Reason.

An Arizona bill requiring police and prosecutors to get a criminal conviction before they could attempt to force defendants to forfeit their assets died Thursday at the hands of a bloc of mostly Democratic lawmakers.

Civil asset forfeiture is a mechanism that lets law enforcement seize and keep the assets of people believed to have committed crimes. Many states do not require defendants to actually be convicted—or sometimes even charged—with a crime before police take their property. People are thus put in the position of having to prove their innocence in order to get the money back, subverting due process. Meanwhile, police agencies keep the money they seize and sell the other property they take, thus filling in gaps in their budgets.

This leads inevitably to corruption, as cops look for a pretext to stop people, search them or their vehicles, and—if they find large sums of cash or other valuable property—claim it simply must be proceeds from drug trafficking and try to keep it for themselves. This process was sold to the public as a way to fight drug cartels and other criminal kingpins, but in reality most forfeitures are for relatively small amounts taken from underprivileged people who lack the resources to fight back.

[ … ]

What’s extremely unusual is for all the Democrats to vote against a forfeiture reform bill, especially after the same legislation passed out of the Senate unanimously. In their explanation for why they voted no, a couple of legislators said the quiet part loud: The pandemic is hurting government budgets, and they don’t want to give up the revenue.

Dam the constitution and due process rights.  Money is money, and if it’s gotten immorally, then so be it.

We are rulers.  “All of your money are belong to us.”

Politico.

A federal judge on Sunday dismantled Florida’s restrictive felon voting rights law in a ruling that could open the door to hundreds of thousands of new voters being added to rolls just ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle declared key portions of the state’s felon voting law unconstitutional, ordering the state to put in place a new process that would help people register to vote in the state.

And just like that, he likely handed Florida to the democrats in the upcoming election.

Plan accordingly.

We discussed this little gun earlier.  While I wouldn’t necessarily carry this as a primary weapon, it seems to me a good, light, reliable backup pocket gun for two-legged threats.

Optics Information.

In this article, the most common footprints/mounting standards used on red dot sights are listed. Each standard is described and an image of it is added. At the end of each section, red dot sights that use the footprint discussed are listed.

This seems like a very useful cataloging of specifications and mounting information on most, if not all, of the red dot sights available.

Someone spent a lot of time putting this together.  Gunsmiths may want to bookmark this for future reference.

News from Washington.

A cougar appeared to be stalking two cyclists as they biked over the weekend in the Cascade Mountains near Seattle. Suddenly, the animal charged, a survivor of the animal’s attack that killed one told authorities.

The man said he hit the cougar in the head with his mountain bike, and the animal ran into the woods. But as he and the other cyclist were catching their breath and getting back on their bicycles, the animal returned and fastened its mouth on the survivor’s head, crunching down, shaking the cyclist side to side like prey, King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Abbott said Sunday, describing the man’s account.

The cyclist managed to get loose when the cougar decided to chase his friend, who was running away, according to Abbott.

[ … ]

When the cougar released him, Sederbaum jumped back on his mountain bike to get away. As he looked back, he saw the cougar dragging Brooks into the woods, Abbott said.

He rode 2 miles for cellphone reception to call 911, according to KOMO.

When sheriff’s deputies located Brooks, the cougar was standing on top of the cyclist’s body, Abbott said. Brooks had been “dragged a short distance to where the animal partially buried the body under a log,” Myers said.

First of all, what a pussy.  He saw someone being dragged away to be killed by the cat and literally hopped on his bike to get away.

Folks, every man dies.  It matters how you live, and it matters how you die.  Turning someone over to a beast because you’re afraid is not a manly thing to do, because man is made in God’s image.

Second, you’d better carry a large bore handgun in the bush, boy.  Don’t ever do something like that again – either failing to carry means of self defense, or leaving someone in distress.

News from Nevada.

The gunman died after being hit with 10 shots in a shootout that Baldwin estimated lasted about four seconds.

Each shot Baldwin fired at the gunman hit its target, including nine to the chest and one to “the central nervous system.” (The second suspect fled.)

[ … ]

Baldwin, 40, said he takes firearms training seriously and hopes that those with concealed-carry permits take inspiration from his story to undergo more training. Baldwin said he trains more than the average concealed-carry holder, often training with tier one military operators and professional sports shooters like his girlfriend, Tori Nonaka, 25. He estimated that it took him about a second to draw his gun and land the first shot.

That’s good shooting under pressure.  I hope I do as well if I’m ever faced with a situation like that, but I probably wouldn’t.

One second draw and presentation, 4 seconds to land 10 shots.

Here is the Lucky Gunner post on the ninth pellet flyer he’s talking about.

I stumbled on this explanation of head space by a gunsmith, and it seemed like a good one.  If any gunsmiths want to add to it or modify it, feel free.

News from New Zealand.

New figures obtained by RNZ show last year had the highest rates of gun crime and deaths involving firearms for nearly 10 years.

But despite that rise, there has not been a corresponding increase in officers taking out or using their guns.

The figures, obtained from police under the Official Information Act, show the rates of gun crime went up in both 2018 and 2019.

Last year, there were 3540 occasions where an offender was found with a gun.

And in both of the last two years, the rate of deadly incidents involving a firearm was the highest it had been since 2009.

Right after peaceable men turned in their guns to the government.  Who’d a thunk it!