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From the Los Angeles Times

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Revisiting the 2nd Amendment's right to bear arms

So far the courts have limited guns mostly to the home. But the National Rifle Assn. is asking the Supreme Court to clarify that the right extends further.

by David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

August 27, 2011

Reporting from Washington

The 2nd Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms" is proving to be a right to keep a gun at home, but so far not a right to bear a loaded firearm in public.

The Supreme Court breathed new life into the amendment when it struck down strict handgun bans in Washington and Chicago and spoke of the "inherent right of self-defense."

But to the dismay of gun rights advocates, judges in recent months have read those decisions narrowly and rejected claims from those who said they had a constitutional right to carry a loaded gun on their person or in their car. Instead, these judges from California to Maryland have said the "core right" to a gun is limited to the home.

Now, the National Rifle Assn. is asking the high court to take up the issue this fall and "correct the widespread misapprehension that the 2nd Amendment's scope does not extend beyond the home."

Stephen Halbrook, an NRA lawyer, said "some judges have buried their heads in the sand and have refused to go one step further" than saying there is a right to have a gun at home.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence hailed the trend and called the high court's rulings a "hollow victory" for gun enthusiasts. "The gun lobby has tried to expand [the 2nd Amendment] into a broad right to carry any type of gun anywhere. And they have been almost unanimously rejected by the courts," said Jonathan Lowy, director of legal action. He conceded, however, that "this battle is far from over."

The uncertainty began with the Supreme Court itself. In 2008, Justice Antonin Scalia said the history of the 2nd Amendment shows it "guarantees the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation." But other parts of his 5-4 opinion stressed there is no right to "carry any weapon in any manner," and that bans on "carrying concealed weapons were lawful" in the 19th century.

Since then, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed to challenge gun restrictions. In California, federal judges in San Diego and Yolo counties rejected suits from law-abiding gun owners who were denied "concealed carry" permits.

"The 2nd Amendment does not create a fundamental right to carry a concealed weapon in public," U.S. District Judge Morrison England ruled in May.

"That's the cutting-edge issue: whether the 2nd Amendment applies outside the home," said Chuck Michel, an NRA lawyer in Long Beach who has appealed the question to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

State judges in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York have also ruled recently that there is no constitutional right to carry a loaded gun for self-defense. And in Virginia, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal conviction of a man who fell asleep in his car near Washington's Reagan National Airport with a loaded gun.

Despite setbacks in court, gun owners are winning on the political front. Now, 40 states grant concealed-carry permits to qualified gun owners. California, Maryland and Illinois are among the handful of states with large urban populations that deny most or all permits, except to those who show they face a specific danger.

Judges have been wary of second-guessing these restrictions. If the right to bear arms is to apply "outside the home environment, we think it is prudent to await direction from the [Supreme] Court itself," U.S. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a prominent conservative on the 4th Circuit bench, wrote in March. "This is serious business. We do not wish to be even minutely responsible for some unspeakably tragic act of mayhem because in the peace of our judicial chambers we miscalculated as to 2nd Amendment rights."

The Supreme Court has two appeal petitions before it. In one, Charles Williams, a Maryland resident, is appealing his one-year jail term for carrying a legally registered gun in a backpack. The other involves Sean Masciandaro, the Virginia man who was convicted and fined for "carrying a loaded weapon in a motor vehicle" on national parkland.

Obama administration lawyers are expected to urge the court to steer clear of the issue. However, if the justices vote to hear it, the administration would have to argue that the right to bear arms does not extend to concealed weapons.

"We think if there is a 2nd Amendment right outside the home, it surely applies to law-abiding citizens carrying handguns for self-defense while traveling on public highways," said Antigone Peyton, a Virginia lawyer who represents Masciandaro. She said her client travels to put on exhibits of reptiles and sometimes sleeps in his car to save money.

In her petition to the high court, she said her client, "like millions of law-abiding gun owners, should be told the scope of his right to keep and bear arms in case of confrontation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-guns-20110827,0,4304914,print.story

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Is Homeland Security spending paying off?

A decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal and state governments are doling out about $75 billion a year on domestic security. Whether the spending spree has been worth it is the subject of increasing debate.

by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

August 28, 2011

Reporting from Ogallala, Neb.

On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: An Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a water-skiing boat and plowing into the dam at the head of the lake.

The federal Department of Homeland Security ago gave the county $42,000 to buy state-of-the-art dive gear, including full-face masks, underwater lights and radios, and a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar capable of mapping wide areas of the lake floor.

Up on the lonely prairie around Cherry County, population 6,148, got thousands of federal dollars for cattle nose leads, halters and electric prods – in case terrorists decided to mount biological warfare against cows.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, where police fear militants might be eyeing DreamWorks Animation or the Disney creative campus, a $205,000 Homeland Security grant bought a 9-ton BearCat armored vehicle, complete with turret. More than 300 BearCats — many acquired with federal money — are now deployed by police across the country; the arrests of methamphetamine dealers and bank robbers these days often look much like a tactical assault on insurgents in Baghdad.

A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bomb-proof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been?

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

"So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said.

One effect is certain: Homeland Security spending has been a primer-pump for local governments starved by the recession, and has dramatically improved emergency response networks across the country.

An entire industry has sprung up to sell an array of products, including high-tech motion sensors and fully outfitted emergency operations trailers. The market is expected to grow to $31 billion by 2014.

Like the military-industrial complex that became a permanent and powerful part of the American landscape during the Cold War, the vast network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet department and — with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist attack — one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.

The expensive and time-consuming screening now routine for passengers at airport boarding gates has detected plenty of knives, loaded guns and other contraband, but it has never identified a terrorist who was about to board a plane. Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001 — most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.

Homeland Security officials say there is no way to compute how many lives might have been lost had the nation's massive security apparatus not been put into place — had the would-be bombers not been arrested before they struck, or deterred from getting on a plane because it was too hard.

"We know that they study our security measures, we know they're continuously looking for ways to get around them, and that's a disincentive for someone to carry out an attack," said John Cohen, the department's deputy counter-terrorism coordinator.

"Another way of asking the question is: Has there been a U.S. airplane that has exploded?"

State and local emergency responders have undergone a dramatic transformation with the aid of $32 billion that has been dispensed in Homeland Security grants since 2002, much of it in the early years spent on Hollywood-style tactical gear, often with little connection between risk and outlay.

"After 9/11, it was literally like my mother running out the door with the charge card," said Al Berndt, assistant director of the Emergency Management Agency in Nebraska, which has received $163.7 million in federal anti-terrorism and emergency aid grants. "What we really needed to be doing is saying, 'Let's identify the threat, identify the capability and capacity you already have, and say, OK, what's the shortfall now, and how do we meet it?'"

The spending has been rife with dubious expenditures, including the $557,400 in rescue and communications gear that went to the 1,500 residents of North Pole, Alaska, and a $750,000 anti-terrorism fence — fashioned with 8-foot-high ram-proof wrought iron reinforced with concrete footers — built around a Veterans Affairs hospital in the pastoral hills outside Asheville, N.C.

West Virginia got $3,000 worth of lapel pins and billed the federal government for thousands of dollars in cellphone charges, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting, which compiled a state-by-state accounting of Homeland Security spending. In New York, $3 million was spent on automated public health records to help identify bioterrorism threats, but investigators for the department's inspector general in 2008 found that employees who used the program weren't even aware of its potential bioterrorism applications.

In some cases, hundreds of millions were spent on ill-fated projects, such as when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano earlier this year pulled the plug on the Secure Border Initiative, a Boeing Co. contract that was to set up an ambitious network of surveillance cameras, radar and sensors as a 2,000-mile-long "virtual" barrier across the U.S.-Mexico border. Originally intended to be in place by 2009, the endeavor was plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines and wound up costing $1 billion before it was canceled.

Large sums of Homeland Security money, critics complain, have been propelled by pork barrel politics into the backyards of the congressionally connected. Yet the spending has also acted as a cash-rich economic stimulus program for many states at a time when other industries are foundering.

Utah is getting a $1.5-billion National Security Agency cyber-security center that will generate up to 10,000 jobs in the state. The Pentagon in July launched bidding for a $500-million U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, which likes to point out that former President George W. Bush flew here for shelter after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials in Nebraska have insisted that no one is immune. A virus dropped at a cattle feed lot could wipe out a big part of the nation's food supply, they point out, while an attack on the dam at Lake McConaughy would cut off the main interstate linking New York and San Francisco and the biggest rail switching yard in the country.

"It would take out Kearney, Grand Island, the power grid, stuff like that. It could definitely do a lot of damage in what I call homeland America, and that's where these guys want to hit," said Ralph Moul, chief of the nearby Keystone-Lemoyne fire department.

Officials here say Nebraska and other places in Middle America not necessarily in Al Qaeda's gun sights have been able to improve traditional emergency response agencies that in many cases were under-equipped and whose workers were poorly trained — a benefit of Homeland Security grants that have required the money to be spent on responses to all kinds of emergencies, not just terrorist attacks.

"I think it's important to understand the [domestic] security equipment wasn't bought to be tucked away for the day there would be some terrorism event," said Harold Peterson, Keith County's emergency management director in Ogallala.

The Lake McConaughy dive team is so well-equipped it has been called out on several drownings around the state. A radio network built with Homeland Security funding paid off during widespread grass fires earlier this year by allowing departments from around the state to easily communicate with each other. And when a massive tornado struck Joplin, Mo., in May, the city was able to get its phones running with the aid of an emergency communications trailer bought with some of the region's $3.1 million in department grants.

Glendale, likewise, has not left the BearCat in the garage. They haven't caught any terrorists, but last fall, police rolled it out for a pre-dawn assault on an apartment in Echo Park where a suspected armed robber and others were thought to be hiding. Instead of having to pound on the door — risking officers' safety — they were able to park on the lawn and call for surrender on loudspeakers.

"The neighbors may remember it, but the bottom line is, the neighborhood didn't get shot up in a police action, dangerous suspects were taken into custody without incident, and we ensured the safety of those suspects and the officers involved," department spokesman Tom Lorenz said.

Berndt, the emergency official in Nebraska, said he had kept detailed records of every dollar spent and was convinced the state was safer for it.

"For me to sit here and say all this money was spent wisely is for me to sit here and lie to you," he said. "Could we have done better? Yes. Have we done all that bad? Probably not all that bad, in the overall scheme of things."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/september11/la-na-911-homeland-money-20110828,0,2917680,print.story

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Sanctuary city? Not L.A.

It's widely asserted that Los Angeles illegally shields undocumented immigrants from federal authorities. That is utterly false.

August 26, 2011

In the ever-divisive debate over the proper role of local police in enforcing federal immigration law, there is a recurrent theme, especially as it involves Los Angeles: Critics complain that this and other municipalities have become "sanctuary cities," in which those in the country illegally are shielded from immigration authorities. That complaint is widespread — it's a regular feature of letters to the editor of this newspaper, and it crops up in politics at all levels. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman argued it during her failed effort against Jerry Brown. Even Wikipedia lists Los Angeles as a sanctuary city.

That's widely believed. It's also utterly false. In a sanctuary city, the city government either actively protects undocumented immigrants from arrest or declines to cooperate with those who oversee deportations, sometimes by limiting the use of city funds. Los Angeles does none of that. The police regularly cooperate with immigration officials; recent joint efforts include gang and drug cases and investigations of organized crime. Every suspect booked by the LAPD or Sheriff's Department is fingerprinted, and those prints are shared with immigration authorities. Every day, men and women who are here illegally — either because they sneaked across the border or overstayed their visas — are removed from Los Angeles and sent home.

The idea of sanctuary cities dates to the 1980s, when thousands of people fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala sought refuge in the United States. American involvement in those wars made the federal government reluctant to acknowledge the danger the refugees faced in their home countries, so churches and synagogues rallied to take them in and shield them from deportation. Some cities, including Los Angeles, joined that movement. In 1985, the City Council formally expressed its "opposition to the deportation of known law-abiding Central American refugees who have fled their homelands for the fear of losing their lives." Even then, however, the council insisted that its support for those refugees should not be construed as "sanctioning the violation of any law or encouraging interference in law enforcement efforts." At no point did the city government protect immigrants from federal authorities.

A few years later, the council considered going further, adopting a motion that would have prevented the Police Department from assisting or cooperating with immigration authorities. That resolution, however, was never adopted by the Police Commission and has never guided LAPD policy.

Instead, LAPD officers operate under another regulation that also is widely — sometimes deliberately — misunderstood. Known as Special Order 40, it is often said to provide blanket protection for illegal immigrants. In fact, it provides no sanctuary to anyone.

Special Order 40, approved by then-Chief Daryl F. Gates in 1979, recognizes some essential public safety facts as they relate to immigration. Those who are in the country illegally may be reluctant to call for help or to act as witnesses if they believe that contacting law enforcement will result in their deportation. That makes them especially susceptible to victimization and creates risks for others too, in that crimes may go unreported or unsolved if illegal immigrants refuse to cooperate. Acknowledging those realities, Special Order 40 concludes that "officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." It does not, however, prevent officers from turning over those arrested for other offenses to immigration authorities; in fact, it specifically directs officers to contact federal authorities if an arrestee turns out to be in the country illegally. It even orders officers to compile a daily list of arrest reports of "undocumented aliens" and forward that list to federal immigration officers.

That is not sanctuary. It is sound public policy that protects not just vulnerable immigrants but society at large.

Some cities are more protective of illegal immigrants. San Francisco, for instance, bars police from inquiring about the immigration status of those with whom officers come in contact, and it declines to use city money to assist immigration enforcement. That does not provide illegal immigrants complete protection, of course, as federal agents still work in the city, and the city's police cooperate with federal officials in gang and drug cases.

The immigration system's failings are many. The borders are porous; immigration authorities are overburdened, as are the courts. States have taken matters into their own hands, creating a patchwork of ill-advised local laws that are no substitute for thoughtful federal policy. With such vital issues to debate, it is all the more important to rely on facts rather than fantasies or conspiracies. To be clear: Los Angeles is not, and never has been, a sanctuary city.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-sanctuary-20110825,0,6932117,print.story

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