Arms and the Law

That's the title and the content of this article in Reason Online.

When I first got into 2A writing, back 39 years ago, I never dreamed I'd see a headline like that. Heck, I wouldn't have dreamed it ten years ago.

The Delaware Supreme Court, in Boone v. Wilmington Housing Authority, ruled that a public housing agency cannot preclude possession of firearms in common areas. It noted that many of those common areas are what would in ordinary houses be part of the house/home, and rejected claims that the government here was acting as a landlord and not as a sovereign.

"With the Common Area Provision in force under penalty of eviction, reasonable, law-abiding adults become disarmed and unable to repel an intruder by force in any common living areas when the intervention of society on their behalf may be too late to prevent an injury."

Via reader Mac Cox comes this post on the differences. I've fired both in my AR-15 without problems, but the post says this is not advisable.

News of the first here. The bills would required chief law enforcement officers to sign the required certification within a deadline (15 days in the Utah bill).

David Codria has them.

Here. I note that the letter is trimmed to only include "Sample 1," presumably because that's what they're selling, and the other two samples may have been found to be "firearms."

Under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, documents and rulings such as this are supposed to be public, not just reflected in a letter to one person. Any general doctrines of, in this case, how much finishing it takes to make an item legally a "firearm" should be published in the Federal Register and then in the Code of Federal Regulations. Specific rulings (rubbing your belly and saying this is or isn't a firearm) should be in the agency reading room (these days an online one) so that the public can see and be guided.

Hat tip to Dave in Colorado

David Codrea has the story.

Ares got a temporary restraining order forbidding the raid; the Dept of Justice filed an ex parte motion (ex parte = the other isn't given notice or opportunity to oppose) modifying the order so that it did not prevent criminal investigations, which of course meant it forbade nothing. Then they raided.

Summary here. Essentially, Ares makes "80% receivers." A receiver starts out as raw material -- steel, or here polymer. Everyone can agree that's not a receiver. At the end, it is a finished receiver that, with the appropriate parts attached, can fire. We can all agree that that is a receiver. But at what point between the two does it go from being in one legal status to being in the other?

The industry understanding (and I emphasize understanding) has been that the line is crossed when the future receiver is 80% complete. But this is one area where BATF rulings, if any, are kept private, and never published as a regulation. This violates the Administrative Procedure Act (which requires that general rules for the public be published as regulations -- you cannot have a rule that the public must comply with, and keep it secret) and allows a little of wiggle room for "our position is" or "our position has always been."

Hat tip to Jeff Harris....

Late today, Justice Kennedy denied the requested stay. This didn't surprise me -- odds of such a motion succeeding in this context seemed most slender. The fact that he ordered the City to respond, ASAP, was the main surprise.

26 bicyclists ride from Newtown to Washington DC to support gun control.

The movement for gun control had very much a 20th century approach. Monopoly in the media, almost the same with celebrities, top-down organization where the Washington HQ tells its members what to think and do, and they have little input into its decisionmaking or priorities. Contrast the gun rights movement, where NRA is rather top-down, but its members have input -- they elect the Board. Gun Owners of American, SAF, JPFO, etc. do not elect their leadership, but they are very accessible to their members and open to their input. Add on State level organizations independent of the national groups -- CalGuns and similar organizations, some big enough to influence the national groups (instead of the other way around). Naturally, people are more energized where they are genuinely part of the organization and not merely its contributors.

Then comes the internet. The mainstream media monopoly on information distribution is impaired, if not broken. Groups can communicate without paying postage for each communication. People have more ways to provide input; the top-down model becomes antiquated. It really is a new world, and the gun right movement w

I just learned that Judge David Boehm died last year. here's his obituary, and here is more on him.

I knew him from the NRA Board, where he was a director for many years until failing health led him to step down. His pictures do him justice -- he was always a kindly and happy fellow.

Scotusblog has it here. A brief summary: the city of Sunnydale, CA, enacted a ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds. It was challenged in US District Court, with a motion for preliminary injunction (to stay enforcement of the law while the case was under consideration). The District Court denied the motion, which was appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which also denied it. That denial was in turn appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I'd have given it low odds there -- the Supreme Court is unlikely to trouble itself with whether a city ordinance should be stayed for the months necessary to dispose of a case. But in the latest development, Justice Kennedy (who handles emergency motions from the Ninth Circuit) ordered the city to respond by 5 PM tomorrow. This indicates at the least that he did not want to deny the motion out of hand. Whether it means more, will have to see.

UPDATE: the motion is online here. It's well-written, I think.

CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who broke the "Fast and Furious" story, has resigned from the network after 21 years of service.

"Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network's liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network's corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air."

In USA Today.

"Even short of revolutions and coups, the militia had a different character in ordinary law enforcement than professionals possess. If called upon to enforce an unpopular law, or to enforce the law in an oppressive or unpopular way, the militia could drag its feet and fail to perform. (In this sense, the militia was like a jury, which is free to acquit even a guilty defendant if it thinks conviction would be unjust. In fact, Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions)."

"But although the militia survives in vestigial form in the statute books, as a functional institution, it no longer exists. For law enforcement, the militia has been replaced by professional police, with SWAT teams, armored vehicles and Nomex coveralls; for military purposes, the militia has been replaced by the National Guard, which despite a thin patina of state control is fundamentally a federal military force."

"But this departure from the syste

Will Baude posts his thoughts on the subject at the Volokh Conspiracy. The debate in the comments is fully as interesting as the post. E.g., if we were not meant to be bound by the social contract embodied in the original Constitution, as the Framing generation saw it, why were the requirements for amending it made so strict, requiring not just majority agreement to the changes, but very nearly a consensus? (2/3 of both Houses + 3/4 of the States).

Tyler Jackson has emailed me an interesting story, soon to apper online (I'll link to it once it does)-- the gist is that the head of the Connecticut Peace Officers' Assn has released an open letter stating that the police will not "be party to the oppression of the people of the state by enforcing an unconstitutional law." So far 250 LEOs have cosigned the letter.

The CT law required the registration of AWs, with a deadline for doing so, and it appears that the vast majority of AW owners have simply refused. So now the State faces massive resistance, and some portion, perhaps a large portion, of police refusing to enforce.

The Ninth has created its own webpage devoted to Peruta, which struck down California's "may issue" for concealed carry, combined with its complete ban on handgun open carry.

CalGuns Foundation's press release notes the event. This is their and SAF's suit against the sheriff of Yolo County, over restrictive "may issue" permit policies. The 9th Circuit (same panel as in the earlier case) reversed the trial court ruling, in favor of the sheriff, in an unpublished opinion that applies its earlier, pro-2A case.

Now, this sheriff can ask for en banc in his case.

These guys claim that DHS has rated them the No. 1 training establishment in the world. I don't know if that is false, or if DHS has insane rating methods.

There was a reason why conservatives in the DC area, when leaving for another part of the nation, would refer to it as "going to America."

Then there was the time when then-Senator Manny Lujan (R-N.M.) sent a letter to a constituent in New Mexico and had it returned by the DC Post Office, for having insufficient postage to go to a foreign country.