Arms and the Law

Ammo.com makes a compelling case for B. H. Obama's right to claim that title. Since his inauguration, annual gun production has nearly doubled, Ruger's stock prices have gone up 1,019%, gun industry employment has gone from 166,000 to 288,000, and 5.2% of the adult population now hold concealed carry permits.

Bearing Arms has the story.

Katie Couric, et al., and "Under the Gun" get caught doctoring footage to make pro-gun speakers look dumb. She asks a question of a group of Virginia Citizens Defense League members, and in the film as edited they stare in dumfounded silence for eight seconds, unable to answer. But VCDL made audio footage of the interview, and in it the members promptly give several answers. She appears to have spliced footage of her asking the question to footage of the group sitting in polite silence when no question was pending.

More here.

It's Doe v. Franklin County, handled by Joshua Prince. The court held that any official who discloses, other than to law enforcement, information from a license to carry application is subject to a civil penalty and not shielded by official immunity. I'd suggest anyone whose information might have been disclosed contact Prince immediately.

Right here. As he says, "Don't write my obituary just yet, but these words needed saying."

Does the Second Amendment cover encryption? It covers "arms," after all, and when the private encryption tool PGP made its way outside the US, the government investigated the creator on charges of exporting munitions without a license.

It's rare that I can say that, especially on 2A matters, but Teixeira v. Alameda County meets that description. Basically, the county adopted and interpreted a zoning ordinance so that it in effect prohibited all new gun stores, and the 9th Circuit struck that down. Among other things, it recognized that a gun dealer may assert the rights of his future customers, that the Heller "categorical exclusions" (felons, commercial regulations, etc.) are to be read narrowly -- "it's sorta like that" is not good enough -- and suggests that language about a class of laws being "longstanding" and thus presumptively allowed requires a more specific showing that the type of regulation at issue is of a longstanding class.

The victorious attorney was Don Kilmer, of California.

Joyce Malcolm has thoughts on the subject.

David Codrea has it, and is seeking contributions toward its cost. Its back side sums things up well.

Before authorizing the gassing at Waco, Janet Reno received a briefing, and she or someone else requested that military advisors be present. The advisors chosen were reluctant to advise a law enforcement operation, but had little choice.
Here's the memo they made of the meeting. The civilian experts were quite unconcerned about the effects of the gas; the military advisors were far more concerned. Reno then asked "why now," and the FBI grossly misled her. Koresh had in fact said he would be coming out as soon as he finished writing the "little book" (too complex to explain here). The FLIR infrared had shown the Davidians were about out of water anyway (it was stored in big plastic tanks outside the building). As far as HRT suffering from lack of training, the military advisors had the simple answer: just pull them back for training. (FBI also had many of its SWAT teams manning the perimeter). There's also a mention of some military equipment (name and nature redacted) that was deployed to Waco.

Here are two pictures made from the air during the fire of April 19:

In the first, you see the Davidian home almost entirely destroyed by fire. There are no firetrucks present. In the second, you see the fire engines after they were allowed in, at a time when they could do no more than cool the ashes.

The sound track of the FLIR tapes picked up radio traffic. The agent at the scene was desperately calling for fire engines, while his superior was ordering them held up several miles away. The agent at the scene got to where he was practically pleading for them, his superior radioed were the trucks for the women and children, the agent answered yes, and his superior replied "they're the only ones, I hope."

I read in the May American Rifleman that Joe White passed on--I knew him since the late 70s, and was in touch within the last few months. He passed on at age 95. He served as NRA's deputy EVP, the only deputy EVP NRA has ever had, being one of the Border Patrol retired leadership that Harlon Carter brought with him to found the NRA. (I know, it'd been around for a century before then, but the organization as it is known today was really founded in the late 1970s). He's written a number of interesting books on the NRA, on growing up impoverished in the hills, and on handling real estate. Oh, and on being in the Border Patrol. A very good man.

Here's a pic taken late in the process. The forward wall has been crushed in at three places, and in the center the tank entered almost its entire length. The previous photo shows how the right side had been torn open. And at the rear another CEV has destroyed half the "gym." I was there when they took the deposition of Danny Coulson, former HRT commander who monitored the operation from Washington, and he said that until he walked into the room he'd had no idea how much of the building had been destroyed or that tanks penetrated nearly their full length.

One key to what happened on the day of the fire lies in claims that the Davidians shot at the FBI armored vehicles. As a general rule, AR-15s with 55 gr bullets are not considered good anti-tank rounds. Multiple hits in the same place may, however, require touch-up painting.

The FBI plan, as sold to Janet Reno, called for quite slow injections of CS "tear gas," more designed to annoy the Davidians into coming out. However, this could be changed to an all-out assault if the Davidians shot at the tanks (no reason was given for this, but they slid it past Reno).

The claim was that the Davidians began shooting early in the assault and continue throughout it. The incident commander testified that was why he out't let the fire trucks respond to the fire -- too dangerous, with the fanatic Davidians shooting.

Here's one of the aerial photos, taken late in the assault (notice how shredded the building is). Three armored vehicle are parked to the left (I inserted an enlarged area above them). It certainly looks as if one crewman has dismounted and is standing in the open, within about 50 yards of the building. That's not a shadow, the sun is high and notice how small the tank's shadows are.

Here is a pic I objected via FOIA, showing the very beginning of the Feb. 28 firefight in front of the building. The surviving Davidians (who were at the front of the building) said the first shots involved BATF firing through the double doors. The photo shows three agents kneeling and apparently shooting at the double doors. There are also bullet holes, barely visible, there and elsewhere. The agents' "cover" doesn't seem to match claims that the Davidians deluged them with gunfire.

To start things off, here is a BATF report of their activities on February 19, 1993, nine days before the first raid and gun battle.

Background: BATF claimed that the massive raid (80+ agents, three borrowed military helicopters, a large caravan of vehicles) was necessary because David Koresh was a paranoid recluse who never left the Davidians' building and thus could not be arrested peacefully.

To monitor the Davidians, BATF put several agents in what came to be called the "undercover house," across the street from the Davidian residence (albeit "across the street" here means a couple of hundred yards away). This report details what those agents did on February 19.

They went shooting.

With David Koresh.

They had all the guns. Koresh had one unarmed Davidian with him. Then Koresh went home, and the agents went back to planning the raid.

I attended the Waco memorial this year, first time in years that I haven't had some emergency supervene. I think next week on this blog will be largely devoted to that topic. I found it amazing how forgiving the Davidians are. Example: in front of the rebuilt church is a memorial to the BATF agents killed in the initial assault, and to the dead of Oklahoma City:

"What You Might Not Know About Harriet Tubman, Gun-Toting Slave Liberator" at Conservative Review.

So points out Clayton Cramer.

The media has been playing up the court's ruling allowing the Brady Campaign lawsuit against Bushmaster to proceed, notwithstanding the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. A look at the actual ruling rather than the news accounts shows the ruling is far less significant than the media claims.

It appears that Connecticut procedures allow a defendant to move to dismiss a case in different ways, including arguing (1) the plaintiff has no case, or (2) the court doesn't even have jurisdiction to decide whether plaintiff has a case. (It's not clear to me whether you can do both in the same motion, as you can with federal practice). Buahmaster's attorneys chose to argue (2): the PLCAA deprives a State court of jurisdiction to determine a case that the statute covers. And that's the argument that the court turned down. Assuming CT procedures permit this, Bushmaster can now proceed to argue that plaintiff doesn't have a case.