Arms and the Law

Saul Cornell's argument is here.

Robert Leider's reply is here.

I think Leider gets much the better of the exchange. Not that a law enacted in one state, or an ordinance in one city, in the 1860s gives much insight into what the American people understood by the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

The Truth About Guns reports that the Biden Administration has ordered Lake City to stop producing 5.56 for the civilian market. LC made up as much as 30% of the civilian market.

This comes from a year ago, but the person involved deserves to be remembered. John Hurley, of Arvada, Colorado, was a CCW holder. A mental case (who had proclaimed his intent to kill as many police as possible) murdered an officer, Hurley rushed to the scene, and killed the murderer. Other police arrived, assumed Hurley was the murderer, and fatally shot him.

This is convincing.

They are up 500%.

From Babylon Bee, America's new newspaper of record.Texas rednecks impersonating Taliban in hopes Biden will give them billions in firearms.

Or should I say, even more ghoulish than usual?

The LA Times and MSN run a column entitled "The threat to Justice Kavanaugh reveals a path to a gun control deal."

McConnell has demanded legislation to protect Supreme Court Justices. So....

"That said, McConnell's demand and the House hearing together point to a solution to the GOP's blockade of gun laws: Combine the House package with the Supreme Court protection act the GOP is so insistent on passing into one bill.

Pass both, or neither. That's the deal.

As we've written before, the only way to move sensible gun safety legislation through Congress is to force the Republicans to vote."

This should be big news, but of course I won't read about it in my local paper. I'm doubtful it will be linked to the efforts to "dox" the Justices.

Good news! Chesa Boudin has been recalled, by an overwhelming vote of his constituents, who are, well, San Francisco residents.

Hunter Biden videotapes self doing drugs and possessing a gun. The Gun Control Act forbids possessing a firearm while a person is a user of, or addicted to, illegal drugs. Yes, people have been prosecuted and imprisoned for that.

Hunter managed to videotape himself doing coke and crack with a hooker, while waving a handgun around. He adds in a text that his girlfriend "said she took it from me because she was scared I would harm myself due to my drug and alcohol problem and our volatile relationship and that she was afraid for the kids."

But laws are for the little people. For the "elite," waving guns around and scaring people while doing enough coke to OD an elephant is just being an amusing eccentric.

From Babylon Bee, America's new newspaper of record.Texas rednecks impersonating Taliban in hopes Biden will give them billions in firearms.

Someone interviews protestors outside the NRA convention. No one understands anything. They think AR-15s are full auto, and that FFLs sell guns without seeing ID and without background checks. He gets them to sign up for the Firearms Policy Coalition, which is in fact "organized to achieve maximal human liberty including the inalienable, fundamental, and individual right to keep and bear arms."

And to think these people are not only allowed to walk the streets of Houston unsupervised, but also to drive a car.

""Guns should not be in the hands of the mentally unstable," says senile man with nukes."

""Listen, folks, this shouldn't be difficult," said the yammering old geriatric to a duck in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. "The mentally unstable shouldn't have guns! It's dangerous!""

Instapundit reminds us of a John Lott paper a few years ago.

"Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don't need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly - doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018."

Ruling here. It's a long one, I haven't had time to read and outline it yet. But some courts can be inventive in getting around a law they don't like, and a skim sounds like that's the case here.

The result? a mostly peaceful city. Only 44 homicides so far this month, 235 this year to date. Plus 554 carjackings, year to date.

Helpless by law: enduring lessons from a century old tragedy, in the Connecticut Law Review. Summary:

"This essay examines questions of violence and self-defense in African American history. It does so by contrasting historical patterns of racist anti-Black violence prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, as exemplified by the destruction of the Greenwood community in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921, with the current phenomenon of Black-on-Black violence in modern inner-city communities. Although circumstances have changed greatly in the century since the destruction of Greenwood, two phenomena persist: 1. the failure of authorities to protect Black communities and their residents, and 2. efforts by authorities to use the law or law enforcement to disarm members of Black communities leaving residents helpless by law."

John Lott has a study of press-reported defensive gun uses. (In my experience, defensive uses are very rarely reported in the press). I especially like this story:

"Young yelled at the deputies and then fired on them. The first deputy was hit in the head and dropped to the ground.

The second deputy stepped forward and returned fire in an effort to protect the deputy who had already been shot...

Police said that was when good Samaritans armed with their own weapons stepped forward and fired multiple shots in the direction of Young to provide cover for and protect the wounded deputies, the Bellingham Herald reported.

The good Samaritans told KING that they were military veterans and they weren't going to sit still and watch law enforcement officers be murdered so they took their children inside their homes and came back out with their own guns...

The sheriff wrote that ... "Second, we are extraordinarily blessed that several armed citizens came to the deputies' assistance at the critical moments when they were most vulnerable....""

Only Guns and Money reports that John Ross, author of "Unintended Consequences," has died of a heart attack while working on a sequel.

It's posted at SSRN. "What 'Text, History and Tradition' Matter in Construing the Constitution?"

Among other finds I made: a lot of the antis' arguments on the subject invoke the 1328 Statute of Northampton, which seemingly banned all carrying of arms. I found that (1) the notion that British common law applied in the colonies is mistaken. Colonial charters often commanded the colonies to apply common law insofar as it fit in with their conditions. The monarchs recognized that the colonies would be dealing with issues that didn't arise in Britain. (2) The Statute definitely didn't fit in with American conditions. The colonies commonly commanded their residents to be armed and to carry arms on certain occasions. (3) As Clayton Cramer first suggested, the Statute's command is probably a mis-translation of the original Law French, in which "armed" probably meant "wearing armor," not "carrying arms."