Arms and the Law

Story here. The good guy saw another person waving a gun and shouting threats after pistol-whipping another person in his rage. The good guy, Lloyd Muldrow, subdued and disarmed the offender and held him for police. Muldrow had a handgun, with a Virginia but not a Maryland permit to carry, and police arrested him.

(The article says he was arrested for carrying within 100 feet of a public building. Bruen specifically says that while "sensitive place" limitations may be constitutional, they must be strictly limited and find an analogy in restrictions that were in place at the time of the framing. The Maryland statute, if applied not just to a government building, but to an area of 100 feet around it, and even to persons inside other buildings within that radius, would seem clearly unconstitutional).

Donations for his defense can be sent to his GiveSendGo page.

US v. Quiroz, W.D. Tex. The judge does a good job, and is quite faithful to Bruen. I just worry that too faithful an application might lead to results that could lead a later Court to abandon "text, history, and tradition" as unworkable.

UPDATE: Wikipedia indicates that Judge Counts is an interesting judge. Made a magistrate judge in 2009, Obama nominated him for district judge in 2016; it failed to be confirmed. A year later Trump nominated him, and this was confirmed by the Senate 96-0 in 2018.

I just received this from Steve Halbrook:

Some of you might be interested in our 3rd Annual Firearms Law in Virginia Seminar 2022, Oct. 14, https://www.vacle.org/product.aspx?zpid=7674. It's both in-person and remote. Among other speakers, we'll have Virginia Supreme Court Justice Stephen McCullough, Kyle Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards, Fairfax Circuit Judge Richard Gardiner, Erin Murphy of Clement & Murphy, ATF Counsel James Vann, and myself. CLE credit approved for VA and DC.

Story here. 10 dead and 15 wounded.

The War on Guns has the story. To register one, you must also send a photo of it.

I bet they are trying to avoid what happened during the 1986 ban on registering newly-made full autos. As the deadline approached, makers of full autos, realizing prices would skyrocket once the ban went into effect, began rushing out and registering receivers. Those who made folded receivers, ones bent out of sheet metal, stamped out as many pieces of sheet metal as they could, stamped them with a serial number, and registered them without finishing them as receivers, then finished making them after registration. As I recall, there was one company that didn't even bother with that, they just registered a lot of serial numbers, then made the receiver and serial numbered them later.

As part of the state's "massive resistance" to the Court's enforcement of the Second Amendment, a restrictive carry bill was proposed in the legislature. Last night it defeated or died, together with another bill to add taxes to firearm sales.

With the Court's striking of "good cause" requirements, this means that Californians now can get carry permits and carry, a big loss for the other side!

Big hat tip to reader Andrew Endsley...

From the Daily Mail. If you want insightful news about the U.S., read the British papers. In the days when I was on the east coast, I monitored American elections over the BBC shortwave.

The Volokh Conspiracy answers Biden's latest display of dementia.. (Eugene definitely knows the 2A but isn't a gunny, so he had to check it out). I wonder if Biden thinks the .223/5.56 has a muzzle velocity in the 15,000 fps range (that would make it rather flat-shooting, if the bullets would just hold together) or the average rifle has one of about 600 fps?

Can a federal magistrate judge issue a search warrant? Magistrate judges aren't nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They are chosen from among attorneys by the judges of the district. They can't try a civil case unless both parties agree, nor any criminal felony or misdemeanor above a petty offense. In a civil case, they can *recommend* what the district judge should do on a motion, but cannot decide it. As the article points out, until recently they weren't called "magistrate judges," but simply "magistrates."

Story here. I don't see the class action, nor the 14th Amendment involvement. He plans to sue Daniels Defense, well, he'd better have a way to get around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and this Texas case.

August 21, 1982, at a hotel in the Maryland suburbs of DC. I, Frances (Avery), and Harlon Carter. Carter and his sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy Neal Knox, created the modern NRA.

Harlon died in '92, Frances died in '03, Neal died in '05, all of cancer.

Just incredible.

The FBI reports there was no malfunction of the gun; it could not have gone off unless Baldwin cocked it and pulled the trigger. Why the PD went to the FBI for this, instead of just asking a gunsmith to take it apart, is unclear, as is why the FBI would consider a local homicide within their jurisdiction.

So now we wait to see what the prosecutors will do, and whether a celebrity can literally get away with murder, or at least manslaughter.

A letter referencing FBI's desire to "audit" their CCW license holder list. What business has FBI "auditing" lists of CCW holders? And how would you audit it anyway? The AG quite properly tells them where to stick their request. I wonder if FBI ever bothered to comply with the Privacy Act, which requires agencies to make public their databases and the "routine uses" of each.

Here. The historian Oswald Spengler defined caesarism as, not one-man rule, but a point when all traditional political norms are abandoned. Hmmm...

An interesting article. Considering the decision is only six weeks old....

I've been reading and re-reading the decision, and writing an article on it. The ruling is SO important. Heller and McDonald laid the groundwork, but themselves decided little but "to entirely ban handguns is unconstitutional," (a regime that existed in no state and only maybe a half dozen cities) and gave little guidance on how to assess everything else. Bruen strikes down a major aspect of the oldest of the modern gun laws, and lays out a detailed framework. Text, history, and tradition, and what matters there is evidence relevant to the understanding of Americans of 1791, or at most 1868. Don't go quoting the gun laws of Henry VIII, or those of a few territories in the 1890s.

A forthcoming article in the Cato Supreme Court Review. I haven't read it yet and so cannot comment, but it certainly sounds comprehensive.

That's what NSSF dealer surveys show. Purchases by first-time gun owners in 2021 totaled over 5 million. Plus large numbers of dealers reporting increases in purchases by women and minorities.

I've felt that Americans were always a nation of gunnies; that was depressed in the 1960s and 1970s, and now we're returning to the norm.

An incident in Virginia. A 61-year old black pastor discovers five people dumping a refrigerator on his land, confronts them, and they start threatening him. He throws down on them, and winds up arrested for brandishing a weapon. Fortunately, charges were dropped, the five arrested, and two police supervisors given unpaid leave. The sheriff says, "Actually, as I told Mr. McCray, if I were faced with similar circumstances, I would have probably done the same thing."

Text here. Among other things, it would cover any semiautonomous rifle with a "pistol grip" or a "threaded barrel." Note this would cover even those where the pistol grip is a portion of the shoulder stock. The M-1 Grand and Carbine would be covered, since their stocks have pistol grips. (The Garand's clip is likely a "detachable feeding device.") So would the Remington Model 8, first sold in 1906 (which also has a detachable buttstock, another banned feature). Among handguns, any that have a magazine outside the pistol grip (There goes the broom handle Mauser). Among shotguns, any that have a magazine (fixed or not) that can accept more than 5 rounds (with the new 1 3/4" shells, that means all of them) and has "a pistol grip or a bird's head grip."

Guns "banned" by name: all "AK types" and "AR types," including some .22 rimfire.

Also covered is any parts designed to "accelerate the rate of fire" of a semiauto.

I can't bear to read any farther. That a majority of the House would pass this is beyond belief...