Arms and the Law

Blog post and link to opinion here. District Court of DC rules that DC's requirement for a permit to carry, combined with its refusal to issue such permits, is unconstitutional, and (2) so is its ban on issuing permits to nonresidents.

A major advance that finally expands judicial recognition to "bear arms." And a success based on narrow targeting of the issues.

Story here It now appears that:

1) the murderer had a pocketful of ammunition, suggesting that, but for the psychiatrist shooting him and other staff jumping him, he would have gone on a killing spree. "We believe that Mr. Plotts, if it wasn't for the heroic action of the doctor and the caseworker, we believe he was there and was going to reload that revolver and continue to fire and continue to kill."

2) The killer had been committed before, and his "records indicate has an extensive criminal past including a 1996 conviction for robbery, is prohibited from carrying a weapon."

Story here. The killer murdered a psychiatric case worker, and then was shot and seriously wounded by a doctor who was carrying a gun. The doctor was nicked by a shot from the killer, it's not yet reported whether that came before or after he hit the killer.

This may illustrate what others have noted: the other side can claim that mass shootings have not been stopped by self-defenders, because mass killings are arbitrarily defined to involve four or more dead, and when a self-defender is present he or she stops the attack before it can reach that number.

UPDATE: the doctor got three hits on the murderer. I'd say the good guy was no amateur.

A bit of background: the good professor is a CCW instructor and author of "The Ten Commandments of Propaganda," "The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage," and "Rise of the Anti-Media: In-Forming America's Concealed Weapon Carry Movement." His speciality is speech communication.

A most interesting article.

over its gun restrictions.

"While we had originally planned to use the Tennessee facility for new equipment and for production of new product lines only, we have decided that it is more prudent from the point of view of our future welfare to move the Maryland production lines in their entirety to the new Tennessee facility."

I hope there will be a lot more such relocations, considering that the center of American gun manufacturing was historically Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Joshua Prince announces that a class action brought by himself and two other attorneys has settled. It challenged Philadelphia's disclosure of private carry permit information. Philadelphia disclosed information regarding appeals from initial denials or revocations online, despite a State law provision making it confidential.

The settlement terms include the city paying $1.45 million, agreeing never to disclose again, scrapping information requirements that exceed those embodied in statute, and instituting a lot of other reforms.

Right here. Not that I know much about apps -- I'm happy with a smartphone that will take calls, check email, and once in a great while call up a browser. I'd settle for the first two.

Rep. Robin Kelly (bought, or at least leased, by Mayor Bloomberg) proposes a ban on firearm advertising directly at children or their parents, such as prohibitions on brand name t-shirts and caps "marketed for children," and a ban on firearms in colors appealing to young shooters.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney calls for Capitol Hill Police to investigate Larry Pratt of GOA, since he dared to say that the Second Amendment is aimed at preventing tyrannical government. ( here's Larry's reply).

I guess if they can't get at the Second Amendment, they have to try to strike at the First.

Background: of course felons are generally forbidden to possess firearms. But if put in reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury, they have the same right to self defense as has anyone else.

Jersey City, NJ. Man wanted for murder ambushes and murders officer. His wife responds with ""He should've taken more [officers] with him," and ""Sorry for the officer's family. That's, you know, whatever."

They even built a memorial for the killer, complete with empty liquor bottles and a "thugs in peace" message. They should add an epitaph, with the words of Lord Byron

"In all of antiquity you'll ne'er survey
A site more dignified than this
Here lie the bones of Castlereigh;
Stop, traveller, and p__s."

Video here. California already had, if I recall correctly, handgun registration (in effect), State as well as Federal background checks, a 15-day waiting period, one gun a month rationing, no carry (open or concealed) without a "may issue" permit, and an "assault weapon ban." Not to mention expensive "safety tests" that have nothing to do with safety (witness the fact that police and prosecutors' guns are exempt from them).

But the low-info people interviewed want "stricter" controls without apparently having any idea what those might be. Presumably, the fact that crime continues proves that the gun laws aren't strict enough.

The legislature responds by making the "safety" requirements applicable to single-shot handguns, claiming that people are buying single shots and making them into repeaters.

I don't know what to file this under -- an example of where the other side wants to go, or an example of how newspaper stories are written by cut and paste of slogans that have been used and re-used for decades.

Here's an interesting article on its brief, filed by John Frazer of Virginia.

"Our brief in the ACLU matter argued that the government's broad interpretation of its authority to collect information from private entities could effectively override legislative protections for privacy, such as provisions intended to block gun registration. Our lawyer, John Frazer of Virginia, also referred to potential abuse of data mining. Aggregating forms of data to perform inference analysis about individuals and portray their connections and networks could allow the easy identification of our members and other gun owners for unlawful purposes."

Shaneen Allen, a 27 year old mother of two, carried a pistol and a PA permit in her car -- but she wound up being stopped in NJ. Now she's looking at three years mandatory, no probation or parole.

US v. Indelicato, 97 F.3d 627 (1st Cr. 1996). The Gun Control Act technically doesn't forbid felons to possess guns; it forbids those convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year's imprisonment, or of one expressly denominated a misdemeanor, and not punishable by more than two years' imprisonment, to do so. It also provides that a conviction does not count if the person has received a restoration of civil rights. In most States, a crime punishable by more than a year's imprisonment is a felony, so the difference is zero.

Officer shoots at dog, instead hits boy.

It's good for some amusement. The only good points are ones that have been used for decades... never let a good crisis, or victim, go to waste, and exploit them quickly. The rest shows a profound misunderstanding of the gun rights movement. NRA (by which they mean the gun rights movement) is only big "inside the beltway," so organize local groups. The gun rights movement went there years ago: CalGuns, United Sportsmen of Florida, etc., etc.. The gun rights movement has money, now Bloomberg will match it. Buying TV ads -- that is SO twentieth century! It isn't millions of dollars, but millions of committed supporters that make the difference, especially today, when thanks to the internet the mass media no longer have a choke hold on communicating with supporters.

Captain's Journal has the story.

From Dick Morris' book Power Plays:

"In the spring of 1967 [presidential candidate] Nixon asked her [Anna Chennault, widow of General Chennault] to be his advisor on Southeast Asian affairs. As Herbert Parmet writes, 'cables intercepted by the National Security Agency from the South Vietnamese ambassador in Washington revealed that the 'Nixon entourage', working through Anna Chennault, was pressuring [South Vietnamese President] Thieu to resist the peace talks....'

Realizing what Nixon was up to, President Johnson ordered a wiretap on Chennault's phone. Yet whatever evidence the tap turned up went unreleased, since it would put the Democrats in an embarrassing position to admit that they had been using wiretaps to defeat Nixon."