Plea Deal for Meredith Graves

She took a plea to a misdemeanor and paid a $200 fine:

“This is not the kind of case that should prevent her from being a doctor,” attorney Daniel Horwitz said. “Licensing boards have a lot of discretion.”

“It’s the type of disposition that will allow her to get on with her life and career,” he continued, explaining why Graves, whose husband accompanied her to New York for her court appearance, decided to plead guilty. “What she did is not a crime in Tennessee.”

Graves will have pay a $200 fine in the case.

It’s still a travesty, but we will fix this. We can’t have individual cities opting out of respecting the Bill of Rights.

Microstamping Inserted into New York Budget

Sounds to me like if this passes, the Cerberus folks are going to regret relocating all their manufacturing to New York.

If microstamping were to become law, firearms manufacturers would be forced to employ a patented, sole-sourced concept that independent studies, including those from the National Academy of Sciences and the University of California at Davis, found to be flawed and easily defeated by criminals. Passage of this bill could result in layoffs of factory workers throughout New York as manufacturers, already being heavily lobbied by tax and gun friendly states, consider moving out of New York. Furthermore, firearms manufacturers could be forced to abandon the New York market altogether rather than spend the astronomical sums of money needed to completely reconfigure their manufacturing and assembly processes. This would directly impact law enforcement, firearms retailers and their law-abiding customers.

What we would call a bug, the supporters of this bill would call a feature. If you don’t think New York City politicians would sacrifice upstate jobs on the altar of their hatred for the Second Amendment, you’re kidding yourself.

 

Oral Argument in Peterson v. Gracia Today

John Richardson wants to know why the Brady Campaign want to keep gays defenseless. Peterson, a gay man, is suing the State of Colorado for not issuing licenses to carry to non-residents so that they may be able to carry while in Colorado. Colorado’s reciprocity statute is limited, and Colorado does not have reciprocity with Peterson’s home state. This is another small step in the lengthy struggle to get a carry case before the Supreme Court.

An Interesting Part of Florida Law

Our opponents have been busy all weekend tweeting to anyone who does or doesn’t want to listen to them that George Zimmerman is out on the street because of the dangerous NRA shoot first law, which legalizes murder, you know. Aside from the hyperbole, the section of Florida Law at issue here, which was part of the Castle Doctrine law passed not terribly long ago is as follows:

(2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force used was unlawful.

I am going to argue that this passage is relatively meaningless. Standard procedures would be to take the shooter into custody for questioning, which was done in this case. Zimmerman was then released because no probable caused existed to hold him. The standard for an arrest or to be charged with a crime has always been probable cause. So what does this change really? It seems to me all this does is codify what’s already generally law.

Canadian Gun Owners Go Underground

From the National Post:

She is a Toronto grandmother of two in her mid-sixties and she is sharing her love of guns in mid-winter on a underground range in Toronto’s west end. (That range has since closed; Ellen’s club now shoots at another range in the City of Toronto but will not disclose its location.)

Ellen also won’t share her real name. The request for anonymity reflects a reluctance to disclose personal information in a city in which even legal gun ownership comes with a stigma attached.

“You have to be careful who you talk to,” she says. “It’s like religion and politics.”

As long as gun owners remain underground and won’t talk about what they do, the extinction of the culture that allows and tolerates gun ownership is inevitable. Also, to change anything for the better, you have to change the culture. From a Canadian Criminologist:

“I know some people like sport shooting, but it doesn’t seem to me like much of a sport, personally. I think a lot of people would also think of it as quite peculiar as a sport, especially because where are those guns stored and how safely? A lot of people would share the view that you should get yourself a proper sport and go play hockey or something.”

And the reason you need to be “out of the closet” so to speak, is because if you’re not, you can’t attack people like this above for being the sanctimonious pricks that they are. The key to changing the culture is to make the attitude displayed above unacceptable. You won’t see anti-gun folks here saying stuff like this, because we have succeeded in accomplishing that.

Quote of the Day: The Twinkie Test

From Caleb:

I guess that’s cool to know that I shouldn’t stick a pastry in my magwell, except I already knew that because I’m not an idiot. Contrived tests like that don’t show me anything about the durability or reliability of a weapons system; if that test proves anything it proves my already standing point that AKs were designed for the lowest common denominator of military forces.

That’s in response to this video here:

I have to say, that while I don’t really have a dog in the AK v. AR fight, that’s not even a fair comparison for a Twinkie test, since one was shoved in a mag well, and the other into a mag well while the bolt was locked back. But either way, I own both platforms, and each has their strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think it’s much disputed that AKs can be used and abused and still fire more reliably, but the ergonomics and accuracy suffer. ARs demand more care and attention, but I can more easily drop a magazine and replace it without dismounting the gun, and have a prayer of hitting a target at 300 meters.

Insurrectionist Militias

I’m going to anxiously await CSGV to condemn this:

The New Black Liberation Militia, a self-styled black survival group, has announced that it plans to make a citizens arrest of Zimmerman next week, the Associated Press reported.

It quoted Najee Muhammad, a group leader, saying, “We’ll find him. We’ve got his mug shot and everything.”

Natalie Jackson, a lawyer for the Martin family, said she does not support the threat, but also cannot control them.

If CSGV is to live up to its own standards, and not be hypocritical tools, it would not only condemn this, but also smear the Martin family. As it is, I think the Martin family is correct in their response, and I agree they can’t control the situation. But what some people would call justice, I would call vigilantism and kidnapping. CSGV is willing to hold all of us responsible for the actions of whack jobs and lunatics, so I don’t see why they would make an exception in this case.

I roundly condemn what the NBL Militia is attempting here, and believe CSGV should as well. The rule of law is the rule of law, and men are entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. If this were the New White Liberation Militia, they would condemn their very existence, and I would join them. They would also smear us with the specter of such a militia, which I would not do. It is as unfair to smear all African-Americans with the specter of the NBLM as it is to smear all Second Amendment supporters with the specter of Tim McVeigh and racist militia groups. But I can promise you CSGV lives by a double standard here. They are fraud, they know they are frauds, which is why all they have left is anger.