespeare you need to know not only the definitions of the words used but the context in which they were used. In the context of the mid/late 18th century, "regulated" typically meant functioning, working, fit-for-purpose, and at the risk of gross over-simplification, "good." A good militia is required for the security of the free (as opposed to authoritarian) state.
The bill of rights is a list of things the federal government cannot do (and through case law, individual states). It is entirely restrictions on the government, not restrictions on citizens. It's a stretch to assume that the one word "regulated" in 2A actually mean restrictions on citizens when no other word in the first ten amendments restricts any citizens' rights.
Well regulated as in "well equipped". A militia wouldn't be worth much with pikes and spoons. Particularly the glorious founders antipathy for a standing army.
I don't like guns, but I think the masses right to own arms is more constitutional than the standing army.
I've read every single word that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin ever wrote that survived to be collected into the various volumes of their collected writings.
Regulated has always meant "controlled".
The pressure regulator schtick sounds like some BS the NRA came up with after snorting some coke through the pile of rubles Putin gave them to poison the minds of Americans.
"regulated" appears 26 times, often in a military context, and it always means what everyone thinks it means and is never used the way you propose.
>Elections in Ireland, till of late, were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown, and were seldom repeated, except on the accession of a new prince, or some other contingent event.
Do you have any historical examples that support your usage of the word?
Regulated means subject to regulations, which are a body of rules.
Regulated technical parameters like pressure and voltage are not subject to regulations (unless we construe the simple feedback mechanism to be a couple of rules).
It is blatant word semantic equivocation to conflate government regulation and pressure regulation.
The word "controlled" doesn't help much; it can be similarly equivocated as a near synonym of "regulated". Regulated pressure is controlled. A regulated industry is controlled.
Interesting. How does pressure regulator relate to humans? It seems like any random civilian being able to gun down dozens of people is pretty out of regulation.
So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia as in US v. Miller? Or does your complete and total deference to case law only go in one direction?
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is *not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment*, or that its use *could contribute to the common defense*.
If you point to Miller, it becomes clear that military weapons were more acceptable for personal ownership under their interpretation of the 2A than a sawed-off shotgun, which was considered only useful for crimes when the NFA was passed (similar to other "concealable" arms). Consequently, the common refrain that "well-regulated militia" now implies something like the National Guard, would thus also imply that in fact it's more reasonable to privately own a tank or fighter jet than a suppressor.
I don't think that most anti-2A advocates really understand that our current legislative limits on gun ownership are about as restrictive as they can be. Amend the 2A if you like (and it probably should be, even if only for clarity), but don't try to amend history.
There is no textual interpretation of the 2A that would not allow for private firearm ownership. Every state constitution that directly preceded the Federal US constitution had a section that said some variation of:
> "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."
That specific quote came from Pennsylvania's constitution (Article 13), which was a Quaker colony at the time, that was much less friendly to firearms than other states, but even they explicitly spelled out the right to arms for personal defense. Heller (2008) reaffirmed this. That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia.
As Huey Newton noted: "Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment."
> So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia
Yes, absolutely. I don't think that, for instance, anyone should own chemical weapons, or weapons like cluster munitions. Generally, any weapon that you would not deploy defensively in a conflict should not be in the hands of a defensive force (the citizenry/ militia). I don't think anyone should have nukes, period, but that's a different discussion.
>That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia.
Nitpick: The standing army the founders were worried about was professional state (like government, not like US state vs local vs federal) law enforcement as that was the capacity in which the jackboot of the occupying British army was being used.
Which we also already have, and which our military can become at any given moment with the right legal wrangling (or disregard for legality). It's the concentration of force that is the problem, not the particular structure of the institution.
You're not wrong but with all the other laws surrounding firearms in public and in vehicles not being able to have a concealed carry permit is a huge practical impediment to exercising one's rights.
CC permits and anything firearm related winds up having to do elaborate song and dance routines to avoid being unconstitutional. Searching the crappy DB that only contains stuff they're allowed to care about instead of searching the good DB that they use when they really want to find dirt on someone falls into that category.
So for the concealed carry there is a background check involved, but it has to be done in a certain way, and the police instead were being more "thorough" and were digging through more databases than they were supposed to? I guess they do have access to those databases, but are only supposed to check them if they suspect a crime was committed.
What's the personal motivation there? It seems like they were going out of their way to be more "thorough", wouldn't it save them time and grief not to check more than needed. Is some higher political figure asking them to be more "thorough". I don't quite get the whole picture. Of course, they broke the law, but just wondering about their motive.