Chad’s Morning Brief: Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Stricter Gun Law, Gay Therapy Continues to Be a Media Topic, and Other Top Stories

Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of June 17, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

Important Election Dates:

Early Voting for the District 3 Runoff Election: June 9-17

Election Day for Lubbock City Council District 3 Runoff: June 21

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SCOTUS Sides With Stricter Gun Laws

According to the Washington Times, the Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration in a case dealing with gun purchases.

The Supreme Court on Monday tightened restrictions on gun purchases, ruling that buyers must take care to explicitly state on their federal purchase form whether they intend to keep or sell their newly-bought gun to someone else.
The 5-4 ruling was seen as the biggest test of gun rights during this term of the Supreme Court, and a majority of justices signaled their desire to strictly interpret the law in light of difficulties in background checks.
“No piece of information is more important under federal firearms law than the identity of a gun’s purchaser—the person who acquires a gun as a result of a transaction with a licensed dealer,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.
The case involved a man who, as a former police officer was entitled to a discount on guns, offered to buy one for his uncle. Bruce Abramski Jr. made the purchase and listed himself as the buyer, clearing a federal background check. He then transferred the gun to his uncle, again done through a federally licensed dealer in compliance with state law.
If he had bought the gun to raffle off, or to give to his uncle as a gift, it would have been legal under the government’s interpretation. But because he bought it specifically to sell to his uncle, the government said, he broke the law by listing himself as the “actual/transferee buyer” of the gun.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a chiding dissent, said the fact that Mr. Abramski was transferring the weapon was not “material to the lawfulness” of the sale.
He said given the rules on raffles and gifts, the law appears concerned “only with the man at the counter.”

Thoughts?

Gay Therapy

Texas Governor Rick Perry is now attempting to get away from the gay therapy question. According to POLITICO, he told CNBC that he'd leave the question of whether or not gay therapy works to the professionals.

Rick Perry on Monday addressed his previous comments on homosexuality, saying he will let medical professionals determine the efficacy of homosexuality therapy and electing not to condemn the practice.
The Texas governor largely skirted questions regarding his comments last week, in which he appeared to suggest that homosexuality is a disorder, and refusing to say whether homosexuality therapy was legitimate or not.
“I don’t know,” the Republican governor said on CNBC when asked whether he believes that there should be therapy programs to “cure” homosexuality. “The fact is, we’ll leave that to the psychologists and the doctors.”
Host Joe Kernen pushed back, saying that psychologists have already dismissed the idea that homosexuality is a disorder or treatable.
When asked further about homosexuality, Perry refused to “condone” it, but said he would respect the rights of each state to set its own laws on same-sex marriage.
“I don’t necessarily condone that lifestyle,” he said of homosexuality. “I don’t condemn it, either. We’re all children of God.” He added that the most important issue in the gay rights debate was that each state should decide its laws for itself without Washington interference.
Appearing in San Francisco last Wednesday, Perry compared homosexuality to alcoholism and did not rule out whether homosexuality could be cured with therapy.
“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” the governor said at the Commonwealth Club of California. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”
Perry was responding to the Texas Republican Party’s recent decision to support access to “reparative therapy” for homosexuals in its public platform.
When running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Perry came under fire for a campaign commercial, in which he said: “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

The fact is, this gay therapy issue never should have been part of the Texas Republican Convention. I understand that the media is twisting the language of the plank, but who didn't see that coming? Perry should be spending his time talking about how great the Texas economy is instead of dodging questions about a practice that many consider sketchy.

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