Wisconsin’s Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued an advisory memo to prosecutors and police departments across his state saying the mere act of having a gun (open carry) does not necessarily warrant a charge of disorderly conduct.

Van Hollen’s memo was the result of an earlier case that saw a backyard tree planter in a suburb of Milwaukee taken down and charged with disorderly conduct for the simple fact that he had a holstered gun strapped to his side.

The memo wasn’t very definitive, saying, “The Department of Justice believes that mere open carry of a firearm, absent additional facts and circumstances, should not result in a disorderly conduct charge,” and citing the state constitutional right to bear arms, Van Hollen still believes that a person who “brandishes a handgun in public” may lose “constitutional protection.” And he said in an interview that still, the act of carrying a gun in public is in itself causing disorder.

Oregon, Wisconsin Police Chief Doug Pettit said the memo didn’t really provide direction for police, “I don’t know if the memo clarifies anything, other than it’s not automatic disorderly conduct charge.” Pettit added that like everything else these days, he would have to use discretion. I recommend to Chief Pettit a good reading and understanding of the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

Van Hollen’s memo cited case precedent advising that the police can approach and question anyone open carrying, and as along as the person remains “free to walk away, there has been no intrusion on liberty.”

But Milwaukee Chief of Police Ed Flynn is refusing to abide by the recommendations of the memo with a rather arrogant and condescending tone:

My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away, and then decide whether you have a right to carry it. Maybe I’ll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I’ve got serious offenders with access to handguns. It’s irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them.

"My troops"? They're police officers.

"Decide whether you have a right to carry it"? Ever heard of due process?

For someone who is supposed to uphold the law, even have a dedication to the law, by totally disregarding that law and infringing on the rights of others to keep and bear arms under the fear of being taken down, Chief Flynn exhibits a certain tyrannical and totalitarian approach, out of line with the Constitution. By defying the law, that’s what Chief Flynn is doing, he breaks it. His advice if put into practice is unconstitutional. It is he who is operating outside the law, by imposing his own rule on others.

The matter of open carry should not be a contentious one. And indeed, in the history of this country it has only become so in modern times.

Objectively, someone carrying a gun is not causing a disorder; this would only be in the eyes of the beholder, the mindset of each individual or of society as a whole who have had their sensibilities manipulated. Usually this happens in societies where limitations and restrictions replace liberties and freedoms, toward a particular goal.

Speaking to reporters while standing alongside Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City on April 16, President Barack Obama said he would push the U.S. Senate to ratify a treaty called the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials. The convention, known by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, has not been brought up for a vote in the Senate since it was adopted in 1997. Like all treaties, it would require a two-thirds majority (67 votes) in the upper house to secure ratification.

The treaty, listed on the Senate website, as Treaty Number: 105-49, was signed by the United States and 28 other OAS Member States on November 14, 1997, at the OAS Headquarters in Washington and was transmitted to the Senate on June 09, 1998. It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations by unanimous consent the same day.

Answering a question during a press conference held in Mexico City on April 17, Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, said: “This is one of the priority treaties that we'd like to see the Senate’s advice and consent on.  And, you know, we are working very closely with Senator Reid and many others on a range of issues, to include this.” (Emphasis added.)

Ratifying the CIFTA treaty would be a major threat to our citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. Since none of the other nations that are party to the "Inter-American Convention" share the protections afforded by our Second Amendment, to make our own law subject to the multinational convention would only undermine those protections.

Examining the treaty, we find that its text is worded benignly enough, using such reassuring phrases as “REAFFIRMING the principles of sovereignty, nonintervention, and the juridical equality of states.” However, since the principles of firearms ownership embodied in our Second Amendment are unique in the world, any accommodation with nations that do not enjoy similar protections is bound to dilute our own government’s respect for the Second Amendment. Certain language in the treaty indicates that its authors viewed the right to keep and bear arms differently than Americans are accustomed to. For example, the treaty attempts to reassure its signatories that it “is not intended to discourage or diminish lawful leisure or recreational activities such as travel or tourism for sport shooting, hunting, and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties.”

But in the case of the United States, the right to keep and bear arms is not contingent upon our government’s definition of “lawful ownership” — it is a fundamental right. And that right is designed not merely to allow for “leisure or recreational activities” but for self defense and as the last recourse of the citizenry against a future government that may become totalitarian.

Also disturbing is the treaty’s references to international law and the United Nations. At one point it references “strengthening existing international law enforcement support mechanisms such as the International Weapons and Explosives Tracking System (IWETS) of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), to prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, [etc.]”

As to why international law is significant to us, an article in the Boston Globe for October 28, 2004 reported that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor — in a15-minute speech delivered at Georgetown law school the previous day — had “extolled the growing role of international law in US courts.” The newspaper quoted O’Connor as stating: “'International law is no longer a specialty. . . . It is vital if judges are to faithfully discharge their duties.”

The last thing the United States needs is to be a party to a treaty that creates a precedent in international law regulating the possession of arms, precedent that may later be cited by U.S. judges. Here is a video from Gun Owners of America that discusses the threat to our Second Amendment rights posed by the CIFTA treaty:

Furthermore, the subordination of the OAS to the UN is revealed by the provision of the treaty that provides that copies of it “shall be deposited with the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, which shall forward an authenticated copy of its text to the Secretariat of the United Nations for registration and publication, in accordance with Article 102 of the United Nations Charter.”

The UN has a long history of attempting to regulate arms in a manner incompatible with the U.S. view of the right to keep and bear arms, through bodies such as the UN Security Council Small Arms Ministerial. In his millennium report, We the Peoples, Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared: “Controlling the proliferation of illicit weapons is a necessary first step toward the non-proliferation of small arms. These weapons must be brought under the control of states, and states must be held responsible for their transfer.”

If our borders are secure, we can police the importation of weapons from criminal or terrorist sources all on our own, without becoming entangled in international treaties that may dilute our basic right to keep and bear arms without infringement.

Follow this link to an alert that allows you to email your senators now, urging them to oppose ratification of this dangerous treaty.

To read more about the danger to liberty posed by gun control, we recommend the materials found online at ShopJBS.org.

A few years ago, during the 2005/6 session of the California legislature, an ammunition serialization bill, AB 352, was passed by both houses, but died in Conference on Nov. 30, 2006. A close call!

Nonetheless, beginning in 2007 an ammunition serialization campaign organized by Ammunition Accountability, a lobbying arm of Ammunition Coding System (listen to the interview on NRANews.com posted below for the direct evidence), has been working with state legislatures to get bills passed to mandate ammunition serialization on a state by state basis. It just so happens that Ammunition Coding System would profit handsomely from such mandatory serialization. Although Russ Ford of Ammunition Coding System claimed vigorously during an interview on NRANews.com (posted on January 25, 2008), that they were striving for complete transparency in their activities, as of January 8, 2009, there is still no link from the Ammunition Accountability website to the Ammunition Coding System website, and no link back the other way either.

By clicking on the "Legislation" tab at http://www.ammunitionaccountability.com, you'll see that five state legislatures introduced ammunition serialization resolutions in 2007 and 18 states did so in 2008.

The good news is that ammunition serialization resolutions were introduced in five states in 2007 and 18 states in 2008, but that not a single state passed their resolution. The bad news is that ammunition serialization resolutions were introduced in five states in 2007 and 18 states in 2008. The point is that many state legislatures became more gun-control-friendly with the 2008 elections. So we can't be assured that ammunition serialization bills will continue to be defeated or ignored during this 2009/10 legislative cycle.

Here's an excellent resource to get up to speed on what ammunition serialization is all about and to learn something about Russ Ford and Ammunition Coding System. It's a video of a 43-minute radio interview with Russ Ford on NRANews.com (scroll to bottom of the linked page to see the video). 

For a little flavor of just how bad this ammunition serialization would be consider this excerpt from an online NRA webpage, "Encoded Ammunition"/Bullet Serialization, that was posted on January 25, 2008:

Reasons to Strenuously Oppose This Legislation

People would be required to forfeit all personally-owned non-encoded ammunition. After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-encoded ammunition. Gun owners possess hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition for target shooting, hunting and personal protection. Consider that American manufacturers produce 8 billion rounds each year.

Reloading (re-using cartridge cases multiple times) would be abolished. There would be no way to correspond serial numbers on cartridge cases, and different sets and quantities of bullets.

People would be required to separately register every box of "encoded ammunition." This information would be supplied to the police. Most states do not even require registration of guns. Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration.

Private citizens would have to maintain records, if they sold ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends.

The cost of ammunition would soar, for police and private citizens alike. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute estimates it would take three weeks to produce ammunition currently produced in a single day. For reason of cost, manufacturers would produce only ultra-expensive encoded ammunition, which police would have to buy, just like everyone else.

We'll be following and opposing the ongoing Ammunition Accountability campaign in 2009. As such resolutions are introduced in state legislatures, we'll be putting our new state legislative contact service to work to provide an easy way for citizens to contact their state legislators regarding this anti-Second-Amendment campaign. You'll be able to find updates on this ammunition accountability issue at our "Right to Bear Arms Blog" and at our JBS.org Freedom Campaign webpage.

Gun Digest magazine is reporting gun sales are soaring in anticipation of gun bans under an Obama administration.