BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking an injunction against enforcement of a federal law that makes it impossible for American citizens who reside outside the United States to purchase firearms while they are in this country.

SAF is joined by two natural-born citizens, Maxwell Hodgkins and Stephen Dearth, who have been denied the opportunity to buy firearms because they do not currently reside in the United States. Hodgkins currently lives in the United Kingdom, and Dearth is a resident of Canada.

The lawsuit alleges that Holder, as attorney general, is enforcing unconstitutional laws that prevent citizens like Hodgkins and Dearth from exercising their Second Amendment rights. The complaint also asserts that enforcement of the federal gun laws that prevent such citizens from purchasing firearms when they visit the U.S. violates their right of equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. The plaintiffs are represented by Virginia attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the Heller case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is what happens when anti-gunners rush to pass a restrictive gun law that ignores the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens who happen to be living abroad,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “Honest Americans who live in other countries for a variety of reasons should not be denied their Second or Fifth Amendment rights when they return to American soil. Hodgkins and Dearth, and many others just like them, are victims of anti-gun rights zeal.

“Such citizens have every right to obtain and own firearms for a variety of reasons, whether to hunt, or for personal protection, target shooting or competition,” he continued. “Hodgkins, Dearth and other non-resident citizens want to keep their firearms here for use when the come home. However, current federal law makes it impossible for them to exercise their rights like any other citizen. It is fundamentally wrong to penalize American citizens for living overseas.”

National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Bill (H.R. 197).

This legislation would protect the rights of licensed firearm permit holders by allowing them to carry firearms across the country without a confusing patchwork system.

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Bill recognizes that those who have a valid state-issued concealed firearms permit should not have to forfeit their safety when traveling. Not only does this bill protect the rights of concealed firearm permit holders, it also maintains the right of states to issue concealed weapons permits as they desire. As a mobile society, legal firearm permit carriers should be able to travel from state to state and exercise their fundamental right to self [UTF-8?]defense—this legislation ensures that.

Specifically, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Bill would allow any person with a valid concealed firearm carrying permit or license, issued by a state, to carry a concealed firearm in any state, as follows:

In states that issue concealed firearm permits, a [UTF-8?]state’s laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders.
In states that do not issue carry permits, a federal “bright-line” standard would permit carrying in places other than police stations; courthouses; public polling places; meetings of state, county, or municipal governing bodies; schools; passenger areas of airports; and certain other locations.
The bill applies to D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.
It would not create a federal licensing system; it would require the states to recognize each [UTF-8?]others’ carry permits, just as they recognize [UTF-8?]drivers’ licenses and carry permits held by armored car guard

View H.R. 197 at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas

H.R. 197 has 55 Co-sponsors:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR00197:@@@P

If your Congress Critter is not on the list of co-sponsors, you might want to email them and request that they co-sponsor the bill and / or vote in favor of it if and when it comes to the floor. The more co-sponsors a Bill has, the better chance of it coming to the floor for a vote.

Ideally, each State would pass their own amendment to their Right-to-Carry law and recognize other State’s permits.

On Thursday, March 19, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. granted anti-gun plaintiffs a preliminary injunction against implementation of the new rule allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by carrying a concealed firearm in national parks and wildlife refuges.

In Thursday’s ruling, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the preliminary injunction against the Department of the Interior rule that took effect on January 9, 2009. The revised rule allowed individuals to carry concealed firearms for self-defense in national parks and national wildlife refuges located in states that allow the carrying of concealed firearms.

Today, NRA filed a notice of appeal in Federal District Court to oppose the preliminary injunction.

By Juliet Eilperin and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 20, 2009; Page A09

A federal judge yesterday blocked a last-minute rule enacted by President George W. Bush allowing visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by gun-control advocates and environmental groups. The Justice Department had sought to block the injunction against the controversial rule…

Click on the title for the complete story.

By Justin McDaniel of the NRA

Last week, the National Park Service (NPS) issued a statement saying that it intended to eliminate the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle in its parks by the end of 2010. Now, after heavy criticism from NRA and other hunting and fishing groups, NPS has backpedaled on its anti-lead announcement, saying Wednesday that the ban only applies to NPS employees and authorized agents of the park service…

Click on the title for more.

UBC professor and author Stanley Coren says dogs work better than Prozac, a prescription antidepressant– and that’s no exaggeration.

According to a study published recently in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, the positive effects of having a familiar, friendly dog close by include lowered blood pressure, slowed heartbeat and more relaxed muscles–all signs of reduced stress.

Click on the title for more.

A West Virginia man has been buried in his pickup truck wearing his camo hunting clothes with his .243 Remington rifle and his favorite pocket knife. Who says you can’t take it with you!

Click on the title for the complete story.

BELLEVUE, WA – A revelation by the Washington Times that President Barack Obama is trying to quietly end the armed pilot program, making air travel more vulnerable to terrorist attack, should outrage travelers, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“The Washington Times nailed it,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, who proposed arming pilots just hours after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and championed the armed pilot program. “ What Obama is doing is risking public safety, as the newspaper put it, ‘in the name of an anti-gun ideology’.”

The newspaper reported in its Tuesday edition that President Obama is “quietly ending the federal firearms program” by diverting some $2 million from the training program to hire “supervisory” staff, whose job, it appears, will be to harass armed pilots through unnecessary field inspections.

“How dare the president, or anybody in his administration, take measures to erode the safety of air travelers,” Gottlieb questioned. “The armed pilot program provides a guaranteed level of security to the public. There may or may not be an air marshal aboard every airplane, but there is definitely a pilot in the cockpit.

“We trust commercial airline pilots with $500 million aircraft,” he continued. “We can certainly trust them with $500 pistols to defend those planes, and th e lives of their passengers.

“Certain individuals have never liked the armed pilot program,” Gottlieb acknowledged. “These anti-gun, anti-self-defense bureaucrats seem more interested in their own power, and protecting their little empires, than they are in protecting the public. And now, Obama is catering to their anti-gun bigotry.”

Call the White House at (202) 456-1111, or send a comment by visiting www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

Click on the title to read Michigan House Bill 4198 aimed at regulating rules for deer and elk feeding through year 2016.

March 9, 2009

Contact Steve Schmitt 517 336-5030 Mary Dettloff 517-335-3012

TB Prevalence Increases Slightly in Deer Herd in Core Area of
Infection

The incidence of bovine tuberculosis (TB) in the deer herd in the core
area of infection in northeastern Lower Michigan – Deer Management Unit
452 – increased slightly in 2008, the Department of Natural Resources
announced last week at the Natural Resources Commission meeting.

DMU 452, which is located in Montmorency, Alpena, Oscoda and Alcona
counties, saw the incidence in deer testing positive for TB increase to
1.8 percent from 1.4 percent in 2007. Although the incidence is still
declining over the long term, the trend for rate of infection during the
last six years is only changing slightly on an annual basis.

“We have brought the prevalence of TB down from 1995, but it appears
to be stabilizing at this level during recent years,” explained DNR
Wildlife Veterinarian Steve Schmitt. “We may have lowered it as far as
we can with our current strategy.”

The DNR’s strategy has been to ban feeding and baiting in the
northeastern Lower Peninsula and to reduce the deer herd, by
liberalizing the availability of antlerless deer licenses. The bait and
feed ban has been extended to include the entire Lower Peninsula
following the discovery of a deer with chronic wasting disease in a
privately-owned deer herd in Kent County last August.

Overall, the DNR tested 16,260 deer for TB in 2008. Of those, 36 were
positive. Among TB-positive deer, 34 came from the four-county area, one
from Presque Isle County and one from Iosco County.

Intensive testing in Shiawassee County, where a TB-positive deer was
found in 2007, and six surrounding counties did not turn up any
TB-positive deer, Schmitt said.