Bill of Rights day!
December 15!
I was in DC during the Bicentennial of the Constitution (1987-89) and during what should have been the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights (1991). The first got big play, a commission headed by Chief Justice Burger, celebrations, etc.. The second was virtually ignored. My guess at the reason was that DC is of course a company town, the company is the federal government, and the Constitution is what gave that company power. The Bill of Rights ... well, it was nice but not really that important.
Venezuelans regret gun confiscation
"If guns had been a stronger part of our culture, if there had been a sense of duty for one to protect their individual rights, and as a show of force against a government power - and had legal carry been a common thing - it would have made a huge difference."
Against a bear, I'd prefer my 45-70
But without one, sometimes an sometimes an attack chihuahua will suffice....
Cert petition, NY State R&P v. New York City
Right here. Very well written. The case challenges the NYC restriction that prohibits the holder of a permit to possess (the type most frequently issued) to transport their firearm to any location other than to a shooting range inside NYC.
"The question presented is:
Whether the City's ban on transporting a licensed, locked, and unloaded handgun to a home or shooting range outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the constitutional right to travel."
ATF requires submission of samples before ruling on effect of an accessory
Adam Kraut discusses it on the Prince Law blog. The importance here is ATF might rule that a certain accessory attached to a certain gun makes it an NFA firearm, which means it could be returned if the person submitting it had an SOT, and also means that he committed a bunch of felonies in making it and shipping it to the agency....
Law school suspends student for owning guns
The University of North Texas suspends a law student, apparently because he owned guns. There was an anonymous claim that he had threatened someone, a claim that he clearly refuted (not just with witnesses that said he wasn't at the location, but by producing his cell phone's GPS data).
Medical articles conclude background checks do nothing
Dave Workman has the story. Not that that will sway anyone.
Problem solved
Jail escapee beats up guard, gets away, breaks into woman's house and approaches her bedroom. She drills him thru the head. Problem solved.
Third Circuit upholds NJ's ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds.
In Ass'n of N.J. Rifle and Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General.
The case is quite well laid-out for an anti-2A result, tho I course like the dissent better:
"Yet the majority treats the Second Amendment differently in two ways. First, it weighs the merits of the case to pick a tier of scrutiny. That puts the cart before the horse. For all other rights, we pick a tier of scrutiny based only on whether the law impairs the core right. The Second Amendment's core is the right to keep weapons for defending oneself and one's family in one's home. The majority agrees that this is the core. So whenever a law impairs that core right, we should apply strict scrutiny, period. That is the case here.
Second, though the majority purports to use intermediate scrutiny, it actually recreates the rational-basis test forbidden by Heller. It suggests that this record favors the government, but make no mistake--that is not what the District Court found. The majority repeatedly relies on evidence that the District Court did not rely on and expert testimony that the District Court said was "of little help." 2018 WL 4688345, at *8. It effectively flips the burden of proof onto the challengers...."
Never, in the long history of human stupidity.....
Has anyone suggested taking a hockey puck to a gunfight.
In my ten years in Washington, I became amazed at the inability of policy-makers to make policy. I have since become amazed at the inability of higher education to think.
California proposes tax on semi autos
Here's a story on the proposal. If they're proposing the tax in order to fund anti-violence agencies, we might ask why they don't tax violent offenders instead? Oh, I forgot, violent criminals are not the problem. The problem is peaceful gun owners. Having enacted just about every form of gun control known, the legislature must find something more to do.
Response to Parkland School Shooting: Cover it up, spend fortunes on PR advisors
Story here. The school was called upon to deal with nasty SOB who made no secret of his desire to kill people and shoot up a school. So they transferred him from a school for "special needs" students (I'd never through of homicidal compulsion as a special need, but at least it fit) into a standard, and large, school. Then they apparently ignored his continuing threats. After the shooting, they spent tens of thousands on PR advice, and stonewalled all attempts to investigate.
An inside story of Heller
Former Justice Stevens gives an insider's view of Heller:
"On the phone, he singled out three decisions as grave errors, noting that he had dissented in all of them. The first was District of Columbia v. Heller, the 5-to-4 ruling in 2008 that recognized an individual Second Amendment right to own guns.
"The combination of its actual practical impact by increasing the use of guns in the country and also the legal reasoning, which I thought was totally unpersuasive," he said, "persuaded me that the case is just about as bad as any in my tenure."
He said he had taken an extraordinary step in trying to head off the decision. Five weeks before Justice Antonin Scalia circulated his draft opinion for the majority, Justice Stevens sent around a draft of what he called his probable dissent. He said he could not recall ever having done anything like that.
"I thought I should give it every effort to switch the case before it was too late," he said.
The effort failed. But Justice Stevens wrote that he helped persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority, to ask for "some important changes" to Justice Scalia's opinion. A passage in the opinion, which Justice Scalia had plainly added to secure a fifth vote, said the decision "should not be taken to cast doubt" on many kinds of gun control laws."
That would confirm suspicions that Kennedy was indeed the swing vote in Heller, and the one whose vote the other Heller majority Justices might worry about when judging whether to grant certiorari in a future case. That would suggest that the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh is pivotal to the future of the Second Amendment. A worrisome vote has been replaced by a solid one, so that each pro-2A Justice knows there are now five solid votes for an expansive view of the Second Amendment.
It also explains why the references to not casting doubt on gun laws are sloppily-worded and unclear. They were a last-minute addition, probably a reluctant one, to ensure Kennedy's vote.