New rule: if you're irresponsible enough to forget your weapon and leave it at the range, we're going to use it to stage goofy pictures.  I really wanted to do a parody of the final frame of Black Dynamite, but asking employees to curl up around my legs could constitute grounds for a lawsuit in some quarters.

If you haven't seen the movie, you should.  Heck, if Sandra Bullock can get an Oscar for whatever it is she did, Michael Jai White deserves one for pulling off lines like this with a straight face:

Doctor Wu, your knack for biological scientific transmogrification is only matched by your zest for Kung-Fu treachery!

I've been using that one all week, regardless of context.  I get odd looks sometimes.

The gun is a Kel-Tec PLR-16.  It was left in a faux Pelican case with a bunch of spare magazines and several hundred rounds of Wolf ammunition. Given the demographic of people who buy guns like this in lieu of decent ones, I'd assume that there was a DVD of Boondock Saints in the case at some point as well.  Unfortunately, we did not recover that.

Of course, nobody ever leaves guns laying about that we'd actually want to shoot.  Such is life.

I've had an on-again-off-again relationship with Starbucks for as long as I can remember.  Their prepared drinks are spendy, but as a guy who grinds his own, I've found their Cafe Verona to be very versatile, and the Ethiopian Sidamo balances nicely with steamed milk.

I'd never really considered their policy on guns.  Heck, it's a coffee shop.  It's frequented by pseudo-intellectuals whose offspring are white kids with dreadlocks.  Despite the lack of any signage stating so, I'd always assumed they wouldn't be too fond of guns.

Therefore, it came as something of a pleasant surprise to find out that they're not caving to pressure from the Brady Campaign to ban guns from their stores.

I may have to spend more money there.

Continued »

Judge Frank Easterbrook took the stand today in the case against Hal Turner.

Turner really wanted to be Glenn Beck, but all he ever amounted to was a guy with a small cancelled radio show and a website he used to convey his views about white supremacy.  He was a Holocaust denier who acted for a time as an informant for the FBI against his own kind.

It turns out that Turner was just a bit miffed at Easterbrook's decision in NRA v. Chicago last June, and his reaction was quite intemperate:

Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.

He then provided the home addresses of 7th Circuit Judges Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner and William Bauer to his readers.

Does this constitute an actual threat or conspiracy? That's up to the jury, but it certainly wasn't wise in any case.  I, for one, am certainly sick of hearing the phrase "watering the tree of liberty" thrown around so casually.

Turner could face up to ten years in prison. Let's hope he has to watch reruns of Space 1999 the whole time.

Continued »

Justice Breyer came up with this concept during oral arguments today, and it was too fruity to pass up.

Still, I take from what you are saying that — let's make up an imaginary importance of ordered liberty chart, and we give it to James Madison and the other framers.  And he would say insofar as that right to bear arms is important for the purpose of maintaining the militia, it's high on the ordered liberty chart.  Insofar as the right to bear arms is there to shoot burglars, it's low on the ordered liberty chart.

He's obviously going to be writing a dissent in McDonald (he still hasn't gotten over Heller), and he'll need all the help he can get, so I figured I'd run with his idea and cobble together a handy visual aid.

Long story short, with the exception of Breyer, there appears to be no significant opposition to incorporation through Due Process.  With the exception of Ginsburg, the Court showed no interest in revisiting the Privileges or Immunities clause.

So, it's a win, but only for the 2nd Amendment. Although Slaughterhouse and Cruikshank stand for the time being, incorporation here will whittle away at them, as it did in Gitlow and Benton.

The transcript [pdf] is up here. Josh Blackman was there, and has his commentary here.

I was saddened to see how quickly Scalia and Roberts dismissed the idea of overturning Slaughterhouse. I'd worried that Scalia would be opposed to revisiting Privileges or Immunities, and I was sadly proven right.

Regarding selective incorporation, a doctrine he's been wary of in the past, Scalia said, "As much as I think it's wrong, even I have acquiesced in it."

Breyer's "imaginary importance of ordered liberty chart" is truly a surreal idea. He tried to get a few digs in at the Heller majority but failed. He did his best to waste some of Gura's time with irrelevancies.

Continued »

As usual, I never know what to expect from a new Autechre record.  The fact that the Designers Republic was back on board for artwork should have been something of a clue.

This is certainly the most consistent and approachable that they've been in years.  The record is restrained and focused, and there's a real emphasis on melody.  They've jettisoned the hyper-abstraction and claustrophobic mixing of Untilted, and the disjointed chaos of Quaristice has been reined in.  What's left is an album that doesn't convey the need to prove anything.

It's all the more satisfying for that.

This is a patient record with a unified character.  There's a sense of space and breathing room that's quite welcome.  The atmosphere is reminiscent of Envane's quieter moments and several tracks lack percussion entirely.

Before everyone starts screaming, "OMG ambient record!  They remade Amber FTW," bear in mind that this is a more mature animal.  It's learned a few things since then, and its teeth are a bit sharper than they were fifteen years ago.

Continued »

Oral arguments are tomorrow morning at 10:00 EST.  Check for transcripts after lunch.

Though they did so in Heller, the Court has chosen not to allow a recording of the proceedings.  I'd have hoped that, with Souter gone, the Court would consider broadcasting, but that appears not to be the case.

Though the Justices' minds are likely made up at this point, the tenor and nature of their questions may give us an idea where they lean.  It should be fun to see Chicago counsel dissemble while trying to pretend Heller didn't mean what it said.

They're obviously nervous.  Mayor Daley has stooped to trotting out Blair Holt's parents to cry on cue for the cameras, and we have this missive from Dennis A. Henigan, in which he cites the same tired, discredited statistics he's been using for years.  It's a sad last wave before drowning, but the text and history of the 14th Amendment are squarely on our side.

News comes from Eugene Volokh that the 7th Circuit wants the Skoien case reheard en banc.  There are two possibilities here.

The first is that there was widespread disagreement with Judge Sykes' decision, and that the others on the panel hope to reverse it should we lose the McDonald case.  This would be similar to the Nordyke situation, in which the initial decision was similarly remanded pending the Supreme Court's decision.

The second possibility is that they want to try for a more lenient standard of scrutiny, which seems unlikely.  Heller took rational basis off the table, and Sykes' opinion was as close to "intermediate" scrutiny as could be workable.  All that remains is strict scrutiny for the 2nd Amendment.

Maybe, just maybe, there's actually support for that.  We'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the 4th Circuit has quietly agreed with the 7th, vacating William Chester's conviction on similar grounds in an unpublished opinion.  Though an "unpublished" opinion is not binding precedent, its very existence shows a certain amount of support for Skykes' interpretation.

Continued »

Old memory with my father on Assateague Beach, pitch-shifted and sepia.

The Morning Horses (01:21)

Building Loop (00:09)

Mass Effect was the story of a plucky commander uniting an oddball crew to save the galaxy.  Sure, there was a seedy underbelly, and folks tended to do some pretty shifty stuff at the fringes of civilization.  Part of the game involved confronting that from time to time, but we were led to expect a Gene Roddenberry happy ending for the most part.

That's certainly not the case in the sequel.  While the first game encouraged the player to navigate a fairly well-defined good/evil moral course, Mass Effect 2 forces us to wade through some fairly gray areas.

Spoilers ahead.

Continued »

A young man commited suicide on the range last Thursday. He fired 49 rounds, then turned the 50th on himself.

I reached him within seconds, but he showed no vital signs whatsoever.  He left behind two notes, one of which he appeared to have been holding while he shot himself, and another in his wallet. He waited until the area to his left was clear and aimed the weapon in such a way that nobody was downrange from the bullet.

We all expect suicidal people to give some sort of sign before they do something like this. As I've learned over the last few days, this isn't the case. I'd spoken to this person on two occasions at length, and he always appeared amiable and content. He seemed to enjoy shooting and was showing improvement over time.

Many suicidal people become somewhat serene once they've made the decision. I have no idea what led this man to take his own life, but he must have made up his mind well before we met.

Needless to say, the whole situation was quite disturbing to both witnesses and employees. My primary emotion at the time was annoyance. I was angry that he'd shown the temerity to dump this in my lap. Some very uncharitable thoughts ran through my head. Looking back, that was a fairly selfish reaction.

There's some consolation in the fact that he chose to do it on our premises rather than in front of his family. They've lost a son and they are grieving.  They don't need to see what I saw. I can deal with the terrible logistics.

I'd hoped this could be kept quiet, but someone at the Atlanta Journal/Constitution had access to a police scanner. The story was in the news before his body had even been removed from the premises, and well before the family could even be located or informed. There has been a great deal of speculation on the gun boards, most of it inaccurate, and much of it in reprehensible taste.

I am grateful for those who have expressed support and sympathy.  If I hear from the man's family, I will post the means to offer assistance to them.

After Rilke  (01:21)

The poem is, "I Live My Life in Widening Rings" from the Book of Hours.

Continued »