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April 2018
NY threatens guns manufacturers' banking: Hornady refuses to sell to NY agencies
One good move. Let's see if the other ammo makers join in.
New as-applied 2A case
Eugene Volokh discusses it here. In the Second Amendment context, an as-applied challenge involves challenging a broad prohibition that is permissible as a category (in this case, a bar on gun possession by convicted felons) but may be a 2A violation as applied to this case (a nonviolent felony conviction that is 28 years old).
The question is whether Heller allows for such challenges. A few courts have said no -- Heller says that bars to felon possession are presumptively lawful, so felons should be treated as having no Second Amendment rights at all. More courts have said yes -- Heller says the general ban is "presumptively" lawful, and a person can rebut that presumption with evidence that the conviction is very old and they have been a law-abiding person since.
(Actually this raises a deeper question. When the Heller majority says such bans are "presumptively" lawful, does it mean (1) the bans are legally presumed to be permissible (whether the presumption can be rebutted or not), so that if one is challenged we never get to the question of what standard of review applies and whether the justification is there, or (2) under the ordinary standards of review, the Court presumes that bans like this will pass muster? Essentially, when such a ban is challenged, do we go to standard of review and judge whether the law's necessity justifies the infringement, or do we cut everything off before reaching that stage?
Hat tip to Alice Beard....
Lyft offering free rides to protest NRA at Dallas
Check out the comments on the Facebook page of "Stand Up to the NRA".
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From the rest of the comments it sounds as if Society for Creative Anachronism, 60s Division, is planning quite a rally. I wonder if they still sell tie-dyed shirts? Could we outdo them with a beatnik event? Bongo drums and cigarettes in holders?
Interesting study of shotgun ammo for self-defense
Right here. It concludes that for most purposes the best load is No. 1 plated buckshot.
I haven't been blogging much since, well -- week of April 9 I was in California for my niece's wedding, week of April 16 I was in Carbondale Illinois for a 2A symposium at Southern Illinois University, week of April 23 I was in St. Louis to present on the Dred Scott case, and this week I'll be in Dallas for the NRA convention. THEN I can finally stay off planes for months!
The trip back from Carbondale was the roughest. It's 105 miles from the nearest big airport (St. Louis), and the hotel staff gave me bad directions. I wound up on a "highway" that was a two-lane farm road, with towns and 25 mph speed limits and stop signs and big farm machinery being moved at 5 mph. I got to the airport and checked in at the American Airlines machine, just about half an hour before takeoff, with no checked baggage. The machine rejected me -- I'd barely missed the 30 minute in advance limit. I was given stand-by on another flight later. I got to the gate, noticed another flight was about halfway thru boarding, and wandered off to grab a soda and a magazine and see what was going on. I came back and realized the flight was the original one I'd been booked on! I asked if I could get on, but they were just closing the cabin door. So I could easily have boarded despite the machine deciding I had missed the "boarding window"!As it was, I got back home eight hours after my original arrival time, having spent some 14 hours in the air or in airports. I've always favored American Airlines, but now must re-think things a bit.
This explains the modern approach to security
Parkland high killer Nikolas Cruz made multiple, violent threats, and the school and law enforcement ignored them. Parkland High survivor Kyle Kashuv posts pics of himself, with his father, at a rifle range and police are called to detain and grill him.
The difference seems to be that it's safe and easy to f__k with Kashuv, he's a law-abiding person who is not going to put up a fight or hold a grudge, whereas it might have been difficult and risky to f__k with Cruz.
MAJOR discovery re: defensive gun uses
Prof. Gary Kleck is the criminologist whose meticulous survey determined that Americans used guns in self defense against attackers about 2.5 million times a year. His conclusion was, of course, attacked, and he did a superb job of showing why the criticisms were invalid.
Now, he makes a BIG discovery. The antigun Centers for Disease Control has secretly (they have never acknowledged they were even asking the question) conducted surveys of the public, asking about defensive gun uses against criminal attackers, and those surveys almost exactly confirm Klick's 2.5 million uses. (You can download his paper by clicking on the orange button at the top of the page).
He notes:
"Why didn't the CDC report their DGU results? The agency clearly regarded the topic as sufficiently important to insert DGU questions into a very expensive national survey that had never previously included any questions about self-defense, and to do so in three of the surveys.... One obvious explanation would be that they recognized that their own surveys' finding of a high DGU prevalence was unfriendly to gun control efforts - efforts repeatedly endorsed by CDC-financed researchers (Kates 2001). Such a decision could have been made at the level of administrators who supervise the BRFSS, or perhaps just lower-level personnel who understood that these findings would be unwelcome news to their bosses. Regardless of how the decision was made, it was a disservice to the American people, who paid for the survey and the information it yielded, but who were not allowed to see it and judge its worth for themselves."
Big hat tip to Alice Beard for this find!
UPDATE: the paper is no longer online, and I'm told that Prof. Kleck discovered some flaw and took it down until he could correct it.
Yeti drops connection with NRA
Yeti, the maker of greatly overpriced coolers, has decided to sever whatever connection it had with NRA Foundation. They have a contact page. I'd refuse to buy from them except I never have bought and never plan to.
UPDATE: Here is Yeti's response. I have some difficulty understanding what they are trying to say.
Heller symposium at Southern Illinois University
Just got back from it. The symposium was excellent, the flight back terrible, my first really bad experience with American in all the years I've flown it. I was supposed to be back in Tucson (and could have been) at 2:42 PM, instead I landed at 10:40 PM.
But the symposium was great. Every speaker was interesting, including those on the other side. It beat hands-down a general two day symposium on constitutional law that the U of Az law school held last month. Their best speakers would have been below the average of the SIU ones. Their worst speakers ... I prefer not to remember. One spent 20 minutes explaining all the ways that death penalty sentences could be handed out with less than perfect consistencies. Why you could have an incompetent attorney, different juries, and so on. Yes, and remarkably the sun rose in the east this morning.
I suppose a big difference was that every SIU speaker was interested in his topic and speaking for that reason, whereas it is likely a bunch speaking at U of A were just trying to write on article on something, anything, toward getting tenure.
ITAR regulations change proposed
Here's a link to the proposed rule. I don't understand ITAR at all, but the summary sounds like the proposal is favorable: "manufacturers and exporters of only items transitioned from the United States Munitions List to the Commerce Control List, such as most commercially available firearms and ammunition, will no longer be required to register or pay a fee as part of compliance with U.S. export controls."
Only the government...
Today is tax day due to a DC holiday on Monday ... and so in the early hours of the morning the IRS site for filing and payment crashed. (Good thing I made mine early). Persons trying to access it are getting either a 404 or a webpage announcing that the site is down for maintenance ... until September 2016.
American Federation of Teachers calls for "disinvesting" in gun manufacturers
Their news release is here.
I never understood such campaigns. If you decline to invest in a viable company, someone else buys its shares, and life goes on unaffected. It appears to be the purest example of "virtue signaling," where the object is not to accomplish anything beyond having one's peers admiringly look upon one's virtue. It is thus appropriate to an age in which narcissism is becoming normalized.
R. Lee Ermey is dead
Story here. I ran into him many times at NRA Board meetings, and the strange part is that he was a really nice guy. But then I never crossed him. In real life as a gunny, and in the movies, he played a part and played it very well.
UPDATE: Hollywood blacklisted Ermey after he dared to criticize President Obama. And spelling corrected!
25th anniversary of Waco -- article in Austin American-Statesman
Right here. Someone finally cited the ATF report of investigation I got thru FOIA!
A day in the annals of non-news
NRA examined its records for 2016, 2017, and 2018, searching for revenue coming from addresses in Russia, and found that 23 people in Russia paid their dues or for magazine subscriptions, and two gave a total of $525 in contributions to NRA (and not its Political Victory Fund). ABC News reports this as "NRA discloses two dozen additional contributions from Russian donors," and runs a long story on it.
Surely that will work...
Pennsylvania school district issues toy bats to teachers so they can deal with mass killers. The article says they are to be used as a "last resort," and are kept locked up in case a teacher goes nuts and begins tapping people with one. They must have some strange teachers out there.
Bank of America takes the other tack
Captain's Journal reports that Bank of America will refuse to lend to gun makers who make "military-style" firearms.
A great reason to bank at Wells Fargo
According to , Wells Fargo is the biggest financier of the NRA and of gun manufacturers. I'd switch to them, except that I already bank there.
That's the spirit!
South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, at constituent meeting over coffee, takes out his revolver and says ""I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords." It rather shocked the Moms Demand Action people at the table.
(The newspaper headline reads: "S.C. congressman pulled a gun at a meeting about gun laws today, explaining "I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords"" But read the article, and it was a constituent coffee, not specifically a meeting about gun control, and he did it in response to a constituent at the table saying that he was carrying concealed and felt safer that way).
"The Book of Glock"
Just received a review copy -- it's for sale on Amazon. I'm a 1911 adherent, but if a person is in the Glock word, this is a must-have. It traces the history of each model and where it fits into the overall development, deals with specialty items, accessories, and just about everything else.
Interviewed on Jesse Ventura regarding new book
Video here.
One hell of a shot!
British sniper kills three terrorist leaders with a single shot. He even got one on the ricochet!
Uploaded my law review article critiquing anti-2A history
Right here.
Some of these people (including many with "Prof" in front of their name, are really outrageous.
Rather a different world...
Convenience stores ("dairies") in New Zealand are being robbed with axes and machetes in order to steal cigarettes. It's not a question of desperate smokers -- due to taxes, a pack (not a carton) of cigarettes goes for $26, so one robbery yielded $8,000, far more than was in the cash register.
London experiencing knife "murder epidemic"
Story here.
"February marked the first month in history books that London had more murders than the American city with a total of 15 homicides."