Arms and the Law

He's the agent who infiltrated the Hell's Angels, had BATF thoroughly backstab him, and sued the agency. Much of the court files were sealed, but were recently unsealed. Here's the local news story on what the reporter found in the formerly sealed files:

Legal Insurrection has the inside scoop. DC police referred the case for prosecution, noting that they'd told NBC that possessing the 30 round magazine would be illegal, and NBC went ahead anyway. The police even swore out an affidavit for an arrest warrant. But DC's "Attorney General" wrote "declined" on it and refused to proceed.

Is out with three articles one of them mine, its theme being "why we fight."

Some guy named Bryant Gumbel, who hosts something called "Real Sports," announces he hates the NRA.

If I could just find a silver image of the hindquarters of a rat, I could keep it as a symbol of what I do not give. Speaking of which, he said it in Rolling Stone.

The Supreme Court today handed down a ruling in Dept of Homeland Security v. MacLean, essentially overruling the firing of an Air Marshal.

The marshal had been briefed on a highjacking alert... and then told that, to save money, DHS was canceling all overnight missions (that is, flight of air marshals) from his airport for the remainder of the month (the idea was to save on marshals' hotel bills when assignments were overnight). Believing that was dangerous (and illegal, since statutes said that flights of the type involved should be a high priority since they would be prime targets), he leaked the story to a reporter. As a result, DHS reversed the policy. DHS traced the leak to him and fired him.

The Court holds that he was entitled to the statutory protection for whistle-blowers, and that the exemption for whistle blowers who leak info whose release is "specifically prohibited by law" mean prohibited by law, not by agency regulation.

Police use of radar that can see into a house. In its present form, it can only report on whether someone is inside, and their distance, but as the article notes, more advanced forms are becoming available.

From the NRA Museum. Very cool.

It's because it fears what Congress would do to its budget if it did.

Good. All the solid work in this field was done decades ago by criminologists. They've had a lot to say about the CDC's produce, and none of it is good. The medical studies being cranked out ignored basic principles of criminology, and did not deal with prior criminological studies.

I found several that concluded that gun density (percent of households with guns) were positively related to gun fatality rates. The logical problem: they estimated gun density by percent of suicides that involved firearms, and measured gun fatalities to include suicide (which far outnumber murders, and make up about 60% of the total). So their real conclusion was: where guns are more often used in suicide, guns are more often used in suicide. Well, yes.

Prof. Brian Anse Patrick has thoughts and experiences there.

So reports Dave Workman. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Story here. It's filed by a chapter of US Law Shield against the City of Harrisburg. As I recall, the preemption law had problems under the State constitutional requirement that a bill have but one purpose.

Yesterday I flew next to Lt. Gen. Leroy Sisco, the CEO of Military Warriors Support Foundation. They function to give homes to disabled veterans, in exchange for them accepting financial mentoring and other help (most of these are young folks). In 2014 they set up 200+ vets in houses. (They also set them up with apartments). I recall there is some controversy about Wounded Warrior Project being antigun... this is definitely a different group. Gen. Sisco, its CEO, was flying back from an NRA Board of Directors meeting, and showed me a picture of a custom 1911 that he would soon be receiving. I don't think we have to worry about these guys being anti!

I've been reading that massive enactment, after a comment a few days ago pointed out that it might affect folks who had both a firearms permit and a medical marihuana card. So far I've found three areas relating to firearms.

On p. 58, the usual appropriation riders forbidding BATF to process petitions for relief from disabilities (i.e., the dis-ability to possess firearms. And, as usual, an exception for petitions filed by corporations! Also, no money can be spent to transfer BATFE's functions to other agencies or departments.

P. 78: no more "Operation Fast and Furious" type operations.

Pp. 82-83: restrictions on agencies limiting firearm exports to Canada. And one restricting denials of permits to import curios and relics.

Pp. 272-73: Fees collected by Interior for testing nontoxic shot may be kept and spent for that testing. (Normally an agency has to turn over all fees to the government's General Fund, and hope to get them back through appropriations).

Webpage here. The most frequent resting place of those already listed is Arlington National Cemetery. Three of them earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. One, "Red Mike" Edson, received that plus two Navy Crosses (the second highest award for gallantry) and the Silver Star (the third highest award for gallantry).

Just found her on find a grave. Heck of a smart young lady. I knew her from when she was one of the first NRA/ILA lobbyists (there were five: Bill Pickins, head, Kathy, Susan Reece, Randy Bowman and Danny Smith). She left that when she married a British MP. I last saw her at a party, though either my dates or those on her obit were confused, since I remember my son Mark (born in 1985) was an infant at the time.

She was very, very, good at politics and PR, and a little goofy in everything else. One day she came into work rather shaken up. She'd locked her keys in her house, tried to climb in an upstairs window, slipped and rolled down the roof and went into the bushes below. Another time she flew to New York City, rented a car, drove to her appointment, took a taxi back to the airport and flew back to DC. A while later the car rental place called NRA to ask where their car was. (In the meantime, it was stolen).

Springfield MA city councilman Bud Williams, speaking at a public event, tells listeners to remember that "Jesus is the reason for the season."

He apparently didn't figure out that the event was a menorah lighting ceremony marking the beginning of Hanukkah.

I checked: yep, he supports more restrictive gun laws. Somehow, not too surprising.

Texas man abuses company credit card to buy $23,000 worth of guns.

Over 300,000 fugitives from justice are at large because the arresting jurisdiction refuses to say it'll extradite them if caught. Apparently, they figure that if the fugitive moves out of state, they're someone else's problem.

What's more, millions of fugitives can pass background checks, because law enforcement has never reported the outstanding arrest warrant to the NICS system.

Prof. Nick Johnson (Fordham Law) takes it apart, at the Library of Law and Liberty.

The ruling is discussed by Eugene Volokh, at the Volokh Conspiracy.