Arms and the Law

Duncan v. Becerra, striking down California's ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds. Chuck Michel claims the victory. I haven't done more than skim the opinion -- it's 86 pages long!

Of course, since this is the Ninth Circuit, don't hold your breath yet. But with New York State Rifle and Pistol pending in the Supreme Court, this may be part of the next wave of serious appellate challenges.

A summary of his testimony, and links to the full transcript, here, via Stephen Green of Instapundit. Green notes ""One crazy ex" is becoming the new standard of justice in Colorado."

Its government has made downloading or possessing the mosque killer's manifesto a crime, punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment.

Discussion here. Four very interesting cases. And that doesn't count NYSRPA v. NY, or the census question case (and the Supremes just asked for briefing on a new aspect of that, whether adding the question on citizenship violates the enumeration clause of Article I, sec. 2, which underlies the census, and simply refers to taking an enumeration of the people for allocating House seats.

A guess as to why the Court wants that added -- what if some Justices are of the mind that a power to take an enumeration of the people does not include doing anything else? You can count heads, but not ask much else?

Another possibility, and I'm not familiar enough with the case to know this.... might it challenge not only asking the question, but whether non-citizens should be excluded from the count? If so, there might be an issue as to whether a population is enumerated when certain persons are not counted. But if that was an issue, I'd have expected plaintiffs to raise it as Argument I, and not wait for the Court to raise the idea.

In any event, most Terms have a small number of interesting cases and a lot of uninteresting ones. It doesn't sound like October Term 2019 is going to be like that.

Some thoughts on when citizens become subjects, highlighted by case studies of various nations.

David Keene, former president of NRA and of the American Conservative Union, will be giving a talk with that title at the Heartland Institute, on Tuesday, March 26, at 5:30-7:30 CDT. The Institute is in Arlington Heights, IL. You can get tickets here, and it may be podcast.

Story here. Pretty surprising, given the increasingly burdensome laws there. Given that, if ownership is steeply increasing in a place like California, it logically is increasing where it's easier to become a gun owner, this is a rebuttal to survey-based claims that fewer households are owning guns.

Story here....

Press release here.

Four people create a home invasion in Yuma, armed homeowner shoots all four.

Would have to be told, by the Supreme Court, that dead judges do not get to vote. As the Supreme Court put it, "That practice effectively allowed a deceased judge to exercise the judicial power of the United States after his death. But federal judges are appointed for life, not for eternity."

Story here. ATF was clever here. The show requires exhibitors to remove firing pins from all displayed guns. So ATF asked all gunsmiths in the area to be on the lookout for anyone wanting to buy a firing pin. When they asked an FFL about a firing pin, giving some lame excuse, he tipped off the agency.

Ha--the first time I viewed the story, no problem. The second time the page gave notice that I was using an ad blocker (actually a popup blocker) and asked me to remove it in order to see the story. Never saw that sort of thing before.

It doesn't pay to hack off the Supreme Court. They're ruled that a state cannot execute a person who is sufficiently mentally disabled, and given a general framework on how that is to be determined. The Texas Court of Appeals held that an execution was in order, and the Supremes reversed and remanded. Apparently, the Texas Court of Appeals changed their wording a little, used the same approach they had used the first time, and the defendant filed a second petition for certiorari.

This time the Court issued a per curiam reversal (not signed by any one judge, generally meaning "this case is a slam-dunk") and did so with nothing but the petition for cert. in front of it! That is, it granted the petition and ruled on the case in same order!. No briefs, no argument. (I've also never seen a per curiam with dissent).

As a cyborg named Ruth Bader Gins-Borg.

Both parties have requested that the Supreme Court schedule the opening brief for May 7 and New York's brief for August 5. They note this would allow the Court to have argument during its October "sitting" (a two-week period for hearing arguments, meaning October 7-8 or 15-16.

The regular briefing schedule would have ended up in late May, I think, and since the Court normally breaks around July 4 until October, there would have been little time to read the briefs, schedule oral argument, take a vote, and write opinions.

From Fox News:

"Martin purchased the gun that was used in the shooting in 2014, police said. Ziman said Martin purchased the weapon after being issued a firearm owner's identification card and after passing the initial background check.

Five days after taking possession of the weapon, a Smith and Wesson 40 caliber handgun, Martin tried to obtain a concealed carry permit.

But during the fingerprinting and background process it was discovered that he had a felony conviction for assault in Mississippi, police said. The date of conviction was in 1995. Police said the conviction would not necessarily have shown up on the background check for a gun owner's license.

Because of the conviction, Martin's concealed carry permit was rejected and his license to own a weapon was revoked by Illinois State Police, police said.

Ziman said as part of the investigation into the shooting, investigators would try to determine why Martin never surrendered his weapon to police as he should have."

I refer to Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties.

Nice to see a unit of government standing up for the rights of its citizens....

Clayton Cramer's Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog has begun to focus on the topic.

Amusingly, the first case he cites (Houston, homeowner shot three armed home invaders) also makes the antigun Gun Violence Archive. I guess they include self-defense against home invaders as "gun violence."

Local police describe him as "a hero."

A rather expensive hunt!

When I was in DC, representing US Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the biologists explained to me he'd set up conservative arrangements in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The locals were meat-hunting; the mountain goats were just a stringy dinner. Once he showed one mountain goat could be worth more in hard currency than the entire village earned in a year, they suddenly became great conservationists! Those goats weren't dinner; they were a way to become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

He told me the locals caught one of the wealthiest men in Pakistan poaching. They stomped him, took his rifle and his pants and left him alone in the wilderness. When he protested to a tribal elder, the man said he agreed that the young men had acted badly. "I will tell them, the next time they see you, they are to shoot you."

Of course, the biologist who set this up was later run out of the agency....