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June 2017
Federal judge enjoins California's magazine ban
It's a preliminary injunction, so no guarantees, but the option is here.
The opinion starts getting interesting at p. 16. At p. 26, the Court criticizes the evidence offered by the state. It sounds to me as if the state assumed it'd be a slam-dunk, no judge is going to enjoin the state no matter how sloppy our evidence, and so just threw a stack of paper at the judge.
Enough almost to make me weep....
An article on a Florida TV station website over their no retreat requirement for self-defense.
It starts off citing a case where (if the facts recounted are true) there was zero argument for self-defense and no-retreat could have played no role, and the judge denied the motion to dismiss on that ground. This is supposedly a "gray area of self-defense." Yes, just as allowing a person to argue "I am not guilty" is a gray area of the law with no clear answer (and why we have juries).
"The law allows people to use deadly force when they fear death or great bodily harm." No, that's been the American rule for self defense since the 1830s. It's not a recent Florida innovation.
A Brady Campaign spokesman asks, ""If I steal from you, can you take my life? If I paint graffiti on your house, can you take my life?"" What has that to do with no retreat requirement?
"I'ts a choice she says is better left up to the justice system." Uh... we're talking about that.
The Brady spokesman "points to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that homicides in Florida increased 24% since the stand your ground law passed and firearm related killings increased 32%."
In 2005, the year the article says "stand your ground" passed (I have no time to verify it) Florida's murder rate was 5.0 and in 2015 it was 5.1. Its total violent crime rate went from 709 in 2005 to 462 in 2015 (same sourse), so I have idea where that claim could have come from.
All this data took about 15 minutes to verify. Why the person composing the report did not do so, I have no idea.
Recreating true Damascus steel
The key appears to be adding a bit of vanadium. Interesting how valued it was -- the steel was made in India (tho I've heard some say Iran), shipped to Syria, and then distributed across the mideast and Europe.
A reminder to burglars....
If your reflexes are slow, don't force a burglary victim to open their gun safe.
Thoughts on the denials of cert.
Cert denied in Peruta, and Justices Thomas and Gorsuch dissent. That case had upheld the California gun law. But cert was also denied in Binderup, with Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor essentially dissenting (they write that they would grant the petition). That case had struck down the felon possession ban, as applied to a nonviolent felon whose case came long ago.
So there were four votes to take a case, all that is required, but they split between two cases. Rather strange. Thomas and Gorsuch I'd take as serious votes. The other two... maybe symbolic, cast only because they knew it wouldn't make a difference? But why do it without writing an opinion to go with the dissent? Of course the results of denial the two cases are 180 degrees apart, but if the Court really wanted a 2A case the votes were there.
Peruta: cert denied
Order here. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch dissent from the denial, suggesting that the combination has replaced Thomas and Scalia as two Justices who want to take cert and expand the Court's reading of the 2A: unfortunately, it takes four to grant and five to win. As always with a Thomas-written opinion, the dissent is clearly reasoned and written.
"We should have granted certiorari in this case. The approach taken by the en banc court is indefensible, and the petition raises important questions that this Court should address. I see no reason to await another case."
"Had the en banc Ninth Circuit answered the question actually at issue in this case, it likely would have been compelled to reach the opposite result. This Court has already suggested that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry firearms in public in some fashion. As we explained in Heller, to "bear arms" means to "'wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.' .... The most natural reading of this definition encompasses public carry. I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen."
"Even if other Members of the Court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the Court to answer this important question definitively."
"The Court's decision to deny certiorari in this case re flects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right."
"For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem anti quated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it."
Interesting Pew survey
Summed up here. A majority believe that the NRA either has the right amount of influence, or should have more influence.
In line with other surveys of which I have heard, 19% of gun owners believe they are members of the NRA. If that were true, NRA membership would be 10-20 million. Prior surveys have found that many people are not too clear about what makes you a member, and believe that belonging to a gun club or having taken an NRA course is all it takes.
World record sniper hit
A Canadian sniper in Iraq hits his man at 3,540 meters, or 3,871 yards. This puts him well ahead of the US record, 2,300 meters, or just over 2,500 yards.
Hat tip to Steve Schreiner...
Thought for the day
Should Greece complain of American universities' cultural appropriation of philosophy, logic, drama, sciences, speech and rhetoric, architecture, medicine, art, and competitive sports? "You guys didn't invent that, we did!"
Shooter at Congressional baseball practice
His Facebook page tells you all you need to know about him. Of course his political beliefs will be mentioned in the mass media... not at all.
UPDATE: more, on from folks looking at his Twitter feed. "Trump is a traitor. Trump has destroyed our democracy. It's time to destroy Trump & Co." Here's a reported picture of him:
Rumor has it that he was a moderate Bernie Bro but was radicalized by watching CNN and Stephen Colbert....
Army Secretary nominee sounds first rate
Over at Bearing Arms, Bob Owens has thoughts about the nominee for the Secretary of the Army, Mark Green. All I need to know is that he believes an armed citizenry is a check and balance on the government, and that therefore citizens should be allowed to own anything the military has, including ships of war.
A view so hardcore that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson would have approved it...
UPDATE: oh, yes, he and his work will be missed. I forgot.
Weather alert for hell: Sleet and Freezing Rain
New Jersey Supreme Court holds that Second Amendment protects having a weapon (or at least a machete) inside your house. On top of it, the issue wasn't raised in the trial court, but the New Jersey court finds that it was "plain error" that it can correct anyway.
Third and final report on "Fast and Furious"
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has released it; I agree with David Codrea that reports are nice, but how about action?
NFA database seriously flawed
I have a Freedom of Information Act suit pending in D.C. District Court, where I'm represented by progun attorney Stephen Stamboulieh of Madison, Mississippi. He won a partial motion for summary judgment, and as a result we obtained certain files, which you can download here.
The files are some of the work papers of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General audit of the NFRTR, which is ATF's database on National Firearms Act firearms, which is consulted to see if a firearm is registered. As part of the audit, OIG took a survey of ATF's inspectors (IOIs, for Industry Operations Inspectors). The first step in inspecting an NFA dealer is to obtain a print out of his NFRTR registry, then compare that to his inventory.
OIG asked how often there was a discrepancy between the inventory and what the NFRTR said the inventory should be: 46% of inspectors said either "always" or "most of the time." (Only 5% reported "never"). How often was the discrepancy found in the NFRTR? 44% said always or most of the time, only 6% said "never." The comments by inspectors were pretty eye-opening:
"When I conduct an NFA inventory reconciliation, I start knowing that the NRA register will be incomplete or inaccurate."
"The discrepancies in the NFRTR makes it impossible to verify the onsite inventory."
"I encounter discrepancies on a daily basis."
"In one instance, I received an NFRTR inventory report with more than 60 errors on behalf of the NFA branch."
"A majority of the FFLs I have inspected, NFA is a small portion of their business. However, I spend the most time on the NFA portion due to the NFRTR being inaccurate most of the time."
"It creates embarrassment to the agency and the IOI because we are always wrong."
Mind you, felony prosecutions are undertaken relying on the NFRTR to establish that a gun is not registered, and with evidence consisting of an affidavit from the custodian of records for the NFRTR certifying that no record of registration could be found. This sounds like Brady material to me.... and it's ten years old.
UPDATE: Brady material is -- well, it's named for a Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, that held it violates due process to convict a person while hiding evidence that that tended to suggest their innocence, or "exculpatory material."
Additional confirmation of a theory
NSSF is reporting that May 2017 had nearly a million (988,473) NICS background checks processed, an increase of 6.5% over May 2016. The media are apt to treat the great increase in firearm sales over past years as caused by people buying out of fear of confiscation or other limitation. I'd say any such fears are remarkably low just now, yet the sales levels not only are high but increasing. What we're seeing is a long term trend as Americans rediscover their love of guns and shooting. This is catastrophic for the antigun movement.
News to me
The U.S. was "created by int'l community in Treaty of Paris in 1783." It's from a professor of history at Harvard, who also chairs their American Studies department, so it must be true.
It's down to this
ISIS accuses Kathy Griffin of cultural appropriation.
Amusing
David Codrea has notes on the photographer behind the pic of Kathy Griffin holding a bloody fake Trump head. Seems she's had a lot of event cancellations, and the photog just had his exhibition at the Leica Gallery vanish.