Civil Rights

An Alternative to Gun Control

3 comments

In the wake of this week’s mass shooting, we’re going to hear calls for more background checks.  This, despite the fact the shooter underwent and passed several background checks when he purchased his guns.  This, despite the fact that Oregon passed more strict background check legislation only a couple of months ago.

Background checks don’t stop these tragedies.  With the exception of Newtown, every mass shooter in the last two decades has purchased his weapons at retail and passed a check.  The lack of a deterrent effect is obvious.  Any other social policy that has failed this utterly would have been abandoned by now.

Of course, whenever I point this out, it’s implied that I’m somehow obligated to provide a solution.  Well, OK.  Here’s one that might actually help.

In 2013, Dan Roberts conducted a study on mass shooters.  Every single one of them had been on Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors.

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Civil Rights

Trigger Warnings

I went to high school in a somewhat rural area.  Local politics were steered by religion and conservatism.  Therefore, it should have come as little surprise that our library’s copy of Catcher in the Rye had been subjected to extensive redaction by some busybody.  In fact, entire paragraphs of the book had been blotted out with magic marker.  The school librarian wasn’t the least bit surprised or disturbed when I pointed this out to her.

I used to assume that book banning was the province of the Right.  That’s no longer the case.  Liberalism has bred its own version, and it’s just as reprehensible. In essence, the belief is that people should be sheltered from anything they find unsettling or even distasteful.

Case in point: the whole concept of trigger warnings.  The original idea was that victims of trauma shouldn’t be confronted with statements or imagery that might provoke or aggravate emotional shock.  

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Civil Rights

Crocodile Tears

There’s a sad-sack story being circulated by gun-control advocates about Lonnie and Sandy Phillips.  In essence, the claim is that they’re being bankrupted by an evil gun retailer who knowingly armed the Aurora movie theater shooter.

The truth is something altogether different.

The lawsuit itself [pdf] was an attempt to hold online dealers culpable because they sold ammunition without a background check.  There is no law in Colorado, or on the federal level, mandating such a practice.

Notice the “should have known” clauses:

Defendants in this case knew, should have known, or knew that it was substantially certain, that in his state of mental instability Holmes would present a danger to society if he were allowed to possess dangerous materiel. Nonetheless, Defendants negligently supplied and entrusted him with the materiel he used to launch his assault.

As an experienced ammunition seller, The Sportsman’s Guide should have known or knew that it was substantially certain that ammunition should not be supplied to persons who may pose a foreseeable risk of harm, including persons with dangerous mental illnesses such as Holmes.

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Civil Rights

Enough!

I get it:  Donald Trump is rich.  He managed daddy’s real-estate business with some degree of competence, and it made a great deal of money.  Good for him.  That doesn’t qualify him to be the President of the United States.

He has yet to articulate a single coherent policy position.  He says he’ll “build a wall” and “make Mexico pay for it.”  OK.  How is he going to get that done?  He won’t say.  He claims he’s going to “make America great again.”  What steps does that entail?  No clue.

He claims to have learned about foreign policy by watching generals on television.  Let that one sink in for a moment.

If he thinks Megyn Kelly’s question to him in that silly Fox debate was tough and unfair, wait until he has to deal with someone like Putin, Rouhani, or Lukashenko.  He has yet to face a real bully.

He spends all of his time chanting calculated and vague slogans, and he treats every speaking engagement like he’s doing a standup comedy routine.  

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Civil Rights

Here Comes Biden

It’s been reasonable to suspect he’ll run for the Presidency, and that now appears to be confirmed.  He’s run twice before.  This time, he’s been Vice President for 8 years.

If he does, Clinton is done.  Biden doesn’t have any major scandals or suspicion to overcome. He’s been in politics for nearly four decades, and everybody knows him.  He’s got the lock on New England and he’ll sweep the labor unions.  He’s safe, charismatic, and connected.  He doesn’t even really have to campaign for it.

Clinton will fall by the wayside.  Bernie Sanders isn’t going to happen.  The party is going to nominate Biden in the primaries.

We can make all the jokes we want about Biden’s gaffes.  The fact is, this guy gets stuff done on gun control.  He wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which we know as the “assault weapons ban.”  Though the Act had a whole slew of provisions, Biden made it clear that it was about “guns, guns, guns.”  

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Civil Rights

Oregon: Universal Background Checks and Datamining

Oregon recently passed a bill to mandate so-called universal background checks on private transfers of firearms.  One of the arguments we’ve made against the concept is that it will result in the creation of a gun registry.

This isn’t just a “slippery slope” argument.  The only way to enforce background checks on private transfers will be to know who had the guns before they were transferred.  That entails a registration.  Supporters of this legislation claim we’re full of hot air.

Well, it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening in Oregon.  Background checks are done on the state level there, and their system has been amended to require information on the transferor as well as the recipient.

The federal NICS system must purge all information on a check within 24 hours of a resolution.  It must be emphasized that this is not the case in Oregon.  According to the bill itself:

The department may retain a record of the information obtained during a request for a criminal background check under this section for the period of time provided in ORS 166.412 (7).

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Civil Rights

Lamenting the Inevitable

I suppose the rifle open-carry guys needed something to do.  They haven’t been in the news the last few months, so they decided to strut around recruiting offices in the wake of the Chattanooga shooting.

In Lancaster, Ohio, a guy named Christopher Reed had a negligent discharge in the parking lot.  Apparently, someone asked to see his rifle and he fired it while he was trying to clear it.

He has been charged with discharging a firearm within the city limits.  As it turns out, this isn’t his first rodeo.  He was convicted and fined $50 for a similar incident in 2013.

Way to go, Reed.  You’re on a roll.

“I’m nobody special,” Reed said in a telephone interview on Thursday.  “I’m just a guy doing my job because my own government wouldn’t do it.”

He downplayed what happened.  “It is what it is,” he said. “Nobody got hurt.”

Oh, OK.  

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Info Dump

SETI Gets Real Funding

1 comment

Through most of our history, we’ve assumed we occupy a privileged and unique place in the universe.  In the 16th century, Copernicus paved the way for the understanding that we orbit but one star among many.  Over the last two centuries, we’ve found that we’re a small part of one galaxy, and that ours is but one galaxy among billions.  If we look at those numbers, it seems ridiculous to assume ours is the only planet in that whole universe to host intelligent life.

Until the 1990’s, the main counterargument was that planetary formation appeared to be limited to our sun.  That changed in 1995, when radio astronomers were able to infer several extrasolar planets.  The Kepler observatory was launched in 2009, and we’ve now verified the existence of nearly 2,000 exoplanets in more than 1,200 solar systems.

In 1960, Frank Drake decided to turn a radio telescope to the sky and listen for signals from possible alien civilizations.  

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Visual Media

Bloom County Is Back

Bloom County was a comic strip that ran in newspapers through most of the 1980’s.  If you don’t know what those things are, I pity you.

It was both a product of the times and a commentary on them.  Our culture was refracted through the lens of a vomiting Garfield parody, an incompetent scoundrel of a lawyer, a boy whose anxieties literally lived in his closet (the purple snorkelwacker!), and a neurotic penguin (actually, puffin) named Opus.

It touched on politics, but it wasn’t an overt political cartoon.  What’s more, it had a huge heart and endearing characters.  It was a tremendous part of my childhood.

(I still have the promotional Billy and the Boingers record somewhere.)

Berkeley Breathed discontinued the strip in 1989.  There would be two spinoffs, Opus and Outland.  Both ran limited runs.  In 2008, he retired from the business.

Word comes this week that he’s bringing the strip back.  

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Info Dump

Pluto and Beyond

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The Voyager probes were a huge part on my childhood.  I was 7 years old when they gave us the best images of Jupiter and its moons we’d ever seen.  The following year, we received unprecedented data on Saturn.

Uranus and Neptune remained somewhat mysterious.  In the ground-based telescopes of the time, they were just big, white dots.  Voyager 2 reached Uranus when I was 14, and it revealed a more colorful, active, and strange world than we’d imagined.  Neptune was predicted to be remote, cold, and serene.  My senior year of high school, Voyager proved that expectation wrong.  Neptune is warmer than we though it would be, and it has storm systems with winds faster than the speed of sound.  Its moon Triton is large enough to suggest it had been captured from somewhere else, and it has geysers of liquid nitrogen.

In short, the more we knew, the stranger things became.

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Civil Rights

The Brady Check Loophole Isn’t

Let’s see if we can get this straight.  A loophole is defined as, “an error in the way a law, rule, or contract is written that makes it possible for some people to legally avoid obeying it.”  If somebody writes a law with a specific exemption, that exemption doesn’t qualify as a loophole.

The Brady Act regulates background checks on retail sales of firearms. Sarah Brady helped author and promote the law. She knows full well what’s in it.*

The Charleston shooter purchased a firearm at retail.  He lied on the form by failing to disclose he was an unlawful user of drugs.  Since the FBI dropped the ball when they should have entered his indictment into the NICS system, his purchase was not denied.

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Civil Rights

The Confederate Flag Thing

Charleston can a rough town.  They’ve got a dark history when it comes to race relations.

It’s sad that it took the murder of nine people at the hands of a neo-Nazi to get the world to notice that.  It’s even sadder that people think taking a stupid flag down will change anything.

Yes, I get it.  The Confederate flag isn’t strictly about slavery.  But like it or not, that flag is unavoidably tied to perceptions of dehumanization, oppression, and segregation.

Consider the svastika.  Hitler didn’t invent it.  He appropriated it for his uses, and it will forever be tainted by his association.  There’s no reclaiming it.  Even if I see it as a Jainist symbol for opportunity, there’s no way my Jewish or Polish friends want to see it.

So…yes, it’s time to consider taking it down from government offices.  It’s a symbol of a divisive and awful time in our history.

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Civil Rights

Victory in Puerto Rico

This one came in under the radar. An organization called Ladies of the 2nd Amendment in Puerto Rico brought a class-action suit challenging the Commonwealth’s permitting system.  They won.

In the Court of Salinas, Judge Lugo Anibal Irizarry ruled that Articles 2.01, 2.02, 2.04, 2.05 and 2.06 of the Arms Act failed constitutional scrutiny.  Most notably, he criticized the voucher system, stating “no fundamental right is taxable.”  While I doubt we can expect this decision to be quoted in continental cases, it’s nice to see an acknowledgement of that.

Residents may now carry firearms without needing to pursue a permit of any sort.  Additionally, there is no longer a licensing requirement for purchasing guns.

The last time I’d seen movement on the issue down there was 2011, in which they won two significant victories.  There isn’t a translation of the decision yet, but I’ve got feelers out.  I’ll post it as soon as it’s in my hands.

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Civil Rights E-cigarettes

H.R. 2058

The FDA is soon expected to extend its authority to all tobacco products. They consider electronic cigarettes and vaping products to fall into that category, so we could be looking at serious trouble for manufacturers.

Currently, products introduced prior to February of 2007 are grandfathered in under the doctrine of substantial equivalence.  Anything introduced later would have to go through an expensive and difficult approval process.  The problem is, the vast majority of vaping products were introduced after that date.

Rep. Tom Cole has introduced a bill that would move the “substantial equivalence” date for FDA deeming from 2007 to 2015, with a 21-month extension period. That means all vapor products currently on the market would be grandfathered in, as would any introduced in the following 2 years.

It’s not ideal by any reckoning.  I’d rather the FDA didn’t classify these products as tobacco, but that looks inevitable.

CASAA is supporting it, and you can contact your representative through Popvox.

Visual Media

New Star Wars Trailer

2 comments

So, we have an actual trailer for the Force Awakens.  It looks like JJ Abrams has the feel of the original trilogy figured out.

I’m not even going to warn you that there are spoilers ahead.  Well, I guess I just did.  With my obligation thus fulfilled, let’s get to it.

destroyer_desert

That’s a Star Destroyer crashed in the desert, with a dead X-Wing in the foreground.  Notice the rounded turbines:  that’s an old-school model, not one of the new ones.  The battle must have taken place during the original trilogy.

kylo_ren

Kylo Ren, the new bad guy.  The mask reminds me of Darth Revan, from the one good Star Wars video game.  His lightsaber looks downright dangerous.

lightsaber_handoff

I think that’s Leia receiving the lightsaber.  Notice the resemblance to Luke Skywalker’s first lightsaber, which he lost in the Empire Strikes Back.  The person handing it over appears to be an alien.

Who ends up with it?  

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Info Dump

The Hugo Mess

Science fiction is often political.  Heinlein’s middle period is praised by libertarian thinkers, Star Trek promoted progressive mores and social justice, and Ursula Le Guin’s work sparked debates about gender roles.  This is to be expected in a genre that often looks to the future for hope or cautionary tales.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the awards pageants are also marred by politics.  It really shouldn’t.  Yet some people are crying foul because Larry Correia and and Brad Torgersen managed to dominate the nomination process for the Hugo awards.

They didn’t cheat.  They simply worked the system within its own rules.

What’s more, I really don’t care.

What does concern me is that the Hugos are a sham in the first place.  We had some spectacular, thoughtful, and moving fiction last year.  Almost none of it got nominated (Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Sword being the exception).

The Kevin J. Anderson book is a generic space-opera mess that reads like it was phoned in.  

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Civil Rights

Shaheen Allen Pardoned

Shaheen Allen made the mistake of driving from Pennsylvania to New Jersey with a firearm in her car.  She was arrested, charged, and convicted of a felony under New Jersey’s Graves Act.  Initially, she was to face a mandatory 42 months in prison.  Public outcry led prosecutors to allow her entry into a diversionary program in lieu of prison time, but she remained a convicted criminal.

Governor Christie has now pardoned her.  His statement is here.  Happy ending, right?

Tell that to Steffon Losey-Davis, who has yet to receive the governor’s beneficence, or to any other victims of New Jersey’s gun laws.

There is nothing in Christie’s pardon, or in any public statement he’s made to date, to indicate that he finds the Graves Act unfair or unconstitutional.  I won’t hold my breath waiting, either.  He ran for office in 1995 in support of New Jersey’s “assault weapons” ban.

So, why the change in heart with Ms.

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Civil Rights

B. Todd Jones Resigns

B. Todd Jones has announced his resignation as director of the ATF, with only 11 days’ notice.  I don’t know if it has anything to do with the backlash from his plan to reclassify M855 ammunition as “armor piercing,” but the coincidence is hard to miss.  When he spoke to the Senate Appropriations committee last week, he had the look of a man who’d found himself dumped in the deep end of the pool.

To be honest, you couldn’t pay me to do his job.  Anyone taking the position inherits a plethora of troubles from an agency dogged by scandal.

Civil Rights

More Desperation

States United to Prevent Gun Violence is running a couple of surreal campaigns to push gun control.  The first is this little chestnut:

Never mind that it’s illegal to run a gun shop in New York without all sorts of licensing, or that it’s illegal for customers to even handle one without a purchase permit.  Since they’re gun control advocates, they can probably get away with the David Gregory defense.

They’ve also scored rapper Snoop Dogg, who is quite the paragon of civic virtue, to promote a separate campaign.

For an organization swimming in the Joyce Foundation’s cash, they’re certainly stooping quite low.

Civil Rights

ATF Holding Off on the M855 Ban. For Now.

From their website:

Although ATF endeavored to create a proposal that reflected a good faith interpretation of the law and balanced the interests of law enforcement, industry, and sportsmen, [yeah, sure…] the vast majority of the comments received to date are critical of the framework, and include issues that deserve further study. Accordingly, ATF will not at this time seek to issue a final framework. After the close of the comment period, ATF will process the comments received, further evaluate the issues raised therein, and provide additional open and transparent process (for example, through additional proposals and opportunities for comment) before proceeding with any framework.

Well, it’s nice to see my pessimism belayed a bit.  This isn’t over, though.  Keep pressure up on your legislators.

Civil Rights

The Obama Socialist Executive Ban on 5.56 Ammunition

That title is a decent approximation of how inaccurately the current situation has been described to me.  It’s 95% untrue.  The proposal at hand is not the result of legislation.  There is no executive order on the matter.  It is not a blanket ban on 5.56.  It only affects one specific loading.

Here’s the short explanation.  The 1985 Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act (LEOPA) delegated authority to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to decide whether certain ammunition could be banned from civilian ownership if it is deemed “armor piercing.”  The criteria are quite specific:

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; or 

A full jacketed projectile larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile.

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Info Dump

More Fun with Roman History

Picking up from yesterday, we’re left with vastly differing accounts of the emperor Numerian’s death.  Which is correct?  The easiest way to solve this is to run down a simple timeline.

Malalas’ Chronographia makes the following claims:

  • Saint Babylas (then patriarch of Antioch) refused to admit an emperor to the church
  • the emperor executed Babylas
  • the emperor went to war with the Persians
  • said emperor was captured following a siege at Carrhae

It becomes apparent he’s referencing three distinct emperors, all of whom predate Numerian by a generation.

Info Dump

Fun with Roman History

I recently got around to reading Peter Heather’s Fall of the Roman Empire.  It’s an excellent read for the layman, and he poses some interesting debates for the historian.  One interesting theory he suggests is that the Huns had an indirect (and earlier than usually assumed) effect on Rome as their migrations forced the Goths to rush the borders and clash with the Empire.

But my area of study is the 3rd Century crisis, and that’s why I noticed an odd and unorthodox account of Numerian’s death.

Everyone remembers the famous emperor Numerian, right?  He’s right up there with…well, don’t feel badly.  They don’t teach much about the 3rd century in school because it was such a mess.  Rome’s borders were crumbling under the weight of Germanic invasions, and the empire was in a state of nearly constant civil war.  Dio (as in Cassius, not Ronnie James) remarked that Rome had descended “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”

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Ordnance

You Only Get One Chance At This

1 comment

A police officer in Glasgow, Kentucky is suing Barren Outdoors.  The employee handed him a loaded gun, which he failed to check, and he blew off part of his left index finger.

Go ahead and laugh:  he’s going to win.

Note to gun store customers:  putting your hand over the muzzle won’t stop a bullet and it doesn’t exempt you from Rule #2.  Don’t point the weapon at anything you can’t pay for.  Nobody wants to hear, “it’s unloaded.”  I’ve lost count of how many times that phrase has turned out to be a lie.

Note to gun store employees:  clear the gun before handing it to a customer because the customer won’t check it.  Seriously, 87.4% just of them just start dry-firing away with wild abandon as soon as they’ve got their sweaty mitts on it.

Note to gun store owners:  you can and will be sued for this.  Comparative negligence might mitigate the damages, but you’re going to have some of the liability.  

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E-cigarettes

Sigelei 100W Plus

3 comments

Vaporizers have come a long way over the last five years. In fact, they’ve seen a vast improvement over the last few months alone. A year ago, most power-regulated devices topped out at 11 watts or so, and they wouldn’t fire atomizers with a resistance of less than 1Ω.

The alternative were so-called mechanical mods, which used no circuitry and drew power directly from the battery. I could build lower-resistance coils to cheat more output, but the quality (and quantity) of vapor tapered off as the battery wore down over the day.

Better chips have since been developed over the last few months. Several manufacturers began using the Evolv DNA30 and DNA40 chips early last year, and now companies like Sigelei are using the newer Yihi sx330 chip to generate higher output.

Sigelei 100W Plus

Yes, this thing can go up to 100 watts. No, I haven’t run it that high. In fact, anything over 40 watts gets pretty overwhelming.

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Civil Rights

SAF Brings Suit against I-594

The press release is here. The filing itself is here [pdf].

Their argument is that I-594 is unconstitutional because it is too vague, both facially and as applied.

I-594, with its amendments to RCW 9.41 relating to non-commercial transfers of firearms, as well as Defendants’ enforcement of the same, prohibit, substantially interfere with, inhibit access to, and infringe upon the right to possess firearms and thus infringe Plaintiffs’ rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well as the rights in Article I, Section 24 of the Washington State Constitution.

Specific examples of infringement include the criminalization of  shared firearms in the same home, the impractical burden on firearms training, and the inability to retake possession of a gun previously loaned to another.

They point out that the Washington State Patrol will not be enforcing the law because they can’t prove what is or isn’t a transfer.

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Civil Rights

Undeserved Celebrity

Apparently, all it takes to become an “activist” in 2014 is to get a Twitter account and make an insipid YouTube video. In a matter of days, this person has gone from being a selfie-obsessed nobody to an internet celebrity based on this video this video.

(The gun is actually a Crosman C-11 pellet gun, but that is a real charter school.)

Angry gun owners unwittingly fed into her narcissism, and even the CSGV has thrown its hat into the ring. Notice the conciliatory and respectful tone:

This was an audition for Michael Bloomberg’s money, and thanks to the outrage, she probably passed.

(This afternoon, she pulled down the original video and re-uploaded it at a different address. The link above is to the new address.)

Civil Rights

Vultures

3 comments

A group of families, organized by the law firm of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, is planning to bring a wrongful death suit against Bushmaster Firearms because one of the company’s rifles was used in the Sandy Hook shooting. In theory, such a lawsuit would be forbidden by the Protection in Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In practice, it’s not as clear.

A Bushmaster rifle was also used in the 2002 DC Beltway shootings. The Brady Campaign brought suit against them, and the company eventually settled. Doing so set a terrible precedent, and the lawyers smell blood in the water.

Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder has taken a keen interest in product-liability lawsuits against gun manufacturers, and their campaign contributions run a close parallel to those of the Brady Campaign. I expect to see a statement from the latter supporting this in the coming days.

BTW, the screen grab in the header was from a loopy media campaign the Bradys did a few years back.

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Civil Rights

The Markus Kaarma Case

1 comment

Self-defense statutes commonly known as “stand your ground” laws have come under a great deal of scrutiny the last couple of years. Though not a stand your ground case, the George Zimmerman situation was quoted as proof that Florida’s law was unfairly biased against minorities. Michael Dunn’s attempt to cite the law in his defense made things even worse.

Now we’ve got a case in Montana that critics are attempting to lump into the same category. The issue at hand doesn’t involve stand your ground laws, which generally cover self-defense outside the home. Kaarma is claiming immunity under Montana’s castle doctrine law, which covers the defense of home.

Castle doctrine is a much older legal theory, and one about which there’s less controversy. It hinges on the idea that there are certain privileges and immunities regarding the use of force in defense of the home. However, Montana’s law is quite clear that lethal force is only allowable to prevent an assault or forcible felony.

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Info Dump

I’m Five Years Old Again

The first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is live. Here’s what we’ve got:

  • John Boyega as a stormtrooper. The armor’s new, and it’s a first to see one of them as person. Rumor has it he’s a protagonist.
  • A beachball-shaped R2 unit. It’s less annoying tha Jar-Jar. Then again, so are head lice.
  • Menacing stormtroopers being airdropped somewhere. Does this mean some remnant of the Empire is still around?
  • Daisy Ridley riding a giant speeder bike. Is that a lightsaber lashed to the side?
  • A desert planet, but possibly not Tatooine. Notice the single sun in the final shot.
  • X-wings skimming over a lake. The pilots’ uniforms look familiar, but the s-foils are different. Freakin’ x-wings, dude.
  • A creepy guy with a red lightsaber. It looks more like a heavy claymore than the agile swords we’re used to seeing. It also looks angry.
  • Cue up the John Williams and ermagherd the Falcon.

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E-cigarettes

Weasel Words

“Scientists say” is an ambiguous and manipulative phrase when not backed up by actual data. It’s right up there with “according to experts” and the ever-popular “studies have shown.”

Today’s exhibit is a hysteria-inducing broadside regarding e-cigarettes. Apparently, scientists say they contain ten times as much formaldehyde as cigarettes. So, where’s the data? The article, of course, doesn’t provide it.

It comes from a Japanese study, available here. The methodology is questionable, and the results contradict what we’ve been hearing from other scientists, like this guy I’m citing. It should be mentioned that this comes from a nation with a male smoking rate 60% higher than that of the United States, and one in which the government controls the tobacco industry.

The real motivation behind things like this is economic. Tobacco marketers [pdf] and pharmaceutical companies have long held monopolies on nicotine products. They’re not happy to see an open-source alternative biting into their market share, and they’re doing everything they can to kill it.

Civil Rights

No Justice, No Peace

That very slogan is a mockery of our system of justice. The protesters demanded a grand jury, and they got it. It turns out the eyewitnesses were unreliable, and the physical evidence shows no criminal activity on Officer Wilson’s part. The system did its job.

Many of those calling for an indictment never cared about the process. They simply care about punishment. They want someone to suffer, and they assume that will happen if they get enough people to scream. They believe that public opinion should drive criminal proceedings.

This tendency towards vengeance is the basest of human instincts, and it’s exactly what our system of justice is designed to counter. The very definition of justice is not the whim of a mob.

There are some serious issues with law enforcement in Ferguson. Why is a majority black community policed by a force that’s overwhelmingly white?

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Civil Rights Ordnance

More on Pistol Braces

I’ve been over the issue of pistol stabilizing braces before. Attaching one to a pistol is perfectly legal. It is also legal to use it as a shoulder stock, though that’s not the intended purpose. The BATFE issued a very specific letter to clarify this.

Black Aces Tactical recently manufactured a shotgun with the brace, and they’ve been informed that this is impermissible. People are now under the impression that this affects all uses. That is not the case.

The answer is simple and short. In legal terms, a shotgun is not a pistol. They are two different things.

As per 18 U.S.C., § 921(A)(5), a shotgun is defined as,

a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of an explosive to fire through a smooth bore either a number of ball shot or a single projectile

A shotgun is a smoothbore weapon designed to be fired from the shoulder.

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Civil Rights

Jay Leno Weasels Out

Jay Leno was scheduled to speak at the 2015 SHOT show but has cancelled under pressure from gun-control groups. This came from his spokesperson:

When it came to his attention that this was actually a pro-gun lobby show, he immediately cancelled his appearance. He found out that it was not what he was originally told it was, and he decided to cancel.

OK, what else would the National Shooting Sports Foundation be? I find it incomprehensible that he would be ignorant of that, or of what the SHOT Show promotes. He could at least have been honest about it.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (formerly the National Coalition to Ban Handguns) had this to say:

The writing is now on the wall for celebrities who would consider getting in bed with the gun lobby: Don’t do it. Because if you do, your reputation and brand will be damaged forever, without repair.

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Ordnance

So, this happens…

1 comment

Here’s a Cobra .380 pistol, gone asplodey on the range. Notice the texture of the crack: that’s not steel. It’s a zinc alloy.

One shouldn’t trust such things to handle 21,000 psi with any real grace.

Civil Rights

I-594: Curios and Relics

6 comments

The ATF has long recognized that certain firearms fall into a category known as “curios and relics.” As defined, this includes weapons that “are of special interest to collectors by reason of some quality other than is associated with firearms intended for sporting use or as offensive or defensive weapons.” Most are firearms over 50 years old, or for which the value is historical rather than functional.

Collectors of curios and relics (C&R) can acquire a Type 3 FFL, which allows them to bypass some of the transfer requirements of the Gun Control Act and Brady Act. To the best of my knowledge (and please prove me wrong), Borchardt pistols and Clement carbines are hardly the preferred weapons of gang violence and mass shootings.

But folks in Washington state decided to do things their own way. Whether through haste or design, I-594 now makes it pointless to hold a C&R license there.

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Civil Rights

Hollis v. Holder

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A guy named Jay Aubrey Isaac Hollis has started a crowdfunding campaign. His goal is to bring litigation against Attorney General Holder on the grounds that the National Firearms Act and 1986 Hughes Amendment are unconstitutional.

In short, he submitted a Form 1 to the BATFE for approval to build a machine gun for personal use, even though it’s illegal for him to do so. Somewhere along the line, somebody got their wires crossed, and it was approved. The BATFE recognized the error and revoked their approval the same day.

Mr. Hollis seems to think this is his big Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment, and he’s presenting a batch of Hail Mary passes to the Northern District court in Texas. Seriously, this is what he asks for in the opening pages:

  • overturning Wickard v. Filburn
  • declaring “unjust taking” under the 5th Amendment because an erroneous approval was reversed
  • applying strict scrutiny to all matters involving the 2nd Amendment, despite the fact that most Circuit courts have rejected the idea
  • revisiting the legislative process behind the passage of the Hughes Amendment

This guy is going to crash and burn in oral arguments, and we’ll all suffer for it. 

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