The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Petitioners brief can be found here, which Dave Hardy says is very, very well done. NRA has also filed its brief in this case, which can be found here. Expect more briefs filed in McDonald to be forthcoming.
UPDATE: Dave Hardy points out that the NRA brief is actually filed as a respondent in support of the Petitioner, rather than an amicus brief, and describes the difference.
The Firearms Blog has a post up about racking a Glock with just the inertia of the slide. I was skeptical, so I decided to do that math. I only have a Glock 19 at my disposal for measurement, but it can’t be that radically different than any other Glock. We can get a ballpark figure for how fast a Glock has to be moving for the slide to rack.
We can figure out how fast a Glock has to be traveling in order for the slide to rack when the Glock comes to a halt. We can do this through conservation of energy. The Glock 19 spring takes about 15 lb. or 67 Newtons to move the spring the 3.5cm it needs. Given that the energy of a spring is 1/2 Fx, that give us 0.5 * 67N * 0.035m or 1.17 Joules. To generate enough kinetic energy, the 350g Glock slide would have to move at 2.6 m/s. The human body is certainly capable of generating this kind of speed, but I’m a bit more skeptical one could stop the movement of the gun quickly enough. From a matter of force, it would take an acceleration (using F=ma) of 191 m/s^2, or about 19.5x the force of gravity. That sounds like a lot of acceleration, but it’s not beyond human capability.
What makes me skeptical is the fact that I can’t seem to reproduce this, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Seems to me it would just be easier to repeal it. This list of things that needs improving shows the absurdity of this law in the first place.
As Jacob points out, the Obama Administration isn’t retreating from the Assault Weapons issue entirely, but they pretty clearly aren’t in a hurry to pass it, or to take it on right now. As long as Obama has other issues he wants to get through Congress, he’s probably not going to fight with us. But just because that’s the case today, doesn’t mean it will be the case tomorrow.
I just watched Paul Helmke and Jacob Hornberger debate on Nightline’s Twittercast, and I thought Paul mopped the floor with him. Hornberger came off as a foaming at the mouth libertarian extremist, while Paul Helmke was, well, Paul Helmke. Hornberger is President of the Future of Freedom Foundation, which has little to do with gun rights, and I wish would have nothing to do with gun rights after hearing him debate Helmke. My disdain for doctrinaire Libertarians is well known, but it’s hard for even me to believe Hornberger’s statement on Fort Hood:
Amidst all the debate over whether the Ft. Hood killer is a terrorist, murderer, enemy combatant, traitor, sleeper agent, or insane person, there is one glaring fact staring America in the face: what happened at Ft. Hood is more blowback from U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even at this early stage of the investigation, the evidence is virtually conclusive that the accused killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Hood by deep anger and rage arising from the things that the U.S. government has been doing to people in the Middle East for many years.
Yeah, you can go to hell Mr. Hornberger. You don’t represent the views of mainstream gun owners, hell, you don’t even represent the views of mainstream libertarians. With guys like this on our side, we don’t need enemies. Hornberger is an extremist, and yet he was chosen by Nightline to represent gun owners. Unbelievable.
CNN has dropped to the bottom of the crap pile of Cable News. They must think they can help up their ratings by scaring people with the militia bogeyman:
There might have been a time when they would have worked, but I think everyone realizes by now that the emperor has no clothes.
I’d like to know the numbers without the word “registered” being in there, but this is interesting:
Our survey included the question: “In general, do you agree or disagree that an individual should have a right to have a registered handgun at home?†52% strongly agreed, 30% agreed somewhat, 10% disagreed somewhat, and 7% strongly disagreed. This is also consistent with polls concerning views of the Second Amendment, where over 70 percent view gun ownership as an individual right. See [here]. It appears that support for gun rights has increased during Obama’s first year in office, although the trajectory seems to be a continuation of a trend that began during the last years of the Bush Administration. See [here].
And I have to wonder how much of the 10% somewhat disagreement was people who hated the “registered” language. I think a lot of gun owners would have a tough time saying yes to that entirely. Either way, it’s enough of a majority to pass a constitutional amendment, in all likelihood.
Jacob Sullum wrote an article here about the Fort Hood shooting, which must have socked the Brady Campaign in the gut to prompt this kind of response from Doug Pennington, but Jacob Sullum wasn’t about to let it go.
He’s pulling a John Kerry, and visiting around with local clubs. Do these clubs seriously not know what side this guy is on? If so why are they letting him use them to fool people?
Joe has some comments on open carry that is very well said, and adds some new information to the debate; namely that open carry has actually been focus grouped. It’s well worth reading.