An Unexpected Ally Against Sullivan

I received the following email:

David:

You can find out who I am by Googling me.

I agree with you on this. Sullivan should not be allowed to serve 1 nanosecond at BATFE's confirmed head.

Irwin J. Nowick

My reply:

Mr. Nowick, I have heard of you. Would you be willing to give me a reason or two why, that I can quote? First, because I'd be very interested to find out why you consider him to be the wrong choice, but mostly because we lack compelling arguments to persuade the democrat side--or is it presumptuous of me to assume your reasons are different from mine?

Thanks,

David

His response:

It's based on the warrant comments and his general behavior as US Attorney in Massachusetts.

Unless Crapo and Senator Tap-Tap lift the hold, his nomination will not come up. This is a hold placed on a Bush nominee by 2 US Republican Senators. Harry Reid who is tight with the NRA will not interfere with a GOP internal food fight unless Bush gives him a huge incentive to do so.

Having said that, as an in your face I would not be surprised if Bush does a bill signing ceremony on the NICS Improvement Act in which this issue comes up and Sullivan is there.

Either Crapo and Tap-Tap fold (and Tap Tap being involved raises the media notoriety of this) or Sullivan withdraws as a nominee. How this is portrayed in the media is critical which is why Sullivan opponents have be on their best behavior and factual in the reasons for their opposition.

Mr. Nowick's opinions should be considered extremely qualified. California legislators listen to him. In this case, we should, too.

UPDATE: I just received the following additional observations from Irwin Nowick:

Sullivan's hold is supported by a slew of people for a slew of reasons.

In terms of why the number of FFL's are dropping, it has to do with the 1986 Firearms Owner Protection Act and the 1993 and 1994 licensing bills. Much has been written about this but because FOPA created a standard for who was required to have a license, the converse also became the case. If you did not meet the standard that required that you get the license, you became ineligible to get the license. That is why the number of FFL's have dropped. I would argue that under a fair regulatory scheme you do not want in a business situation so many market entrants in this field that it cannot be regulated. That is not good for any one.

I would also point out a big problem with the GCA - the law not BATFE - and the NRA could have fixed this in 1986 - is that there are no intermediate sanctions for no heavy violations. While HR 4900 fixes some of that it has some overkill provisions that make it DOA. A new BATFE head should have been asked about this at his confirmation and coming in could have committed to working with the stakeholders to fix these issues and stated when he would have legislation ready. It also would help if the President showed some interest in these issues. So that gets into the temperament issue which is a key attribute of being head of BATFE or any other agency. Particularly in a very controversial area if you want to get things done you have temperament.

In CA, for all the complaining starting under Lockyer the head of the Firearms Division (Randy Rossi who is now retired) had stakeholder groups which would bring up issues and we would address them through either legislation or the like by banging heads together. It worked because while Randy was a cop he was also a hunter and competition shooter who owned guns in his individual capacity so he understood guns as a gun owner. He had LEADERSHIP skills.

Incidentally, on the licensing issue, there is an analogy in terms of CA law. In many states, the exemptions from carrying a handgun are very restrictive so when the NRA pushed for shall issue laws, they were in effect pushing to have people licensed to carry handguns under conditions that were really enhanced regulations. In many of these cases, the NRA was so focused on the licensing that they ignored creating additional exemptions besides the license.

In CA, while we have had a substantial amount of licensing reforms (AB 2022 in 1998 being just one - though I could add others), the chiefs and sheriffs - while they recognized that there were legitimate reasons to carry/transport guns so we added all these locked container exemptions or other provisions which solved the problem but with due respect to persons concerns. The effect of the exemptions though were that in CA the number of general carry licensees has climbed somewhat but the number of persons legally carrying guns under some other provision or procedure jumped considerably such that the chiefs and sheriffs when they denied license requests stated the reason you asked for the license is denied is that you don't need one for what you want to do. It just did not show up in the overall statistics.