Arms and the Law

From Instapundit:

"The poor federal courts are overworked. We need to add more judges. A lot more judges."

Just got word that Heidi Washington, daughter of the late Tom Washington, who died in 1995 while serving as NRA President (he died after suffering a heart attack while deer hunting). It's worth mentioning that, when George H. W. Bush resigned from NRA after a "jack-booted thug" reference, Washington released very effective response. Heidi is an endowment member, endorsed by the nominating committee, head of the Michigan Department of Corrections and supporter of the Warden's Cup competition.
Looks as if as head of the Dept of Corrections she has received some praise as a reformer.

7th Circuit US Court of Appeals' ruling here. Chicago of course banned handguns -- that got struck down in McDonald. Then it went to strict licensing, with a requirement of training on a range, while banning all firing ranges. That got stuck down in Ezell I. Then it tried restrictively regulating ranges, which gets struck down here. Of the city's three requirements, two are stricken 3-0 and the remainder was struck 2-1.

Hat tip to Alice Beard, who points out that the opinion is written by judge Diane Sykes (who I think wrote Ezell I also), who is on Trump's list of 21 judges he'd be willing to appoint to the Supreme Court.

Story here.

"In fact, Mr. Waugh has "made 'bug-out bags' stuffed with ammo, energy bars, and assorted survival gear for his wife and their three cats. He's begun stowing water and browsing real estate listings in Gunnison County, Colorado, which he's determined to be a 'liberal safe-haven.' Last month, Waugh added a 9mm handgun to his arsenal."

Todd has established a Facebook page to document his candidacy.

Article here. The main contenders were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, and at the end there were a dozen papers with unsettled authorship. Comparing other, known, writings of the two men, they found both used sentences of the same average length, but there were other clues, as as Hamilton used "while" but Madison used "whilst."

Here in AZ, a perp shot and wounded a highway patrolman. A driver then stopped and fatally shot the perp, the used the patrolman's radio to call for help. Story here.

Roy Innis, NRA director and head of the Congress on Racial Equality, died on yesterday at age 82. Here's his obit story in the Washington Times. I'd spoken with his son Niger at the NRA meeting a few days before that, and he mentioned that Roy was in serious decline. A very good man.

It would be an interesting idea. It might fit in with making the whistle-blowing agents head of the Office of Inspector General for Justice. The OIG is charged with rooting out "fraud, waste, and abuse." That can be an interesting, if full time, assignment. And a lot of fun.

Finally had time to finish James Gibson's recent book, "A War Without Rifles: the 1792 Militia Act and the War of 1812." I greatly enjoyed the book and the research. The "without rifles" part reflects that military and militia planning in the early 19th century leaned strongly toward muskets rather than rifles, which posed problems in the War of 1812 (the British had adapted to the Napoleonic Wars with tactics that involved swarms of skirmishers moving up to harass opposing troops, and by issuing the Baker rifle to some skirmishing units). Plenty of other research here, including the fact that Secretary of War James Monroe proposed the first American military draft (the male population 18-45 to divided into units of 100 men, each required to furnish four recruits, the other 96 to pay their bounties).

From the Canadian Firearms Blog comes eight reasons why Canada isn't all bad on guns. The variances between Canadian and US law are interesting. No special restrictions for short-barreled rifles in Canada. Most Americans don't have to get permits to possess firearms, but we generally have to go thru an FFL to buy one interstate. Canada requires the permit but allows private parties to buy inter-province.

With all those variances, why, a fellow might start to think that the gun regulations of both counties are arbitrary rather than rational.

He died of cancer, age 62, yesterday. He was professor of communications at the University of Toledo, pro-gun, and a brilliant writer and speaker. He authored "The Ten Commandments of Propaganda," "The National Rifle Association and the Mass Media," and other works, and spoke at the NRA's National Firearms Law Seminar a few years ago. His book on NRA and the mass media created objective measures of negative publicity (that is, not just your impression that this was negative, but ways objectively to measure it and assign numbers to it) and showed that X amount of bad publicity was associated with Y amount of rise in NRA membership.

A brilliant mind and a very good man. We will miss him.

To quote Glen Reynolds, "Heh."

Discussion here, with the Amazon links at the bottom of the page.

Young's books were cited around a hundred times (literally) by the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Emerson, which made him the most-cited 2A author then, and he may well still hold that distinction!

Story here. Its organizer is Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

In the Washington Times, she has "The Second Amendment: A Fundamental Principal of American Liberty." (And in the comment section, Clayton Cramer takes on critics).

The Court of Appeals opinion is a good one. It sounds like the trial court just wanted to deep six the case.

Glad to be in Arizona. When the California legislature came up with the idea of microstamping firing pins, the objection was made that it'd be very easy to deface or remove the microstamp. The legislature then came up with the brilliant solution to that: require the manufacturer to put a second microstamp inside the handgun (with no requirement that that one do anything). And to think they let those legislators not only walk the street, but also to drive a car.

I just finished "Ready the Cannons," by William Gurstelle, who also has released "Backyard Ballistics" and "Defending Your Castle." "Ready the Cannons" lists a great number of projects, mostly using PVC piping and BBQ igniters. The beverage bottle bazooka (small soda bottle, vapor from rubbing alcohol, and launch tube), a hydro swivel water gun, a carbide cannon (I remember when those were sold in kid's comic books, they made a heck of a blast while not being fixable with a projectile, and so were not legally guns). A potato gun with a 10 foot barrel, to see how high you can fire its load. A device that accelerates ping-pong balls to 300 mph.

Seems like a nice Christmas book (or perhaps one to get early so as to build a few for presents). It and the two other books are available on Amazon.

As Imstapundit asks, is there anything that Trump cannot do?

There has been some thought that gun sales might slump off, but I am skeptical there. I saw an industry study years ago that tried to determine whether the rapidly rising sales were due to fear of then-new president Obama. The study singled out guns that people would think were more vulnerable to restriction -- handguns and "assault rifles" -- and compared their sales trends to general firearm sales trends.

The finding was that after his first election and for, if I remember correctly, three months after, the more vulnerable firearms had a sale surge disproportionate to other firearms, but after that, all firearms began surging. The conclusion was that were seeing some general trend to want more firearms that was not being driven by political fears.

Right here. I find it interesting that someone one has created a computer program to calculate a group's size from a scanned-in target.