Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

It’s not just the Ninth Circus.  It’s local and state courts too, and even in such states as South Carolina.

A state judge has ruled in favor of the state attorney general’s office over the city of Columbia in a lawsuit about a trio of gun laws the city passed in 2019.

Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled in favor of S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office in the case. Wilson sued the city back in January 2020, initially attempting to have the matter heard before the state Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court referred the case back to the lower courts. Wilson subsequently took the case to the court of common pleas in April 2020, and both sides have been filing various pleadings and motions ever since.

The three gun ordinances were adopted by the city in 2019. One of them added homemade “ghost guns” to the city’s nuisance ordinance. Another allowed for the seizure of guns from people under an extreme risk protection order. And the third prohibits the possession of guns within 1,000 feet of a school.

Wilson has long argued that, in almost all cases, state laws on guns take precedence in the Palmetto State, and that the regulation of firearms is beyond the reach of a city or county.

The attorney general, in court filings, has cited a section of SC law that says, “no governing body of any county, municipality, or other political subdivision in the state may enact or promulgate any regulation or ordinance that regulates or attempts to regulate: The transfer, ownership, possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms, ammunition, components of firearms or any combination of these things.”

In her ruling, Newman said that the city’s gun laws violate the state’s statutes as they relate to firearms, and are invalid.

“We’ve said for three decades now that state law doesn’t allow cities, towns or counties to regulate firearms, so we appreciate the judge’s ruling,” Wilson said in a release. “These Columbia ordinances clearly violate the state law that prohibits local governments from passing any gun laws or ordinances that regulate the transfer, ownership, or possession of firearms.”

Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said the city plans to file a motion to reconsider the decision and, if it is denied, the city will appeal.

The case has taken a winding path through court. At one point, Benjamin, an attorney, had planned to argue the case himself if it went to trial. However, that trial never happened, as Newman ultimately granted Wilson’s request for a ruling on pleadings that had been filed with the court.

“I find it somewhat offensive and insulting that the people of Columbia were not offered the opportunity to make its case in court,” Benjamin told The State on Tuesday. “These ordinances are lawful and constitutional and deserve the full attention of our judges and judicial system.”

Wilson, meanwhile, stressed the power the state government has in shaping gun laws across South Carolina.

“The General Assembly, through state law, has reserved for itself the ability to protect its citizens’ Second Amendment rights,” Wilson said. “State law means just that — the law of the entire state. Therefore, the remedy for the city is to convince the Legislature to change the law, not to disregard it. This ruling now provides clear guidance to all local governments on future matters of gun regulation.”

Benjamin, who has been bullish on gun laws, including an effort to ban bump stocks in Columbia, insists the three city gun ordinances in question are necessary.

“The bipartisan effort to prohibit the manufacturing of untraceable ghost guns, to keep guns out of our schools and to secure more red flag laws that have been proven to save lives are important enough to warrant the hard work, attention and focus of the president of the United States, and Senator (Lindsey) Graham on red flag laws, in particular,” the mayor said. “Surely the courts could have heard our arguments.”

What should have taken a single day back in 2019, has now reached a conclusion.

Or maybe not.  They threaten to continue winding this through the courts.

America is divided, and not just between North, South, East and West.  Or just between states.  The division is between rural areas and urban, between one neighborhood and the next.

You can expect to see more of this in the future.  My own opinion of this is that the Mayor of Columbia and his attorneys should be confined to prison for wasting the time and money of the citizens of South Carolina.

But I guess Columbia loves its tyrants.

Fox News.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a federal district court ruling that would have repealed California’s assault weapons ban.

In a Monday panel decision in Miller v. Bonta, the appellate court put the June 4 order from District Court Judge Roger Benitez old hold as the court awaits the outcome of another case. Benitez had ruled that the ban violated the Second Amendment.

“The district court’s June 4, 2021 order and judgment are stayed pending resolution of Rupp v. Bonta,” the court said. “The stay shall remain in effect until further order of this court.”

The Rupp case, which also deals with the assault weapons ban and has already been briefed before the Ninth Circuit, had also been put on hold as the court handles other Second Amendment cases that could effect it.

You knew that would happen, right?  And you know how the Rupp case will end, right?

The Ninth Circus strikes again.

WSJ.

Texas is renewing a strategy that seeks to circumvent federal gun-control laws, one that lawmakers hope makes its way to the Supreme Court to test longstanding doctrine on gun regulation.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott gathered with Republican lawmakers at the Alamo Thursday to ceremonially sign several gun-related bills passed during the recent legislative session, including one making the open carry of handguns without a license legal, and another allowing state residents to buy Texas-made gun silencers without a federal license.

And when Kansas passed that law, I said beware because Kansas wasn’t serious and had no intention of protecting its citizens from FedGov overreach.

““Passing the bill is a first step,” said Rachel Malone, the Texas director of Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group. She said it could be years before silencers, also known as suppressors, can be bought and sold in Texas, because the measure needs to wend its way through federal courts.”

This is silly and trivial.  It misunderstands the point of nullification, and they may as well hang it up now.  The federal courts will never find in their favor, and the SCOTUS won’t hear the case.  Texans who make use of this law are set up to be hanged out to dry.

Nullification only has teeth if the state is prepare to ignore the rulings of federal courts and send agents of the state to arrest and imprison agents of the FedGov who attempt to enforce the laws which are the subject of nullification.

Ms. Malone has given up the case before it ever becomes a case.  This is nothing more than symbolism.  Call me when a state of really ready to do nullification the right way.

So says the Missouri Justice Department.

The Justice Department is warning Missouri officials that the state can’t ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill last week that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.

In a letter sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice officials said the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause outweighs the measure that Gov. Mike Parson signed into law Saturday. The new rules penalize local police departments if their officers enforce federal gun laws.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said the law threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities, they said in the letter, noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.

“The public safety of the people of the United States and citizens of Missouri is paramount,” Boynton wrote in the letter.

So let me explain how you know someone knows his own argument to be weak.  They use multiple leaky buckets to try to stem the leaks.  That’s what the acting AG has done here.

First of all, he says simply that you can’t do this, just because.  Federal vs. state, and they win.  But he knows that the state can indeed do this, and the intestinal fortitude will dictate the outcome.  If the governor sends the state police to arrest any agent of the FedGov who tries to enforce federal laws, then he wins.  It doesn’t even appear this bill goes that far – it just prevents agents of the state from enforcing federal laws.

Second, since he knows he loses the first argument, he throws in working relationships and – you guessed it, money.  We don’t want to lose FedGov money.  That’s the real reason, you see, he’s so scared.  Loss of money.

Third, since he knows that he loses the first and second arguments (if liberty is more important than money), he throws the final plea out there.  Consider public safety, which is of course none of his business.  That’s the business of the law makers and governor.

Since he loses on all three accounts, the people of Missouri may safely ignore him.  His staff can’t even craft a letter without giving their hand away.

Dean Weingarten writing at Ammoland.

It was a major piece of legislation, arguably the first time the Federal Government had significantly infringed on the right to keep and bear arms, protected by the Second Amendment.

Attorney General Cummings was asked to testify before the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the House, which was considering the bill.

In the original bill, the focus was on pistols and revolvers, short-barreled shotguns, concealable firearms, silencers, and machine guns. Short barreled rifles were not included.

[ … ]

Representative Harold Knutson, of Minnesota, asks Attorney General Homer Cummings if he may add “rifles” to the bill and raise the barrel length to 18 inches, to protect deer hunting rifles in his home state. Cummings is bewildered by the request. It does not make any sense.  Eventually, Cummings says it is acceptable to him, to gain the approval of Representative Knutson. Cummings needs the votes on the committee to pass the bill. From the hearing:

Mr.KNUTSON. General, would there be any objection, on page 1, line 4, after the word” shotgun” to add the words” or rifle” having a barrel less than 18 inches? The reason I ask that is I happen to come from a section of the State where deer hunting is a very popular pastime in the fall of the year and, of course, I would not like to pass any legislation to forbid or make it impossible for our people to keep arms that would permit them to hunt deer. 

Attorney General CUMMINGS. Well, as long as it is not mentioned at all, it would not interfere at all.

Mr. KNUTSON. It seems to me that an 18 -inch barrel would make this provision stronger than 16 inches, knowing what I do about firearms.

Attorney General CUMMINGS. Well, there is no objection as far as we are concerned to including rifles after the word” shotguns” if you desire.

After this exchange, Representative Knutson fades from the picture. He has a few questions later. On page 87, he makes sure that rifles with barrels over 18 inches are exempted from the bill.

Quinn Otto-Moudry makes the same observation in an article in The Cornell Review examining the NFA hearings, in September of 2020 …

[ … ]

In the remaining transcripts, the focus is on pistols, machine guns, and sawed-off shotguns. Rifles are barely mentioned. Sawed-off shotguns are referred to repeatedly.

The record is clear. Today, we deal with the bizarre regulatory world where short-barreled rifles are tightly regulated and taxed, while pistols with virtually the same capability, only more concealable, are honored and recognized by the Supreme Court as protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

I knew that from reading the transcript (yes, I actually spent the time to read the entire transcript of the awful, ignorant proceeding).  But thanks to Dean for bringing this back up again.

In the main, idiotic prohibition laws created gangsters.  Stupid movies demonized suppressors (which is badly needed today for hearing protection, something OSHA would tell you too).

So in order to respond to the problem they created from prohibition, and in order to be out in front of scary Hollywood movies, they doubled down on stupid and created the NFA.

Handguns are much more devastating than SBRs, suppressors or anything regulated by the NFA, so look for increased attention to pistols to address inner city crime, a problem that Congress created themselves by the evisceration of the inner city family by rendering it fatherless.

Here is the paradigm.  Congress creates problems by doing something stupid, Congress tries to address the problems they create by doing more stupid things, and then Congress doubles down and makes matters worse by compounding their “solutions” (which is a description of the GCA, a compounded problem that exacerbates the stupidity of the NFA).  It’s stupid (the GCA) on top of stupid (the NFA) on top of stupid (prohibition and Hollywood).

At some point we need a year of Jubilee where all laws become null and void so we can throw the bums out and start over.

I repeat myself.  If you hired every gun mechanic working for FN from its Columbia, S.C. factory and put them in office and in the bureaucracy, we’d be much better off than with the elected politicians.  Or if you want to keep your good pistols, then just hire dogs from the local dog park.  We’d still be better off.

News about Nevada.

NYT.

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York State lawmakers passed legislation on Tuesday intended to allow civil lawsuits to be brought against firearm manufacturers and dealers, an attempt to circumvent the broad immunity gun companies currently enjoy under federal law.

There’s a relatively easy way to handle this.  If this gets signed into law in NY, all firearms manufacturers who care about liberty should stop selling firearms to all law enforcement in the state of New York, including federal (FBI, Marshals Service, etc.) and all state, county and city law enforcement.

No Glocks, no S&W M&Ps, no Sigs, no FNs, no patrol rifles of any kind, including ARs, no long range bolt action rifles, and no replacement parts, build kits, or cleaning supplies (e.g., from Brownells, Midway, or anywhere).  No ammunition sent to law enforcement in NY, not from individual suppliers or wholesalers, and no mail order (Ammoseek could quite easily exclude suppliers who send ammunition to New York state at all).

Do it and see how they like playing hard ball.  But then, all firearms manufacturers and suppliers won’t make such a decision and follow through, will they?

Will they?  Because $$$$.

Until they get sued themselves under the new law.  There are ways to beat gun control – those ways just require a new paradigm and true commitment to something other than $$$$.

We’ve all seen the ruling in California concerning AR-15s, a ruling that was righteous and correct, but which is likely to be overturned by the Ninth Circus.

Anyway, here is a sampling of the reactions from the chattering class.

“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez said in the ruling. Leaving aside the question of why civilians are purchasing “homeland defense equipment” (did we forget to include the Army line in the budget this year?), this makes total sense.

What two items could be more directly and obviously comparable than an AR-15 and a Swiss Army knife? I can’t think of how many times I’ve used an AR-15 to open a bottle of wine. Whenever I need a toothpick but cannot find one, I just whip out my AR-15. Conversely, whenever I am entering a theater of war, I always remember to pack my Swiss Army knife. That way, if anyone comes at me, I can offer to help them open a bottle, which will be so confusing to them that perhaps I can just get up and walk away before anyone notices I have gone. I very much understand how things work in theaters of war.

Sometimes you wish you had a nail file, but you don’t have one, and at times like these it is so good to have such a versatile tool as the AR-15, designed for home defense and homeland defense, which will shoot a very large number of bullets into something to help you express your frustration at not having a nail file.

And the lame attempts at sarcasm go on and on.  Here is another.

“I think it’s incredibly problematic when a federal judge quotes things that are factually incorrect, because it hurts the integrity of the branch,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who is an MSNBC columnist.

[ … ]

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said Benitez’s assertions are “utterly without factual foundation.”

It’s called the genetic fallacy.  This author tries to line up people who disagree with the judge, one of whom is a commentator for none other than his own silly outfit, the other (Tribe) whom you could probably get to agree to sue little green men on Mars in federal court.  He’s a certifiable kook.

What these commentators and their line of “experts” simply cannot understand is why the judge would call this the Swiss army knife of guns.

They cannot understand that there are over twenty million of these rifles in circulation now, and many more to come.  They cannot understand that they can be used equally well by people large and small.

They can be easily maintained and cleaned, used for self defense, used for target shooting, and with a different upper receiver (say a 300 BO or 6.8 SPC upper) used for hunting deer or feral hogs – or used in 5.56mm/.223 to shoot Coyotes who are ensconced on your property and endangering your small children when they go out to play.

These people have never been chased by hogs or coyotes, never had all of their chickens killed by a fox, never hunted deer, and apparently never had to worry about crime, living behind gated communities as they do.

They falsely believe that home invasions are perpetrated by one person, and only one person, and that the police are only seconds away when a 911 call is made.  They even believe it’s the duty of the police to protect them despite court rulings like Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, Warren v. District of Columbia and DeShaney v. Winnebago County

And as for the whole notion of use to ameliorate tyranny, they would have sided with King George, so that argument convinces them of nothing.  They believe in tyranny.

There is no use of a weapon by any individual outside of actors on behalf of the state of which they approve.

These people quite literally live in a different world than you do.  They usually do not get outside the beltway, they only fly over the areas you live, and those nasty animals are something the wildlife game managers should handle.

I’ve talked with them before.  Their most daring event is when they walk their dog and hear something in the brush, hurry back home, and decide not to do that again so near dusk.

They are the effeminate chattering class, and they don’t see why you need or would want guns.  They don’t understand the modularity of AR-15s well enough to know why a judge would refer to its massively varied utility.  They would rather sip Chardonnay than worry about your problems.

They know enough to be sarcastic, and to want to disarm you.  But that horse left the barn years ago.  There’s no getting him back in.  He’s long gone.

Via The Gun Feed.

The University of Michigan.

The University of Michigan will launch a new Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention to generate knowledge and advance innovative solutions that reduce firearm injury, a public health crisis that leads to more than 100 deaths per day across the United States.

[ … ]

A $10 million university commitment over the next five years will support the institute, which launched as a presidential initiative in 2019 to formulate and answer critical questions around safety and violence.

This is a lot of funding, and it will turn into an even larger gun control study center than the one at Duke University.

The University of Michigan is famous for a number of things, perhaps chief among them is the fact that they have the leading college of nuclear engineering in the world.  I’d prefer to see them send $10 million to the college of nuclear engineering.

Next up, this is just more from Kimber.

Wow! Former Kimber executive, Ryan Busse, signs on with gun-ban advocates at Giffords. pic.twitter.com/8BIAQwNqZa

— Tom Gresham (@Guntalk) June 6, 2021

This is a well know problem for Kimber, and when he originally came out as a gun controller Kimber denied even knowing the positions taken by Busse.

But it’s difficult to see how the company wouldn’t know the political proclivities of one of their chief executives.

Ammoland.

The maximum length of a pistol would be 26 inches. That would make any AR15 style pistol with a barrel over seven inches an SBR regardless of any other determination features.  The measurements of a seven-inch AR pistol from the rear of the buffer tube to the front of the gun are 25 inches.

“Given the public interest surrounding these issues, ATF is proposing to amend the definition of ‘rifle’ in 27 CFR 478.11 and 479.11, respectively, by adding a sentence at the end of each definition. The new sentence would clarify that the term ‘rifle’ includes any weapon with a rifled barrel and equipped with15 an attached ‘stabilizing brace’ that has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder, as indicated on ATF Worksheet 4999.”

• 1 point: Minor Indicator (the weapon could be fired from the shoulder)
• 2 points: Moderate Indicator (the weapon may be designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder)
• 3 points: Strong Indicator (the weapon is likely designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder)
• 4 points: Decisive Indicator (the weapon is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder

The ATF would consider any gun with a score of four or more points an SBR.  Firearms over 13 ½ inches would automatically be an SBR.  If a pistol has a standard buffer tube, then the firearm would be assigned two points. The ATF would consider any gun that is over 120 ounces unloaded an SBR.

More confusingly, if a firearm has flip-up sights, then the ATF would give that gun one point towards becoming an SBR. The ATF would assign a gun with a red dot two points.  The ATF doesn’t see why a shooter would use a red dot pistol on a pistol.

The ATF would assign any gun with a hand stop two points.  That would put any firearm with a hand stop halfway to becoming an SBR.  The ATF would consider any gun with a secondary grip as an SBR.

[ … ]

The first choice is turning the guns into the ATF.  The ATF says this choice would be at “no-cost” to gun owners.  This move is gun confiscation.  The second choice would be to install a barrel that more than 16 inches long.  The third choice is to pay a $200 tax stamp and register it as an SBR.  The final option would be to modify the brace and not sell it to anyone in the future.

The document gives some alternatives. These alternatives include making the rules just guidance. That chance would mean that they would not have the force of law.  Other alternatives include grandfathering all firearms with braces or forgiveness of the tax stamp fee.

Sounds like a beauty contest where contestants answer panelist questions about solving world hunger.

They must be trying to outdo the complexity, stupidity and arbitrariness of 18 USC 922r.

UPDATE: Via David Codrea, GOA.

“Nearly every aspect of the Proposed Rule is either arbitrary and capricious, in excess of the agency’s jurisdiction, or in conflict with either statute or constitutional right. Often, it is all of the above. Numerous times, the Proposed Rule purports to blatantly rewrite federal law to suit ATF’s agenda.”