He’s, of course, expecting Angus King to vote his way, which means against National Reciprocity. But of course, I’m sure he’ll be talking to the hilt about how he supports the Second Amendment and your hunting heritage. These people can’t win without lying.
Author: Sebastian
Fifth Circuit Upholds 18-20 Year Old Gun Purchase Ban
NRA v. BATF. There is an impression that the Fifth Circuit is pro-gun, because it was the first to rule that the Second Amendment is an individual right. But it’s also worth noting that they upheld the PFA restrictions even though they offer the barest of due process protections. I will have more analysis of the opinion later, when I have time to read it.
UPDATE: Just giving a quick skim, it’s the same sad story. “We are very uncomfortable with this right, so we will go ahead and apply a low level of scrutiny to this which we will call intermediate, which, of course, is just perfect for upholding this statute.” The decision quotes heavily from Saul Cornell, the Joyce Funded scholar who attempted to undo the Standard Model of the Second Amendment.
Borrowing Concepts from Abortion Rights to Save Gun Rights
Professor Johnson has a post up speaking of borrowing the “undue burden” concept from abortion rights in order to protect Second Amendment rights, much, I’m sure, to the horror of Justice Breyer if he were to read it.
Drawing a Blank on the Bill of Rights
I doubt most Americans could name you which of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights protect which rights, but most Americans aren’t members of Congress:
“I’m drawing a blank on the Second Amendment, but I think it’s the weapons, isn’t it? The NRA?” he said, according to The Monitor.
If I ever get to establish Sebastianland, the first rule for holding office in Sebastianland will be to name each of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights and tell me what right they protect. I think that should be basic, required knowledge for being a member of Congress. How can I expect a person to uphold their oath of office if they don’t even know the document?
I sometimes think the biggest flaw in the Constitution is that we didn’t have more provisions to try to keep morons from holding public office. If you had to devise a constitutional system that filtered for morons, how would you do it?
Domestic Murders
Apparently CSGV doesn’t care about an uncomfortably large number of domestic murders.  You’ll often hear from the other side that their cause is reducing gun violence, and not other forms of violence. I get that people can pick their cause, and I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that. But I also tend to think, translating this into another context, it would be like an organization dedicated to reducing drunk driving fatalities by trying to regulate Fords, and not concerning itself with regulating Hondas, Toyotas, or Chryslers. Sure, it’s legit, but it’s odd, and it would make me question whether the organization in question was really just out to get Ford.
Jihadist Gunwalking?
Clayton points to an article in the Washington Times that suggests the Obama Administration was walking guns to the jihadists. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Of course, I thought the same thing about walking guns to Mexico, and that turned out to be actually happening.
Snoreastercane
It’s the storm of the century of the year. I might be happy that I got that generator when I did.
When snow comes before all the leaves are off the trees, especially if it’s a wet and sticky snow, very bad things happen. We’ll make contingency plans for the blog in the event of a serious, prolonged outage.
Muckraking in the 21st Century
Anyone who’s gotten politically involved to any degree will eventually run into a kook. Normally this will happen very quickly. Working gun shows in 2008, I ran into several. To some degree, since you’re not there to pick fights with people, you humor them for a bit and hope they move on. Usually it’s run of the mill conspiracy nonsense, or something that’s mostly harmless. Often time the kook wants to be heard. They’ll have their say, you can be polite, nod a lot, and they’ll move on.
When this James O’Keefe video first started, I was somewhat sympathetic to Patrick Moran, because he legitimately tried to steer the videographer’s energy back to legitimate tasks. And then he went completely off the rail. Full context is provided at the end, and I watched that too. I thought full context was worse than the editing:
I might have tried to steer this person back to legitimate tasks too, but once it became clear this character would not be dissuaded, I would have said “Well, what you’re talking about is voter fraud, and it’s illegal, and we don’t do things that way, sorry.” What I definitely would not do is offer some advise on how to pull it off.
Oral Arguments in the Woollard Case
This is the challenge to Maryland’s restrictive carry laws, that won in District Court, and are on appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.Oral arguments happened yesterday. We do not yet have full oral argument audio or transcript, but press accounts can found at the Baltimore Sun.
Fortune Sued
You probably all remember the Eban article that appeared in Fortune Magazine a while back. Rank apologia if I ever saw it. Dave Hardy is reporting that Fortune is now facing a lawsuit by one of the whistleblowers for publishing a known falsehood. These kinds of cases are difficult to win, but as Dave notes, Fortune may be in trouble here.