2013 – Page 46 – Shall Not Be Questioned

News Media Loving the Alt-history

What if Zimmerman didn’t have a gun? You keep seeing this in the media, as if we can really know, and if this isn’t anything more than wild assed speculation. It’s utter nonsense.

Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten out of the car. Maybe he would have gotten beaten to death. Maybe he would have ended up in a coma for two months, and recovered. Wouldn’t that be a better outcome? Maybe he would have not gotten involved in his neighborhood and stayed home like a good scared little citizen. Maybe he would have had it out with Tray and they could have gone for ice cream afterwards.

Who knows and who cares? What if Hitler had gotten accepted into art school? We’ll never know.

Can Self-Defense Really be “Senselessly Expanded”?

Attorney General Eric Holder believes that we go too far in allowing law-abiding citizens to defend their lives in attacks by criminals:

Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nationâ€™s attention, itâ€™s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. (emphasis added)

Speaking about broader self-defense laws beyond the Zimmerman case, Holder calls putting the duty on the law-abiding citizen to retreat from attackers “common sense.”

Kill Me Now!

Gun news is slow, since the media is focused on other things for the moment, like how racist America is. In the mean time, those of us in the Northeast are baking. It’s not often I’ll say I’d trade Houston for its weather, but:

Today we’re getting a break on humidity. Dewpoint today is under 70, whereas it’s been 70-72 the past several days. I learned from my days being an avid hiker, before I got too busy and too fat, that dewpoint is the number to watch. A lot of people think relative humidity is the important number for comfort, but dewpoint, which tells you how much moisture is actually in the air, is a more reliable measure. Dewpoints below 60 are generally comfortable, even if it’s fairly hot out. You can go do a long hike, even in 90 degree weather, and do fine if the dewpoint is below 60. From 60-65 you can generally manage, but pushing closer to 65 you’ll start to feel the suck. At 65-70, it’s generally pretty uncomfortable. Anything above 70 is unbearable even if the temperature is not that high. You’ll be dripping with sweat with even minor exertion. I’ll take 105 in Phoenix over this crap any day of the week. Dry heat is much easier to deal with. On days like today, I just try to stay indoors and not do much that requires physical exertion, which conveniently is generally what my jobs requires.

But that’s not to say it doesn’t still suck. Few houses built here before the 1990s were built with central air conditioning. Most people who have it in older houses retrofitted it, which is expensive if you don’t have forced-air heat. My house has hot water baseboard heating and no AC, so retrofitting is more pricy. The open floor plan of the house is nice, but in summer it makes AC difficult. I’m relying on a 14,000 BTU/hr portable unit downstairs, and a 6000BTU/hr Wal-Mart special window unit upstairs. They’ve been running flat out for days without cycling. Not good. But they are keeping the house reasonably comfortable. Right now my office is 80 degrees, with a dewpoint of 63 degrees indoors. That’s pretty good. I’d call that a beautiful day if it was outside. Eventually, I’m going to get another 14,000 BTU portable unit for upstairs, which should hopefully be enough to do the whole house, and let the units cycle a bit even in craptacular heat and humidity such as this.

PLCAA Success Story? Colt Remerges

Colt Defense and Colt Manufacturing are becoming one again. They split in 2003 to shield their defense business from potential lawsuits. With the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms ActÂ in 2005,Â lawsuits aren’t the threat they used to be, and thus ends a chapter in the firearms industry that never would have happened, if not for religious fanatics who set on a mission to do to the firearms industry what they did to the tobacco industry. PLCAA is far from perfect protection, and said fanatics are still busy looking for weaknesses, but it was an understated victory of the last decade that I think helped put the anti-gun organizations on the ropes. They spent a lot of money and resources on those suits which got nowhere.

Hey, Gun Industry, Better Ignore New Business Models

SayUncle has a few things to say about an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispach, decrying Lucky Gunner, LLC for essentially being what’s called a “virtual company,” acting like it’s some kind of stealth and shady operation rather than just a smart business. It’s quick becoming a trend in Biotech as well, and, in fact, I had considered trying to help start such a company if we could practically do it (and we couldn’t, but not because the virtual model couldn’t work).

Why run your own warehousing and logistics services if you can hire someone who specializes in that to do it for you more efficiently than you could yourself? I guess if you’re in the gun industry, new business models are out of the question, lest you attract the attention of reporters who think they’ve got something on you. It’s amazing how much of the firearms industry our opponents want to leave stuck in the 1950s.

CSGV Failing to Give the Full Context

I haven’t blogged about the CSGV for quite some time, mostly because they are irrelevant in the current debate. But their claim on the jury instructions, as you may imagine, fail to give the whole picture. The full jury instructions are posted online. You can find them here and here. There’s a lot more to the jury’s instructions than that. They, of course, fail to mention this would also be part of the instruction:

In deciding whether defendant was justified in the use of deadly force, you must judge [him] [her] by the circumstances by which [he] [she] was surrounded at the time the force was used.Â The danger facing the defendant need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of deadly force, the appearance of danger must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person under the same circumstances would have believed that the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force.Â Based upon appearances, the defendant must have actually believed that the danger was real.

You can find exactly how the instructions changed in the Florida Supreme Court case showing here. What is also mentioned is that previously, retreat was only required when one could do so in complete safety. Zimmerman’s claim was that her was pinned to the ground. Either you believe it or you don’t. If you believe it, duty to retreat doesn’t come into play regardless, under current law or the old law.

UPDATE: You can find the exact and lengthy jury instructions here.

Again with the Same, Tired Narratives

And now the Marissa Alexander case rears up again in the media. I covered her case more than a year ago at this point, when the narrative first hit the media. Alexander is a poster child against mandatory minimum sentences, not against stand your ground laws. A big problem we’re having is that journalists, when they don’t outright have an agenda, which is often, don’t really understand our laws or legal system. Stand Your Ground laws honestly don’t change a whole lot when it comes to self-defense cases. It still comes down to credibility, and that was the difference between Alexander and Zimmerman.

UPDATE: More here, at WTBGU.

UPDATE: Also at Ace of Spades.

Update on Illinois Ordinance Fights

We’re winning more than we’re losing, which is good. When we show up, we win. And even where we lost, we didn’t lose as badly as one might fear. Perhaps we’ll get to see how the convictions of the town councils that defied us stand up under a federal lawsuit.

Prius-Driving, Pink Shirt-Wearing Candidate for Colorado Governor

It looks like the freshest candidate in Colorado’s gubernatorial race is a big cycling enthusiast who hops in his Prius when he has to drive somewhere and is comfortable showing off in a somewhat slim-fitting pink polo.

Oh, and he’s a pro-gun guy.

As Jim Geraghty notes, another big plus to Brophy is that he’s not Tom Tancredo. I also appreciate his pitch for issues beyond the gun issue:

â€œInstead of limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines, we will work to increase the capacity of our highways,â€ Brophy said. â€œWe will increase the number of charter schools and magnet schools.â€

Even if the gun control law is a big reason why he’s running for governor, it’s good that he has a message of positive changes he wants to make, too.

CT State Police Aren’t Engineers

This is the reason that State Police Det. Ken Damato gives for the Connecticut State Police refusing to give manufacturers any guidance on what features of a firearm would be within the bounds of the state’s new gun control laws. He says, “Weâ€™re not arbiters of weapons construction.”

Such excuses are interesting considering that he then admits the same non-engineers who know so little about firearms are telling retailers what they can and cannot sell, and I have little doubt that these non-engineer/non-firearms experts will gladly arrest a citizen with a gun they claim they don’t really understand.

Of course, don’t expect any consistency out of the State Police on this issue. They will defend their absolute knowledge when it comes to arresting people, but not when it comes to assisting the firearms business in attempting to follow the law.

This reeks of Massachusetts-style attitudes. There are two sets of requirements that have to be met before handguns can be sold in Massachusetts, and Attorney General requirements are essentially handled the same way that the Connecticut State Police are behaving now. They tell manufacturers that they will not assist in judging compliance–unless, that is, you break the law. Then they will gladly go after you for the crime.

I remember a period of a few weeks when Glock decided to try legally selling in Massachusetts back in 2004 or so. The AG’s office, which would not provide guidance up until that point, just suddenly decided that they didn’t actually meet requirements and made them illegal to sell. If you want an idea of the kind of mess that Connecticut may be on the path toward by adopting Massachusetts-style attitudes on gun regulations, then check out this crazy page by a Massachusetts gun dealer that tries to explain what he can and cannot sell.

Even the Connecticut press seems to think this attitude that the State Police are refusing to help people abide by the law is too much. Granted, their solution is to make government bigger to answer more questions, but at least they acknowledge that there’s a problem when bureaucrats try to keep things vague for people trying to follow the law.