Arms and the Law

Newly-elected Congressman turned down for DC apartment due to his bad credit rating.

Some interesting thoughts. I've often encountered that in the past. At the local college of law, I once looked up faculty voting registrations. Out of 30 or so that I found, there was only one Repub, a new hire. And of course if you bring up the Second Amendment, the reaction is echhh...

Haven't been blogging because last week I had a complex case. And in the coming week I'm summoned for jury duty, and won't be able to talk about that until the trial is over. I noticed something amusing, though. Arizona has mandatory, repeat mandatory, retirement for judges at age 70. But jurors must serve up to age 75.

He says, ""The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick," he said. "It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero.""

update; no idea why the comment was blocked, but I've cleared it.

A few useful facts.

It turns out that, not long before, the killer had threatened his mother with a bomb, causing the evacuation of a neighborhood. Yet he somehow was not arrested. As The Truth About Guns asks, what does it take to get arrested in Colorado Springs? Or, for that matter, to get a psychiatric commitment, which, like a felony conviction, would have barred him from legal firearms ownership?

At SSRN. He finds that, despite 24 states having gone to permit-less concealed carry, the number of CCW licenses continues to expand.(He doesn't count Alabama, since it will only go permit-less on January 1).

Outside of California and New York, 10% of the adult population now has a permit. Even 4.5% of Illinois has one.

(I haven't been blogging much due to workload, catching covid, and having a relapse. Fortunately it was the most modern strain, about like a cold, but it really did drain my energy).

Video here. With Steve are professors William Merkel and Mark Smith.

Hardaway v. Nigrelli, W.D.N.Y. A victory for FPC and SAF. Plaintiffs are clerics who want to carry to protect their churches. The court had earlier issued a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the ban, and now elevates that to a preliminary injunction (which usually turns into a permanent injunction once the trial is finished -- issuing a PI requires finding that the movant is likely to win on the trial).

The 2A analysis starts about p. 25. Text, history, and tradition, and the only examples defendants could find of bans in churches come from 1870 and later.

One-time NRA director, and life-long activist Bob Baer, of the Houston area, has passed on. He and Jim Norell and I spent many an hour on the telephone over the years. Now he and Jim are gone.

Around 2000, Bob played a big role in reawakening the Waco tragedy.

Our own media would never tell us the dark side of Sen. Ted Kennedy. It's more than Chappaquiddick.

"My legislation says there can be no more than eight bullets in a round."

Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue and he meant to say "no more than eight bullets in a pound." That is, "a ten gauge is all you need for self-defense and sport, no eight gauges!"

It's against Sheriff Laurie Smith, of Santa Clara County, CA. One of her major donors got a carry permit even though he left blank the box for explaining his need, while other applicants never even got a reply.

3 teens (one, it turns out, wanted for robbery) try to enter a school with guns. The security guard calls 911 and locks down.

Then an assistant principal lets them thru the first set of doors "because it was unsafe to be outside because I saw police officers."

Instead of having the assistant publicly flogged, the school board seems to think his decision was understandable: "The staff member made a split-second decision that the individual thought was the best way to keep students and staff safe."

They've brought on Steve Gutowski as commentator on the issue. Which is driving Brady Campaign insane! Because, of course, the last thing they want is real debate.

The FBI says about 4% of the time. John Lott does a more comprehensive study and concludes it's more like 34%, and in certain settings over 50%.

Mark Smith discusses it here. Post Bruen, it's a whole new legal day!

Clayton Cramer: "I Will Take Seriously Government Concern About Machine Guns in Private Hands When the Government Shows It Is Similarly Concerned" It sounds like the government lost track of upwards of a thousand M-4s, and shipped them to someone who thought he was buying empty rifle crates.

Oh, well, considering how many thousand we left behind in Iraq, this is minor.

I just returned from it, you can access the videos on their YouTube channel. Here's one five-hour segment.

Some sessions were very interesting. One speaker has an organization devoted to giving teachers first-aid training and equipment. He points out one school shooting where nobody knew what to do to save a student who was hit, they were even applying a defibrillator when there was no reason to do so. The organization also trains armed teachers. He said just being armed is only the beginning, they should also be organized so that each goes to a critical place or a choke point, and have some training in action shooting so they don't freeze up. His group uses guns that fire small capsules at enough speed to hurt, because messing up should hurt, and pain is a powerful aid to memory.

Josh Blackman has a legal obit on the good judge. He wrote the DC Circuit opinion in Parker v. DC, which thereby became Heller v. DC. That opinion, by splitting with all the other circuits, and by striking down a gun law, became a perfect vehicle for a Supreme Court case.

Irony: he spoke at a gathering which I attended, and said that when he was up for a Supreme Court nomination, NRA opposed him. He had been asked if he'd support a "Saturday Night Special" ban (which was the fad of gun control groups then), and replied he might, if anyone could tell him what a SNS was. This was interpreted as an anti-gun answer, when it was quite the opposite. Thus he never sat on the Supreme Court, but, he added, if he had we might not have gotten Heller (meaning he wouldn't have been in the DC Circuit to generate the Circuit split).

Clayton Cramer has the story.