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.
Harvard students search roommate's room, find guns, force her to move out
Because her legally-owned guns made them nervous. They said they (illegally) searched her room since she came from the South, was conservative, and so they suspected she must own guns.
Mance case petition to Supreme Court
Here's the press release, I don't have the petition for cert. yet. The Mance case is the one challenging GCA 68's ban on purchases of handguns from FFLs in other states. Mance, as I recall, is in the District of Columbia, which has only one real FFL, who charges steep prices. We should soon know whether the appointment of Justice Kavanaugh makes a difference in the cert. count. At the moment we know we have two votes. What is needed is four to accept and of course five to win.
Figure that we had five in Heller and McDonald... why did we have only two voting for cert thereafter? A big possibility is that the missing three votes were unsure of the outcome if they took the case. Did the replacement of Kennedy by Kavanaugh change that assessment? I suppose we are about to find out.
junk science
Nearly 40% of published scientific studies do not replicate. In other words, they're bogus. That's no news to anyone who has looked at the medical articles on guns and gun control. Here's my Howard Univ. Law Journal article on the subject.
(I've been effectively offline for more than a week, due to a friend being hospitalized).