Arms and the Law

Hurrah! Please Lord, give him another fifty or so years....

Standing his ground, by a pro-gun member of the George Mason Law faculty.

Story here. There are just too many PDs that aren't sending in data. I don't recall this happening before, there were some scandals in individual cities (in the 60s, the FBI stopped reporting NY City for a time, after concluding it was cooking the books to make things look better than they were), but I don't recall any mass failures to report.

24 States now! One more and we'll have half the country!

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, has died of a heart attack while flying back home. He was a first-rate fellow, a former riverboat captain and dedicated shooter and hunter. He made it to 88, and was the longest-serving member of the House.

An email from "Everytown":

"DEVELOPING: PERMITLESS CARRY, A TOP NRA PRIORITY, ADVANCING ACROSS THE COUNTRY DESPITE WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION

David--if the gun lobby gets their way, more than half the country will have permitless carry laws in place by the end of 2022.

Just in the past week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey sided with the gun lobby and signed new permitless carry bills into law, ignoring widespread opposition from law enforcement, community leaders, and their constituents.

Now we're running an all-hands-on-deck veto campaign after the Indiana legislature sent a similar bill to Gov. Holcomb. And the gun lobby is doubling down to pass permitless carry in states like Georgia and Nebraska."

With a nice graphic (I can't find a link to it) showing the growth of constitutional carry.

Of course, being a member of the elite, nothing happened. Law enforcement even stored the gun for him and returned it when he came back. Laws are for the little people.

Alabama and Ohio join the trend! I think that brings us to 23 states, nearly half the Union. I just realized Kentucky allows permitless concealed carry, which is a bit ironic, since the state was the first to ban concealed carry, back in 1813.

To fight in the Ukraine!

Story here.

I wonder that the machine's results are even admissible in court. Some tests are, like fingerprints and DNA, because they are accepted and have been proven to the point that their results are admissible without having to call an expert to prove that, for example, the odds of two people having the same fingerprint or DNA are very, very low. But this technology is said to rely upon algorithms that will not be disclosed, and upon some human judgment. I can see it being good enough for probable cause, but admission into evidence at trial? This machine says the defendant is guilty, and no, we won't tell you how the machine works? I'd be one thing to say, we got three digital records from these locations, they are gunshot sounds and of the same shot, and a human triangulated the location of the shot, but this machine, by secret methods, does the same, is a different matter.

This Article in Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities describes Joe Olson and I as "two right-leaning scholars." Quite a promotion from "two elderly crackpots!"

He wants people to use dating sites and Twitter to undermine the invading Russian army's morale. As the responses suggest, the troops are probably a bit busy just now. On the other hand, he probably does not want to acknowledge what the Ukrainian government is doing -- arming its citizenry and calling up its militia.

From The Truth about Guns: Mexico has sued American firearm manufacturers, and 14 state attorneys general have filed amicus briefs supporting the lawsuit. Almost all of those attorneys general have links to George Soros or groups that he organized or supports.

Normally, I'd find a half-dozen or so webpages, candidates speaking for themselves, or blog endorsing or opposing candidates. This year a quick search turned up only one, for Frank Tait, the only candidate nominated by petition. Aside from that, there is a posting last year on Only Guns and Money. If anyone sees pages that I missed, please add comments.

I always vote ONLY for people I really, really want, and never vote for the entire number allowed (this year 25 of the 30 candidates. If you have five that you really want, and vote for 25, you just dilute your vote: there is a good chance that you may be electing someone you considered just OK at the expense of someone you really wanted.

Sebastian Gorja interviews John Lott, on Biden's proposal for a gun registry. Youtube bans the video as a violation of its Terms of Service.

At the Volokh Conspiracy, WashPo is catching hades for its referring to Clarence Thomas as "the Black justice whose rulings often resemble the thinking of White conservatives."

As Josh Blackman observes,

"The Court's white conservatives issue rulings that often resemble those of Justice Thomas. Thomas is the intellectual leader of the Court's conservative wing. And he has been for decades. Gorsuch, Alito, and the rest are just trying to keep up with CT. But once again, we get the racist trope that Thomas is Scalia's clone. Just the opposite. Scalia often remarked that Thomas pushed him to the right. What lazy writing from the Post."

Right here These proposals go back to the 1980s, at least. They face a clear issue: unless you're willing to have the law unenforced (I find that an attractive idea, but few in Congress would), its enforcement has to be assigned somewhere. Anywhere else (FBI, Marshals, Secret Service) would result in enforcement by an agency with more prestige and power.

A related issue: what do you do with the existing agents? Most of those are good folk, it's the agency management that is corrupt and incompetent and (as usual with management in that state) is not about to promote the good ones. Presumably, relocate them to the new agency. But how do you move only the good ones and keep out the bad? Moving the bad ones over just gives them more power and prestige.

Good. Some of the texts or emails shown are shocking. None of these clowns should have been allowed near anything more dangerous than a butter knife.

Louisville: antigun activist ("Kentucky's concealed carry law shows your life doesn't matter to gun-loving Republicans") arrested after trying to assassinate mayoral candidate.

From View from the Porch comes an interesting discussion about whether ballistic ID, especially bullet striations, is junk science. The data summed up certainly suggests that.

(One of the first such IDs, maybe the first, happened here in Tucson. In the old law school they had the exhibits on the wall. No use of comparative microscopes, etc., the witness just looked at the bullets with a magnifying glass. One exhibit was labelled "bullets from different guns look different," with a picture of an assortment. Well, yes, they were an assortment of jacketed and lead bullets, damaged and undamaged, ones with wide rifling grooves and ones with narrow).