Arms and the Law

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."

Right here. The sheriff has released video of Baldwin during earlier segments of the filming. These show he wasn't worrying about having his finger inside the trigger guard and pressing the trigger while handling a cocked single-action. Of course, he's playing a gunman who's drawing and ready to fire, but all the more reason to follow the tightest safety procedures -- starting with making very, very, sure the gun isn't loaded and there isn't a live round anywhere in the area. And, of course, not pointing it at anyone. Plus a few other things that anyone who respects a gun's power would be doing.

More video here.

A report of an interesting study. A Memphis newspaper published data on concealed weapon permit holders, itemized by zip code. Someone set out to study what happened to burglary rates in the years after the publication. Answer: burglary rates for the areas with high populations of permit-holders fell, while those for areas with low populations of permit-holders rose. The newspaper had inadvertently pointed out where the safest burglary targets in the city were located.

Article here. A nice win in the Washington Supreme Court.

Here's a link to a webpage I created, with pictures and audio and video, to accompany my book I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Kill You. At the first link, audio and video links are on the left. David Koresh talking to 911, and sounding entirely reasonable for a man who's been shot and seriously wounded. Radio traffic for the first day's gunfight. FBI radio traffic during the fire, with one FBI leader demanding firetrucks, and a higher commander refusing, quite in cold blood.

Plus an ATF report indicating that (contrary to the official story that Koresh could not be arrested without a raid, since he never left the building), ATF agents had actually gone shooting with him a few days before the raid! Koresh was unarmed until an agent lent him a .38 Super.

This is not going to be easy, since the killer acted in New York City, generally considered already to have the most oppressive gun laws in the country, and the killer had no trouble getting around them all. But here is Everytown's email fundraiser:

"Brooklyn Subway Shooting Highlights Dangers of Adverse Ruling in Supreme Court Case

Yep, such a ruling could give victims the power to defend themselves. Can't have that. It might mean more gun violence -- that the killer gets shot.

Here's the video. Skip the first 41 minutes of blank screen and intro. He proclaims a "ghost gun" can be completed on a kitchen table in under 30 minutes, that 20,000 were seized by police last year, etc. Then he calls for bans on gun purchase by anyone on a "terrorist watch list," cracking down on rogue gun dealers (using old figures indicating that 90% of traces -- which he describes as guns found at crime scenes -- trace to 5% of dealers, wants the usual shopping list of background checks for private sales, "assault weapon" and "large magazine" bans, repeal of the Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act (saying that no other industry has legal immunity... has he heard of vaccine makers?).

And, "this should just be a start."

I forgot -- "I support the Second Amendment."

There was at least a little humor. He keeps referring to the ATF as the AFT.

Right here.

"Since the modern affirmation of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), much scholarly attention has focused on two issues: the soundness of Heller's originalist approach to the Second Amendment, as well as the pragmatic question of whether the Second Amendment right is now being underenforced by the lower federal courts.

This Article examines a subject at the intersection of both of these questions: the role of traditionalist interpretation in interpreting and applying the Second Amendment. It particularly focuses on how traditionalist interpretation sheds light on the constitutionality of restrictions on the carrying of handguns for self-defense, the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen."

It's upcoming in the Texas Review of Law and Politics....

Predictably, it's being used as a call for more gun control. Even though it happened in a state which Brady Campaign consistently ranks as having the most restrictive gun regulations in the country.

It turns out one of the arrested shooters was on the streets only because, after being sentenced to ten years of assault with great bodily injury, he was given early release, over the prosecutor's objections that he is a violent criminal who "has no regard for his victims" and no respect for the law.

Add in that the one gun found at the scene was both stolen and converted to full auto, and the event is more like a demonstration of why California's gun laws, indeed their entire approach to crime, is completely moronic.

A pending Supreme Court case deals with state sovereign immunity; specifically, do Congress' constitutional war powers permit it to allow states to be sued under the statutes governing re-employment of honorably discharged veterans?

Since I believe court-created sovereign immunity to be neither good law nor wise policy, on the one hand, and cannot see how a 1789 constitutional provision could override a 1795 constitutional amendment, on the other, I don't have a dog in this fight. But for those who do, here is an article pointing out that the Constitution divides military power (if not the power to declare war) among states and the federal government.

An interesting article.

Story here. That makes it 25 states, half the Union! The bill passed the state senate by a 3:2 majority.

Very interesting! Designed by Colt for Eastern Airlines back in the 70s. Plaster of Paris bullets, disposable cylinders. I wonder if Jim Reinke, later NRA director, was involved, he was president or VP of Eastern at one point.

Story here. David Codrea has a clever response: he emailed the story to ATF's "hot line" for gun law violations.