Arms and the Law

It involves Mike Strickland, of Oregon, who drew his handgun after being menaced by a Black Lives Matter crowd. Project Veritas has some video of the incident, and James O'Keefe vouching for him.

News here. The House took the action under the Congressional Review Act. The measure is now on to the Senate.

At Downhill, Donna Weisner Keene has "Hero Gets Bounced Around Too Often."

Soldier of Fortune and Col. Brown have endorsed seven candidates. They give highest priority to Steve Schreiner, who's running for re-election. He's a Colorado activist, and Vietnam vet (Silver Star and Bronze Star with V for valor). They also endorse Tom Arvas, John Cushman, Curtis Jenkins, Sean Maloney, Linda Walker, and Heidi Washington.

David Codrea supports Steven Stamboulieh, and gives his answers to a list of questions on his positions. He's definitely solid on the Second Amendment.

From Charles Cooke, in the National Review Online:

"In 1990, some form of "constitutional carry" obtained in just 0.25 percent of the geographical area of the United States, and for only 0.22 percent of the population. Today, those numbers are 42 percent and 18 percent, respectively."

And, as he notes, those numbers are likely to grow appreciably in 2017.

I just came across an 1977 issue of the legal journal Case and Comment, which has an article about using computers in the practice of law. It casually mentions that they are the size of a refrigerator, and can be used for word processing and billing. "A computer capable of doing the operations cited in this article can be obtained for about $25,000. [$99,000 in 2016 dollars] More advanced models may exceed $300,000 to purchase. [upwards of a million in modern money]"

Software would cost $2,000 to $10,000 -- $8,000 to 40,000 in modern terms.

The first legal computer I saw was in the office of Margrit Cromwell, now sadly deceased, here in Tucson, around 1980 or so. It was indeed huge, ran on 8" floppy disks (no hard drives) and cost her $15,000, if I recall correctly.

Speaking about Michael Moore's futile quest for relevance.

From Instapundit:

"The poor federal courts are overworked. We need to add more judges. A lot more judges."

Just got word that Heidi Washington, daughter of the late Tom Washington, who died in 1995 while serving as NRA President (he died after suffering a heart attack while deer hunting). It's worth mentioning that, when George H. W. Bush resigned from NRA after a "jack-booted thug" reference, Washington released very effective response. Heidi is an endowment member, endorsed by the nominating committee, head of the Michigan Department of Corrections and supporter of the Warden's Cup competition.
Looks as if as head of the Dept of Corrections she has received some praise as a reformer.

7th Circuit US Court of Appeals' ruling here. Chicago of course banned handguns -- that got struck down in McDonald. Then it went to strict licensing, with a requirement of training on a range, while banning all firing ranges. That got stuck down in Ezell I. Then it tried restrictively regulating ranges, which gets struck down here. Of the city's three requirements, two are stricken 3-0 and the remainder was struck 2-1.

Hat tip to Alice Beard, who points out that the opinion is written by judge Diane Sykes (who I think wrote Ezell I also), who is on Trump's list of 21 judges he'd be willing to appoint to the Supreme Court.

Story here.

"In fact, Mr. Waugh has "made 'bug-out bags' stuffed with ammo, energy bars, and assorted survival gear for his wife and their three cats. He's begun stowing water and browsing real estate listings in Gunnison County, Colorado, which he's determined to be a 'liberal safe-haven.' Last month, Waugh added a 9mm handgun to his arsenal."

Todd has established a Facebook page to document his candidacy.

Article here. The main contenders were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, and at the end there were a dozen papers with unsettled authorship. Comparing other, known, writings of the two men, they found both used sentences of the same average length, but there were other clues, as as Hamilton used "while" but Madison used "whilst."

Here in AZ, a perp shot and wounded a highway patrolman. A driver then stopped and fatally shot the perp, the used the patrolman's radio to call for help. Story here.

Roy Innis, NRA director and head of the Congress on Racial Equality, died on yesterday at age 82. Here's his obit story in the Washington Times. I'd spoken with his son Niger at the NRA meeting a few days before that, and he mentioned that Roy was in serious decline. A very good man.

It would be an interesting idea. It might fit in with making the whistle-blowing agents head of the Office of Inspector General for Justice. The OIG is charged with rooting out "fraud, waste, and abuse." That can be an interesting, if full time, assignment. And a lot of fun.

Finally had time to finish James Gibson's recent book, "A War Without Rifles: the 1792 Militia Act and the War of 1812." I greatly enjoyed the book and the research. The "without rifles" part reflects that military and militia planning in the early 19th century leaned strongly toward muskets rather than rifles, which posed problems in the War of 1812 (the British had adapted to the Napoleonic Wars with tactics that involved swarms of skirmishers moving up to harass opposing troops, and by issuing the Baker rifle to some skirmishing units). Plenty of other research here, including the fact that Secretary of War James Monroe proposed the first American military draft (the male population 18-45 to divided into units of 100 men, each required to furnish four recruits, the other 96 to pay their bounties).

From the Canadian Firearms Blog comes eight reasons why Canada isn't all bad on guns. The variances between Canadian and US law are interesting. No special restrictions for short-barreled rifles in Canada. Most Americans don't have to get permits to possess firearms, but we generally have to go thru an FFL to buy one interstate. Canada requires the permit but allows private parties to buy inter-province.

With all those variances, why, a fellow might start to think that the gun regulations of both counties are arbitrary rather than rational.

He died of cancer, age 62, yesterday. He was professor of communications at the University of Toledo, pro-gun, and a brilliant writer and speaker. He authored "The Ten Commandments of Propaganda," "The National Rifle Association and the Mass Media," and other works, and spoke at the NRA's National Firearms Law Seminar a few years ago. His book on NRA and the mass media created objective measures of negative publicity (that is, not just your impression that this was negative, but ways objectively to measure it and assign numbers to it) and showed that X amount of bad publicity was associated with Y amount of rise in NRA membership.

A brilliant mind and a very good man. We will miss him.

To quote Glen Reynolds, "Heh."