Of Arms and the Law

Inspector General: US Atty leaked memo to retaliate against ATF whistleblower

Story here. Retaliation for having disclosed "Fast and Furious," that is. Probably grounds for a Privacy Act suit here.

Cat's out of the bag and running

Forbes reports that a fellow has created a rifled, durable, handgun with a 3-D printer. He used a different plastic and a different design than that used in the original effort.

The rifling is vital, because a smoothbore handgun is NFA regulated.

Feinstein's "assault weapon ban" and exceptions

Under her ban, retired LEOs would be allowed to purchase AWs. A perfectly decent non-LEO would be unable to buy one, but this fellow would be able to. As a friend pointed out, when an LEO becomes too mentally unstable to serve, he's given a disability retirement.

Brady sues over mandatory gun law

Nelson, GA has enacted a law requiring every household to be armed, and Brady Campaign has filed a legal challenge. Since apparently there's no penalty for violation (a feature of the earlier Kennesaw ban, due to some advice I gave decades ago), I have trouble seeing "case or controversy." It would, I'd think, be a chance to trot out Framing era militia statutes, tho.

The Second Amendment's right to arms clause establishes that you may decide how many firearms to own.

Its militia clause, however, recognizes that "none" may be the wrong answer.

Five reasons the NRA wins

An insightful article by Amy Showalter. She notes the conventional media narrative is "NRA has lots of political money with which to scare politicians," but that's not the key. Keys are things like armies of well-informed volunteers, face to face contact, old-fashioned personal persuasion.

There may be a deeper issue here. NRA has members, Brady Campaign has customers, you might say. They have no voice in the organization, or its policies or leadership. It puts products (bills, messages, and (when it can get any) legislative successes) to them, and they send in contributions.

Video entries in the eternal debate

Ammoforsale.com (which seems to actually have ammo for sale, a rare enough occurrence these days) is hosting a video debate:

9mm: the greatest cartridge ever made.

.45 ACP: the greatest cartridge ever made.

(You may have to click on the video tab to run the video in each). As far as I'm concerned, if the Lord had meant the 9mm to be the greatest cartridge ever made, he would have inspired John M. Browning to create it.

Another Bloomberg mayor.....

Jersey City mayor Jerramiah Healy is proud of his membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns. At least he's escaped indictment so far (he's only been convicted of a misdemeanor after brawling with police), but there has been a ... little flap.

A while back, he was photographed sitting naked on his porch. Pressed to explain, he said he was drunk. (On 6-8 beers, and he's an attorney... such a lightweight). Now he's advancing a different claim. In it, he claims that he came to the door in a towel, and three young ladies, apparently bent upon taking advantage of him, snatched away the towel. He defended his virtue by repelling their "filthy" advances and driving them off, and while stopping to rest on his porch, was photographed.

You can't make this stuff up...

David Gregory and the illegal AR-15 magazine

Emily Miller has the story. Gregory is the political reporter who, on NBC Nightly News, pulled out an AR-15 magazine... at a studio inside DC, where such magazines are banned. Of course, nothing ever happened. Ms. Miller and Judicial Watch are pursuing the matter, and DC has fouled up by withholding a document from Judicial Watch that it has already disclosed to Miller.

The ammo shortage is so serious....

That the chief of police of Proctor, Minnesota, is having to borrow ammunition from local shooters.

Cert petition: right of a soldier to self-defense in combat zone

Petition here. We're getting to where we may have to field armies of lawyers. They'll do little good in combat, but will be able to comply with legal standards while being defeated. Petitioner is a platoon leader, appealing a court martial. His platoon was hit with an IED, suffered two KIAs.

He questioned a suspect, holding a gun on him, and finally threatening him. He testified that when he looked aside, the suspect threw a rock at him and rose up, reaching for his gun. This was disputed; the translator said the first shot was fired while the suspect was "semi-seated." Forensic experts said, however, that the first shot was fired when the suspect was either standing or nearly standing.

Disputed facts, but the court martial ruled that he had no right of self-defense, since he initiated things by pointing a gun at the suspect and threatening him. Thus, even if his story was true he was still guilty. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years.

Here's the government's opposition. It points out that he also stripped the suspect prior to questioning him, and that the translator said he said he killed the suspect because he was involved in several bombings.

Thoughts on the Benghazi talking points

Off topic really, but that entire process is so very typical of the Federal bureaucracy (and maybe of other ones, I was a Federal bureaucrat only). The most important thing to a bureaucrat is not truth or falsity, but The Position. The Position is the only reality, and ruling upon it settles every question. Determining it requires a collective effort, usually by people who have no direct knowledge at all. In this case, the final editing of the talking points appears to have been done at a meeting of Deputy Assistant Secretaries (I'm assuming that was the deputies meeting referred to, although State may have more than one Deputy Secretary, I'm not going to research it). None of them had any direct knowledge of anything. Quite likely, none of them talked to anyone with direct knowledge. The memo they were working on was itself probably drafted by people with no direct knowledge, and who may not have spoken to anyone with it.

To a bureaucrat, none of this was important. What is important is a collective determination of The Position. Once that is settled, it becomes collective reality and no one will even think of questioning it. And everyone higher in the chain of command will be told only The Position, not that there are questions about or differences of opinion on it.

I once wrote a one-page memo on what happened in a courtroom. It was very dry. We argued this, they argued that, and the judge ordered this. No policy statements, no recommendations, just what was said.I sent it to the client agency FYI. My boss's boss got a copy and became very worried. I'd told the client agency what happened, without making sure it was Our Position on it. I asked, how can we have A Position on what happened in a room? I was in the room, no one else here was, and it was a public proceeding, anyone who wants can buy a transcript. It did not reduce his fears.

At one point Secretary Lujan began calling individual attorneys to ask how interesting court cases were going. We got written orders to refuse his call! He must go thru the chain of command, so that every answer was vetted by the branch, the division, and then the Solicitor (who knew only what the division told him), and The Position would then be given to the Secretary. There would be no "oh, we had a hearing on preliminary injunction last Tuesday, I figure we have a 50-50 on winning."

History of California gun laws

An interesting post at CalGuns Foundation. I just checked out the weapons section of the California Penal Code, and it runs over a thousand pages. Now, that's with annotations (short one-paragraph summaries of court cases interpreting each section), but it's still staggering.

MSI sues Maryland Police over permit delays

Maryland Shall Issue has filed a lawsuit against the State Police. The gist of it is that the police are taking an average of 55 days to issue permits, while the statutory command is that they do so within 7 days.

Article on women of the NRA

Right here. "Meet the ladies who call the shots at the NRA."

A very interesting book

I sat next to the author on a flight into Houston, and found his book very interesting. He was an FFL and author of articles in various gun magazines. He reported a suspicious customer to ATF years ago, and at their urging, became a prominent part of "Operation Wide Receiver," which preceded "Operation Fast and Furious." He kept good notes, and this book is the result.

To make a long story short, he sold guns to Cartel buyers, documenting everything with hidden recorders and a hidden videocam, turned over the results to ATF, and was assured that the guns were being traced and cartel leaders would be taken down thanks to his work. And then given many excuses as to why no charges had yet been filed. In the end they arrested a handful of straw purchasers, and dropped charges against the one that insisted on going to trial.

After that, an Ass't US Attorney made him realize what was going on. How were they going to take down cartel leaders who were in another country? Was it done to find out which cartels the guns were going to? They knew that by the first or second shipment. To track where cartels were operating? We already knew that. The AUSA said, "I can only think of one reason why [ATF special agent in charge] Newell would allow American guns to continue to cross the border and show up at Mexican crime scenes." Neither of them had to say anything at that point.

He believes that Newell was key to the gunrunning at the outset. Then comes the presidential election, an antigun Administration, and Dennis Burke becomes US Attorney for the State. Burke boasted of having drafted the first Federal "assault weapon ban," and had later served in the Clinton White House. Burke had every reason to expand the program via Fast and Furious; he would make sure that American guns wound up at Mexican murder scenes, and set the stage for another AW ban.