You may recall that I’ve been wondering how a live round ever made it onto the Rust set.
One thing that always bothered me was presence of live rounds on site at all. Where did they come from? Who brought them? How did at least one end up in the gun?
We may have a better idea of who that was, now. Armorer Gutierrez-Reed had tried suggesting the company that supplied blanks had mixed the live rounds in with the right stuff. The forensic examination of components strongly suggested otherwise. Then there was the report that she had retrieved the gun after the shooting, before the police arrived, and removed the spent case. That’s odd,and sounds rather like tampering with evidence.
I just ran across this tidbit, which — if true — may explain a lot.
The New York Post reports that police gathered text messages from Reed that indicated she had attempted to use live ammunition on the set of her previous film.
Did she bring them again, for the Rust filming? And was she trying to conceal evidence of what she’d done? I suppose we’ll see when her trial starts.
This may be part of the new forensic evidence that the prosecutors cited when dropping charges against Baldwin for now. I still think the actor completely failed to exercise “due caution and circumspection,” but if Gutierrez-Reed herself knowingly brought the live rounds onto the set, and loaded one into the gun, a lot more of the culpability for the resulting death and injury shifts her way. Not all, but some.
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This claim comes via the not-so-reliable LA Times.
‘Rust’ prosecutors drop charges against Alec Baldwin after questions over gun misfire
The development came after prosecutors received new information in the case — that Baldwin’s prop gun had been modified before being delivered to the low-budget western in October 2021, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The replica of the vintage weapon — a Colt .45 revolver — had been modified , increasing the odds that the gun might have misfired, as Baldwin has said, according to the sources.
Methinks someone neglected to read the FBI forensic report on the testing of the gun. Here’s is the relevant portion (page 6).
TL;DR: They tried to force it to fire without pulling the trigger by pounding on the hammer with a mallet 1) with the hammer down, 2) at quarter cock, 3) at half cock, and 4) at full cock. The only detonation occurred in the full cock position…
…when they pounded the hammer so hard that the sear sheered.
Prior to the breakage, the gun operated properly and would not fire.
Accidental Discharge Testing
Hammer at rest (de-cocked on a loaded chamber)
With the hammer at rest on a loaded chamber, Item 2 detonated a primer without a pull of the trigger when the hammer was struck directly. With a revolver of this design, when the hammer is at rest on a loaded chamber, the firing pin sits directly on the primer of the cartridge. When force is applied to the hammer, such as striking or dropping, it can fire the cartridge without a pull of the trigger. This is consistent with normal operation for a single-action revolver of this design.
Hammer at ¼ and ½ cock positions
With the hammer in the ¼ and ½ cock positions, Item 2 could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger. When enough pressure was applied to the trigger, each of these safety positions were overcome and the hammer fell. This is consistent with normal operation for a single-action revolver of this design.
With the hammer in the ¼ cock position, pressure was applied to the trigger and the hammer fell, however the firing pin did not have enough force to detonate the primer and resulted in light firing pin strikes.
With the hammer in the ½ cock position, pressure was applied to the trigger and the hammer fell, however the cylinder could not be properly aligned to the bore, the firing pin struck the outer headstamp area and did not detonate the primer.
Hammer at full cock position
With the hammer in the full cock position, Item 2 could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional. During this testing, portions of the trigger sear and cylinder stop fractured while the hammer was struck. The fracture of these internal components allowed the hammer to fall and the firing pin and detonated the primer. This was the only successful discharge during this testing and it was attributed to the fracture of internal components, not the failure of the firearm or safety mechanisms.
This claim that the gun was modified makes me wonder if they got the gun back from the FBI, noticed that now it can misfire, but overlooked the FBI statement that they broke the sear themselves, which most definitely had been working properly pre-mallet-pounding.
I’d like to know who these unnamed sources are, and just what their “familiarity” is. Designated defense teams leakers, perhaps?
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I don’t normally turn to Vice for news, but this is too good to skip.
The Washington state legislature passed an “assault weapons ban,” HB 1240. It seems to be fairly bog standard as these things go: cosmetic characteristics that they swear “are not “merely cosmetic”,” and doesn’t actually ban any existing firearm. Just future sales and transfers. But…
Ah, schadenfreude! Vice, for once, is freaking out over a gun control law, because the Washington lefties…
Washington Is Banning Assault Rifles and Left-Wing Gun Owners Are Scared But some Washington residents told VICE News that they’re worried the ban creates a situation where “traditional” gun owners—white, male conservatives—are sitting on an arsenal of high-powered weapons, which emerging demographics of gun owners, like LGBTQ people, leftists and minorities, no longer have access to.
Suck it up, buttercups. You wanted it, you got it. You should have thought things through.
“This is also the worst time to unilaterally disarm a population of left-minded individuals,” George said. “These next five or 10 years might decide the fate of America, and when the music stops and the next January 6 happens and we’re all scrambling to find a chair, I’m worried that the fascists will be the ones with all the guns.”
I can’t stop chuckling.
But who are the fascists, George? The evil right-wingers who just want to be left alone, or the folks who wanted government control over an entire class of firearms, and the population?
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Based on the majority of snooze stories, I was chalking up the Louisville bank shooting to workplace violence. Multiple reports had it that he had been, or was about to be, fired. Not so much, apparently.
[Some asshole] made three key points in the manifesto, which is in the hands of the police: he wanted to kill himself, he wanted to prove how easy it was to buy a gun in Kentucky and he wanted to highlight a mental health crisis in America.
Hmm. On the one hand, he seemingly thought that there’s some much “gun violence” that guns must be further restricted. On the other hand, apparently there wasn’t enough gun violence, so he had to stage some himself.
What the SOB really was… was a terrorist. No different than a psycho suicide bomber.
(A)involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
(B)appear to be intended—
(i)to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii)to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
Good riddance.
Victim disarmers will probably — secretly — consider him a martyr. The Daily Mail report seems to; given the way they use his case to illustrate why he was “right” and Kentucky gun laws are dangerously lax. Why if you aren’t a known criminal, and haven’t been ruled mentally ill, or use illegal drugs, or any of the other restrictions on gun possession, and if you’re old enough… why, you can go to a gun store, undergo a background check (to confirm all the above) and by a gun.
* I won’t give him the post mortem fame he wanted by using his name, unless it’s necessary for research. Clearly, the Daily Mail doesn’t agree; they give his name 33 times in just that one report.
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I’ve only been up for a couple of hours (as I begin typing), and the news is already full of stupidity that I’ll need to address. I’ll lead off with a case challenging Washington, DC’s “large capacity” magazine ban, Hanson v. DC. The judge, one Rudolph Contreras, denied a preliminary injunction against the ban. His… reasoning is… remarkable. Or something; I’m trying to be somewhat polite.
A weapon may have some useful purposes in both civilian and military contexts, but if it is most useful in military service, it is not protected by the Second Amendment.
[…]
[Large capacity magazines] are not covered by the [2A] because they are most useful in military service.
Oddly, Contreras cites HELLER in making that point. I can’t find that argument in HELLER, which was largely about whether non- military weapons could be regulated, and how, but there is this.
It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M–16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.
Rather the opposite of Contreras’ weasel-wording, eh? Indeed, HELLER even cites the earlier MILLER, which establishes that militarily-useful arms are protected by the Second Amendment.
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
Having chucked decades of SCOTUS precedent already, Contreras proceeds to demonstrate an amazing lack of judicial awareness of current events and Supreme Court decisions. Now that he’s established in his own deluded mind that standard capacity magazines are not 2A-protected, he addresses whether this particular restriction of such magazines is permissable.
WARNING: If you’re drinking, swallow before proceeding, for the protection of your screen.
Under this “two-step approach,” a court must “ask first whether a particular provision impinges upon a right protected by the Second Amendment; if it does, then . . . go on to determine whether the provision passes muster under the appropriate level of constitutional scrutiny.
Umm… BRUEN, moron. (All right; “somewhat polite” is off the table after all.) Associate Justice Thomas spent a fair amount of ink taking lower courts to task for continuing to use the two-step approach.
The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broad y consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Heller’s methodology centered on constitutional text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny.</b
[…]
To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest.
[…] The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
HELLER rejected two-step government interest scrutiny.
MCDONALD rejected two-step government interest scrutiny.
BRUEN rejected two-step government interest scrutiny, and bitch-slapped lower courts for continuing to use it in direct defiance of the Supreme Court.
At this point, I wouldn’t blame Clarence Thomas if he is looking for a 2X4 and Contreras’ home address.
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I think it may be a little premature for Baldwin to relax.
1. The report is that the charges will be dropped without prejudice, meaning the charges can be resurrected. Right there, Baldwin is not in the clear yet.
2. The charges against armorer Gutierrez-Reed are apparently not going to be dropped.
3. Assistant director Hall has already been convicted and sentenced for his role.
Something is still up.
Pure speculation: The special prosecutors may have uncovered more evidence, and are considering a different set of charges.
One thing that always bothered me was presence of live rounds on site at all. Where did they come from? Who brought them? How did at least one end up in the gun?
And why?
Gutierrez-Reed’s theory that the blank supplier must have mixed live rounds in her order wasn’t supported by the forensic evidence. The ammunition components were reportedly not a match with the supplier’s components. And it begs the question of why the armorer would have loaded even blanks for a rehearsal that didn’twasn’t supposed to involve shooting.
Then there’s theory that someone proposed to me in a private conversation: What if someone deliberately loaded live ammo to set up Baldwin, knowing that his lack of firearm safety might nearly guarantee an unfortunate incident?
“Without prejudice.” Maybe some of those questions are being asked. Maybe even answered.
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On the off chance that, like the gun-grabbing ATF, you’re not real clear on what Patriots’ day commemorates…
Acting on orders from London to suppress the rebellious colonists, General Thomas Gage, recently appointed royal governor of Massachusetts, ordered his troops to seize the colonists’ military stores at Concord.
Yep, that’s when we killed 273 statist thugs out to confiscate American arms. Military arms, of the sort the ATF and their enabling Dims think we shouldn’t be allowed to possess. And fought an eight year war to hammer the point home. With those military arms.
History may not repeat, but it rhymes. The ATF may want to consider other things that took place on this date. Some of us do remember.
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I see New York state Attorney General Leticia James is going to hold a statewide gun “buy back” on Saturday, April 29, 2023.
The pricing schedule caught my eye.
The attorney general’s office will provide $500 per assault rifle or ghost gun turned in on-site at each event, $75 per rifle or shotgun and $25 per non-working, replica, antique, homemade or 3D printed gun. The office is offering $150 per handgun, and $500 will be given for the first handgun turned in per person.
Two things jumped out at me. The first, “assault rifle” seemed a bit odd for something run by the state Attorney General, the top lawyer for the state, who should presumably know something about her state laws. So I turned to the official announcement. After all, maybe that was just the usual authorized journalist sloppiness.
Nope. She’s offering to buy select-fire assault rifles, not assault weapons as defined in New York Consolidated Laws, Penal Law – PEN § 265.00.
I wonder how many idiots would actually turn in a select-fire assault rifle worth $10,000-plus, for a mere five hundred bucks.
Assault rifle or ghost gun $500
Now the second odd point: “ghost gun” and “3D-printed gun” are listed separately, with differing prices. Regular readers here know that for the past several years, in an effort to demonize homebuilds –especially supposedly “undetectable” 3D-printed guns — like to conflate 3D-printed jobs and commercial builds with obliterated serial numbers, in order to drive up the apparent number of homebuilda used in crimes.
And yet, she also distinguishes “ghost gun” from general “homemade” gun. What definitions is she using?
Ghost gun does not equal homemade does not equal 3D-printed? It matters. It’s a of $500 versus $25.
I’ve asked the Attorney General’s office for clarification, but have not received a response.
The AG’s event FAQ raises more questions.
Can I transport the firearm in a car?
Yes. It must be unloaded and in the trunk in a plastic bag, paper bag, or box.
Funny that. Transporting a firearm in a vehicle, unless you’re properly licensed, is a crime in New York. So is possession of an unserialized firearm. Seems to me that a less than ethical cops could stake out the approach to one of these “buy backs” and make quite a few busts, before the sucker gets to the turn-in point.
Again James is the state’s top lawyer. Surely she knows she’s telling people to break the law.
Funny how James fails to mention that part. Entrapment, anyone?
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I heard about a shooting in Clay County Missouri. Apparently a 16 year old went to pick up his siblings and went to the wrong address, street instead of terrace.
Stories vary, but the things that are the same are the homeowner was a 84 year old man who had gone to bed for the night. He heard someone ring his doorbell, and he got up to answer the door. It after 2200 at night, so he took his firearm.
Now this part differs. The homeowner said he opened the door to see a 6 foot tall black male trying to open his exterior storm door. Ralph Yarl the boy that was shot, says he didn’t try to open the door.
The homeowner fired two shots through the door, hitting once in the head, once in the arm. The boy then ran off and went to three different houses before someone called 9-1-1. Which I believe the homeowner had already called. He told the police it was the last thing he wanted to do but he was scared because of the boy’s size and his age.
Apparently for some reason the Clay County prosecutor has decided that constitutes a racial component. Unless the racial component was the homeowner saying “Don’t come around here”. But Zachary Thompson the “Prosecutor”, has decided that is racial. In another report the prosecutor says no words were exchanged.
A witness said they heard an unknown vehicle pull into the driveway of Lester’s address. The witness “thought it was odd for their elderly neighbor to have a visitor this late at night,” according to the statement.
So, late night visitors are not a normal occurrence at the 84 year old homeowners house.
All this is very sad. The boy seems to be recovering, last I saw, he spent a day or so in the hospital and is now recovering at home. None of the following is to say it’s not tragic. It is. A 16 year old was shot and an 84 year old may spend the rest of his life in prison, if the media doesn’t kill him first.
The media totally sucks. All of them.
#FakeNews narrative
They’ve given out the 85 year old’s name, photograph and address. Yes, in some reports the homeowner is 85. His house has now been vandalized.
Every news story you see about this, the main focus is white man shot black teen for ringing the wrong doorbell. If it had been a 85 year old black man would that make him less shot? If it had been a 6 foot 16 year old white boy, would that make him less shot? But race is the whole thing the media and Hollyweird types are focusing on. Meanwhile Channel 9 news is taking this opportunity to say the Castle Doctrine needs to be re-visited. No, it doesn’t. Although I have no faith in the justice system, I’m hoping in this case it will be better.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised the media is making this all about race. I’m not sure if it was Yuri Besmenov that said the communists couldn’t really get a toe hold in America using class, because (at the time) America had a vibrant middle class of any race. Therefore they went with race to create the divisions in our society that they need.
Yarl’s family has retained nationally renowned civil rights and personal injury attorneys Ben Crump and Lee Merritt in this case.
Crump is perhaps best known for handling cases in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more.
His family also started a GoFundMe page. $2,523,790 raised of $2,500,000 goal
The whole thing is sad, for everyone involved. But the media is bound and determined to make this another city burned to the ground. Since every article that showed up in my web search listed the race of the people involved, that’s the story. Not something tragic happened, and it is tragic for both, but a chance to foment another riot. And those news stations in Kansas City that are playing along better think twice, because the riots in other cities didn’t always exempt buildings just because you were on their side.
I was texting with my buddy in Nicaragua earlier today. I had sent him the photos from the “news media” along with some thoughts. I told him I see what is happening, our readers see what is happening, I don’t want to be only a voice of doom and gloom. Tomorrow is Yom HaShoah, I know G-d is in control of everything. But Yom HaShoah reminds me that sometimes really bad things do happen, and they don’t make sense to me. They do him, but not to me. He said why don’t you share the meditation from today? It’s perfect.
Today is the 11th day of the Omer. We choose what we let in through our gates. Maybe not our country’s, but our own.
Reminding gun owners what he did for the protection of the Second Amendment and pledging to do much more, former President Donald Trump closed the National Rifle Association’s main event Friday with a stemwinder that brought the crowd to its feet.
What he did for 2A protection? Lessee…
He did roll back a bizarre interpretation of 3D printer files as munitions (something that report falsely characterizes as “banning 3D-printed guns”). And he reversed the VA’s blatantly unconstitutional and illegal reporting of people to NICS. I’ll give him those.
On the other hand, he also signed Fix NICS, prompting states to arbitrarily convert more people into prohibited persons and felons.
And there was that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appointee who thinks, “the Second Amendment has no application to state laws.” What could possibly go wrong?
Even more damaging, he magically turned inert pieces plastic into machineguns, by executive fiat. That did more damage to 2A-protected rights than any Dim president had managed in decades. Estimates vary, but turned tens to hundreds of thousands of people into unindicted felons. And more than a few indicted and convicted.
Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool. Well, Trump did used to be a Dimocrat.
He established the precedent that federal bureaucrats are free to redefine words at will, without enabling legislation, to call any damned thing they want “machineguns.” And the ATF immediately ran with it; they live for this… excrement.
The Rare Breed Triggers FRT-15 trigger group, which requires the trigger be pulled for each round fired, suddenly became a “machinegun,” by using the exact same “logic” of “operation of operation of the trigger” really meaning “volitional movement of the finger. Oops; more newly-minted felons.
On a roll with redefining words, they came for pictures. Yep, thanks to Trump’s precedent, the ATF decided that line drawings of unassembled pieces of lightning links really are machineguns. A couple of folks are on trial for that even now, including a guy who let people run ads for the Auto Keycard, but never even sold them himself.
The Trump precedential damage continued with braced pistols becoming short-barrel rifles, after they specifically were not. But at least they gave you the options of begging permission to pay for the privilege of keeping them, or self-incriminating and hoping they’d make an exception for you. More felons.
And he’s “pledging to do much more?” While didn’t act on them before, Trump has supported no-due process red flag orders, raising the age to buy any firearm to 21, and an “assault weapon” ban. Is that the “more” he’s promising? If the Dims were paying attention, they’d nominate Trump themselves over Xiden.
On the bright side, Trump’s Supreme Court picks might… might eventually repair the damage he did to the Second Amendment. But his actions will still cost us millions of dollars in legal expenses, endless man hours, and hard work — not to mention the harm done to plaintiffs and improperly charged defendants — to get the Court to reverse him. (And note that the brilliant BRUEN decision was not written by a Trump appointee.)
If it were just his SCOTUS picks, economic work, and the incredible Abraham Accords, I’d be happy to see Trump elected again. But the man has zero impulse control on Second Amendment issues; he can demonstrably be panicked into rash action by any high profile incident.
And we have to live with his impulses.
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Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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