Author: Sebastian

It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to blog, but a lot has built up in the tabs. I may have a few separate posts in those tabs somewhere, but sometime I just link everything out in the news dump and see what items I have more to say about than I thought. They become separate posts. So here we go:

The magazine limit reduction in NJ has cleared its first hurdle. I guess lawmakers don’t have any problem saying no to a little girl.

Another mass knife murder in China. Six dead. Clearly the last one inspired a copycat incident.

Bob Owens notes that three people were arrested for violating a local ordinance on Open Carry in Missouri. Missouri’s preemption statute is pretty iron clad, so the arrest was completely illegal. Actually, it seems like OC is one exception to MO preemption. Wow. That does need to be fixed.

The NRA notes that the gun control supporters are bound to take advantage of the inflation of causes of death by the UN, which are generally adopted by the CDC.

Also from NRA, they have filed an amicus brief in the NSA spying case.

Why smart guns are a dumb idea.

Governor Malloy in CT: Your side lost. Arrogant prick.

Cuomo scared to call special elections?

Celebrating 15 years of making gun control supporters wet their pants.

What can metadata reveal about you? Personally, I’m not as concerned if people can find out I’m a gun owner. It’s not really that hard. Just ask the mailman. The concern is if they have a record of what I own.

Jeff also notes that the Wall Street Journal did a hit piece on the gun industry. Of course, what they don’t point out is that unlike cigarettes, the discipline instilled by the shooting sports are good for kids.

Who really designed the AK-47? To be fair, both sides used German scientists and engineers for cold war projects, including our space programs.

Doctors can advise me about guns when they learn to keep their booger hooks off the bang switch.

Tam: “I’m not making a statement; I just want a sammich” I think it’s the same thing that makes people carry AR-15s in to Starbucks.

Prince Law has more on the Sunnyvale case. That Kennedy didn’t enjoin Sunnyvale is not surprising. My understanding is those kinds of injunctions are very rarely issues. What was surprising is that he asked for a response.

The Daily Caller on the Connecticut situation. I hope they aren’t foolish enough to go door to door. They have the ability if they decide to compile the list.

Town in NY tries to shut down anti-SAFE Act sign.

Good write up on MAIG. Glenn Reynolds notes, “To be fair, not all of them are felons, as far as we know.”

The response from the City of Sunnyvale to the Supreme Court can be found here. TL;DR there’s no exigent circumstance here, and there’s no right to have a magazine holding more than ten rounds anyway. They say that at least one applicant is already storing his magazines outside of town, and that this shouldn’t be a problem for other applicants.

Applicants are merely attempting to circumvent the appeals process by asking this Court to prejudge the very issues that are now before the Ninth Circuit in this appeal.

They also note that no lower court has found for a right to keep and bear magazines holding more than ten rounds.

Every court that has considered the constitutionality of a ban on LCMs, including the D.C. Circuit, has applied intermediate scrutiny and held that such a ban does not violate the Second Amendment. See Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244, 1264 (D.C. Cir. 2011); San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Ass’n v. City & Cnty. of San Francisco, C-13-05351 WHA, 2014 WL 644395, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 19, 2014); New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Cuomo, C-13-291S, 2013 WL6909955, at *18 (W.D.N.Y. Dec. 31, 2013); Shew v. Malloy, C-13-739 AVC, 2014 WL346859, at *9 (D. Conn. Jan. 30, 2014); Tardy v. O’Malley, C-13-2861, TRO Hr’g Tr.,at 66-71 (D. Md. Oct. 1, 2013).3

And after all, all courts agree that the Second Amendment is a Second Class Right:

Since this Court recognized the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the Circuits have adopted a careful and measured approach to the various gun control ordinances they have evaluated, deciding each case on its merits and avoiding broad pronouncements that would up-end the development of Second Amendment jurisprudence. In keeping with this careful approach, a consensus has emerged in the Circuits that while severe restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms either fail categorically without regard to their justifications or fail strict scrutiny, more modest burdens that permit armed self-defense but only regulate the exercise of that right are subject to less demanding scrutiny.

The response drips with disdain for the Second Amendment, and for the rights of gun owners. I hope the Court can help us out here with an injunction, but I’d be a liar if I said I was optimistic.

UPDATE: The motion was denied without comment. There’s not too much in the way of tea leaves to read here.

The bill is H.R. 2959, and NRA has a press release out about the bill. Elections are coming up soon, and whether or not we can get this through the Senate (probably not) or through the President (definitely not) it gets lawmakers on record for an important vote. This particular bill doesn’t enumerate specific powers that Congress has to pass such a bill, but that is not strictly required. Certainly Congress has the power under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to pass such a bill. As I’ve mentioned in the past, there is a potential issue with the case of City of Boerne v. Flores case, in terms of the Court having been willing, in the past, to smack down Congress for getting out ahead of the Supreme Court in defining a right.

However, in this case, Heller contained lengthy discussion that recognized the right to carry a firearm, though not necessarily in any manner one may want, and not necessarily any place. The bill still leaves room for states to ban the carrying of concealed weapons entirely (though, at this point, no state does so). It is as respectful to the right as described in Heller as Congress could muster, so it is arguably a bill that is not getting out in front of Congress. Additionally, even if the 14th Amendment argument fails, there are at least two others that may also work. Though I’ve written before about why I think resting federal reciprocity on the interstate commerce power could be a dubious proposition, even in light of Gonzalez v. Raich, because there’s no real nexus to interstate commerce with this bill, short of arguments the court has rejected in past cases.

I’d note that I don’t think this should be the end of Congress exercising it’s 14th Amendment powers on behalf the Second Amendment, but only the beginning. Just because the Supreme Court has had a turf battle with Congress in one context doesn’t necessarily mean they will choose to in another. At the least, Congress needs to preempt DC City Council from regulating firearms above what federal law does, which it has the clear, plenary power to do. But I’d also like to see such preemption applied to all states, and finally be rid of the two Americas problem.

I had this topic scheduled for tomorrow, but sometimes when you try to stretch out material, it’s old news before you can blink an eye. So I’ll go tonight, with Dave Hardy, who is reporting that the Supreme Court had just made an interesting move in the case involving the magazine ban in Sunnyvale, California. The motion to stay enforcement until the case had been decided was denied by the District Court, and again by the 9th Circuit. It was appealed to the Supreme Court, and Kennedy just told the city it needed to respond by tomorrow. Interesting! We will eagerly see how this goes.