February 2015 – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

FedEx Refusing to Ship Defense Distributed’s CNC Mill

Their argument boils down to uncertain legality, which is a completely bogus argument. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about shipping a CNC machine to anyone, in any state.

But now FedEx tells WIRED itâ€™s too wary of the legal issues around homemade gunsmithing to ship the machine to customers. â€œThis device is capable of manufacturing firearms, and potentially by private individuals,â€ FedEx spokesperson Scott Fiedler wrote in a statement. â€œWe are uncertain at this time whether this device is a regulated commodity by local, state or federal governments. As such, to ensure we comply with the applicable law and regulations, FedEx declined to ship this device until we know more about how it will be regulated.â€

I don’t think it would be crazy tin-foil-hat speculation that it’s quite possible they are getting threats from the Administration in other areas they regulate that could hurt FedEx, if FedEx doesn’t bend to their will on the gun issue. It’s not like we haven’t seen that before.

Of course, if that’s the case, they should blow the whistle. At best, this is cowardice on the part of FedEx, and I won’t do business with them until they grow a pair and start shipping his product like they would any other CNC machine.

News Links for Tuesday 02-24-2015

I meant to get up a news links post yesterday, but tasks conspired against it, which seems to be happening a lot lately. At work, we had a window blow open and freeze all the pipes, which caused quite a disaster. Last week I couldn’t open my back door. Fearing the header might have failed, causing the weight from the house to fall onto the door, I went into the drywall to check. The header was fine. I think the severe dry, cold air just made the wood contract enough to jam the door. I managed to pull hard enough to get the door open, but it took a hammer to close it again. That door has always been tight, and the seal on the double pane failed years ago. It is time to replace it, which is money I wasn’t expecting to spend. Such are distractions of life, like the news:

Joe Huffman collects bigotry from the other side, something for which there is no shortage.

Gun control works!Â No, really, it does.

Shannon Watts is a propagandist, not an activist. She’s honestly not very good, and prone to making gaffes and mistake. If it wasn’t for Bloomberg’s money, I wouldn’t be too worried about her.

Apparently Governor Wolf’s pick to run the Pennsylvania State Police is already generating controversy. It’s worth noting that this office has, in the past with hostile Democratic administrations, been used to screw with gun owners.

What’s that? Associating with Bloomberg is bad for a Democrat’s political aspirations? Who would have guessed.

Bring handguns back to Britain!

Turning out for Constitutional Carry in Idaho.

Shocking: Some lawmakers who are friendly to the Second Amendment are (gasp!) active NRA members.

SCOTUSBlog takes a look at Henderson v. United States. A gun case, but not a Second Amendment case, at least not directly.

John Richardson has more on the M855 ban.

Tam: “It was within my lifetime (albeit barely) that you could order an actual 20mm anti-tank rifle in the mail with less drama than buying a packet of Sudafed today.” Also, “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

Yes! Next question.

Eugene Volokh: Open Carry v. Announced Carry. I’ve also thought there might be stronger First Amendment protection for open carry than Second, given that the courts take the former more seriously than the latter.

Off Topic:

Bombshell Interview: Cop Reveals That â€œPlanting Evidence And Lyingâ€ Are Just â€œPart Of The Gameâ€

What ISIS Really Wants. A very excellent piece of journalism from The Atlantic. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.

More Danger in Washington State

Another gun control bill has passed out of committee in the Washington Legislature. If I were a gun owner in Washington, I’d print out this bill and roll it up. Go find yourself a gun owner who voted for I-594 because it sounded “reasonable,” and hit them on the nose with this bill and firmly say, “No!”

Any victory will embolden and strengthen the other side. Once the dam starts to crack, it’s very difficult to prevent it from breaking. This is especially true in blue states that have managed to keep their gun rights, despite years of Democratic control. Once they figure out they can hurt you, and you can’t boot them from power, they’ll just keep hurting you. Colorado was saved from this fate because they figuratively broke the noses of the people who hurt them with those recall elections

If you’re in a blue state that’s kept its gun rights despite a history of Democratic control, you’re probably lucky, and probably are retaining your gun rights on borrowed time. Once the powers that be learn they can hurt you, and you can’t hurt them back, your cause is doomed.

Not the Brightest Gun Shop Burglars

Today has had a bit of excitement in Bucks County. One of the local gun shops was the location of a “standoff” between police and two men from Philadelphia who were attempting to break in.

After stealing a vehicle, the suspects entered through the roof and figured they would go through the ventilation system. They managed to remove at least a sheep mount from the store before the cops managed to get them out of the building.

These ever-so-brilliant suspects realized that they would be caught, so they figured they would call 911 and claim they found a dead body somewhere else in town and the police who were already set up outside and trying to get them out would just leave and let them walk away. That just got them another criminal charge out here in Bucks County.

According to reports, they tried to claim that they just randomly broke into that building because they were homeless. Sure. Stealing a truck, driving to a gun shop, getting at least some product out of the building, but it was just because you wanted to get warm? Oh, and there just happened to be drugs on them, too. Yeah, no jury here will buy that sh*t.

However, it turns out that neither one of these geniuses likely knows what it’s like facing a jury. Sure, they both have arrest records from Philadelphia, but the vast majority of their charges were nolle prossed.

One of the suspects appears to have quite the history with guns, as he was arrested for illegally carrying firearms at 15. He has a record that’s 4 pages long filled with many charges involving theft, burglary, and assault. Yet, this is the same city filled with people demanding more gun control. It’s clear that they aren’t making do with the laws they have, and now a suburban gun shop and neighboring stores are paying for those decisions not to prosecute.

Two More Favorable Court Rulings

Looks like we’ve had a few more favorable court rulings in the past few days. The first comes from the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in the case of Suarez v. Holder, holding that a past non-violent felony conviction was not sufficient to strip him of his right to keep and bear arms.Â This is an “as applied” challenge, meaning it did not challenge the felon-in-possession statute (18 USC 922(g)) on its face, but challenged it as applied to the plaintiff in this case. He was convicted in 1990 of carrying a firearm without a license in Maryland, a misdemeanor in Maryland, but one that can carry a penalty of up to three years in prison (and thus prohibiting under federal law). The more cases like this we get, the more cause we have to seek further redress through Congress, since these suits cost the federal courts time and money (both of which are in short supply). You can read more about the case here. Hat tip to Joe HuffmanÂ for the tipoff.

The other case is from the Florida Court of Appeal, Norman v. State. This court upheld the Florida restriction on open carry, but it’s a win because they adopted the reasoning that we’ve been pushing the courts toward. The court recognized there was a right to carry a firearm outside the home, but that the state may regulate the manner in which firearms are carried.

The Legislature â€œhas a right to prescribe a particular manner of carry, provided that it does not â€˜cut[] off the exercise of the right of the citizen altogether to bear arms, or, under the color of prescribing the mode, render[] the right itself useless.â€™â€ The Legislature is permitted to regulate the manner in which arms are borne for the purpose of maintaining public peace and safety, so long as any such regulation leaves available a viable carry mode.

The reason our legal advocates have been pushing for this interpretation is because it squares with a long, unfortunateÂ tradition in some parts of the country of making concealed carry unlawful, while allowing open carry, and courts upholding them under the Second Amendment and state Second Amendment analogues. This ruling does beg the question of whether, say, New Jersey, for instance, could get around being forced to comply with federal law by legalizing open carry, but still requiring a relatively non-obtainable license for concealed carry. That doesn’t do anything to destroy the right de jure, but given that open carry is not socially acceptable in the Garden State, does it amount to a de facto destruction of the right? That’s probably why anti-evasion doctrine is going to become very important going forward.

Kleck: Defensive Gun Use is Not a Myth

It’s very good to see Politico willing to publish a retort by Gary Kleck against an articleÂ recently published in the same by the trolls over at Armed with Reason. Be sure to read the whole article, but I will quote from, and comment on a bit here:

But what DeFillipis and Hughes carefully withheld from readers is the fact that I and my colleague have refuted every one of Hemenwayâ€™s dubious claims, and those by other critics of the NSDS, first in 1997, and again, even more extensively, in 1998 and 2001.

I’m shocked (shocked!) to discover pro-gun control folks not presenting all the facts, and misleading people into believing their conclusion. This is standard operating procedure for our opponents. Dr. Kleck pulls no punches:

The authors, a couple of Oklahoma investment counselors with no graduate degrees, do not claim to have had any training in survey research methods. Like Hemenway (who is also untrained in survey methods), they believe that itâ€™s perfectly plausible that surveys generate enormous over-estimates of crime-related experiences, as if this were the most commonplace thing in the world.

In other words, the people criticizing his studies have no credentials. I’m not one to argue that un-credentialed people can’t produce good science, because they can. But DeFillipis’ and Hughes’ operation looks more like slick marketing rather than science. It would seem Dr. Kleck agrees:

Left unmentioned will be one simple fact: in all of Hâ€™s commentary, he does not once cite the one thing that could legitimately cast doubt on our estimatesâ€”better empirical evidence.

That’s because they can’t produce it. Even very conservatives studies, like the National Crime Victimization Survey, put the number at 80,000 events a year, and that was also done in the early 1990s, before concealed carry was broadly legal. Even anecdotally, I know two people who did quite legitimately defend themselves with a firearm. In both cases, there were no shots fired; the attacker(s) fled.

Is it Unlawful to Donate to a City’s Defense Fund for Illegal Gun Ordinances?

[UPDATE: Link fixed]Â Pro-gun attorney Josh Prince makes a good case for it. The criminal penalty for violating preemption is not part of the new Act 192, but was an original feature of the 1974 preemption law. The problem, however, is that it would require the county district attorney to bring charges, which they’ve never been willing to do. In this case, I doubt they would. Anyone charged would likely have a decent First Amendment claim that their donation was a form of protected speech. So from the beginning there was never any enforcement mechanism for preemption, so many towns and cities through Pennsylvania just ignored it, and passed their own gun control laws anyway. While rarely enforced, if you were one of the unlucky few, it was on you to hire an attorney at your own expense, to defend against the charge and challenge ordinance in court. While this almost always resulted in victory under Pennsylvania’s preemption statute, you were out the money for court costs and attorneys fees. The legislature set out to fix this with Act 192, and at least Lancaster, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg don’t appreciate being held to account for their own illegal behavior.

Sorry fellas, you’ve been flouting the law for 40 years now. Time to pay up.

Stagecoach Mary – The Well-Armed Woman of Montana

I have to admit that I adored reading this write-up on Mary Fields of Cascade, Montana. She was the second woman and first African American to deliver mail for Wells Fargo Co.

In her stay in Montana, she took on many tough traditionally male jobs and those were sometimes dangerous enough that she would slap a gun on her hip. Even beyond being a well-armed woman, the legends surrounding her seem pretty epic. Consider that the article says she was “one of very few black people in the new state at all, and most likely the only one with a pet eagle.”

By the time she retired from her mail route, apparently her birthday was celebrated as a local holiday for the school kids.

New Jersey Flintlock Case Getting Mainstream Traction

The New York Daily News has run a very favorable article on the Gordon Van Gilder case. You read that right, the New York Daily News. They even embedded NRA’s video on it. I’m kind of shocked, because it’s not like the Daily News is on our side, even on a good day. My guess is that the media is likely aware these stories damage Chris Christie. Regardless of motivation, the more people hear Mr. Van Gilder’s story, the more likely he can get a favorable outcome, as Shannen Allen did.

It also lets people know that what New Jersey has are all the “reasonable common sense gun laws” that the gun control crowd promotes, and that New Jersey’s laws are their model for the rest of the country.

In Order to Win Colorado Back, House Democrats Must be Removed From Power

The Denver Post is reporting on the committee votes in the Colorado House:

HB 1050:Â Repeals requirement that anyone besides a licensed gun dealer who transfers possession of a firearm must obtain a background check and repeals requirement that charges a fee for a check.Â Defeated 6-5.

HB 1127:Â Establishes immunity from certain civil actions for owners and operators of businesses open to the public who adopt a policy allowing persons to carry a concealed handgun on the premises.Â Defeated 6-5.

HB 1009:Â Repeals the ban on the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines.Â Defeated 6-5.

HB 1049:Â Adds a place of business to the locations that may be defended with deadly physical force.Â Defeated 6-5.Â

HB 1086:Â Requires the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to produce in a certain time frame certificates allowing for the transfers of machine guns, destructive devices or other firearms or explain why, in that time frame, it was denied.Â Defeated 7-4.

See the whole article to contrast what the GOP is doing in the Senate, which passed constitutional carry out of committee. I hate to raise the bar higher, because Colorado activists have already been carrying a lot of water for the movement, but if Colorado is to be snatched out of Bloomberg’s hands, the Democrats must lose control of the House as well.

These were 6-5 votes. It’s very close. But the next election could determine everything. Abandon false prophets like Dudley Brown, who has a socially conservative agenda that extends far beyond gun rights. The Colorado GOP has to get smart and embrace good candidates who can win in that state’s more socially liberal political climate.