Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

He finds some problems and dishonesty.

Americans have a God-given right to make machinery, including machinery that propels a projectile.

If you recall, a federal judge completely vacated the ATF’s frame and receiver rule, and after appeal to the Fifth Circuit to issue a stay on the judge’s decision, the Fifth Circuit told the ATF that they weren’t likely to prevail.  It’s a bit more complicated than that, because there were non-challenged provisions vacated along with the stupid main points of the frame and receiver rule.  But the ATF doesn’t care about that, and neither do the plaintiffs.

Well, the ATF got their panties in a wad over all of that and had a girl-fit, and they have sent this to the Supreme Court.

Here is their paperwork.  Most of it is laughable.  In fact, it’s so stupid that I’m not going to lift prose out of it.  You can read it for yourself.

Let’s rehearse this again.  What the ATF is saying is that they don’t want people to be able to do what the colonialists did back in the days before and preceding the war of independence.  That is, make their own machinery, if said machinery can propel a projectile.

The FedGov wants them all serialized, because guess why?

I’ve said it before.  I consider the entirety of the serialization schema to be immoral and unconstitutional.

Source.

At summary judgment, the district court found that the two challenged provisions in the Rule exceeded the statutory jurisdiction and authority of the ATF and vacated the entire Rule per the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(C). The district court rejected a stay pending appeal but granted a seven-day administrative stay to allow the ATF to bring an emergency appeal.

Because the ATF has not demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits, nor irreparable harm in the absence of a stay, we DENY the government’s request to stay the vacatur of the two challenged portions of the Rule. “[V]acatur . . . reestablish[es] the status quo ante,” Defense Distributed v. Platkin, 55 F.4th 486, 491 (5th Cir. 2022), which is the world before the Rule became effective. This effectively maintains, pending appeal, the status quo that existed for 54 years from 1968 to 2022.

The ATF is likely correct, however, that the vacatur was overbroad. The district court analyzed the legality of only two of the numerous provisions of the Rule, which contains an explicit severability clause. See 87 Fed. Reg. at 24730. Where a court holds specific portions of a rule unlawful, severance is preferred when doing so “will not impair the function of the [rule] as a whole, and there is no indication that the regulation would not have been passed but for its inclusion.” K Mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 294 (1988); see also Sw. Elec. Power Co. v. EPA, 920 F.3d 999, 1033 (5th Cir. 2019) (vacating only challenged portions of a rule). Because the agency has shown a strong likelihood of success on its assertion that the vacatur of the several non-challenged parts of the Rule was overbroad, we STAY the vacatur, pending appeal, as to the non-challenged provisions.

We sua sponte EXPEDITE the appeal to the next available oral argument calendar. To allow time for additional proceedings as appropriate, this order is administratively STAYED for 10 days.

I’m not sure what all of this means, but according to the decision, throwing out the entirety of the new frame and receiver rule would have vacated several non-challenged provisions.

It’s good to see, however, that the Fifth Circuit doesn’t believe the ATF can win on the challenged provisions of the new rule.

Good.  This was always going to happen, it should be sooner rather than later.

They’ll get a good dose of the facts now, including the pesky one on the FBI refusing to allow the ATF to examine the weapons allegedly used in the Las Vagas shooting.

If they do any research at all, they’ll find out that the Las Vegas shooting was a rolling gun battle all the way down main street, not a shooting from a hotel window.  That whole event is full of things the FedGov doesn’t want you to know.

And by the way, never forget that Donal Trump gave you the bump stock ban, and the corollary empowered ATF who now feels no compunction about making up law out of whole cloth – because Trump gave them permission to do it.  Donald Trump owns the bump stock ban and the current ATF.  It’s his.  It belongs to him.  It has his name on it.

I do wish that my name could be on this brief as a petitioner, but I never felt compelled to own a bump stock – until now so I could be on that brief.

Here is the brief.

We’ve been tracking this at TCJ (Oldest to Newest): Here, here, here, here, and here.

Now this, from Gun Owners of America:

TN, It’s Time to Double Down.

Dear friend,

Reports indicate that Rep. William Lamberth is not happy that his constituents — the hard-working men and women who elected him — are expressing their strong resistance to gun confiscation orders.

This means the pressure on Lamberth is working, for now.

Gun owners like you know that the foundational principles of our country like the right to keep and bear arms, due process, and other constitutionally-protected freedoms are cherished by Tennesseans. Gun confiscation policies have no place in the Volunteer State!

However, we cannot back off. We must keep up the political pressure to ensure no gun confiscation bill ever sees the light of day in the quickly approaching Special Session.

Don’t forget, Gov. Bill “Lousy Lee” desperately wants to pass this ineffective and unconstitutional policy. The legislators must know that gun owners won’t stand for it!

So again, I’m personally asking you to take these four steps. These actions will go a long way to protect your rights:

• First, email Lamberth with GOA’s pre-written and editable message.
• Second, follow up your message with a call to Lamberth at (615) 741-1980.
• Third, print off GOA’s Fact Sheet and mail it in to Lamberth’s office at 425 Rep. John Lewis Way North, Suite 602 Cordell Hull Bldg. Nashville, TN 37243. Better yet, if you are in Nashville, deliver it in person to his office. (Please be sure to sign the letter.)
• Finally, donate to GOA. We are running ads around the state to mobilize gun owners. The more resources we have available, the more 2A supporters we can reach.

If you have already taken one or more of these actions, then I ask you to please get a pro-gun friend or family member to speak up as well.

It’s said that when politicians “feel the heat, they see the light.” It’s time gun owners turn up the political heat on William Lamberth!

In liberty,

Jordan Stein
Certified Firearms Instructor
Southeast Region Director
Gun Owners of America

Thanks for being involved.

There isn’t any gun legislation that couldn’t be made worse by the presence of the NRA.

Can the folks in NY working to destroy the NRA please work a little faster?  Can someone tell the NRA to mind their own business, which in the best case would be stop pretending to be pro-2A, kicking Wayne to the curb, and go to work to undo all of the infringements they’ve previously engineered against us?

Quick note to the NRA: Please stay out of this and all such matters.  Pring your magazines and leave the hard work to the real men.

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection (forthcoming 2023) will (presumably) publish this pre-print by these two writers on Qualified Immunity as Gun Control.  They think they’re on to something big, and hence the obvious snarkiness by the end of their summary.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen threw the political project of gun regulation into question. Before Bruen, states could enact new kinds of gun restrictions if they passed a relatively stringent means-ends test. That is, if laws meaningfully reduced danger, while not too heavily burdening the right to self-defense, they were allowed. After Bruen, only gun controls actually in force in the founding era, and their close analogues, are permissible. Many fewer regulations will now pass the constitutional test.

Here, we suggest an unlikely source of continuing power, after Bruen, for states to disarm individuals they deem dangerous: qualified immunity. Qualified immunity shields state officers from monetary liability for many constitutional violations. In short, unless a previous case “clearly established,” with high factual particularity, that the officer’s conduct was unconstitutional, the officer does not pay. Thus, a state law enforcement officer may, after Bruen, confiscate an individual’s firearm if the officer deems that person too dangerous to possess it. The officer’s justifications may conflict with the federal courts’ understanding of Bruen or the Second Amendment—perhaps flagrantly. But unless a previous, authoritative legal decision examining near-identical facts says so, the officer risks no liability. And because each individual act of disarmament will be unique, such prior decisions will be vanishingly rare. The result is a surprisingly free hand for states to determine who should and should not be armed, even in contravention of the Supreme Court’s dictates.

Proponents of gun rights, who skew conservative, may see this as lawlessness. In the past, it has been liberals and civil libertarians who have seen qualified immunity that way. Here, as elsewhere in the law, what’s good sauce for the goose is good for the gander. Gun rights advocates may therefore either accept qualified immunity’s implications for their preferred rights or join with their usual adversaries in opposing it everywhere.

If it sounds like these authors, Guha Krishnamurthi (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law) and Peter Salib (University of Houston Law Center) are hinting that cops just violate second amendment rights under the color of law based on the protections police enjoy virtually everywhere and in most, if not all, circumstances, you’d be wrong.  They say, “The officer’s justifications may conflict with the federal courts’ understanding of Bruen or the Second Amendment—perhaps flagrantly.”

And they don’t really mind very much that you understand them.  They aren’t hinting at latitude (not that there is any) – they are obviously and directly saying that police should violate constitutional protections if they want to, including the 2A.

They are trying to appeal to so-called “law and order conservatives.”  They’re everywhere in government, from Bill Barr (who supported red flag laws, waiting periods, magazine capacity bans, etc., and who defended Lon Horiuchi after he killed Vicki Weaver for no good reason), to “law and order conservative” judge Frank Easterbrook in Chicago, all of whom would disarm Americans.

But these are dinosaurs on the “conservative” side, or another way of saying it is that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between a communist and a “law and order conservative.”

The authors of the silly paper above presume to impale someone on the horns of a dilemma (certainly not gun owners).  Gun owners have seen the dark side of state power, from overbearing and lying cops during traffic stops, to overreach by the ATF, to the weaponization of federal law enforcement by the power that happens to be in charge at the moment, whether Obama, Biden or Trump (and here I include the bump stock ban just to ensure that I take shots at “law and order conservatives” as well as statists).

Qualified immunity is a concoction and witch’s brew of the courts because the police are agents and enforcers of state power, whether local, state or federal, not protectors of the people.

That dog won’t hunt.  The authors of the study failed, and miserably so.  Between losing qualified immunity or red flag laws, most sensible people will say, “The dilemma fails.  I don’t have to choose – lose them both.”  They have no basis in the constitution and represent the worst from the minds of men.

Liberty Doll has the details along with some commentary.

Here is also a writeup of what happened.  What you heard about the SWAT team berating the man, a pastor, husband and teacher, a normal man by any account, is exactly what these people are like.  These people are not the exception, a few bad apples in an otherwise good bushel of apples.  No, they are all bad.  They want to violate your constitutional rights.  They live for it.  They are sociopathic criminals.

Imagine being employed by the ATF and being able to look at your wife and children when you get home and look yourself in the mirror at night and be able to fall asleep with no trouble.  Imagine having your conscience hardened and soul seared with hot coals to the degree these people have.  I hope this fate doesn’t befall anyone reading this.

As for ATF Special Agent Theodore Mongell sending several SWAT teams to knock on someone’s door, I know little girls with more courage than that.

ATF to federal court: “Hey, we don’t really like all that stuff in NYSRPA v. Bruen about no tiers of scrutiny and not letting us do interest balancing, so we want you to tell the supreme court they’re wrong.”

Imagine being employed by the ATF and being able to look at your wife and children when you get home and look yourself in the mirror at night and be able to fall asleep with no trouble.  Imagine having your conscience hardened and soul seared with hot coals to the degree these people have.  I hope this fate doesn’t befall anyone reading this.

Prior: here and here and here

Tennessee is still facing a serious threat to its civil rights in the form of a Red Flag law from the Republican super-majority. And now you know your rights are in danger because the NRA has gotten involved. Governor Bill Lee, a monied interest himself, has called a special session of the full legislature, which is a sneaky way to bring a gun control debate to the floor. If the proper committee processes were followed as occurs in a regular session, this proposed Red Flag law would never get a hearing.

Key Graph:

The National Rifle Association is calling for legislation, [Sen. Ferrell Haile, R-Gallatin] Haile said, that will “take care of the individual, take them out of the equation, not take everybody else’s gun out of the equation that’s not involved in this, and that’s protecting the Second Amendment.”

It’s impossible to protect the Second Amendment and “take care of the individual, take them out of the equation.” The Second Amendment is a civil right by definition, and within the text, an individual liberty retained by each person. Taking a man’s firearms who has committed no crime is the very essence of not protecting the Second Amendment.

Also disturbing is that no text of any proposed measure has been released to the public by any party. This is all being done as smokey backroom shenanigans.

I told you this in the last entry about TN Red Flag laws here at TCJ:

There will be intense pressure and truckloads of outside money from national-level organizations and governments.

Well, the linked article here goes on:

Meanwhile, a group of residents based in Green Hills and Belle Meade called Voices for a Safer Tennessee has hired two lobbying firms, Bivens & Associates and JohnsonPossKirby, to represent it in a push for stronger gun laws in the wake of the shooting.

By “a group of residents,” it means federal money has offered these services, and they found some sympathizers to attach their name to the effort to make it appear “local,” which it is not. Oh, they even incorporated these “voices.” That would be funny if it weren’t such a serious threat.

There’s a perfect reason to be adamantly against Red Flag laws. One day soon, it will be used to disarm “objectional” sorts of men in the name of mental health wielded as a political weapon. Tennesseeans may not care about that now with a Republican super-majority, but this law will be turned against you for your political beliefs or Second Amendment position. The Second Amendment’s purpose is to remind Tennesseeans of their duty to keep and maintain the implements of war to bare against tyranny, and what greater tyranny than the potential to classify whole groups as “dangerous” where no evidence would be required to take their arms?

Some historians have softened reasons surrounding the start of the U.S. Revolution against England with talk about taxation. But the immediate cause of the war was the shot heard ’round the world when the king’s men came for the guns and powder on Lexington Green. Tennessee has embarked on a dangerous path indeed.