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]
David Dell’Aquila says he finally realized that his attempts to reform the National Rifle Association from within were doomed after a conversation he had with NRA President Carolyn Meadows (she hadn’t been given the top job yet at the time). It happened during a party for large donors like himself that was held before the Indianapolis annual meeting in April.
Dell’Aquila tells TTAG that he approached Meadows because he’d received information indicating that a high-ranking NRA employee was receiving payments from vendors to whom he directed business. Meadows asked where he heard that (he told her it didn’t matter). She then told him none of it was true.
Then Dell’Aquila said he asked Meadows — strictly hypothetically — if she had a problem with an NRA official collecting a salary from the Association while using a vendor with which he either had an ownership interest or received payments for business directed its way (i.e. kickbacks).
According to Dell’Aquila, Meadows told him, “That’s how it’s done in D.C. Everyone does it.”
That’s when he says he knew his year-long effort (it started following the 2018 Dallas annual meeting) to bring about change and accountability by working with NRA officers and employees was futile.
Dell’Aquila, a retired Nashville technology consultant, then set about developing a four-phase strategy to force EVP and CEO Wayne LaPierre and his supporters — both in management and on the board — out of their positions.
I like the cut of his jib. Then there’s this (readers and I have discussed the issue of fiduciary responsibility of NRA board members and just how far that goes).
It is important for each member of the Board of Directors to completely understand his or her responsibilities. For example, current NRA officers who have stated “I don’t know anything about that,” “that is the first time I’m hearing it,” “I trust Wayne completely,” etc., are not deemed within the law as valid acceptable legal defenses. It is your responsibility to know or take the necessary actions to obtain such knowledge.
Again, we’ll see just how far that responsibility goes, but I do hope it goes all the way to actual personal legal liability.
With all of that said, I still doubt that the NRA can be reformed. I think it’s dead.
Using machetes, knives and baseball bats, members of the criminal MS-13 gang killed their victims, dismembered their bodies and threw their remains into a canyon in the Angeles National Forest, according to a sweeping indictment unsealed Tuesday by federal authorities in Los Angeles. In one instance, they said, members of the gang ripped out a victim’s heart.
[ … ]
MS-13 street gangsters from the San Fernando Valley butchered and bludgeoned their rivals with machetes, knives, baseball bats, and pipes in a series of gruesome killings in the Angeles National Forest, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday…
Other charges include racketeering and drug trafficking, with the MS-13 members also accused of extorting rival gang members, street vendors and business owners – members of local immigrant communities – using violence to intimidate them.
The gang members used social media, mostly Facebook Messenger, to orchestrate assaults, post gang signs and even to plot murders, prosecutors said…
It looks like the self-righteous folks at Facebook are putting their wares to effective use for the criminals.
I post this particularly to note the following: ” … extorting … street vendors and business owners.”
Soon to come to a neighborhood near you given the porous border and the “They come for love” mentality. Or, they come for free medical care and in the mean time we can enrich our stock prices with cheap labor.
“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,” said Staton, an appointment by President Obama. Prior to stepping up to the federal bench, Staton was a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco and a California Superior Court judge appointed by Gov. Gray Davis just before he was recalled.
Staton also quoted that the rate of fire of such guns, listed in the order as “300 to 500 round per minute rate” makes semiautomatic rifles “virtually indistinguishable in practical effect from machineguns.”
Wow. I wish I could pull the trigger 300-500 times per minute for a full minute. I’d vie for book of world records. Move over, Jerry Miculek. The boss is on the block.
But … there’s that sticky issue of legal definitions (like the single pull of the trigger being the difference between semi-autos and machine guns). I guess judges don’t have to worry about things like legalities.
Because county sheriffs have issued CCP permits s without completing a full NICS check, firearms have been transferred to felons and other prohibited individuals in violation of federal law, thereby creating a substantial public safety concern. For this reason, the standards set forth in the Brady law require us to find that Alabama’s CCP permits no longer qualify as a NICS check alternative. In the interest of public safety, and effective immediately, FFLs in Alabama may no longer accept CCP permits as an alternative to a NICS check. Unless another exception applies, a NICS check must be conducted whenever you transfer a firearm to an unlicensed person even if the individual presents an unexpired CCP permit.
First of all, I agree with the second comment at David’s place. I have no sympathy for the Alabama Sheriffs. Virtually ever one of them is a gun controller.
Second, I disagree with the notion that the ATF gets to decide how a Sheriff complies, but this is what happens when you have a FedGov that licenses FFL (as opposed to the righteous practice of no FedGov involvement at all).
This Magpul Extended Minute demonstrates what I find to be good practice. But you can always shoot in single action with the hammer cocked (even with DA revolvers), which gives you a trigger pull as light as a 1911.
While he makes an error at the first of the video concerning the number of gun owners (and near the last of the video as well), and while what he is proposing will happen does indeed violate God-given and constitutional rights, regardless of the notion of self incrimination, I think what he says is VERY important.
He highlights the connectedness of the world today, the ubiquitous nature of the internet-of-things, and the threat that poses. It’s worth watching all the way through.
Our friend Timothy Harper with News Now OKC recently did a 2A audit in Mcloud, Oklahoma.
So there are a few things that need to be reinforced with the Mcloud PD. First of all, there was no legal necessity for Mr. Harper to show his ID. This wasn’t a “Terry Stop.” You could not articulate suspicion of a crime.
Second, you had no right to order him off the street, and I’m glad he stood his ground. Third, you couldn’t articulate any difference between flying a kite and Mr. Harper doing what he was doing, which is entirely legal, and yet you ordered him off the street. So you looked stupid.
Finally, tell fat boy he needs to lose some weight if he wants to chase down the real bad guys.
I’m glad Mr. Harper is doing this. It apparently is needful and I hope he keeps going.
Earlier this month, New York City sent a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, to inform the justices that a challenge to the city’s ban on transporting guns outside the city limits is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. The Supreme Court did not accept the letter, perhaps because the challengers in the case objected. The challengers argued (among other things) that the letter was “premature” because the developments that the city cited as rendering the case moot had not yet gone into effect. With changes to both state and city laws now in place, the city returned to the court today, urging the justices to remove the case from their docket for the upcoming term.
Changes to the city’s rules, the city explained, will allow licensed gun owners to transport their guns to, among other places, second homes and shooting ranges outside New York City. Those rules went into effect on July 21. And on July 16, the city continued, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that changes state laws to allow licensed gun owners to transport their handguns to other places – again, such as second homes, shooting ranges and shooting competitions – where they are legally allowed to have them.
These developments, the city told the court again today, mean that the case is moot. The challengers, the city reasoned, had asked only for the “modest ability to transport their licensed firearms, unloaded and locked away separate from ammunition, to a shooting range or second home outside city limits” – which they now are able to do, the city stressed. The case should therefore be dismissed as moot or, at the very least, be sent back for the lower courts to decide whether it is moot.
I’m not sure I completely understand this. Amy’s publication date for this post is July 22, the same evening I’m writing this.
