Arms and the Law

In my shortwave listening days, I relied upon the BBC for impartial and intelligent American news -- especially on an election night. It seems to be the same now in the age of the internet.

Michael Bloomberg gives a great demonstration of ignorance and confusion.

He's by no means the only one. Captain's Quarters has a good collection of gun-related incoherence from pols, students, and the media.

As mayor, Bloomberg compared the NY Civil Liberties Union and a teacher's union to NRA, proclaiming all three to be "extremists."

An interesting history. I know for many years he had an A NRA rating, with good reason. He voted against the Brady Act, and for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act. Now, of course, he's running for the Demo nomination....

They needed 766,000 signatures, and only got 146,000. They've of course announced they will try again next election.

The legal problem is that the lower meets part of the regulatory definition -- it houses the firing mechanism and hammer -- and upper meets part of it -- it houses the bolt and is fitted with the barrel. Now it turns out that ATF has known about this problem for years, and refused to deal with it by regulation.

Story here. One of the changes is that the buyer can list their sex as male, female, or nonbinary....

It's been challenged in court, and the Florida Supreme Court seems skeptical. The challenge appears to center on the requirement that the referendum clearly state to the voters what the law would do. The explanation seems to say that already-owned guns would be grandfathered in and registered, when in fact the referendum would not let them be transferred, so they would have to be turned in upon the owner's death.

Turns out the mourning mother who stars in his ad about children' gun deaths... her son was 20 at his death and was part of a gang war.

Robbers pull toy gun intended victim shoots three out of four.

When gun sales are at record levels. Since it's not difficult to find hard data (background check numbers are reported monthly, and serve as a rough surrogate for sales, and total production is reported by ATF, albeit with a delay), it's interesting that the reporter gives no such data before proclaiming that conclusion.

Yes, Colt stopped making AR-15s -- because everyone else was making them. Yes, Ruger backed off some -- because it had been running its plants 24 hours a day, with three shifts of workers (It's always played the conservative hand in business dealings, and didn't want to expand the physical plant unless forced to do so).

What amused me was that I have been cleaning out a storage area (largely storing my papers) and had chuckling at finding a newspaper article from 1982, if I recall correctly, saying the same thing, that gun sales were falling and the industry was in trouble.

Story here.

Story here. A little late. The issue was over removal of restrictions on internet availability of the code to print the receivers, and as I recall the code is now hosted at several overseas sites. So the suit is probably vulnerable to a motion to dismiss for mootness and lack of standing (inability to provide relief, hence no case and controversy).

Of course, if the only object is to garner some publicity and create appearances -- by the look of the Twitter comments, that is succeeding.

Local Dori Monson:

"The two suspects in this downtown shooting have been arrested 44 times with 20 convictions and 21 times with 15 convictions. Marquise Tolbert, the one with 20 convictions, had three felonies last year alone. You tell me how someone with three felonies in 2019 is walking around free and able to engage in a shootout that kills a woman and injures a bunch of other people, including a 9-year-old kid. Both Tolbert and William Tolliver, the other suspect, are just 24 years old. They both have previously been arrested and charged with drive-by shootings and unlawful possession of a firearm in 2018. So the courts knew full well that these were gun-toting gang members. Why did our justice system let them walk free?"

The area's Congresscritter opines:

"I pledge to continue doing everything I can to fight the gun lobby and its Congressional allies who stand in the way of commonsense gun safety and gun violence prevention measures."

Founder of GOA, NRA director, political writer.

At the Daily Beast.

"Bloomberg, who's quickly moved up in national polls on an unprecedented tsunami of spending and despite sitting out the Democratic debates, represents, in a way never seen in modern American politics, the melding of oligarchal power with political willfulness. His campaign remains a wild long shot, but ask New York City how that can play out--and how difficult it is to dislodge this oligarch once he's in office, even when the law demands that he leave."

They denied cert.

Hat tip to Alice Beard....

Story here.

"It means that the approximately 360,000 licensed gun-owners in the Czech Republic are allowed to carry their weapons in public and use them in case of a public order emergency, such as terrorism."

The proposal for a constitutional amendment was approved 139-29. But they shouldn't have modeled it on the 1780 Massachusetts right to arms, but on the 1776 version used by Pennsylvania. Still, this is Europe, and we must give them time to get up to speed, even if they are two centuries late.

Story here.

"I'm here because I've seen how all of you decent, responsible, law-abiding gun owners are relentlessly, and I believe unfairly, demonized."

"I'm here because I've seen firsthand how an ideological hatred of guns and the people who own them is more important to some people than the actual goal of saving lives."

He left Brady because "I had a lot of issues with a lot of people who thought they were on my side," who would tell him "I think we should get rid of all the guns."

something on the situation in Iran.

A modest proposal: we are prepared to pound your aircraft, and nail your anti-aircraft sites with Wild Weasels and Shrikes. At that point comes the real airstrike. Not bombers, but cargo planes carrying AK-47s with ammo and small parachutes. We will blanket you with them (or maybe just your most rebellious areas for starters). Surrender now (in which event we'll arm them anyway) or face the consequences. The Second Amendment in action!