Of Arms and the Law

Maybe we should just legalize bribery....

As it is, Congressional leaders have to buy votes by giving things to a legislator's district, which costs us far more than would a simple bribe. If, for example, the leadership needed a vote to pass health care legislation, I really doubt even a greedy senator would ask for $100,000,000.

Permits for toy guns

That's going to become a requirement in New South Wales.

Will the Chicago case lead to a constitutional reawakening?

That's the question asked in the Wall Street Journal Online.

Attempted hijack of Maesrk Alabama

This time, tho, the ship had armed guards who shot back, and the pirates quickly took several KIAs. Howard Nemerov notes, strangely, the NY Times plays down the rifles and the defense and sounds rather, well, pro-pirate.

7th Circuit questions ban on gun ownership by misdemeanor DV defendants

There's quite a discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy, regarding today's decision that calls into question the Lautenberg Amendment. The court concludes that the law should be given intermediate scrutiny (in part because the firearm was possessed for hunting rather than self-defense), vacates the conviction and sends that case back for more fact-finding. The wording certainly indicates that the court is taking the challenge seriously and wants the parties to do so as well. Opinion here.

Hat tip to readers Todd, and to Alice Beard.

Cory Maye gets a new trial!

Good news!

Via Instapundit...

UPDATE: here's the opinion. Maye's attorney got a ruling transferring the case to another county, due to local bias. Then he discovered the second county was no better, and moved to have it returned. Instead the trial court moved the case to a third county. The appellate court noted there was a constitutional right to be tried in the county where the offense allegedly occurred, and so, upon Maye's retracting his request to be transferred elsewhere, it should have been returned to the county where the incident occurred, not sent to a third county.

NRA's Chicago brief

Pdf is here. Between this and Petitioner's brief, I think the ground is covered very well. Petitioner emphasizes incorporation under the privileges or immunities clause (which makes far more sense) and NRA emphasizes incorporation under the due process clause (which is simpler to do).

NRA files, not as an amicus, but as respondent in support of petitioner. In case you wonder what that is -- NRA also filed an appeal (a petition for cert.), but the Supreme Court took the SAF case and not the NRA one, which remains pending. The Clerk ruled that NRA, being a party to the other appeal, was entitled to file as if it were a party (meaning a longer brief, but deadline yesterday). It'd obviously be in support of the Petitioner. But custom is that anyone not a petitioner and not an amicus is a respondent. So they wound up as Respondent in Support of Petitioner).

US v. Miller (1939)

I did some research in National Archives, into US v. Miller. If anyone wonders how the case wound up so messy... here are a pair of telegrams from Miller's attorney to the clerk of the Court, announced that he won't file a brief, nor argue. View image

Opening brief in Chicago case

Pdf is here. Very, very, well-written.

NY case on destruction of guns

Pdf here. Plaintiff surrendered his guns to a sheriff, pursuant to a protection order entered in his divorce case. The sheriff destroyed them before the divorce case was over. The Court of Appeals held that he had a property interest in his firearms, the statute authorizing the sheriff to destroy unclaimed firearms after a year only applied to handguns, there was no qualified immunity since a reasonable LEO reading the statute would have known that. It also held that the sheriff's department (rather than just the person who destroyed the firearms) was open to suit since had an office policy allowing such illegal destruction.

DC Ct of Apps holds Heller is retroactive

Pdf ruling here. Skim ahead to p. 21, or p. 29 if you have a low threshold of boredom.

Report from Fort Hood

I can't authenticate this -- don't know the author's identity -- but the author states he is a soldier who was present at the murders. It comes via a Texas friend:

Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 10:05 AM
Subject: What happened

Since I don't know when I'll sleep (it's 4 am now) I'll write what happened (the abbreviated version.....the long one is already part of the investigation with more to come).

Don't assume that most of the current media accounts are very accurate. They're not. They'll improve with time. Only those of us who were there really know what went down. But as they collate our statements they'll get it right.

I did my SRP last week (Soldier Readiness Processing) but you're supposed to come back a week later to have them look at the smallpox vaccination site (it's this big itchy growth on your shoulder). I am probably alive because I pulled a --------- and entered the wrong building first (the main SRP building). The Medical SRP building is off to the side. Realizing my mistake I left the main building and walked down the sidewalk to the medical SRP building.

As I'm walking up to it the gunshots start. Slow and methodical. But continuous. Two ambulatory wounded came out. Then two soldiers dragging a third who was covered in blood.. Hearing the shots but not seeing the shooter, along with a couple other soldiers I stood in the street and yelled at everyone who came running that it was clear but to "RUN!" I kept motioning people fast. About 6-10 minutes later (the shooting continuous), two cops ran up, one male, one female. We pointed in the direction of the shots.

They headed that way (the medical SRP building was about 50 meters away). Then a lot more gunfire. A couple minutes later a balding man in ACU's came around the building carrying a pistol and holding it tactically. He started shooting at us and we all dived back to the cars behind us. I don't think he hit the couple other guys who were there. I did see the bullet holes later in the cars. First I went behind a tire and then looked under the body of the car. I've been trained how to respond to gunfire...but with my own weapon.

To have no weapon I don't know how to explain what that felt like. I hadn't run away and stayed because I had thought about the consequences or anything like that. I wasn't thinking anything through. Please understand, there was no intention. I was just staying there because I didn't think about running. It never occurred to me that he might shoot me. Until he started shooting in my direction and I realized I was unarmed.

Then the female cop comes around the corner.. He shoots her. (According to the news accounts she got a round into him. I believe it, I just didn't see it. He didn't go down.) She goes down.. He starts reloading. He's fiddling with his mags. Weirdly, he hasn't dropped the one that was in his weapon. He's holding the fresh one and the old one (you do that on the range when time is not of the essence but in combat you would just let the old mag go).

I see the male cop around the left corner of the building. I'm about 15-20 meters from the shooter.) I yell at the cop, "He's reloading, he's reloading. Shoot him! Shoot him! You have to understand, everything was quiet at this point. The cop appears to hear me and comes around the corner and shoots the shooter. He goes down. The cop kicks his weapon farther away. I sprint up to the downed female cop. Another captain (I think he was with me behind the cars) comes up as well. She's bleeding profusely out of her thigh. We take our belts off and tourniquet her just like we've been trained (I hope we did it right...we didn't have any CLS (combat lifesaver) bags with their awesome tourniquets on us, so we worked with what we had).

Meanwhile, in the most bizarre moment of the day, a photographer was standing over us taking pictures. I suppose I'll be seeing those tomorrow..

I couldn't believe he was one of ours. I didn't want to believe it. Then I saw his name and rank and realized this wasn't just some specialist with mental issues. At this point there was a guy there from CID and I asked him if he knew he was the shooter and had him secured. He said he did.

I then went over the slaughterhouse, the medical SRP building. No human should ever have to see what that looked like. And I won't tell you. Just believe me. Please. There was nothing to be done there. Someone then said there was someone critically wounded around the corner. I ran around (while seeing this floor to ceiling window that someone had jumped through movie-style) and saw a large African-American soldier lying on his back with two or three soldiers attending. I ran up and identified two entrance wounds on the right side of his stomach, one exit wound on the left side and one head wound. He was not bleeding externally from the stomach wounds (though almost certainly internally) but was bleeding from the head wound. A soldier was using a shirt to try and stop the head bleeding.

He was conscious so I began talking to him to keep him so. He was 42, from North Carolina, he was named something Jr., his son was named something III and he had a daughter as well. His children lived with him. He was divorced. I told him the blubber on his stomach saved his life. He smiled. a young soldier in civvies showed up and identified himself as a combat medic. We debated whether to put him on the back of a pickup truck. A doctor (well, an audiologist) showed up and said you can't move him, he has a head wound. We finally sat tight.

I went back to the slaughterhouse. They weren't letting anyone in there. Not even medics. finally, after about 45 minutes had elapsed some cops showed up in tactical vests. someone said the TBI building was unsecured. They headed into there. All of a sudden a couple more shots were fired. People shouted there was a second shooter! A half hour later the SWAT showed up. there was no second shooter. that had been an impetuous cop apparently. But that confused things for a while. Meanwhile, I went back to the shooter. The female cop had been taken away. a medic was pumping plasma into the shooter.

Eventually (an hour and a half to two hours after the shootings) they started landing choppers. They took out the big African-American guy and the shooter. I guess the ambulatory wounded were all at the SRP building. Everyone else in my area was dead.

I suppose the emergency responders were told there were multiple shooters. I heard that was the delay with the choppers (they were all civilian helicopters). they needed a secure LZ. but other than the initial cops who did everything right, I didn't see a lot of them for a while.

I did see many a soldier rush out to help their fellows/sisters. There was one female soldier, I don't know her name or rank but I would recognize her anywhere, who was everywhere helping people. a couple people, mainly civilians, were hysterical, but only a couple. One civilian freaked out when I tried to comfort her when she saw my uniform. I guess she had seen the shooter up close. A lot of soldiers were rushing out to help even when we thought there was another gunman out there..

This Army is not broken no matter what the pundits say. not the Army I saw. And then they kept me for a long time to come. Oh, and perhaps the most surreal thing, at 1500 (the end of the workday on Thursdays) when the bugle sounded we all came to attention and saluted the flag. In the middle of it all. this is what I saw.

It can't have been real. but this is my small corner of what happened.
**************************************

DC "sniper" gets a last injection

Either the last or one of the last shootings was at the Home Depot in Falls Church, about 200-300 yards from the house owned by my ex, Frances, and I.

I remember seeing it on the news and calling in. Fran was apt to be frightened by the least things, and this really had things going; police had shut down Rt. 7 and were routing traffic thru the neighborhood, helicopters buzzing overhead. I remember her shouting to her mother to turn off the lights and not silhouette herself against a window. I pointed out the snipers' MO was shoot and scoot; it was a safe bet he was at least 10 miles away before the first squad car got to the scene.

Veterans' Day video

Right here, at Shooting Illustrated online.

Thoughts on the Ft. Hood shootings

J. Neil Schulman has traced the history of the Dept of Defense regulation that essentially forbids military personnel to carry their own firearms on-base.