Arms and the Law

Carjacker stops to steal ammo from a Walmart, is captured by a concealed carry good guy.

Via Instapundit: Prosecutor has eyewitness to the shooting on re-direct. He starts asking, over and over with different wording, "you don't know what was in the mind of the rioter who got shot, do you?" He asks once too often.

"Q. You can't read Rosenbaum's mind, right? You can't know what he was actually thinking, right? Your interpretation of his intent is nothing but complete guesswork, isn't that right?

A. Well, he said 'Fuck you,' and then he reached for the weapon."

Ooops.

Story here. I won't say it crashed and burned, because it didn't get into the air in the first place. First two witnesses say the fellow who was shot was being hyper aggressive and threatening lethal harm, had set fires, he had chased Rittenhouse down and was trying to grab his gun away.

This is not a good beginning to a prosecutor's case.

John Lott reports that permits to carry concealed are way up. They've increased by 10% in the last year, and 48% over the last five years, despite the fact that 21 states now have no permit requirement and thus do not report their numbers.

I've had a theory: the US was always a nation of gunnies. The experience of the 60s (three assassinations, more attempts, riots and skyrocketing crime) was enough to depress this, but 50 years later we are returning to the norm.

Here's his Twitter page, with multiple postings over the last few days. The long and the short of it: safe gun handling on a movie set involves even more redundancies than does safe gun handling in general. The only way the Baldwin shooting could have occurred was (1) many, many screwups (starting with just having real cartridges on a set when actors are supposed to shoot blanks) or (2) nobody gave a hoot about gun safety at all.

Back in action at last, just in time to post the transcript of oral argument!

Listened to it this morning. Paul Clement, for NYSRPA, had a good but somewhat shaky opening. Then the Solicitor General spoke, VERY shaky and uncertain. Turns out she was just made SG last week, after being an acting since January, background clerking for judges but only one year of practice. Then New York's attorney spoke, reasonably well. Then Clement gave a really excellent rebuttal.

NY's defense seemed to focus on: there's a wide variation in conditions around the state, from rural counties to packed cities and their subways. The present system lets local officials decide and be flexible. A counter was -- is there any other fundamental right where we let licensing officials be arbitrary because conditions vary?

According to this report, the gun in question had "misfired" (maybe they mean malfunctioned) several times before, but was kept in action. Still, this sounds like a case of a live regular round going off. Whatever it was completely penetrated one person and went on to seriously injure another. But what fool would allow a regular cartridge anywhere near a set like that?

and cursing. I posted several posts... and they vanished.

Apparently the blog host updated its interface, so that my usual computers (a pair of older Macs) wouldn't interface with it. I finally got a Windows laptop and can post from that. I'm just now starting to the learn the new OS and browser and hardware, so it may be slow for a bit.
It appears all the older posts have been moved to the archives, and can be found by clicking on that link.

trying to get back in action

It's virtual this year: the first day is posted to youtube, here.

That's the subject of an article at Real Clear Investigations. Prof. Kleck has written first-rate articles and books on the subject for decades.

Update--I was referring not to this article, but to the work of Prof. Gary Kleck. Kleck, Gary and Marc Gertz. 1995. "Armed Resistance to Crime: the Prevalence and Nature of Self-defense with a Gun." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 86(1):150-187.

Here's the Supreme Court docket, with links to each pdf filing. Theirs begin after "argument set," dated Aug. 16. I count 36 of them, but may be a little off.

Their dominate in one thing: big name organizations. American Bar Association, ACLU, Amnesty International, League of Women Voters, etc., essentially the organizations of the elite. None of those listed should have much institutional interest in the 2A or gun control, so they wade in because it's one of the elites against the rest of us.

Quick skims indicate very little discussion of history or real con law. Most briefs are "guns are bad and gun laws are good." I notice attempts at narrowing the issue... not so much is gun control good as gun control is good in big cities like New York.

It's reported that the Mossad used an FN-MAG controlled by satellite link to kill Iran's top nuclear scientist.

For the second year, Second Amendment Foundation is hosting its Gun Rights Policy Conference online.

Their history dates back to when SAF organized Scholars' Conferences in the late 1970s. I distinctly remember one in 1978, I think it was the second one, in St. Louis. At those conferences, I first met Steve Halbrook, Joyce Malcolm, Don Kates (who chaired them), David Caplan, and others. Egad, 43 years ago, about 2/3 of a human lifetime.

On the Supreme Court docket here. The historical discussion begins on p. 21.

Right off the top, it discusses "surety to keep the peace" statutes as if they disarmed the defendant. All the ones I've seen just bound the defendant to keep the peace for six months or a year; whether he carried arms during that time was not affected. They applied only if someone, the plaintiff, proved that the defendant had threatened him or breached his peace.

Right here.

Story here. I knew Foss when he was an NRA director and president, prior to his death in 2003. He earned the Medal of Honor ... on Guadalcanal, where as one writer said, uncommon courage was a common virtue, and he stood out even there. Here's an understated summary of his actions, and here's a much more colorful one at Badass of the Week.

Story here. I must say, for some reason, one look at the fellow and I didn't like him. This is one of his better photos.