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"News Media", Courts, Culture, gun control, gun grabbers, Law, Media, Politics, Rights, Voting

So whatever happened to

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So whatever happened to that Governor, you know, that one? It’s like one of those click bait questions you see at the bottom of an online news story.

Illinois has a rich tradition of their governors winding up making license plates due to corruption. Four of the last seven in fact. 4 of Illinois’ last 7 governors went to prison

But it’s not Illinois I’m thinking of right now. It’s Missouri. Greitens, yeah, that’s the name Eric Greitens. He was accused of felony invasion of privacy, it was all over the news, non-stop. It wasn’t the first time a conservative figure had been accused of such. Herman Cain, Bill O’Reilly, Judge Roy Moore, Judge Brett Kavanaugh come to mind, and the media covered it non-stop. Although Kavanaugh is different. In the first cases those men either dropped out of the political race they were in, and O’Reilly left his TV show. They tried it with Sean Hannity and he said “bring it”. They did, and he informed them he would fight it and sue, they decided to leave him alone and dropped it. In Judge Kavanaugh’s case, he rode it out, as has President Trump. Governor Greitens did not. While he was prosecuted with tax payer dollars, he had to pay for his own defense. But in all those cases, when the men stepped aside the story just went away. In Kavanaugh’s case it was also different in that while it was on-going some of accusers began to be exposed as lying.

I think this is when I began to get really testy about knee jerk reactions. When the Greitens case was flooding the #MSM #FakeNews airways there were already people saying “Wait a minute, something is off here”. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, whom I mightily admire did a couple of columns during the situation.

These Five Questions About The Eric Greitens Indictment Must Be Answered

That is a fascinating column! It was followed by

Why The Prosecutor In The Eric Greitens Case Could Be The One Who Ends Up In Jail

And she should. But wait, there’s more.

Missouri case that toppled GOP governor boomerangs on Soros-backed prosecutor

Wait! What! The Demoncrat prosecutor/political hack Kim Gardner lied about evidence, hid evidence, hired a retired FIB guy who also lied about evidence. I know, it’s like that movie “Groundhog Day” isn’t it?

Soros, one of the largest liberal benefactors in history, donated $630,000 that year to a political action committee called Safety and Justice Committee. That super PAC in turn donated more than $204,000 as an in-kind donation to Gardner’s election. Soros’ support accounted for about two-thirds of her total campaign donations of nearly $300,000, according to a post-election filing with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Gardner’s platform of criminal justice reform to help minorities proved a nice fit for Team Soros.

Color me shocked.

Ex-Missouri governor considers suing prosecutor over dismissed indictment

“It was a crime that was committed against me, but most importantly a crime against the people of Missouri. This was their votes that they worked to overturn,” Greitens said during a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News podcast John Solomon Reports. “

I know! Progressives perverting the legal system to get rid of an elected official they didn’t want elected. It’s just so eerily familiar, somethings ringing in the back of my mind. If only I could remember or put my finger on it. /Sarcasm

Missouri: Soros-Backed Democrat Prosecutor’s Conduct Under Review in Greitens Case

You can hear a very interesting interview between Greitens and Seb Gorka

So in addition to Governor Greitens “pissing people off” per Seb, why would Demoncrats and Soros want to get Governor Greitens out of office? I mean, yeah, he was fulfilling campaign promises and nobody really expects politicians to do that these days, but what else could have been in the chute? Translations: Coming down the pike, In the wind, In the offing, Waiting to happen?

Well now.

Missouri governor says state will accept refugees This would be the replacement Governor, the one that took over after the Soros funded Gardner pushed Greitens out.

Missouri Gov. Michael Parson (R) said Monday that the state will accept refugees after President Trump signed an executive order allowing governors to opt out of doing so, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

What? Missouri didn’t have a high enough crime rate? Needed more people for the taxpayers to support? Of course they may assimilate and become useful citizens, but I somehow think that Missourians might not be all that thrilled. Though Parsons isn’t the only one.

These 15 GOP governors are asking for more refugee resettlement in their red states

A tip of my Stetson to my buddy Larry that tipped me off on that bit.

But even if Missouri doesn’t suffer the increased crime rates, and more people on the dole there are other considerations.

Election Fraud Cases

Missouri Secretary of State: Yes, voter fraud is a real threat

Voter Fraud Changed the Outcome of a Missouri Election

Missouri, like I’m sure other states already seems to have a voter fraud problem. Why does Parsons want to add to it?

Democrat Voter Fraud in Minnesota

Who is elected absolutely has the ability to change the character of a state. For example look how settling around 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota “enriched” their culture and affected their state.

How Minneapolis’ Somali community became the terrorist recruitment capital of the US

The state that gave us the anti-Semitic, terrorist supporting, Bernie Sanders loving Ilhan Omar. Is she still married to her brother?

But Minnesota is not the only state that has been affected by an influx of “outsiders”. Look at Virginia. It used to be a nice state, lots of nice horses, lots of nice places to ride. Oh, I’m sure it had other good qualities as well. For example it used to be sane. As in respecting the rights of individuals as recognized (not granted) by the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. Rights that are granted by G-d, not government. But all that has changed. There has been an influx of progressives, and they’ve changed who gets elected and who gets elected is who writes and votes on laws. For the last few months we’ve been watching gun owners in Virginia wage a desperate battle to hang onto their Second Amendment rights.

But it will not end with Virginia. Virginia is not the only state under attack, it is part of a bigger plan. And like the Wuhan Corona virus, it can be there for awhile before the state even realizes it’s been infected. There is a book on the plan to turn Red States into Purple States. Blueprint

“The Colorado turnaround in 2008 was nothing short of phenomenal: a once rock-solid Republican state went Democratic in a big way. And members of both parties are still scratching their heads over what happened. Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer have dug into the question for their book ‘The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care.’ –Political Bookworm Blog by Steven Levingston

Missouri does have a piece of legislation pending that may help them, although it wouldn’t prevent a Virginia style takeover. It is an excellent bill called “Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA)”.

If you have friends in Missouri, and I do, you may want to pass this along to them. There is a reference page from a group called Missouri First Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA)

And they have a video explaining how it works

Last I heard is the Bill is doing great in the house with 86 co-sponsors, but in the Senate a Senator named Doug Libla who is Chair of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee is holding it up. Seems he insists it be watered down. Now one would think this Sen. Libla would be a Demoncrat, but he’s not. He’s supposed to be a Republican. I guess he’s one of those “Trans-Republicans” like Mittens Romney.

A current specimen of a “TransRepublican”

So I suppose, inquiring minds wonder, how many reasons were there that the Soros funded prosecutor went after Governor Greitens, and why exactly did they want him removed? Ultimately will it end up changes the character of the state? For the sake of Missourians, I hope their Second Amendment Preservation Act is signed into law soon.

So whatever happened to? According to the video, he’s headed back to court. Sic ‘em Governor Greitens.

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Courts, gun control, Law, Politics, SCOTUS

Cautiously Pessimistic

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Direct marketeer Alan Gottlieb is cautiously optimistic “that the U.S. Supreme Court will “step up to the plate” and expand further on the right to keep and bear arms that is protected by the Second Amendment in the case of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York.” I’m not. And when Gottlieb says things are good, you know it’s gonna hit the fan.

Post-Heller and McDonald, the Supreme Court has been AWOL on the Second Amendment. Many people thought that would change with the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh allegedly giving the Court a “conservative” majority. How they figure that with “It’s not a fee, it’s a tax” Roberts beats the heck out of me.

We had a chance to test that theory with the bump stock ban. And they rejected a temporary stay of enforcement. Twice.

Slow learners thought that SCOTUS granting cert to NYSRPA v. NYC was a good sign. I was dubious, and more so when they instructed parties to be prepared to argue the mootness point. If you weren’t keeping up, when the Court took the case, NYC changed their law slightly in an attempt to make the case moot, so the Court would drop it.

Moot. Imagine a lawsuit for car accident damages where the defendant argues the case is moot because the crash is over. NYC screwed over gun owners for years, limiting their training and defense options.

It’s possible that the Supreme Court has seen the error of its ways. That could be why they took up a “moot” case. Perhaps they’ll rule that NYC’s limitations on firearm transport were unconstitutional. Given its history, especially recent history, I don’t think so.

I think it’s nothing more than a political show. The Court figured they had to be seen to do something on all these 2A cases, and they picked this one for the dog and pony show. They can say they leaned over backwards to give NYSRPA a chance, but gosh darn it, the mootness point was real. Dismissed.

But the really pessimistic possibility is that they won’t dismiss, and uphold the city’s old law. All it takes is five justices, and if Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are unknown qualities, Roberts is a proven lefty mole.

We shall see.

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Academics, Courts, Culture, gun control, gun grabbers, guns, mindset, Politics, Schools and campuses

Wise Judges, judgment and the lack thereof

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Admittedly, this column is a bit behind the times, I apologize. Parshah Shoftim was a few weeks ago. And part of the Parshah really hit home. Probably because if I spend any time at all listening to the news, all I hear is impeachment, impeachment, impeachment (said is the best Jan Brady whine). The secret Soviet style hearings which include only progressive #Demoncrats, the liar Adam Shiff-less., and lots of leaks, lots and lots of leaks.

Shiff-less

But here’s the relevant portion of the Parshah that got me to thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of Parshah Shoftim

This is from Deut./Devarim דברים

19:16.

Haven’t all of the women hired to attack Kavenaugh recanted? After they and their complicit media tried to ruin his and his family’s lives. Of course.

And the penalty for that?

No matter the crime, gun control is the answer. Knee-jerk gun control response to deadly shootings

Honest law-abiding gun owners, judged guilty for the acts of criminals.

And as Sammy “The Bull” Gravano points out, the mob will always have guns. You only have to listen to the first couple minutes if you want.

Well, the mob and #Bozo’s armed guys he would have sent in to make sure American Citizens complied with his rules, so they could “recover” the AR-15s and AK-47s. Recover? Were they missing before they were stolen by #Bozo?

The murderer of Kate Steinle went free, he literally got away with murder. And posters put up at a liberal Kalifornia college campus honoring her and reminding people of the cost of illegal un-checked invasion have been deemed racist my the college administrators. Color me shocked.

This is wise judgment?

But the real hypocrisy of liberals is on full display in a fairly recent bill proposed by Sen. John Cornyn -Rep of Texas. He proposed a bill to “combat mass shootings”. He proposed to do this by

It would expand resources for mental health treatment, facilitate the creation of “behavioral intervention teams” to monitor students exhibiting disturbing behavior and offer new tools for law enforcement.

The bill’s school safety proposals are a response to years of school shootings perpetrated by young people described as isolated and troubled.

What is their objection you ask?

Privacy experts and education groups, many of which have resisted similar efforts at the state level, say that level of social media and network surveillance can discourage children from speaking their minds online and could disproportionately result in punishment against children of color, who already face higher rates of punishment in school.

“This is all very frightening,” an education policy consultant, who has been tracking the legislation, told The Hill. “There’s no real research, or even anecdotal information, to back up the idea … that following everything [kids] do online is really a way to determine that they’re going to be violent.”

Now, I’m not a fan of monitoring or big brothering anyone. But this is hypocrisy at it’s finest. And if you don’t believe me, you could ask Alexandria Keyes. She was suspended from school for five days after she posted a picture of herself with her brother.

The two are shown holding guns and the photo is captioned, “Me and my legal guardian are going to the gun range to practice gun safety and responsible gun ownership while getting better so we can protect ourselves while also using the First Amendment to practice our Second Amendment.”

Oh the shock, the horror, the carnage! Oh, wait there wasn’t any. The girl and her brother just went to the range practiced marksmanship and harmed no one. But panties were being twisted into a bunch at a rapid rate, and Alexandria was suspended for disrupting school. Huh? She wasn’t at school, she didn’t use a school computer to post the picture. Sen. Cornyn’s bill only monitors online activity while the students are using school computers.

Abbe Smith, Chief Communications Officer for Cherry Creek School District, told me that the decision to suspend Keyes “involved multiple social media posts that concerned the school community and resulted in multiple parents keeping their kids home from school out of concern for safety.” Smith said that federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protections prevent her from discussing the details of the case, including disclosing the other photos the district allegedly considered in Keyes’ suspension.

More about this

The school’s policy references Colorado law, which defines the grounds for suspension as “behavior on or off school property that is detrimental to the welfare or safety of other pupils or of school personnel, including behavior that creates a threat of physical harm to the child or to other children.”

… According to Cherry Creek School Board policy, the school district reserves the right to suspend students who “[repeatedly interfere] with a school’s ability to provide educational opportunities to other students.” Over the phone, Smith noted that since multiple parents kept their children home after becoming aware of the post, Keyes’ photo could be viewed as an impediment to the school’s ability to educate, even if the district didn’t ultimately make its decision based on the chances that Keyes posed a physical threat. Does this mean parental fears can be a mechanism for the school district to veto a teen’s extracurricular activities?

Is Cherry Creek not worried that this is going to prevent Alexandria from speaking her mind online? Maybe Cherry Creek never got the memo from the educational policy consultant that monitoring online activity of children is not effective in determining if they are going to be violent later?

And those sanctimonious sniveling parents that bullied the school into suspending her? They have accused her falsely. She has done nothing wrong. They have left a mark on her school record because of their hoplophobic tiny minds. They have allowed their lack of education and knowledge to deprive her of five days worth.

What should then be their sentence?

False statements given to police because someone wants someone’s guns seized in a storm trooper operation because they are A) mad at their uncle B) don’t like how someone voted C) don’t think people should be allowed to own guns D) ___________________ for whatever reason. Police show up, guns are seized and sometimes, sometimes, people die. Red Flag laws, the height of hypocrisy coming from progressives.

What then should be their sentence? And what should their sentence be if it results in the death of an innocent gun own, exactly as they intended it would?

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Bump-Fire, Courts, gun control, guns, Law, SCOTUS, shooting

[UPDATED] DigiTrigger

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This appears to be a machinegun under current ATF BSTD/AutoGlove/etc rulings. Now, the demo in the video is marked “Military & Police,” so I’m going to assume that it won’t be available to us peons, despite SCOTUS’ Miller ruling. But…

This civilian unit seems to have the same problem. Unlike a normal mechanical binary trigger, which fires one round when the finger pulls the trigger and a second round when the finger allows the trigger to reset, DigiTrigger appears to use the electronics to operate the firing mechanism twice for a single finger operation of the trigger. (see below) That is exactly why the ATF shut down the AutoGlove. The alleged single — “volitional” — operation of the trigger is the basic of the BSTD rule.

Update:  I contacted the company. The pull/release (P/R) mode is not burst, but fully simulates P/R: fire on pull, then fire when the finger lets the trigger reset. The DT1.6 digital machinegun I first mentioned is, as I expected, definitely NFA and is under development for the LE/Mil market. No surprise there.

I get it. People want to push the envelope of what they think is legal. But unless they’ve amassed a large pile of legal fund cash, and a herd of good attorneys, with the intent of a serious court challenge to BS ATF determinations and court decisions, all Digital Trigger Technologies is doing is asking for trouble.

If they know what they’re getting into and are willing to go to the mat on this, more power and the best of luck to them

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authoritarian swine, Courts, gun control, Law, Sellouts and traitors

Magazines are guns… now

Here we ago again, compliments of the “pro-2A Trump” administration.

I noted this issue 8 months ago: A Texas state judge let a suit go forward against Academy Sports & Outdoors, for selling a long gun to an out-of-state resident (specifically: the Sutherland Springs chumbucket). The legal theory was that the sale should not have proceeded because “high capacity” (i.e.- standard) magazines are banned in the asshole’s home state of Colorado, and 18 U.S. Code § 922(a)(3) bans the interstate sale of a firearm if it isn’t lawful in both states. (Never mind that the shooter was a prohibited person whom no one bothered reporting to NICS.)

The problem with that is that magazines are not firearms. The ATF has said so repeatedly. Therefore, 18 U.S. Code § 922 doesn’t apply.

Until now. Welcome to the wonderful world of feds redefining words… again.

Trump administration: Academy Sports liable for selling gun to Sutherland Springs shooter
Now, Trump administration lawyers are trying to shift some of the attention onto Academy Sports + Outdoors, writing in a motion filed Tuesday that the retailer is liable for the massacre because the shooter purchased his gun and high-capacity magazine at one of its stores.

[chumbucket] showed a Colorado license but carried out the purchase in Texas. High-capacity magazines are illegal in Colorado.

Same argument, but now it’s the federal government, rather than plaintiffs, doing the redefinition.

How Orwellian. We have always been at war with East Asia. Magazines were always firearms.

Trump is the most anti-2A President in decades, since 1994 at least. And he has successfully imposed more restrictions than any other President, Republican or Democrat, in his two and a half years in office.

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Bump-Fire, Courts, gun control, Law

If I see, “The ATF admitted…” One. More. Time.

This story won’t go away. Ever since NCLA ran their press release claiming the federal government admitted in a filing in the Aposhian case that they didn’t have the lawful authority to “legislate” the bump-fire ban, the “wonderful news” keeps showing up in blogs, forums, and news sites.

First, the story did originate with the NCLA. That was your first tip to take it with a grain of salt. You may recall that they also claimed that Aposhian was the only man in America allowed to keep his bump stock. That was… incorrect. It was almost as if they were completely unaware of the Guedes et al and Gunowners of America cases. I, and many other people, tried to get them to fix that statement. They informed me that a statement correcting it that would be released.

It wasn’t, at least as of this writing, six months later.

As for this claim… read the filing for yourself. What the federal attorneys said was, We did not arrogate Congressional power to legislate. We used our Congressionally delegated power to interpret the NFA’s language to establish rules; the ‘power to fill up the details’.

Please stop passing NCLA’s mischaracterization around.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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Academics, Courts, gun control, Law, SCOTUS

Debunking Lies

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Frustration is getting to me. That frustration is seeing the same lies over and over again, even though they’ve been thoroughly debunked. Like this one:

From 1791 until 2008, the supreme court refused to touch gun-control laws.
[…]
All that changed in 2008 with the court’s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v Heller. In striking down a Washington DC ban on handguns in the home, the court’s conservative majority held for the first time that the second amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.”

It’s particularly frustrating because that comes from “James J Grosfeld professor of law” Lawrence Douglas. Either Douglas is remarkably ill-informed for a law professor, or he’s a liar.

* 1857, Dred Scott
The Supreme Court ruled against Scott because — among other reasons — if Scott was a free man, he’d have the right to bear arms just like every other citizen. Not that he’d have the right to join a militia, but to bear arms at all.

*1876, Cruikshank
The Court found that the Bill of Rights applies to all people. The limitation was on which governments were forbidden to infringe on rights. In this case, they found that it did not apply to state governments.

* 1886, Presser
Admittedly, this was militia related, but the Court found that everyone capable of bearing arms is in the militia. Everyone; all individuals.

* 1939, Miller
This was an odd case, and not just for a dead defendant going to the Supreme Court. The final ruling held that the Second Amendment only protected those weapons suitable for military use. Since deceased Miller’s lawyers didn’t bother showing up, the Court bought the prosecution’s absurd claim that short-barrel shotguns are not military-grade and thus could be regulated under the National Firearms Act. Weapons suitable for military use cannot be regulated. Sadly, they limited that to the shotgun in question.

And that’s something to throw in victim disarmers’ faces when they shriek about “weapons of war.”

The Supreme Court long recognized the Second Amendment as protecting the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Heller didn’t change that; the Court acknowledging a preexisting, individual right was not new. They said so in their decision, citing multiple cases. What was new was incorporation.

Up until Heller, court rulings as to the applicability of various parts of the Constitution and Amendments to state and local governments was inconsistent. Heller should have settled the matter: The Second Amendment applies to all governments, not just the federal government.

But Chicago politicians ride the short bus, so the Supreme Court revisited the subject in McDonald. The Court slapped down the claim that Heller only applied to Washington, DC, and explicitly stated that it applies to all levels of government.

Is Douglas ignorant or a liar? I think he’s a liar, because this recently-common talking point has been debunked repeatedly. But VDs keep pushing it anyway, just as the cite Kellerman.

It’s frustrating. We’re stuck with the truth. The rights-violators are free to lie at will.

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Courts, gun control, gun grabbers, Law

Beyond Judicial Incompetence

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This is deliberate lies. Conflation, willfully mischaracterizing SCOTUS precedents.

Last week, I called out Beth Alcazar for accepting the victim disarmers’ große Lüge of conflating assault rifle with arbitrary “assault weapon.”

This is why. The Dishonorable Josephine L. Staton misapplied intermediate scrutiny in Rupp v. Becerra, a challenge to California’s “assault weapon” ban. This oath-breaking piece of… work ruled against the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgement, and granted Becerra’s.

The conflation lie shows up immediately.

Thus, in 1999, the AWCA was amended to allow legislators to define a new class of restricted weapons according to their features rather than by model. Under the 1999 amendments, a weapon was an “assault rifle” if it had “the capacity to accept a detachable magazine,” and any of the following features:

Right there, she falsely states that the law was about assault rifles, which leads her to claim…

Indeed, the Court concludes that semiautomatic rifles are virtually indistinguishable from M-16s.

Since the differences — receiver milling, bolt group, trigger group, and select-fire capability had been explained to the court, she is flat out lying. She rationalizes with something about which The Zelman Partisans have been warning you: rate of fire.

In enacting the now-defunct federal ban on assault rifles, Congress found that their rate of fire––300 to 500 rounds per minute–– makes semiautomatic rifles “virtually indistinguishable in practical effect from machineguns.

Again with the assault rifle conflation, and a deliberate mischaracterization of The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 which defined “assault weapons” as something distinctly different than assault rifles.

Then there is this:

In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Yet another outright lie. In HELLER, SCOTUS most carefully noted that the Second Amendment protects a preexisting right.

The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.
Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms.
Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion.

Moving on to another lie…

Because the Court concludes that semiautomatic assault rifles are essentially indistinguishable from M-16s, which Heller noted could be banned pursuant to longstanding prohibitions on dangerous and usual weapons, the Court need not reach the question of whether semiautomatic rifles are excluded from the Second Amendment because they are not in common use for lawful purposes like self-defense.

“Not in common use…” Reality begs to differ. AR-pattern rifles are often used for self defense. And hunting. Not to mention various other shooting sports. What in the flaming heck does Staton think people are doing with more than 16 million AR- and AK-pattern firearms?

But now that the “Honorable” Judge Malfeasance has equated semi-automatic ARs to select-fire M-16s, another Supreme Court precedent comes into play: MILLER.

In Miller, SCOTUS found that — because no one showed up to counter the prosecution’s ridiculous claim that the military doesn’t use short-barrel shotguns — short-barrel shotguns could be regulated under the NFA. Weapons suitable for militia use could not be regulated.

Staton has just ruled that semi-automatic AR-15 are military weapons. Under MILLER, the possession of them by individuals (See HELLER) is most certainly protected by the Second Amendment.

Reading her ruling alternates between infuriating and mind-numbing.

A pistol grip increases a shooter’s ability to control the rifle and reload rapidly while firing multiple rounds.

I have no idea what a pistol grip on a rifle with a forward magazine well has to do with reloading, but I’m not a lobotomized federal judge.

Regarding adjustable stocks…

Further, the shorter the rifle, the easier it is to conceal

Apparently she chooses to ignore statutory limits on the “concealability of rifles, since the minimum length of a non-NFA rifle is 26 inches.

Finally, flash suppressors reduce the flash emitted upon firing and aid a shooter in low-light conditions while also concealing his or her position, especially at night

Flash hiders don’t hide the flash from others. They don’t “conceal” the shooter’s position.

As discussed throughout, that the rifles are more accurate and easier to control is precisely why California has chosen to ban them.

Then ban sights and rifling, since they make all firearms more accurate. Legalize full-auto — nay, make full-auto mandatory, since, as this dishonest scum notes:

automatic fire “is inherently less accurate than semiautomatic fire.”

Clearly California, and Staton, wants firearms to be as inaccurate as possible, for the sake of public safety.

For the foregoing reasons LIES, MISCHARACTERIZATIONS, MISINTERPRETATIONS, AND ARBITRARY DECLARATIONS the Court GRANTS the Attorney General’s Motion for Summary Judgment and DENIES Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment.

Fixed it for you.

For this ruling alone, Staton should be impeached. Then indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced for malfeasance in office.

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Action, Bump-Fire, Courts, gun control, Law

So you didn’t want to die on “bump stock hill”

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For better than a year and a half, The Zelman Partisans have been trying to warn gun owners that the bump-fire stock ban was a bigger deal than just that. In late May, we warned that lawyers were taking notice and making this argument in public.

Now they’re arguing in Nevada state court that all semi-automatic firearms are “easily convertible” to machineguns and therefore are machineguns.

Parents of Las Vegas massacre victim sue gun makers and dealers: “These are weapons of war”
As the Parsons later learned, the shooter had used a dozen different rifles, each modified to simulate a machine gun with automatic fire. That allowed him to fire more than a bullet a second.

Machine guns have been banned since 1986. But the lawsuit the couple filed last night claims a gun that’s easily modifiable to fire automatically is a machine gun, and is therefore “flatly illegal” under federal and state law.

This challenge to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act hinges on the bump-fire ban. PLCA doesn’t protect manufacturers when they’ve broken the law, and this argument is that they’ve been unlawfully marketing post-1986 (thanks, VNRA) “easily converted” machineguns to civilians.

If you want to derail this suit, and avoid the otherwise inevitable unpleasantness of an attempted semi-auto ban, you need to support the groups fighting the bump-fire stock (or even rubber bands) ban:

Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America Are leading the charge in federal court.

Donate to Firearms Policy Coalition (and enter to win a SIG P320)

Donate to GOA

Please note that I am not recommending any donations to the National Rifle Association. They got us into this mess. And, to date, I can find no indication that they’ve diverted a penny of LaPierre’s wardrobe-and-busty-intern budget to a ban challenge; I’ve not found so much as an amicus brief in someone else’s case.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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Bump-Fire, Courts, gun control, Law, SCOTUS

“Political Expediency, Not Statutory Ambiguity”

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The Firearms Policy Coalition and Cato Institute have filed an amicus brief in Gun Owners of America v. Barr, the GOA’s bump-fire stock case in the 6th Circuit.

Read it. It’s only 17 pages in full, and the brief proper is just 11 pages (the remainder being the standard legal paperwork administrivia).

Yes, read it; but I’m going to distill the basic message for you anyway.

The ATF’s Interpretative Reversal Is Based on Political Expediency, Not Statutory Ambiguity
[…]
What prompted this reversal? The proposed rulemaking reveals that the impetus for this change in position was not an organic review of agency policy. Instead, the change was triggered by public outrage following the October 2017 mass killing in Las Vegas, which likely involved a bump-stock-type device:
[…]
The ATF admits that the rulemaking was commenced “in response” to outside political pressure.
[…]
On February 28, 2018, the president hosted a meeting with members of Congress to discuss school and community safety. […] President Trump interjected that there was no need for legislation because he would deal with bump stocks through executive action:

“And I’m going to write that out. Because we can do that with an executive order. I’m going to write the bump stock; essentially, write it out. So you won’t have to worry about bump stock.”
[…]
Reportedly, Justice Department officials told Senate Judiciary Committee staff that the government “would not be able to take [bump stocks] off shelves without new legislation from Congress.”

Likewise, the ATF director told police chiefs that his agency “did not currently have
the regulatory power to control sales of bump stocks.”

While the Department stated that “no final determination had been made,” President Trump boasted that the “legal papers” to prohibit bump stocks were almost completed. […] [B]efore the rulemaking was announced, President Trump tweeted: “Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”

Right there, they document that the decision had been made, regardless of the actual rulemaking process or facts, and that it deliberately bypassed legislation. We knew that, of course, but they collated and documented it in incriminating detail.

This is now a test of the court itself, not just ATF or DOJ. Taking the longer view, because I anticipate the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals blowing this off, it is a test of the Supreme Court.

If the ban is upheld, despite flawed regulatory practices (which didn’t really matter, as the process was a Potemkin show to pretend they weren’t actually banning by political fiat), and the grossly improper bypassing of Congress, there is no law.

By and large, honest gun owners try to live by the Constitution and the rule of law. We’ve put up with much over the decades because it was framed as “law,” and we thought we, too, had the courts and law to make our case for freedom. The politicians, bureaucrats, and especially the courts must consider the ramifications of making that impossible.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

 

Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with ISP and web host bills. And the rabbits need feed. Click here to donate via PayPal.
(More Tip Jar Options)

 

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