Month: January 2014

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I’m pleased that for the first time in days the temperature is actually above freezing! Who would have guessed such things were possible. Here’s some news links:

Miguel notes the hypocrisy of the Chicago Police Department. They are battlefield weapons that don’t belong on the streets when you have them, but necessary “patrol rifles” when they do.

Taxing a right.

To be fair, they have to squash dissent, because they don’t have any arguments.

Illinois is also proposing a state law to disarm people prescribed medical pot.

Connecticut is planning an amnesty because so few people registered their guns. I doubt that’s going to help. They didn’t register them because they know better, not because they forgot, or didn’t hear about it.

Tim on Rule 1 guns. Rule 1 of gunfighting is to have a gun.

This is a ghost gun. Don’t cross the streams!

I have to admit, this makes me reconsider my hesitance to agree that the Volokh move to the WaPo was a good idea. I agree with Ace of Spades who note: “I hate to tell him this but: They know that’s what you’re offering to the public. That’s the problem.”

A newspaper boss wanted to make a public database of gun owners, then decided to change his mind. These people are evil. I have no doubt they’d stuff us all into cattle cars if they thought they could get away with it.

I’ve never carried to the opera before, but I’ve carried to orchestra concerts. We’re not all uncultured rednecks like they think. Maybe they could use some therapy for their phobias.

Prof. Nick Johnson is going to be guest blogging over at Volokh, speaking about his new book “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms” You can also see his excellent interview on C-SPAN’s Book TV here.

Off topic: I’d say I’ll never eat at Subway again, but I don’t eat at Subway to begin with. Why? Because their food sucks. It’s just bread and filler — hardly any meat and cheese.

The Glock 42 joins other firearms that will not be available for Californians. I’d like to see manufacturers depart the LEO market too. Even though they are better than you and me. Guns that are deemed “unsafe handguns” are only unsafe when you and I have them, according to California law.

I’d really like to see the courts call them on that nonsense. Generally speaking, I think the courts should be very skeptical of law enforcement exemptions. Law professor Nelson Lund wrote a paper on this topic, arguing that the Courts should look at police use when determining whether an arm was protected. I couldn’t agree more. I strongly believe civilians should be able to own anything cops can own. You can’t argue a weapon is for mass murder, or a weapon is unsafe, and then turn around and say the police need them for self-defense and they aren’t unsafe in the hands of cops. That’s transparently about crapping on civil rights rather than about public safety.

While he’s not proposing a system that American gun owners would tolerate, it is interesting to see a British politician arguing that banning handguns for the law-abiding is a terrible idea that was done as a senseless knee-jerk reaction.

Of course, his critics try to insult him by saying his positions are irresponsible and too much like America. To try and find middle ground, the handgun “advocate” also calls Americans crazy for allowing so many law-abiding citizens to own guns.

Smith and Wesson is also pulling out of California. I don’t expect they’ll be the last. My understanding is that any semi-automatic pistol already on the roster of approved handguns is grandfathered, but as soon as a manufacturer makes a single change or improvement to the gun, it has to be re-certified, which is when the micro-stamping requirement kicks in. I know this sucks for folks out in the Golden State, but in reality, I think the more manufacturers that stop selling their wares, the stronger the case gets against micro-stamping being an unconstitutional requirement.

The anti-gun people are unable to get gun bans through thanks to Heller and McDonald. Given that, requiring manufactures to employ a theoretical and unproven technology under the guide of crime fighting is the next best thing, because it has the effect of banning firearms in a way the courts will likely allow them to get away with. Or so they think. The question is whether the federal courts are capable of seeing through such a transparent means to unconstitutionally limit the availability to firearms to law-abiding civilians.

Dave Hardy has a summary of Oral Arguments today before the Supreme Court. Sounds like the justices were tough on both attorneys, so not too much tea leaf reading. This case centers around whether you can buy a gun for someone else if that someone else is not a prohibited person. In Abramski’s case, he bought a gun in his home state of Virginia, took the gun to Pennsylvania and transferred it through an FFL there to his Uncle. He was charged with lying on 4473 in regards to whether he was the actual buyer. Abramski’s contention is that unless the other buyer is prohibited, it’s lawful to buy a gun for someone else, and ATF is exceeding its authority on 4473.

Yesterday an Alberta Clipper dumped a good 7 inches of global warming in the driveway, so this morning involved sweeping the cars off and shoveling it all away so the sun and salt can get to work. When I started, it was still single digits out, and now it’s warmed up to a balmy 11 degrees on Fahrenheit scale. That’s -11C for you Canadians who no doubt wonder why I’d complain about such warm weather. But for me it’s enough to make me wear my big silly looking Russian hat. Hey, it’s warm. Shows 64 degrees in my office now, because the furnace has some trouble keeping up, but compared to outside it’s the South Pacific in here. But the news links wait for no man, not even Al Gore:

But I thought AR-15s were battlefield weapons, only useful for mass murder?

Bearing Arms also has a story from the City of Brotherly Corruption. Seems some gun buyback money got “diverted.”

Some of our opponents act like nobody ever killed everyone else until about 500 years ago when firearms were invented.

S.E. Cupp: “Spare us the gun lecture, Harvey”

NRA responds to Harvy Weinstein as well. If Weinstein is stupid enough to think this will hurt NRA, he’s never read this book by Brian Anse Patrick. The more they hate, the stronger we get.

Gun Nuts Media offers a Shot Show 2014 recap, and some advice on how to travel with guns on an airline.

Glenn Reynolds in USA Today: One legacy of Obama is that government conspiracy theories don’t seem so crazy anymore.

Randy Barnett: How the NSA program is like gun registration. But our opponents tell us all right-thinking people favor gun registration. It’s common sense.

It’s a shame this guy can’t use the David Gregory defense. Laws are for the little people, little person.