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‘Shotgun Sellout’: House Democrats cut special deal with NRA
House Democrats held a shotgun wedding between campaign finance “reformers” and the National Rifle Association today in announcing a carve out for the powerful gun lobby in a bill responding to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

The “Shotgun Sellout” exempts large organizations from the most burdensome regulations of the DISCLOSE Act, “Democratic Incumbents Seek to Contain Losses by Outlawing Speech in Elections,” while pistol whipping genuine grassroots groups.

“The Democratic majority has decided that established, powerful interest groups should be exempted from the proposed draconian regulations, while small advocacy groups should have their voices silenced by the DISCLOSE Act,” said Center for Competitive Politics President Sean Parnell. “Exempting the National Rifle Association from these regulations while local groups such as the Oregon Firearms Federation would face stifling regulations if they choose to exercise their First Amendment rights simply cannot be considered ‘reform.’”

“This sort of special carve out for an established interest group is just the kind of insider manipulation that gives the public the sense that Congress is unresponsive to the concerns of ordinary Americans,” said Allison Hayward, CCP’s Vice President of Policy. “How can it be that invasive and onerous disclosure requirements are proper when applied to small, regional interest groups but not large, wealthy national groups?”

“This exception could serve to entrench political organization, discourage local participation in civic groups, and undermine the civic involvement that Alexis de Tocqueville identified as uniquely American and one of America’s great strengths,” she added.

According to Capitol Hill sources, the Rules Committee will likely hold a Wednesday hearing to advance the DISCLOSE Act to the House floor by the end of the week.

Read the rest here.

Alan Gura, lawyer for the Chicago plaintiffs whose right to effectively defend their lives in their own homes has been abridged by the city’s ban on handgun possession, previously won 2008′s D.C. v. Heller, the case establishing that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess weapons against federal encroachment. Gura is responsible, then, for the rehabilitation and revival of one constitutional amendment already. In McDonald, rather than merely extending the Second’s reach, he is aiming to rehabilitate and revive the 14th Amendment as well.

However, the Supreme Court’s decision in late January to grant 10 of Gura’s 30 minutes of oral argument time to the National Rifle Association (NRA) seems likely to hurt chances that the Court will take the more dramatic route laid before them. The NRA isn’t a plaintiff in McDonald (though they were parties in an earlier version heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which combined separate challenges to Chicago’s gun bans), and the organization’s intent is to emphasize the more limited and traditional method of incorporating the Second Amendment against the states via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

To sum up a very complicated legal argument quickly, Gura’s McDonald briefs do not rely solely on the traditional due process method. He also argued that 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause was more clearly intended to accomplish such incorporation, in terms of both legal logic and history.

This is almost a “libertarian” vs. “Republican” argument taking shape. Gura’s effort in using the Privileges or Immunities clause is much more far-reaching and thus more “libertarian” than the NRA’s effort to use, the more typical for incorporation, Due Process clause.

It could be said that winning this case on Privileges or Immunities grounds would make everyone, not just gun owners, more free. Winning the case on Due Process grounds would be more specific and mostly help gun owners alone.

Take the time to read the entire article if you are interested in this case.

Sadly, it’s also typical of how the NRA has behaved throughout this case and before that during the Heller litigation — sabotaging Alan [Gura] at every turn and showing again and again that, even in the face of winning arguments that fully support its legal positions, the NRA prefers to seek glory for itself rather than presenting the strongest case for its purported constituency of gun owners.

Read the full article at Cato.org.