Arms and the Law

It doesn't pay to hack off the Supreme Court. They're ruled that a state cannot execute a person who is sufficiently mentally disabled, and given a general framework on how that is to be determined. The Texas Court of Appeals held that an execution was in order, and the Supremes reversed and remanded. Apparently, the Texas Court of Appeals changed their wording a little, used the same approach they had used the first time, and the defendant filed a second petition for certiorari.

This time the Court issued a per curiam reversal (not signed by any one judge, generally meaning "this case is a slam-dunk") and did so with nothing but the petition for cert. in front of it! That is, it granted the petition and ruled on the case in same order!. No briefs, no argument. (I've also never seen a per curiam with dissent).

As a cyborg named Ruth Bader Gins-Borg.

Both parties have requested that the Supreme Court schedule the opening brief for May 7 and New York's brief for August 5. They note this would allow the Court to have argument during its October "sitting" (a two-week period for hearing arguments, meaning October 7-8 or 15-16.

The regular briefing schedule would have ended up in late May, I think, and since the Court normally breaks around July 4 until October, there would have been little time to read the briefs, schedule oral argument, take a vote, and write opinions.

From Fox News:

"Martin purchased the gun that was used in the shooting in 2014, police said. Ziman said Martin purchased the weapon after being issued a firearm owner's identification card and after passing the initial background check.

Five days after taking possession of the weapon, a Smith and Wesson 40 caliber handgun, Martin tried to obtain a concealed carry permit.

But during the fingerprinting and background process it was discovered that he had a felony conviction for assault in Mississippi, police said. The date of conviction was in 1995. Police said the conviction would not necessarily have shown up on the background check for a gun owner's license.

Because of the conviction, Martin's concealed carry permit was rejected and his license to own a weapon was revoked by Illinois State Police, police said.

Ziman said as part of the investigation into the shooting, investigators would try to determine why Martin never surrendered his weapon to police as he should have."

I refer to Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties.

Nice to see a unit of government standing up for the rights of its citizens....

Clayton Cramer's Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog has begun to focus on the topic.

Amusingly, the first case he cites (Houston, homeowner shot three armed home invaders) also makes the antigun Gun Violence Archive. I guess they include self-defense against home invaders as "gun violence."

Local police describe him as "a hero."

A rather expensive hunt!

When I was in DC, representing US Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the biologists explained to me he'd set up conservative arrangements in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The locals were meat-hunting; the mountain goats were just a stringy dinner. Once he showed one mountain goat could be worth more in hard currency than the entire village earned in a year, they suddenly became great conservationists! Those goats weren't dinner; they were a way to become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

He told me the locals caught one of the wealthiest men in Pakistan poaching. They stomped him, took his rifle and his pants and left him alone in the wilderness. When he protested to a tribal elder, the man said he agreed that the young men had acted badly. "I will tell them, the next time they see you, they are to shoot you."

Of course, the biologist who set this up was later run out of the agency....

Story here.

An unbelievably good movie -- here's the trailer. The Imperial War Museum got the director of the Lord of the Rings series to work on their century-old WWI footage, on the condition that the entire film must consist of real footage, improved as best his team could. No talking heads, no modern re-enactors. They did an unbelievable job, improving resolution, turning early movies' slow frame rates into modern speed, colorizing, using lip readers to tell them what people were saying and then creating a sound track with that speech (speakers chosen to match the proper local accents).

It's here in Tucson through Tuesday. Oh, and, they managed to make some of it 3-D (but only some showings have that).

UPDATE: you can find tickets on Fandango. Just input your zip code at the top right menu.

After Age 92, after serving 60 years in Congress. I met him a few times, circa 1980 .... gad, 39 years ago. He did much good for the right to arms, extending back to the Gun Control Act controversy... over half a century ago.

ATF has changed the mailing addresses for many of its forms, including FFL issuance and renewal, import licensing, and many NFA forms. I'm told this was incidental to their changing banks; it looks like all the forms are ones that require payment.

Up against the wall, Bambi!

Filings here. It was filed a few hours ago.

Malone v. Singas, Eastern District of NY. The court finds that nunchucks are 2A-protected (or to be more exact, presumes that as arms they are protected, and the government failed to refute this), that they are in common-enough use, and that the government has produced no evidence that they are used in crime to the point where anyone could care.

It's rather typical of modern-day rulings in that it takes 32 pages to say this.....

December 15!

I was in DC during the Bicentennial of the Constitution (1987-89) and during what should have been the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights (1991). The first got big play, a commission headed by Chief Justice Burger, celebrations, etc.. The second was virtually ignored. My guess at the reason was that DC is of course a company town, the company is the federal government, and the Constitution is what gave that company power. The Bill of Rights ... well, it was nice but not really that important.

Too late.

"If guns had been a stronger part of our culture, if there had been a sense of duty for one to protect their individual rights, and as a show of force against a government power - and had legal carry been a common thing - it would have made a huge difference."

But without one, sometimes an sometimes an attack chihuahua will suffice....

Right here. Very well written. The case challenges the NYC restriction that prohibits the holder of a permit to possess (the type most frequently issued) to transport their firearm to any location other than to a shooting range inside NYC.

"The question presented is:

Whether the City's ban on transporting a licensed, locked, and unloaded handgun to a home or shooting range outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the constitutional right to travel."

Adam Kraut discusses it on the Prince Law blog. The importance here is ATF might rule that a certain accessory attached to a certain gun makes it an NFA firearm, which means it could be returned if the person submitting it had an SOT, and also means that he committed a bunch of felonies in making it and shipping it to the agency....