New York Court Holds Stun Gun Ban is Not Unconstitutional, in Contravention of Caetano

Herschel Smith · 30 Mar 2025 · 2 Comments

Dean Weingarten has a good find at Ammoland. Judge Eduardo Ramos, the U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York,  has issued an Opinion & Order that a ban on stun guns is constitutional. A New York State law prohibits the private possession of stun guns and tasers; a New York City law prohibits the possession and selling of stun guns. Judge Ramos has ruled these laws do not infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Let's briefly…… [read more]

The FBI Sig P320 Files

BY Herschel Smith
1 day, 22 hours ago

Great work. I’m a bit surprised they responded to the FOIA request by transferring the full FBI document over to anyone.

With this done now, it’s hard to see how the Sig lawyers or designers move forward without a whole host of lawsuits and without an announcement and complete recall of the firearm.

For the record, I have nothing that says ‘Sig’ in my locker. I don’t do striker-fired guns and I don’t do Sig. I have heard that this pistol was originally intended to be a hammer-fired gun and then later redesigned to striker-fired. If that’s true, they should have left it hammer-fired.

Water Filtration Methods for Backcountry Hunting

BY Herschel Smith
4 days, 13 hours ago

KUIU has a very good article up on methods of water filtration and purification for backcountry hunting, with emphasis on weight and movement. I won’t post it all or even any of it, but they have a nice list of pros and cons on the various methods.

I have most of these methods, from life straw to force filtration through ceramic filters. I don’t have (and haven’t used) tablets. I don’t like the idea of loading my thyroid up with iodine. Some are light, some are bulky and weighty, and leak inside your backpack. Again, there are pros and cons to all of it.

Prior:

Water Filtration for the Hunter and Backpacker

The Best Backpacking Water Filters

Get Your Head Straight About the Second Amendment

BY Herschel Smith
4 days, 13 hours ago

There is an X post in this link, but that’s not what interested me. The weird cacophony of comments were just as strange as anything I could have imagined.

I am an old man now. I’ve boiled away all the BS. Gun control is my litmus test. If you support gun control you are a fascist. Period. End of story.

If you support fascism there is already a party for you. The Democrats.

[ … ]

Litmus test you say?

“If you support gun control you are a fascist. Period. End of story.“

So you agree with me that Vladimir Putin is a fascist, good to know.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill tightening gun controls in response to a deadly school shooting earlier this year.

The law, signed into force on June 28, raises the minimum age for buying hunting rifles and long-barreled guns from 18 to 21.
It also provides for additional restrictions on owning weapons.“

https://www.rferl.org/amp/russia-gun-ownership-law/31331101.html

It all goes downhill from there and apparently these commenters know each other (at least, over the interwebz) and one thinks he has something on the other. I’m glad I don’t deal with these commenters. I’d just delete them. I have no patience for things like that in my house.

Let me answer the question for you. Yes, if you support gun control, you are a communist. You may be a communist with a little ‘c’ who pretends to love liberty, or you may be a communist with a big ‘C’ who admits it all. But either way, you are a communist.

That’s why I didn’t like GWB who wanted to renew the Clinton era AWB. That’s why I didn’t like Clinton (among many other things). That’s why I didn’t like Obama (among many other things). And if Trump continues to make claims that he is the best friend gun owners have and then ignores our demands, I won’t like him very much by the end of all of this.

The same thing goes for Putin. I don’t like him because he is a gun controller (among many other things). Gun control is a signal issue that indicates to me where your heart is.

And note well that both the senate and the house let 2A advocates, sports shooters, hunters and gun owners down in their promise to undo suppressors and SBRs as NFA items. This will come back to haunt them.

I know that there is a flurry of lawsuits now over the NFA given the fact that there is now a registry without a tax which folks purport to violate other laws passed by congress.

So what? All a court has to do is decide that if congress this term had wanted to remove suppressors and SBRs from the NFA, or that they were worried about running afoul of other things they had done, they could have easily removed them from the NFA altogether or not rescinded the tax.

As it is, the $200 tax has stood for almost 100 years. Now that we’ve made it fair game, who knows what the democrats will do when they control things (as they are bound to)?

They’ve opened a can of worms by doing what they consider to be a halfway house. A court will never side with us, and even if so, the SCOTUS will never grant it certiorari. The Pollyanna posts and videos about how this is a win annoy me. It’s a fantastical and abject loss and failure.

Finally, I suspect John Thune was worried about losing the senate by exposing Cornyn and others as gun controllers. He doesn’t have his chamber in order, and I suspect that’s why he didn’t overrule the parliamentarian.

So before Elon or anyone else gets his head straight about the second amendment, we need to first focus on the senate and house, if there is really any further point to doing so. I suspect all is lost and there is no longer any purpose in politics. It’s all just one uniparty.

Why Did B&T Just Sue Surefire?

BY Herschel Smith
4 days, 13 hours ago

I knew that SureFire had a quick connect from their flash hider directly to a suppressor design, but I didn’t know that B&T had designed one before them. Apparently, SureFire doesn’t like the fact that B&T is making money off of their own design.

In today’s litigious society, I’m not sure I would have allowed pictures to be taken, or at least, I would have patented it long ago if I was a B&T attorney.

How the Big, Beautiful Bill Threw Gun Owners and Second Amendment Advocates Under the Bus

BY Herschel Smith
1 week, 4 days ago

The House and Senate versions of the reconciliation bill will have to be themselves merged and reconciled, but at least in the senate, gun owners have been thrown under the bus.

It begins with the House version of the bill, which not only repeals the $200 tax stamp for suppressors but also removes them entirely from the NFA. We had to push very hard to get this through committee and the house.

On to the senate. The senate version initially had the same language, but the senate parliamentarian judged removal of suppressors from the NFA to be outside the scope of what can be done in the bill. John Thune, ever the GOP wallflower, has said that he will not overrule or discharge the senate parliamentarian.

When this came to light, as if clockwork, a number of gun “influencers” and YouTubers came out with the same language. Removal of the $200 tax is the “next best win.” Surprisingly and disappointingly, I also saw a post on X by Gun Owners of America using the same language. It was everywhere I looked and listened – “next best win.”

Someone, somewhere, was in charge of this push to get gun owners to accept less than perfect but still a win. These talking points came from someone, but I don’t know who. I will neither embed nor link the posts or videos with “influencers” uttering this phrase. I find the phrase and the posts and videos to be disgusting and repulsive. I do so for a number of reasons.

Gun owners have been used and abused for decades now, and our support has always been presumed and taken for granted. Once again into the breach, the pols must have figured. We can pass this one off to the proles as a “next best win.” But moreover, this tactic assumes that gun owners are an impressionable monolith. Have some influencers says some things and they’ll be fine.

But anyone who reads the comments on posts or videos knows that gun owners are the first to point out stupidity, waste and shilling for companies. We aren’t a monolith, and we don’t influence easily. Actually, we’re a rather disagreeable bunch.

As to the bill, it may be even more complicated that what I just outlined. John Thune has said he won’t overrule the senate parliamentarian. But he (and the GOP) already has. They did it for the California EV mandate, which the parliamentarian also said is outside the bounds. The vote was 51 – 44. They didn’t do it by 2/3 of the senate. So that excuse is clearly a lie.

There are two possible reasons for this, and perhaps they both apply. First, the GOP is not as quick or willing to protect your second amendment rights as they seem. They usually feign support and then buckle at the last minute, finding some political reason why whatever they proposed couldn’t really be done.

The second reason, while a bit more difficult to prove, is a likely reason (or at least outcome) of their feigning support for the Hearing Protection Act right up until the last minute.

John Cornyn is going to be in the fight of his career against a strong challenger in Texas, Ken Paxton. Cornyn played gun controller himself in his support for the Safer Communities Act. The democrats needed the support of two GOP senators, and they got them with Cornyn and Thom Tillis.

So Cornyn’s reputation needed to be repaired in his upcoming fight. Enter Thune and Cornyn in reinserting the $200 tax stamp repeal in the “big beautiful bill.” Not removal from the registry, mind you, but repeal of the $200 tax, as if that’s what the problem is with having suppressors in the NFA.

This way, not only has the senate effectively killed the repeal of suppressors as NFA items, but Thune has given Cornyn talking points back home. Or so he thinks he has. Rather, I think what will happen is voters will remember this treachery. This will become yet another ball and chain around Cornyn’s neck. John Thune will go down as one of the weakest and most treacherous senate leaders in history, at least with gun owners.

We have never had an opportunity as good as this one, with a GOP president, house and senate. Thune has thrown this away under the guise of not overruling the parliamentarian, when in fact he has done this before.

In Pennsylvania, gun owners were mostly silent in elections and hadn’t made their voices heard. That was true up until 2024 when they came out in droves. It handed Pennsylvania to the GOP. I wouldn’t expect that to happen again. John Thune may have just single handedly and forever handed Pennsylvania to the democrats.

The big beautiful bill is a dud to gun owners and second amendment advocates. There is nothing whatsoever in it for us. And the influencers who used the phrase “next best win” have to live with the shame of having used talking points handed to them by someone, we still don’t know who.

Either Thune was pushed around like an Afghan dancing boy by the senate parliamentarian, or he didn’t really want suppressors removed as an NFA item and used all of this to help his buddy, John Cornyn. There is plenty of shame to go around.

A Quick Note on the Hearing Protection Act

BY Herschel Smith
1 week, 5 days ago

It’s dead. Allowed to be killed by the cowardly senator John Thune because of a parliamentary trick.

So much for honesty and integrity in politics. They hate you. The democrats hate you, and the republicans hate you.

Rare Breed Triggers Files 6th Lawsuit Over Forced Reset Triggers (FRT) Patent Infringement (Against Hoffman Super Safety)

BY Herschel Smith
2 weeks, 2 days ago

Friend of TCJ Stephen Stamboulieh outlines yet another lawsuit by Force Reset Triggers. We had discussed the settlement the FedGov made with them and it appeared that they were encouraged / forced to sue in court. If so, bad settlement.

Also, it appears that FRT is now keeping records indefinitely. The ARFCOM boys aren’t happy with this. Neither should they be.

The Answer to the Invasive Screwworm Threat: Shooting Cartel Bosses

BY Herschel Smith
2 weeks, 4 days ago

American Hunter.

A New World screwworm (NWS) outbreak in Mexico has raised alarms at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is painfully familiar with the consequences should the parasite invade the United States. The impact on livestock and wildlife—including game animals—could be devastating if the flying insect and the flesh-eating maggots it produces are not stopped before gaining entry.

On May 11 U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced, “The United States has ordered the suspension of livestock imports through ports of entry along our southern border after the continued spread of the New World Screwworm in Mexico…The protection of our animals and safety of our nation’s food supply is a national security issue of the utmost importance.”

An adult NWS is similar in appearance to a common fly, but according to the USDA they, “…are blue-green, have three dark stripes on their backs, and have orange eyes; they are about twice the size of a housefly.” It’s the parasite’s larval stage that threatens warm-blooded mammals.

“They drop their eggs primarily in surface wounds, but also in noses and sinus cavities. Left untreated in humans, livestock, or wild animals, the egg masses hatch into swarms of larvae—the ‘worm stage’—which embed themselves in the host’s flesh and consume the living tissue and fluids. The appearance of the larvae and the way they burrow into the host’s flesh give the screwworm its common name. Feeding screwworms enlarge the wound and attract additional female flies, which deposit more and more eggs in the wound. If the infestation remains untreated, the host animal has little chance of surviving the secondary infections that often follow,” the above-linked USDA webpage explains.

Wonderful. But there’s a way to handle these devilish things. Dropping sterilized flies into the Darien gap. But there’s one problem.

“All we needed to do was keep a flow of those planes. But the cartels were extorting money for every flight of flies that came out of Panama. They were extorting $35,000 a plane,” he said. “So, for all practical purposes, this is really kind of a political closing to make a point that they have got to get their act together.”

So you kill the cartel boss who’s extorting money for the USDA flights. Then when you try another flight and some cartel big wig tries to extort money from you, you send folks to kill him too. And so on. Until you reach the end of cartel bosses who want to perish because of fly drops.

There is no real problem that can’t be solved in this manner. The other option is to let our cattle herds be eaten alive and forswear ever eating beef again.

Which will it be?

Some Folks Will Never Get It

BY Herschel Smith
2 weeks, 4 days ago

The Story of Wabash Bill

BY Herschel Smith
3 weeks, 3 days ago

I had never heard this story before about survival after a bear attack.

At Outdoor Life.



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