In the wake of an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that arguably makes state protection of gun rights even greater than under the Second Amendment, a trial judge has invalidated a statute prohibiting those convicted of “crimes of violence” from possessing guns.

The NRA-backed amendment, passed by ballot initiative in November, established that the right to bear arms is a “fundamental right” and any infringement of that right is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of skepticism courts apply to legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court has never established a level of scrutiny for the Second Amendment — a failure that has led to disparate interpretations and confusion among lower courts. However, as law professor Adam Winkler notes, “challenged gun laws almost always survive.”

Even Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 that the Second Amendment does not impede “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Not so in Louisiana, where Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Darryl Derbigny held Thursday:

After applying the strict scrutiny standard to LA. R.S. 14.95.1, this court concludes that the statute is not narrowly tailored to achieve the government’s interest. LA R.S.14.95.1 applies without discretion to nearly every felony crime enumerated in the Louisiana Criminal Code. As such, the statute, ‘as-is’, is unconstitutional in its entirety. This court will not engage in a “judicial line item veto”, by deciding what predicate felony convictions should be included in LA R.S. 14:95.1.

Before the passage of the ballot initiative, many prominent figures including the Orleans Parish District Attorney warned that several laws crucial to public safety, including a requirement that 18 to 20-year-olds carry concealed permits, campus bans, and the law at issue here, could be subject to invalidation under the new amendment. Nonetheless, the amendment passed with an overwhelming 74 percent support.

The public defenders in the case had argued that, while a possession ban for violent felons could be justified even under the “strict scrutiny” standard by the compelling state interest in public safety, no such justification could be applied to less violent felons such as Glen Draughter, who had previously pleaded guilty to attempted simple burglary.

There are no doubt crimes considered felonies, such as possession of drugs, consumption of pornography or white collar crime, that have little relationship at all to gun possession. But the Louisiana statute explicitly limited its prohibition to “crimes of violence,” and there is every reason to believe that someone who burgles would be eminently more dangerous if they were carrying a gun.

As conservative blogger and law professor Eugene Volokh points out, the federal ban on gun possession by felons is still in effect, and federal officials could still prosecute Louisiana felons for carrying guns under their own law. But the feds alone would have to significantly reallocate their resources and are not equipped to fill local public safety demands.

Colorado’s new gun violence prevention law includes a ban on ammunition magazines with more than 15 rounds and universal background checks. Before Colorado even passed the safety measures, Magpul Industries, a manufacturer of high-capacity magazines, threatened to relocate to another state rather than face new limits.

Since Magpul’s announcement, Republican lawmakers in states with high rates of gun deaths have eagerly courted the Colorado-based company:

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): “Businesses and manufacturers do not need a government that attacks them, over regulates them, or tries to tax them out of existence. Arizona gets it. Arizona is perfect for Magpul.”

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.): “In South Carolina, we believe in the Second Amendment. We believe in free enterprise. We believe in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our state welcomes any individual or business who believes the same.”

Oklahoma House: We believe we are better suitors for this company in Oklahoma, so we are courting these companies to relocate to Oklahoma and create hundreds if not thousands of jobs,” State Rep. John Bennett (R) said.

Mississippi House: “I am personally inviting you and your company to come to the great state of Mississippi,” House Speaker Philip Gunn (R) said. “In our state, you will not be criticized for providing good to the law abiding citizens who enjoy hunting, shooting or who just want the peace of mind that comes with the constitutional right to protect their families.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R): “There is no other state that fits the definition of business-friendly like Texas.”

The company has pulled other stunts, too. It placed ads advocating against Colorado reforms, and it also held an online sale to help people “stock up” on magazines over 15 rounds.

If anything, however, the efforts to lure Magpul into states with weak guns laws demonstrates why strong federal gun laws are needed. Gun violence laws vary widely across states. Without federal standards creating some minimum baseline, states can enact weaker and weaker gun laws to attract gun companies, creating a race to the bottom on laws meant to protect public safety.

As hearings are under way to investigate New York City’s stop and frisk policy, one police officer is testifying that he was told by superiors to target young black men between the ages of 14 and 21.

Stop and frisk is a method of searching people in which a cop is able to stop someone he or she suspects of a crime, and is able to frisk that individual if they feel that there is some justification. New York City policy made 685,724 stops as part of the policy in 2011 alone. In total, they have made over 5 million stops, and 85 percent of those stopped were black or Latino.

Officer Pedro Serrano, in court to testify yesterday, played a covert recording he’d obtained of an interraction with his superior where he was told the race of people to target, though not that he should stop everyone of that race:

Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.

“He meant blacks and Hispanics,” Officer Pedro Serrano, who made the secret recording, testified Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?” Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.[...]

“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

During cross examination, City lawyer Brenda Cooke got Serrano to admit that McCormack never said he wanted Serrano to stop all blacks and Hispanics.

“Those specific words, no,” he told her.

The news about targeting black men tracks with yesterday’s revelations that the NYPD set quotas for arrests. It also explains the fact that, in 2011, NYPD made more stops of young black men than there actually are young black men in the city.

South Carolina state Rep. Bill Chumley really hates the Affordable Care Act. So much so that he introduced a wildly unconstitutional bill that would imprison any federal official who enforces Obamacare in the state of South Carolina for up to five years.

Chumley, however, isn’t just wasting the state legislature’s time with unconstitutional fantasies about nullifying health reform and giving big government’s employees their comeuppance, he also wasted taxpayer money shuttling a questionable “expert” into the state to testify in favor of his proto-Confederate proposal:

Rep. Bill Chumley of Woodruff brought Walter Williams from a suburban Washington airport to push for a bill that initially sought to nullify the federal health care law. The state planes’ four legs — to a Manassas, Va., airport and back, to pick up Williams and return him — would have cost a paying passenger nearly $6,400, according to the state Aeronautics Commission’s manifest and flight log.

Williams, a syndicated columnist and radio commentator who sometimes fills in for Rush Limbaugh, is well known for advocating state measures attempting to nullify the federal law.

Chumley again dismissed requests that he reimburse the state, calling Williams’ testimony official state business.

Nullification, the idea that states can invalidate federal laws — or worse, criminalize their enforcement — conflicts directly with the Constitution’s declaration that duly-enacted federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” As James Madison once warned, if states did have the unilateral authority to nullify federal laws, such a power would “speedily put an end to the Union itself.”

Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a Maryland law requiring most gun owners to obtain a permit before they may carry a firearm outside of their home, business or their property. In the process, the court articulated a legal standard that could go a long way towards reining in the kind of ubiquitously armed society favored by fringe lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association.

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held for the first time in American history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a firearm, was not a particularly coherent opinion. It lists numerous limits on the right to bear arms, but also holds that the single most deadly weapon in the nation — handguns – enjoy special constitutional protection above and beyond that enjoyed by other, less deadly weapons. Nearly 8 in 10 gun murders in the United States are committed with a handgun. Similarly, although the opinion forbids an outright ban on handguns inside the home, it provides much less clarity about the scope of the Second Amendment elsewhere. Much of the opinion strongly suggests that the right to bear arms is far less robust outside of a person’s own home.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion threads this needle by applying a two-tiered legal standard to gun laws. The court suggests that a law which directly burdens the core right to keep a gun in the home is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of skepticism judges typically apply to laws. But a law which burdens gun possession outside of the home is subject to less skeptical review — what lawyers call “intermediate scrutiny.”

The implications of this shift is that it allows judges to be far more respectful to the concerns animating the elected officials who enact gun laws when they determine whether or not those laws are consistent with the Second Amendment. The court’s opinion highlights numerous arguments justifying Maryland’s limits on carrying guns in public. Among them:

• “Decreasing the availability of handguns to criminals via theft“: The court cites an explanation that “criminals in Maryland are constantly looking for ways to arm themselves with handguns, including by stealing them from others. It is not uncommon for criminals to obtain these guns during street altercations.”
• Preventing arguments from escalating into murders: Nearly half of all homicides occur after an argument or fight. As the court notes, reducing the number of guns in public places will decrease “the likelihood that basic confrontations between individuals would turn deadly.”
• Preventing fatal police errors: Contrary to the NRA’s claims that armed citizens will save lives by doling out vigilante justice to potential murders, the court notes that during a confrontation between police and a gunman “an additional person bearing a gun might cause confusion as to which side of the confrontation the person is on, which could lead to hesitation by the police officer and the potential for innocent victims, including the permit holder, innocent bystanders, and police officers.”
• Fostering good relationships between police and citizens: “If the number of legal handguns on the streets increased significantly, [police] officers would have no choice but to take extra precautions before engaging citizens, effectively treating encounters between police and the community that now are routine, friendly, and trusting, as high-risk stops, which demand a much more rigid protocol and a strategic approach.”
• Allowing police to focus their resources efficiently: “Increasing the number of people legally carrying handguns in the streets will also force [police] officers to spend more resources responding to reports about handgun sightings and engaging handgun carriers to ensure they are doing so lawfully.” Additionally, “[p]olice officers would also have a harder time identifying potential security risks if more people without good and substantial reason to carry a handgun were able to do so, making it more difficult to respond when necessary.”

To be clear, the Fourth Circuit’s conclusion that gun rights are less robust outside the four walls of a gun owner’s home is far from novel. Heller itself implies such a distinction, and previous court decisions drew a similar line to the one the Fourth Circuit relied on yesterday. If this line is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, however, it could go a long way towards keeping dangerous guns off America’s streets.

Thursday night, Congress passed the first federal legislation addressing firearms since the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut. But while one might think the new laws would tighten federal restrictions aimed at preventing criminals from getting guns, the reality is the opposite: all of them are National Rifle Association (NRA) promoted laws that actually weaken federal firearm law.

Six gun provisions were passed as riders attached to the resolution funding the government through September on Thursday. While all six had been federal law since 2004, each was approved by Congress on a year-to-year basis only. Now, four of the provisions are permanent. According to National Public Radio‘s Tamara Keith, the NRA “is the driving force behind these provisions.” Here they are:

1) Limit enforcement tools against crooked dealers. One rider would prevent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents from shutting down gun stores due to “due to a lack of business activity,” arguably a sign of criminal sales.

2) Shield gun dealers who “lose” their guns. This legislation precludes any federal law that requires gun retailers to count their guns and submit the results as a mechanism of determining whether any weapons have been lost or stolen.

3) Interfere with ATF gun trace reports. The ATF is now mandated to include, in any reports concerning its tracing of guns back to crime, that trace data “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crime.” Academic work on guns has used trace data to firmly establish that several firearm regulations effectively prevent the spread of guns to criminal.

4) Expand the class of protected guns. According to Roll Call‘s John Gramlich, the fourth permanent law would “place a broad definition of antique guns and ammunition that may be imported into the United States.”

The comprehensive package aimed at tightening gun laws, which would impose universal background checks and harsher penalties on gun traffickers, is facing a tough floor fight in the Senate as a consequence of disagreement over how to enforce the background check provision.

The New Hampshire House voted today to prohibit private prisons in the Granite State, countering progress the industry has made elsewhere around the country.

The New Hampshire Union Leader has more:

The House on Thursday voted to forbid the executive branch from privatizing the state prison system, saying that to do so would shirk the state’s constitutional responsibility to rehabilitate inmates.

The 197-136 roll call by the Democratic -controlled House sent House Bill 443 to the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim, 13-11 majority and the bill’s fate is uncertain, at best.

The legislation, while prohibiting prison privatization, allows the governor to enter into a temporary contract with a private provider during times of a “corrections emergency” with the approval of the Executive Council.

The move is an abrupt shift in New Hampshire, where just last year the legislature had considered a bill to send its entire male prison population to private prisons.

The problems with private prisons are too numerous to spell out in full, but here are a few highlights.

At its core, the entire private prison industry profits when people are imprisoned, meaning stricter drug and immigration laws produce larger profits. Private prison operators know this, and have spent more than $45 million on lobbying federal and state lawmakers over the past decade, including top Republicans influencing the immigration debate. Indeed, the CEO of one of the largest private prison groups, the Corrections Corporation of America, assured investors on a recent call that there would continue to be “strong demand” for prison cells, even after immigration reform. The industry stands to rake in $5.1 billion detaining immigrants alone.

Though conservatives regularly argue privatizing industries makes them leaner and more cost-effective, the opposite is true for prisons. In Arizona, for example, private prisons cost $3.5 million per year more than state-run prisons. In Florida, the state has started laying people off after privatizing prisoners’ health care. In addition, private prisons are riddled with violations, including emergency procedures and cleanliness.