Category: Guns

SayUncle notes a victory in the First Circuit which thew out a gun charge for someone who had been involuntary committed under state procedures that did not offer proper due process. This looks like a circuit court ruling, which is a bigger deal. This is now law in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, and Rhode Island. Interestingly, it looks like the attorneys for the defendant (it’s a criminal case) were from the Federal Defender Office.

At the same time, there’s been a setback in the Ninth Circuit, where the Supreme Court has denied cert on an appeal of a ruling upholding a California Law which banned domestic violence misdemeanants from having firearms for ten years. For the record, I hate it when reporters, who ought to know better, characterize this as some kind of approval by the Supreme Court as to the law being challenged in the cert petition. Denial of cert means very little. For all anyone knows, the Court is looking for a better case through which to take up that issue. Certainly, if I were looking at it, I wouldn’t like the added complication of the prohibition being only temporary under California law. There could be a lot of reasons for cert being denied.

Also, ANJRPC/SAF recently lost a motion in district court challenging New Jersey’s carry statute. The judge ruled there was no right outside the home, but ANJRPC/SAF are appealing.

Titled “A Resolution urging the State of New York to use common sense and sound judgement in the disposition of the case against Meredith Graves.” This would have about as much impact as New York asking 1950s Tennessee to go easy on the poor black fellow who happened to not understand that sitting at the wrong lunch counter was a problem. As it is, if they go easy on Meredith Graves, it’ll be because they fear spurring the passage of pending civil rights legislation and the filing of civil rights lawsuits. They certainly won’t be doing it out of a sense of justice, or because they’ve finally seen the light about the Second Amendment. The only way jurisdictions like New York join the rest of America when it comes to respecting all of the Bill of Rights is if it’s forced on them.

Emily Miller, who has been documenting her attempt to acquire a pistol legally in the District of Columbia, is apparently finding that obtaining crippled 10 round capacity magazines for some of the guns she wants is now rather hard. It would seem it’s turned on its head from the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. While for most firearms, >10 round magazines were always plentiful during the ban, for a few models, finding the standard magazines was difficult. I remember paying 130 dollars for a new standard factory magazine that held 15 rounds for my Glock 19. Ironically, 17 and 30 round magazines I seem to recall being much cheaper.

Either way, these are the reasonable gun laws that are supported by our opponents. Remember, they don’t support prohibition, and never have, according to them, but they sure don’t mind supporting what amounts to practical prohibition. Imagine how hard this would be for a poor person living in a crappy neighborhood who has to work two jobs to pay rent and put food on the table? Heavens… we don’t want those kinds of people having guns now, do we? Maybe we should be asking CSGV and Brady why they hate poor people.

Stranger over at Extrano’s Alley is doing a series on some of the history behind the Gun Control Act. This post is November.

It was only a matter of time before technology to detect the presence of a gun on a person at a distance became a reality, but they are working on something in NYC to do just that. You can certainly bet Bloomberg will want to step up this project, in the hopes of landing more innocent gun owners in prison.

There is already arguably Supreme Court precedent in this area in the Kyllo v. US, in which the Court ruled that using special technology not available to the general public requires a warrant. Kyllo, however, involved the home, so the Courts would have to extend that protection to the streets. But it’s not inconceivable that would be the case. Bloomberg has never been remarkably concerned about American liberties, however, so it doesn’t surprise me this is coming out of New York.