Arms and the Law

I reported recently that Clayton Cramer's gun self-defense blog is back online. I just realized it has an interesting feature. In the right margin are a list of labels. Clicking on these you can get cases from each of several states, the nature of the self-defense, and some firearms used (including ARs and AKs). I was interested that one of the largest categories is "pizza delivery driver." One of the smallest is "mistaken identity," listing one case where police mistook the defender for a burglar and fired on him. (Fortunately their marksmanship wasn't up to snuff, and no one got hurt).

Opinion here. The dissent begins after p. 11 of the orders.

A dissent from denial has no precedential value, though it can be cited for whatever strength its reasoning holds. It does serve as a signal (here, by two Justices, one of whom authored Heller) that there are two votes for cert. in a good case raising 2A issues (tho it also signals that the reasons given in this case were insufficient to attract enough votes to grant cert.). It can also signal lower court judges who want to rule in accord with the dissent that there is support for that view on high.

Sentencing Law and Policy blog has some thoughts.

Quite a number. Of course, ten years ago Sen. Ted Kennedy found he was on the no-fly list It took him six weeks to get his name removed. Then, again, he had killed somebody.

AG Loretta Lynch pledges to prosecute "hate speech" directed at Muslims. Never mind that there is no First Amendment exception for "hate speech," however defined. You'd think someone competent to be AG would at least know the First Amendment exceptions.

But I wonder if she would direct her attention here?

Got an email from Prof. Nick Johnson:

"The John Stossel Show on Fox Business is doing an hour on gun issues, airing this Friday the 4th at 8:00. (Already taped) It will appear on the main Fox network sometime over the weekend. Stossel is a pro-gun libertarian. The theme of the show is debunking gun control myths and illuminating some of its absurdities. I am on someplace in the middle talking about [his book] Negroes and the Gun and why trusting your security entirely to the state has been a bad idea for some folks."

My article in America's First Freedom, about finds in the Clinton Presidential Library, is online here. The most interesting finds related to how the Clinton Administration was trying to settle the suits against gun manufacturers -- by creating a system that would essentially register guns, ban all firearms that could take 10+ round magazines, ban polymer frames, ban FFLs from selling at gunshots, etc., etc. All by judicial settlement, with no need to turn to Congress.

Right here!

He'd had some troubles with a copyright troll, and so it now bears the message: "Documenting civilians using guns in self-defense. Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton at claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt."

Video, via Project Veritas, here.

Docket here. The Supreme Court votes on (among other things) whether to take a petition for cert. during its "conferences." Most decisions are made at the first conference, sometimes some are unable to be decided then, and the case is "delisted" for a later conference. In this case (concerning and "assault weapons ban") the Court has considered the case seven times, over a period spanning two months.

Most unusual, but hard to read the tea leaves. Is the vote in doubt? Are the votes there to deny, but some Justice or Justices want time to write a dissent from the denial? No way to know. It's interesting to note that 23 States filed an amicus urging the Court to take the case, noting that the lower courts have shown considerable resistance to the Court's ruling in Heller and McDonald.

PETA has long run an "animal shelter" in Virginia, a major function of which is snuffing the animals brought in (in 2014, the "shelter" adopted out 39 dogs and cats and killed 2,454). Now, they're being sued for snatching a dog off its owners' porch and snuffing it. Unlike Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday, their hypocrisy seems to have no limits.

It's Mann v. United States, set to be considered on Dec. 4. It concerns an issue of which I was unaware.

This report states that the annual turkey pardoning was canceled due to Russian protests. They were concerned about pardoning a Turkey "after an unfortunate misunderstanding between an Su-24 fighter and a Turkish AIM-9 Sidewinder a few days ago."

But one says the turkey (who had taken the name of Al-Turki) was pardoned, hijacked an aircraft at Andrews AFB, and defected to ISIS.

The case is State v. Herrmann. The opinion is very well-written, and two features stand out to me.

(1) The court applies intermediate scrutiny, but doesn't treat it as an easy way to rule for the government. "To meet this standard, the government must demonstrate "that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way." ... [S] law challenged on Second Amendment grounds is not presumed constitutional, ... and the burden is on the government to establish the law's constitutionality..." It thus brushed off the State's argument that the ban would prevent surprise knife attacks. "[T]he State cites no evidence to establish that this danger actually exists to any significant degree."

(2) The court doesn't buy the argument that only one class of knives is affected. "[I]f a complete prohibition of handgun possession in the home for self-defense is unconstitutional, despite demonstrable public safety concerns, it follows that a complete prohibition of a less dangerous category of arms in the home for self-defense is also unconstitutional."

The pitch for "nontoxic," i.e., non-lead ammunition has long been at odds with the pitch to ban "armor-piercing" ammunition. Under Federal law, AP ammo includes any ammo with "a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium." 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(17). In short, all bullets made of any likely useful metal OTHER than lead. The definition does have some exceptions, including "a projectile which the Attorney General finds is primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes."

Here's some video from Attorney General Lynch testifying in House hearings, in which Rep. Ratcliff points out that ammo manufacturers have sent in 32 requests for exemption over the past four years, and so far none has been acted upon, or even gotten a responsive letter. (Ms. Lynch responds that she has never heard of the requests). Odds are pretty good that it's the same today. Somewhere there is a letter delegating the AG's power to someone else, and that someone else could care less, nor does the AG.

Right here. After playing tennis, he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. Odds of surviving an arrest outside of a hospital are about 6.7%. But they had a portable defib unit on site and a cardiologist in the clubhouse, plus he had a playing partner that knew the latest form of CPR. So a week after he "died," he was back home, aching from a quadruple bypass. There's some quite useful info on operating the most recent and most automated defib units.

Apparently this Alaskan store owner never heard of that idea. When the robber transferred the gun to their weak hand, she grabbed it and threw it away. The robber then came at her with a knife, and she took that away, too. Her cries for help brought people rushing from nearby stores and they held the robber for police.

A review of the Armatix iP1 "smart gun."

It required execution of seven push-button commands before firing, misfires 3-4 times per magazine, costs three times what comparable firearms cost, keys on being "paired" to a watch with defective resistance to water, and has a terrible double-action pull. Apart from that, it is just what you are looking for in a self-defense arm. Oh, it also has a "kill switch" function so another person can turn it off.

"The watched kettle never boils," so the saying goes, but there are several involved here.

In the State legislative races, Bloomberg spent $2,400,000, pro-gun groups spent $77,000, and Bloomberg's candidates went nowhere.

From Everytown: "Gun safety prevailed on the NRA's home turf because we made sure that every voter knew where the candidates stood on gun safety." Yep, and they voted pro-gun.

CIA staffer's house is searched, his computers are seized, and he's forced to resign because he (with agency permission) had classified files on a private computer.

"It was 14 months later, this January, when Scudder was told he wouldn't face criminal charges. By then, his CIA career was over. The agency had mounted an internal investigation that determined that Scudder's FOIA request "contained classified titles" of CIA articles and that he had deleted a "TOP SECRET" label from one document, according to a memo from an agency personnel board."

I could swear I'd heard of another government employee who did something like this on a far bigger scale, and one not involving historical documents...