Guns – Page 164 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Administrative Procedures are Important

ATF has a habit of ruling by letter, instead of the method Congress prescribes through the Administrative Procedures Act. Dave Hardy notes that in the case of 80% lowers, which are all over the gun news because of the raid on Ares Armor. It would be possible to do rule making on what a receiver is and is not, and have it be clear in the Code of Federal Regulations.

I don’t know how much you all know about these EP Armor polymer lowers, but it looks to me like they mill out the space for the trigger group, and then backfill it with a different color polymer so the customer knows exactly how much to machine. ATF argues that the milling process constitutes manufacturing a firearm, with all that it entails, regardless of whether you backfill it later. They have an argument to be made there.

But it’s quite disturbing that ATF was fishing for Ares customer list. What crime have the customers committed? Violating a determination letter? I know the courts have a habit of deferring to agency determinations, but how long is ATF going to be permitted to get away with ruling by letterhead instead of federal regulations like agencies are bound to?

I’d say good advice is, if you buy an 80% lower, cash and carry is the watch order of the day.

NRA Board Elections

With about 3 weeks for ballots to be returned, we’re doing a bit of a late overview of who we’re voting for this year. Neither one of us is voting for more than 10 people. There’s no need to feel like you need to fill in 25 circles just because you can. Here are a few of the names who might otherwise be overlooked.

First up our ballots (which happen to be exactly the same, which isn’t normally the case – maybe because we’re both digital subscribers?) is William H Dailey. He’s chair of the Civil Rights Defense Fund which often funds cases that have the opportunity to set precedent. Even if the bigger court cases on carry are generating mixed results, the CRDF is often involved with cases that rarely make major headlines.

We also backed Dan Boren because he does show up to participate, and politically I think keeping moderate Democrats involved in the issue. Representing the Left Coast, we’re voting for Joel Friedman who we’ve mentioned before.

Coming back east, we also both voted for Patricia A Clark from Newtown, Connecticut. She’s very involved in the shooting sports side of the issue, and I think that’s particularly important in places like Connecticut right now. In the same column on our ballots, there’s Todd J Rathner from Arizona who is actively involved in state legislatures pushing bills for both gun and knife rights. At the very bottom of the column is Linda L Walker who has been very good at being accessible to many gun owners on the ground.

Finally, we both voted for Antonio Hernandez of Puerto Rico who currently serves as a non-board member on the Legal Affairs and Urban Affairs Committees and has pushed to promote a pro-gun culture there by establishing the first Friends dinner and getting the island’s state association authorization renewed. In addition, I also cast a vote for Allan D Cors for his work with the NRA Foundation, as well as his involvement with ILA. I’m a fan of board members who have been involved in multiple aspects of the organization.

As always, we’ll highlight the results of the votes at the Annual Meeting.

NRA May Have Succeeded at Scuttling Murthy Nomination

The Senate is balking on Vivek Murthy, reports the New York Times, and also The Hill. The NY Times notes:

â€œWe are recalibrating our strategy around his floor vote,â€ said one senior White House official, who added that a range of options was being discussed. They included working with Democratic leaders to gain more support, delaying a vote until after the midterm elections, or allowing Dr. Murthy to withdraw.

They’re screwed no matter how they want to spin this. They’ve been put in a tough spot. I was kind of skeptical Surgeon General, an office I don’t think anyone pays attention to, was worth a fight over, but this seems to have worked out well so far.

Obama Issues Executive Order over Ukraine

See here. The language essentially freezes all assets of certain Russian persons that are held within the jurisdiction of the United States, including persons “to operate in the arms or related materiel sector in the Russian Federation.” It also prevents them from entering the country. I’m not certain whether this would affect firearm and ammunition imports, but my reading of it suggests that it does. I am not familiar enough with theÂ International Emergency Economic Powers Act to know for sure. It would seem that ammunition within the country already is fine, because it’s your property, or the property of the ammo dealer. Whether Wolf, which is a domestic corporation, is affected, I do not know. It would seem it would depend on whether any Russian Oligarchs own it. But either way, my reading of this suggests that it would be unlawful for anyone to purchase ammunition from Tula, which Wolf needs to do to stay in business.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Politico suggests that no, it only targets personal assets.

American officials stressed Monday morning that they were going after only the private finances of the people targeted, and not their business interests, with the hope that this strategy â€” done in coordination with travel restrictions and parallel moves by European Union member countries â€” will increase pressure on Putin.

Though, the EO reads differently.

Monday News Links

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.”

Bloomberg Says He Can Outspend NRA

Bloomberg on whether he can outspend the NRA: “Oh sure!” But then he backtracks and notes he’s not the only funder of this. OK then, pull all your money out, Mike, and lets see how well these groups survive on their own. There’s more to this issue than money, and Bloomberg has yet to learn that. He has also yet to learn when he says that he can outspend NRA, we hear that he can use his money to drown out our non-billionare voices. NRA isn’t funded by a rich patron.

Shannon Watts to IN Legs: Bullies!

Shannon Watts doesn’t like people exposing her as aÂ ~~former~~Â corporate spinmeister.Â Apparently that’s bullying. The reason we keep beating her in legislatures is because there’s no real depth to Moms Demand Action.Â That must be why she’s decided to go corporate, but even there, she has no real track record.

What lost Starbucks was the OC nonsense from our side, and in a sense we didn’t really lose Starbucks, since you can still carry a firearm there. Staples has held firm and are obviously tiring of Watt’s antics. Facebook didn’t really give them anything they were asking for, but offered them a way to back down and save face by claiming a victory when none existed. That was such thin gruel that even the Brady Campaign, who pioneered the declaring victory from defeat move, couldn’t join the spin.

Opposition to Range Improvements

I can’t help but laugh at this story that promotes all sorts of negative political stereotypes, and all because neither the writer nor the interviewees appears to have done any homework on the issue.

So a Colorado shooting range is having problems maintaining & improving their facilities on membership dues. Becoming a 100% NRA club will make them more likely to qualify for grants from NRA that can pay for some of these improvements. Not to mention, NRA sanctions many shooting competitions, they provide firearm safety training programs, club insurance, and they are a pretty helpful resource for information for gun ranges looking to expand or improve. All of this falls into the category of General Operations and/or the NRA Foundation. None of it is the territory of NRA-ILA, a separate political entity with its own funding and another separate political action committee in NRA PVF.

Yet, Democratic members are complaining to the media that with a new requirement to join NRA as part of your membership to the shooting range that they are being forced to join “a fringe right-wing political organization” without actually making any effort to learn about the apolitical side of the organization that the club is turning to for help. But the advocates of the membership requirement aren’t exactly working to educate people when they are touting that they agree with NRA on politics, so it’s all okay.

A little education on both sides would go a very long way in minimizing hard feelings on the decision…

Understanding SCOTUS

Sebastian has been really busy the last couple of days, but he noted that quite a few people shared links to Dave Hardy’s explanations for the actions of SCOTUS in regard to the Sunnyvale mag ban.

Response by Sunnyvale to SCOTUS

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 toÂ circumvent the appeals process by asking this Court to prejudge the very issuesÂ 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, includingÂ the D.C. Circuit, has applied intermediate scrutiny and held that such a ban doesÂ not violate the Second Amendment. See Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3dÂ 1244, 1264 (D.C. Cir. 2011); San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Assâ€™n v. City &Â Cnty. of San Francisco, C-13-05351 WHA, 2014 WL 644395, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Feb.Â 19, 2014); New York State Rifle & Pistol Assâ€™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. Oâ€™Malley, C-13-2861, TRO Hrâ€™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 andÂ bear arms, the Circuits have adopted a careful and measured approach to theÂ various gun control ordinances they have evaluated, deciding each case on itsÂ merits and avoiding broad pronouncements that would up-end the development ofÂ Second Amendment jurisprudence. In keeping with this careful approach, aÂ consensus has emerged in the Circuits that while severe restrictions on the right toÂ keep and bear arms either fail categorically without regard to their justifications orÂ fail strict scrutiny, more modest burdens that permit armed self-defense but onlyÂ 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.