Arms and the Law

My article in America's First Freedom, about finds in the Clinton Presidential Library, is online here. The most interesting finds related to how the Clinton Administration was trying to settle the suits against gun manufacturers -- by creating a system that would essentially register guns, ban all firearms that could take 10+ round magazines, ban polymer frames, ban FFLs from selling at gunshots, etc., etc. All by judicial settlement, with no need to turn to Congress.

Right here!

He'd had some troubles with a copyright troll, and so it now bears the message: "Documenting civilians using guns in self-defense. Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton at claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt."

Video, via Project Veritas, here.

Docket here. The Supreme Court votes on (among other things) whether to take a petition for cert. during its "conferences." Most decisions are made at the first conference, sometimes some are unable to be decided then, and the case is "delisted" for a later conference. In this case (concerning and "assault weapons ban") the Court has considered the case seven times, over a period spanning two months.

Most unusual, but hard to read the tea leaves. Is the vote in doubt? Are the votes there to deny, but some Justice or Justices want time to write a dissent from the denial? No way to know. It's interesting to note that 23 States filed an amicus urging the Court to take the case, noting that the lower courts have shown considerable resistance to the Court's ruling in Heller and McDonald.

PETA has long run an "animal shelter" in Virginia, a major function of which is snuffing the animals brought in (in 2014, the "shelter" adopted out 39 dogs and cats and killed 2,454). Now, they're being sued for snatching a dog off its owners' porch and snuffing it. Unlike Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday, their hypocrisy seems to have no limits.

It's Mann v. United States, set to be considered on Dec. 4. It concerns an issue of which I was unaware.

This report states that the annual turkey pardoning was canceled due to Russian protests. They were concerned about pardoning a Turkey "after an unfortunate misunderstanding between an Su-24 fighter and a Turkish AIM-9 Sidewinder a few days ago."

But one says the turkey (who had taken the name of Al-Turki) was pardoned, hijacked an aircraft at Andrews AFB, and defected to ISIS.

The case is State v. Herrmann. The opinion is very well-written, and two features stand out to me.

(1) The court applies intermediate scrutiny, but doesn't treat it as an easy way to rule for the government. "To meet this standard, the government must demonstrate "that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way." ... [S] law challenged on Second Amendment grounds is not presumed constitutional, ... and the burden is on the government to establish the law's constitutionality..." It thus brushed off the State's argument that the ban would prevent surprise knife attacks. "[T]he State cites no evidence to establish that this danger actually exists to any significant degree."

(2) The court doesn't buy the argument that only one class of knives is affected. "[I]f a complete prohibition of handgun possession in the home for self-defense is unconstitutional, despite demonstrable public safety concerns, it follows that a complete prohibition of a less dangerous category of arms in the home for self-defense is also unconstitutional."

The pitch for "nontoxic," i.e., non-lead ammunition has long been at odds with the pitch to ban "armor-piercing" ammunition. Under Federal law, AP ammo includes any ammo with "a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium." 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(17). In short, all bullets made of any likely useful metal OTHER than lead. The definition does have some exceptions, including "a projectile which the Attorney General finds is primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes."

Here's some video from Attorney General Lynch testifying in House hearings, in which Rep. Ratcliff points out that ammo manufacturers have sent in 32 requests for exemption over the past four years, and so far none has been acted upon, or even gotten a responsive letter. (Ms. Lynch responds that she has never heard of the requests). Odds are pretty good that it's the same today. Somewhere there is a letter delegating the AG's power to someone else, and that someone else could care less, nor does the AG.

Right here. After playing tennis, he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. Odds of surviving an arrest outside of a hospital are about 6.7%. But they had a portable defib unit on site and a cardiologist in the clubhouse, plus he had a playing partner that knew the latest form of CPR. So a week after he "died," he was back home, aching from a quadruple bypass. There's some quite useful info on operating the most recent and most automated defib units.

Apparently this Alaskan store owner never heard of that idea. When the robber transferred the gun to their weak hand, she grabbed it and threw it away. The robber then came at her with a knife, and she took that away, too. Her cries for help brought people rushing from nearby stores and they held the robber for police.

A review of the Armatix iP1 "smart gun."

It required execution of seven push-button commands before firing, misfires 3-4 times per magazine, costs three times what comparable firearms cost, keys on being "paired" to a watch with defective resistance to water, and has a terrible double-action pull. Apart from that, it is just what you are looking for in a self-defense arm. Oh, it also has a "kill switch" function so another person can turn it off.

"The watched kettle never boils," so the saying goes, but there are several involved here.

In the State legislative races, Bloomberg spent $2,400,000, pro-gun groups spent $77,000, and Bloomberg's candidates went nowhere.

From Everytown: "Gun safety prevailed on the NRA's home turf because we made sure that every voter knew where the candidates stood on gun safety." Yep, and they voted pro-gun.

CIA staffer's house is searched, his computers are seized, and he's forced to resign because he (with agency permission) had classified files on a private computer.

"It was 14 months later, this January, when Scudder was told he wouldn't face criminal charges. By then, his CIA career was over. The agency had mounted an internal investigation that determined that Scudder's FOIA request "contained classified titles" of CIA articles and that he had deleted a "TOP SECRET" label from one document, according to a memo from an agency personnel board."

I could swear I'd heard of another government employee who did something like this on a far bigger scale, and one not involving historical documents...

Chicago's handgun ban was struck down in McDonald. It responded by enacting a tight permitting system, requiring among other things training on a range, while retaining its ban on shooting ranges. That got struck down in Ezell I. It responded by allowing ranges, but only under high restrictive zoning (among other things, they must be in areas zone for manufacturing, not just for commercial use, must be 500 feet from any other building, and no person under 18 may enter them. That resulted in Ezell II.

Here's the oral argument, held this morning. Chicago's attorney leads, and walks into a firestorm of plainly irritated judges.

On Amazon, Prof. David Berstein's (George Mason Univ. Law) new book, "Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law." It also makes the point that the Obama Administration's actions are often predicated on questionable actions of the Bush II Administration. Bottom line: power begets, and seeks, power.

Nearly two years ago, "Bill Clinton Warns Democrats Against Overreaching on Gun Debate."

"Former President Bill Clinton warned a group of top Democratic donors at a private Saturday meeting not to underestimate the passions that gun control stirs among many Americans.
"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them," Clinton said.
"Alot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things," Clinton said. "I know because I come from this world.""

2,475 meters, 2,700 yards, using a pair of Barrett .50s against a Taliban commander in Afhghanistan.

Story here.

"those arming themselves are primarily women.

"If anyone wants to buy a long gun in Austria right now, too bad for them," the Czech newscaster says. "All of them are currently sold out.""

Here's is another account, via Google Translate.