Arms and the Law

In the wake of Brady Campaign being handed its posterior in court, Sebastian notes that Brady no longer serves any purpose, even to the antigunners, and Bob Owens asks "Is the Brady Campaign done?".

Both good points. I just had one worry, though. There have been rumors that Bloomberg's groups have been in some conflict/rivalry with the older antigun groups, trying to encroach upon their space, as it were, in terms of PR and fundraising. Might this lead to Bloombergian hegemony? They may be astroturf, but they have the money to form mercenaries, and the other side has never worried much about real grassroots anyway.

Latest issue here. The firearms related articles are at the end of the issue. There's Steve Halbrook on the NY SAFE act, and Dave Kopel on the history of firearm magazines and restrictions on them.

H/T to Alice Beard....

Man begins shooting into a crowd, an Uber driver with a concealed carry permit shoots him down before he hits anyone.

1775: the Revolutionary War breaks out as General Gage sends a force to seize militia supplies, and the Americans resist.

1993: the final day of the Waco siege. FBI armored vehicles fill the Davidians' building with CS gas and methylene chloride, a fire breaks out, and over a hundred die.

1995: Timothy McVeigh sets off his bomb at Oklahoma City, killing 168.

2015: the Washington Post remembers one of the above.

The PA Gaming Control Board has been advised that its restrictions on firearms in casinos violates the State's pre-emption statute.

As a general rule, bringing a knife to a gunfight is unwise, but there are exceptions to every rule. It probably helped that the knife in question was a katana.

Interesting issue ... and here I'm referring to shotguns which were originally made with a rear pistol grip in place of a buttstock.

While at the meeting, I wandered over to the "Moms Demand" so-called demonstration. (It was over half a mile from the meeting, but since the object was publicity I suppose its location was unimportant to its organizers). It looked like a hundred people or so people were there (its organizer had predicted four hundred).

Best presentation I heard at the Firearms Law Seminar was that of Massad Ayoob. I'm a good and often tough judge of speaking, and he was simply first rate. He spoke on self-defense and the law of self-defense.

Some things are just impossible to believe. But then, who would have believed glass could be turned into flexible threads of great strength?

Story here.

David Codrea notes that, while J. Edgar Hoover happily received the first .357 Magnum made, he'd secretly tried to outlaw its development, on a "cop-killer bullet" sort of theory.

John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center is having a very interesting event on the evening of Friday, April 10. You can sign up here. It's $50-200, depending upon your choices, and it's going to a good cause -- in terms of refuting antigun research and conduct progun research, the best cause, in fact. And how often can you hear about details of criminology alongside Katie Pavlich and Dana Loesch?

Good news! Shes the lady with the PA carry permit who was stopped in NJ, and thinking her permit valid, informed the officer that he had a gun. She was looking at a mandatory sentence of around three years, as I recall.

Dave Workman has the story.

Right here. The weapons-grade plutonium is a little pricey, though.

Just remember the offers may not last long after April 1...

John Lott takes apart an FBI report claiming that the number of mass shootings is increasing. Among other things, he notes that the FBI data including shootings where no one was killed (which make up nearly a quarter of the incidents counted) and someones nobody injured. It includes cases where one person was killed (which hardly are mass slayings), which makes up another quarter of the cases counted. It also overlooks cases fitting its criteria early in the period, which including some that shouldn't be counted at the end. The FBI count begins with the year 2000, which had an exceptionally low number of events (and undercounts them -- showing zero when actually there were four). He replies with a count over the last four decades, which finds only a slight rise. (And we might note that the US population increased 43% over the period used by Lott, and 12% over the shorter period US by the FBI).

Hat tip to reader Alice Beard....

Story here. The city police would refuse to return guns that came into their hands but should legally have been returned to their owners. In this case, they destroyed the guns despite court orders to the contrary. And wound up paying $30K to settle the civil suit.

To make it still better, the judge indicates he's going to award attorney fees to the winners.

"THOMAS, Chief Judge:
Upon the vote of a majority of nonrecused active judges, it is ordered that
this case be reheard en banc pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a) and Circuit Rule 35-3. The three-judge panel opinion and order denying motions to intervene shall not be cited as precedent by or to any court of the Ninth Circuit."

In the Ninth, that means the case will be reheard by a panel of ten randomly-chosen judges (out of around 28 active duty ones) plus the chief judge.