Ruling Tilts Law Against Gun Limits

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Supreme Court's historic decision Monday allowing gun owners to challenge city and state regulations as a violation of their Second Amendment rights clears the way for new challenges to firearms laws nationwide.

A five-justice conservative majority, over vigorous protests from the four more liberal justices, declared the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to the American notion of liberty and can shield gun owners from certain regulations across the country. Although the majority noted some gun laws would stand, such as prohibitions on felons possessing firearms, its rationale is certain to usher in a new era of litigation over gun control.

The case stemmed from a 28-year-old Chicago law that was a rare, total ban on handguns. The law was challenged by four homeowners who said they needed handguns for their safety. The high court's decision could fuel lawsuits against myriad local regulations - from firearms licensing requirements to limits on weapons carried outside the home.

"It's going to be city by city, town by town, block by block," National Rifle Association Vice President Wayne LaPierre vowed Monday. "We're going to have to work into every level to make sure this constitutional victory isn't turned into a practical defeat."

Monday's decision was somewhat predictable, based the justices' 5-4 decision in 2008 that first found an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, and on the tenor of oral arguments in the Chicago case in March.

Yet it greatly expands the force and consequences of the ruling two years ago and generated new concern from city officials worried it would undercut gun laws and lead to more violence.

"Across the country, cities are struggling with how to address this issue," Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said at City Hall. "Common sense tells you we need fewer guns on the street, not more guns."

David Pope, president of the village of Oak Park, outside Chicago, which also was defending a handgun ban, said the ruling curbs local flexibility to address crime. "For a long time, we always thought it was reasonable and constitutional for different cities and towns to have different regulations," he said.

Several large cities, including Baltimore, Cleveland and Oakland, had urged the court not to rule against Chicago. They were joined by three states with urban centers, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey, that warned if the high court extended the Second Amendment's reach, "nearly every firearms law will become the subject of a constitutional challenge, and even in cases where the law ultimately survives, its defense will be costly and time-consuming."

Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, which supports strict gun-control laws, predicted more than a new tide of lawsuits.

"People will die because of this decision," she said. "It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry."

As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito announced the court's opinion from the bench Monday, though, he said experts differ on whether private gun possession increases or decreases death and injury.

Alito also said that the 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, establishing the right to keep and bear arms under federal law, steered the court's decision Monday. The 2008 case arose from a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.

In Monday's case, Alito deemed the right to bear arms "fundamental" and noted the court had previously held that most provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to both the federal government and the states. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Breyer read portions of his dissent from the bench Monday, warning the new ruling would interfere with legislative efforts nationwide to control firearms and violence.

Dissenting separately, Justice Stevens, who is retiring, criticized the majority's view that the Second Amendment right to firearms is so fundamental and valuable that it must be applied broadly.

"Just as (firearms) can help homeowners defend their families and property from intruders," Stevens wrote, "they can help thugs and insurrectionists murder innocent victims. The threat that firearms will be misused is far from hypothetical, for gun crime has devastated many of our communities."

'Not the end of all gun laws'

Monday's case, brought by Otis McDonald and three other Chicagoans who said they wanted to keep handguns in their home for self-defense, presented the second round of high-stakes litigation over the scope of the Second Amendment.

For decades, despite polls showing Americans believed in an individual right to bear arms, most federal judges had ruled that the Second Amendment covered only a right of state militias, such as National Guards. That changed when the justices ruled definitively in 2008 there is an individual right to firearms in the home for personal safety.

In trying to distinguish its handgun ban from the Washington, D.C., ordinance struck down in 2008, the City of Chicago had argued that firearms violence there was of such a magnitude that the court should not extend its earlier decision to the states.

Chicago officials argued the Second Amendment involves a right to possess an item designed to kill or cause injury and cannot be likened to, for example, the First Amendment right of free speech, because it is not fundamental to individual liberty.

Alito's opinion for the court rejected that idea. He said that "a provision of the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the federal government and the states." He also dismissed arguments from Chicago officials and their backers that the court's extending the Second Amendment to the states would threaten all existing gun laws.

He said the Heller decision "recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not 'a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.' We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents' doomsday proclamations, (the decision) does not imperil law regulating firearms."

Justice Breyer, in his dissenting opinion signed by Ginsburg and Sotomayor, insisted state and local communities have carefully considered how they want to regulate guns and that their judgments would now be usurped by judges.

The Chicago challengers' case was brought on June 26, 2008, the day the Supreme Court struck down the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. Chicagoans Adam Orlov and Colleen and David Lawson joined McDonald in the case.

They were represented by Virginia lawyer Alan Gura, who had taken the lead on Heller.

"The court has made clear that the Second Amendment is a powerful, meaningful right," Gura said Monday.

"This is not the end of all gun laws. We weren't seeking an end to all gun laws. But it is going to be the end of those laws meant only to interfere with people's constitutional rights."

He said some registration laws, for example, can be so cumbersome that they restrict gun rights. Gura said he would soon be filing more lawsuits.

Some cities already revising laws

Chicago's Mayor Daley suggested the court's decision reflected a lack of understanding of the tragedies wrought by gun violence. "To suggest that Chicago's elected officials haven't done enough to protect our city's residents shows many of our highest level officials don't understand that gun violence pervades America, not just Chicago," he said.

He said the city was considering how to revise its law. The justices' rationale is likely to lead to the invalidation of the Chicago handgun ban, but the high court's majority did not definitely rule against the city's ban, and instead sent Monday's case back to lower courts for final action.

Some cities had begun revising their gun-control laws in anticipation of Monday's ruling. In Wilmette, Ill., Village Manager Timothy Frenzer said the community repealed its 19-year-old gun ban shortly after the high court's 2008 decision, largely because the "outcome (Monday) was predictable."

"All the groundwork had been laid in 2008 for the court to take the step it did today," Frenzer says.

In the two years since the community's gun ban was repealed, Frenzer says there has been "no detectable change" in crime.

Some cities, including New York, have strict gun licensing rules that critics such as LaPierre say end up being a ban for some would-be gun owners.

"I will continue to collaborate with mayors across the country to pursue common-sense, constitutional approaches to protecting public safety," said Bloomberg, co-chairman of the national coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

The majority of states sided with those challenging Chicago's ban. Thirty-eight states, led by Texas, said the Second Amendment should apply broadly. They said that some 44 states have a right to keep and bear arms in their own state constitutions.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers' reactions reflected the public's deep divisions over gun laws.

Judiciary Committee members Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., praised the ruling. Hatch called it a "victory for law-abiding gun owners." Leahy said "state and local governments will now have to proceed more carefully" on gun regulations, but "it will be in respect of a right that belongs to all Americans."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, countered that she was "extremely dismayed" by the court's ruling.

"I believe the proliferation of guns has made this country less safe, not more safe," said Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor. She assumed that job in 1978, after then-mayor George Moscone was fatally shot by former supervisor Dan White.

Source Officer.Com

Military likely to shun iPhone

Open architecture of something akin to the Android OS is more appealing

Jun 14, 2010
As the military continues its search for the best battlefield smart phone, it’s looking more unlikely that the iPhone will be a contender. The biggest hurdle: Apple’s proprietary technology and the massive price tag attached to implementing it across the Defense Department.


Comparatively, a mobile device driven by an open operating system – one that is malleable to DOD needs, perhaps the Android – could be a better fit for rapid design and deployment, according to DOD Buzz.


The Army, in particular, has been leading the charge for smart phones on the front line; besides fostering better connections up and down the chain of command, the presence of a smart phone effectively puts extra sensors on a solider. More sensors means more data, and in this case, more effective data-sharing. The ability to record audio, take pictures and video or exploit any number of custom applications would make for a critical asset in the combat theater.


It’s something military leaders are taking seriously. One example: the Army Apps challenge drew 141 teams that created 53 application proposals last month. Of those app proposals, 17 were for Android, 16 for iPhone, 10 for ASP.NET, seven for the LAMP open software stack, two for the BlackBerry and one for the Army Knowledge Online portal.

“Soldiers and Army civilians are creating new mobile and web applications of value for their peers—tools that enhance warfighting effectiveness and business productivity today,” said Lt. Gen. Jeff Sorenson, Army chief information officer/G-6, in an earlier interview.

Testing is already under way, including within the Army’s Brigade Combat Team Modernization program, on both iPhones and Androids. But already there’s a hefty speed bump: According to DOD Buzz, a Boeing official pegged the cost of a single, proprietary iPhone app at $200. It’s a steep cost for any program, but military smart phones don’t even have a dedicated budget yet.

To Sorenson, attaining the necessary situational awareness is more important than any cost. Getting the right devices and apps into the theater “might in many cases save soldier’s lives, which is priceless,” he said in March.

Source Defense Systems
June 17,2010

Can you hear me now? New Army phone communicates through rocks

New wireless telephone technology can transmit voice and data through mountains of solid rock

Say hello to the Rock Phone, a novel communication technology that recently emerged in Canada. It won't help you be heard any better at a Coldplay concert, but it will let you transmit real-time voice and data through a mountain of solid rock.

The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., is in the process of ordering a set of Rock Phones, presumably for testing, according to a presolicitation notice posted online on May 18, 2010.

The Rock Phone system, developed by Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia), uses magneto-inductive technology, which provides users a channel for signal, communication, guidance and navigation. The channel's unique properties let it operate through any medium, including earth, rock, sea or urban structures. According to the company's website, this capability is useful when the environment does not permit penetration by standard radio waves, such as into caves, mines, tunnels or large buildings.

Ultra Electronics claims the unit can operate through hundreds of meters of solid rock, enabling secure data and voice communications for troops or rescuers separated by line-of-sight obstacles underground, underwater or in dense urban environments. Vehicle-mounted systems reportedly are capable of providing extremely secure communications over longer ranges.

Magneto-inductive technology can be used in applications such as data, voice, video, remote control of unmanned ground vehicles and robots, or any other scenario where wireless communications of analog or digital signals are involved.

The Rock Phone device is portable and can be carried in the hand or worn on a belt. Rock Phones can be interfaced with any voice radio system to provide the capability for re-establishing radio contact in areas separated by intervening line-of-sight obstructions.

Since nothing else seems to have worked, maybe the Rock Phone can help the U.S. military find Osama bin Laden, widely presumed to be hiding in the backcountry caves somewhere in Afghanistan. Picture squads of troops or remote-controlled robots, each armed with Rock Phones, dispatched into hundreds of caves and tunnels in the Hindu Kush being able to talk with each other underground.

Scott Dern, a contract specialist for the Picatinny Arsenal, declined a Homeland1 request to comment on the Rock Phone acquisition or to speculate on what the Army intends to do with them.

Be that as it may, homeland security personnel might find Rock Phone technology advantageous for enhancing rescue communications in the aftermath of an earthquake or a mine- or building-collapse disaster.

Source Homeland1 News

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Feds Issue Terror Watch for the Texas/Mexico Border

Feds Issue Terror Watch for the Texas/Mexico Border
By Jana Winter

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a "large-scale smuggling enterprise" responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.

In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.

In recent years, American Somalis have been recruited by Al Shabaab to travel to Somalia, where they are often radicalized by more extremist or operational anti-American terror groups, which Al Shabaab supports. The recruiters coming through the Mexican border are the ones who could be the most dangerous, according to law enforcement officials.

Source The Counter Terrorist