Month: July 2023

As I was reading Justice Thomas’s wonderful Bruen opinion, I noticed the phrase “protected by the Second Amendment”. This is something he says throughout the opinion.

When I started looking for it, I found that when legal people were talking about the Second Amendment, they often (always?) said, “Protected by the Second Amendment” or “Second Amendment protected rights”. Over and over we see this language.

Our rights are endowed upon us by our creator. They are not granted to us by the State. If the state can grant us a right, the state can remove that right. Almost all arguments about constitutionality revolves around the absolute values of those rights.

The left argues that my right to free speech ends when they are offended. They call it “hate speech”. The sheep and leftists argue that my right to self-defense ends when I might harm somebody else. Listen to the comments on any shooting, and there will be calls for the punishment of the victim because they “didn’t have to kill.” or they “didn’t have to injure” the attacker.

Can you cry “Fire!” in a crowded theater? ABSOLUTELY! You can even do it if there is no fire. You have an absolute right to do so. On the other hand, if your actions cause harm to others. Real harm, not just emotional duress, then you might be liable for those damages.

I.e., if you cry “Gun!” in a crowded theater, and it causes a panic among the people trying to escape and some are injured or killed, you will be held responsible for those injuries and deaths.

Why “absolute”? Because rights have no value if they are not absolute. I absolutely have the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t have the right to murder people with arms. This is the balancing of rights. Their right to live vs. my right to keep and bear arms.

The law works at balancing the rights of the people. They fail most of the time. I have a right to my property. He has a right to life. He loses that right when he attacks me to take my property. (Notice that it isn’t just propriety here, there is violence directed at me).

Which takes us back to blowing Mrs. AWA’s mind this morning.

I said something like, “If the Second Amendment was repealed, it would not affect my rights.” Her response was, “But those are your Second Amendment rights, they would be gone.”

“What rights does the Second Amendment give us?”

“The right to keep and bear arms.”

“Nope, try again.”

“Ahhh, the right to have guns and use them”

“Still wrong.”

“It says it right there, the right to keep and bear arms”

“Yes, it does. But the Second Amendment gives us no rights.”

“Umm”

“Read what it says, “the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”, this is protection for a preexisting right.”

“No. It says it right there.”

“Our rights come from our creator. We are endowed by them when we are created. The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, or armed self-defense, which was endowed upon us by our creator.”

“Because it exists outside the government’s wishes and control, they cannot remove it. They can remove the protections, but not the right.”

“Mind. Blown.”

Mrs. AWA was so conditioned to hear “Second Amendment rights” that she lost sight, if she ever had it, of the simple fact that our rights exist outside the Constitution.

Now go forth and remember, they are Second Amendment protected rights, not given rights.

With a title of Over half of both Second Amendment supporters and Republicans favor universal background checks and gun licensing provisions[xCite item=”TEGEG49E” pos=0] I had to look deeper. The first thing to know is that this was conducted by a group associated with the U. Penn. It could be a left leaning entity, I’ve not done the research.

YouGov is a site where you can sign up to be paid to take surveys. This means that the bias for the survey is internet savvy. Not a bad bias.

So let’s look at the questions that were asked:

What we see isn’t horrible. Unfortunately, it lacks context.

Consider the question of background checks. The people giving this survey do not get to explain. When I hear “background checks for all firearm sales and transfers” it might mean universal background checks. Or it could mean “transfers at the time of sale” and I might even think of it as when buying from an FFL.

Given that the only reason that there is a background check is the GCA as amended, a background check is not constitutional.

Question B is at least attempting to be honest. They have explicitly stated that they are talking about the banning of semi-automatic firearms. They didn’t just say “Assault Weapons.”

C is just plain scary. I know that most of us want gun owners to train and learn what they are doing. To be good members of the community. Requiring tests and licenses for both firearm and person is bull shit.

Let’s take a look at two categories.

81% of males support universal background checks, 66% support test, license and registration, 55% support “assault weapon ban” and 48% support eliminating most gun laws.

The sample size is 1000. 468 of which were male. They fudge those numbers to make it 487 to match the actual percentage of men and women in the country. 394 of 487 support UBC. 321 of 487 support Test, License, Registration. 267 of 487 support “assault weapons ban”, and 234 of 487 support eliminating most gun laws.

Ok, the takeaway on this survey eludes me. It looks like there is good support for the Second Amendment, but there is also support for infringements. This feels like people avoiding absolutism. Hagar answers, “What part of shall not infringe, don’t you understand?”

I am also an absolutist, I just am not as vocal about it. I don’t know.

Regardless, my rights, and yours, do not come from surveys or opinions. Our rights are protected by the Bill of Rights. We are endowed with them by our creator.
[xCiteBib]

Reader Archer was letting his mind wonder:

— Archer.

The first step in analyzing a Second Amendment Challenge is to determine if the proposed conduct implicates the Second Amendment.

For conduct to be implicated, the object must be an arm and the conduct must be “keep and bear”.

If it is an arm and the conduct has anything to do with “keep and bear” then the conduct is presumptively protected under the Second Amendment.

We define the conduct, “I wish to keep and bear ammunition feed devices that have an arbitrary capacity.” The state wants to limit that capacity to ten or less.

Before Bruen the court would presume that this conduct was protected. They would then move to the second stage of the analysis: How much does this infringe the core right of armed self-defense?

Since you can use smaller magazines, different guns, and the state has presented evidence that self-defense events involving civilians rarely use more than three rounds, the infringement is trivial.

The state has also presented compelling “evidence” that big ass magazines allow for more harm when used in mass shooting events.

The court balances how much raping is being done to you verse how much the state really really wants to infringe. The courts almost always came down in favor of the State.

Today, we don’t get that presumption of protected conduct. Instead, we have to prove the conduct does implicate the Second Amendment.

When dealing with a gun ban, Heller controls. If it is a ban and the object is in “common use for lawful purposes, today”, then it is protected under the Second Amendment.

Therefore, the state wants to make the object “not an arm” or they wish to make it “dangerous and unusual”. The state is arguing from both sides in the LCM bans.

On the one hand, they argue it is not an arm. Since it is just a box and there are many differently shaped boxes of different sizes, you don’t need to have this particular size and shape. Further, they argue that a magazine is not an arm because it doesn’t really do anything. It is exactly like a cartridge box, or the box of ammo you buy from the LGS.

Since it is not an “arm” it is not protected under the Second Amendment.

If it is not an arm, it can be banned.

Because the state knows this is a weak argument, they move to the second step, “Even if it is an arm, which it isn’t, it isn’t in common use for self-defense”.

The state is acknowledging that magazines are in common use as defined by Heller and made concrete in Caetano. Heller said possessed. Caetano said that “hundreds of thousands in lawful possession” made it common.

The state knows that if a court rules, correctly, “dangerous and unusual,” then they lose. They can’t make an argument about “dangerous” that has any bearing because it is common. It doesn’t matter if it is the deadliest weapon ever invented by man, if it is in common use for lawful purposes, then it is protected under the Second Amendment.

But back to Archer’s idea. If you only fire 3 shots out of a LCM, then you didn’t really have an LCM because use is …

It doesn’t work.

Having gone through the magic above, the court decides to go rogue. They rule that the LCM is NOT a protected arm. Either they say it isn’t an arm or they say it isn’t in common use, it doesn’t matter, they have allowed the ban to go into effect.

At that point, the state makes it illegal to have an ammunition feed device which holds more than 10 rounds.

The law doesn’t say anything about use, it is mere possession.

The cops show up at your self-defense event. They slap you on the back and congratulate you on surviving the encounter. They take your fire arm, drop the mag and count the rounds in the mag.

You only fired 3 rounds, just like the statistics say you should, there are 5 rounds left in the magazine, this means you had less than 8 rounds in the magazine. Your golden!

Nope. The law isn’t like New York’s (old?) law. The LCM ban said you had to down load your magazines. You could still have your 15 round Glock mag, but you could only put 7 rounds in it, or some such nonsense. In this ban, it is a ban on the possession of LCMs.

So you tell the cop you only fired 3 rounds. He and the CSI folks see three holes in the perp and no others. The witnesses agree that it was only three rounds, and there are only three casings on the ground. Your golden!

Nope, the law does ban using more than 10 rounds, it bans possessing a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

To wrap this up, consider the cops searching your home with a warrant. They locate a tarball of heroin. It doesn’t matter if you used it, it doesn’t matter if it is pure or cut a thousand times. The mere possession of that tarball is the crime.

We had some excellent responses regarding car safes. I looked at an in console safe for my truck, the price has come way down, it is now on the “to buy” list.

I’m in the process of bringing a new client onboard. This makes me grateful to Miguel for getting me started on WordPress.

Ballistics software is currently on hold until I get client work caught up.

For our readers in Massachusetts, be aware that there is a horrible bill being pushed. I’ve not read the bill, but second hand descriptions from people I trust on the Interwebs suggest it will truly mess with everybody.

As predicted, the argument being pushed by the infringers is that “in common use” actually means “in common use for lawful purposes, like self-defense” which actually means “In common use for self-defense” which actually means “shots fired in a self-defense event”.

There are some cases pending transcription that I’m going to be evaluating over the following days.

Meanwhile, the comments are open, tell us what you are thinking, what you’d like to hear more about, what you’ve heard to much about.

J.Kb. posted about the case regarding Mexico suing a number of American firearm manufacturers for reasons. Oral arguments were heard in the 1st Cir. on the 24th. I’ve created one of my automatic transcriptions. I have not finished listening nor reading.

That is part of the plan for today.

The short version seems to be that the District Court tossed the case because it was in direct violation of PLCAA.

The problem, for me, is that much of this is not a 2A case but a bunch of other things.

I need to understand the legal concept of extraterritorial, what the lawyer is talking about when he claims that only some things are precluded by PLCAA. If a US court must hear the case because of a violation of Mexico’s laws. There is a section on “cumulative damage”, “jurisdictional stripping”, references to multiple cases, are all issues mentioned. They are also considering if they should allow the case to proceed, regardless of PLCAA because if Mexico were to do this in Mexican courts, they would have no way of enforcing on the American companies.

There is a bunch of stuff regarding “aiding and abetting liability”. And “proximate cause”, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, I’m attempting to get some client work done. Including GFZ. Have a good one!

High availability is a concept that says you will have zero downtime.

Consider an old world situation. You have a server that is serving exactly one website. On that server you are running an Operating System, a database engine, a web server (Apache/Nginx), an interpreter, and a bunch of code and HTML.

In your browser (client) you type “http://www.awa-example.com”. This causes your computer to send a request to a DNS server to translate “www.awa-example.com” into an IP address. Dozens of computers working in a distributed way work to get that answer. Your browser then opens a TCP/IP connection to the address it was told to use.

When that connection finishes traveling across multiple different servers (routers) it arrives at my server. My server examines the packet and determines that it is addressed to the web server. The web server looks at the request and sees that the request is for www.awa-example.com. It looks through its configuration files and decides on which interpreter to use. It transfers the request to that interpreter.

The interpreter loads configuration files and loads the code to execute/interpret. That code runs and opens a connection to the database engine. The code makes a query to the database, the database returns a result, the code formats it and sends back a message to your browser, which displays it.

If any part of that long set of computers/servers and software fails, your browser doesn’t get an answer to display.

We have a “demark” that marks the point of responsibility. Anything outside the demark is “their” problem. Anything inside the demark, including the demark, is our issue.

What that means is that in a high availability system, there has to be at least two of everything. On the outside, we must have two “theirs” and two demarks. Linode provides us those multiple “theirs” and demarks. If one link into their data center dies, the others take up the load and everything continues as if nothing was at issue.

If we are worried about the data center, they offer data centers all around the world. We are happy with just one data center.

At their demark they send traffic to one of two “node balancers” we have purchased. These are in different racks. Each is capable of handling all traffic into our cluster. If they need to update the node balancer, they can update one, wait until it is up and running, then update the other. This is either software or hardware. They can physically turn off one rack, and we won’t even notice.

We use a cluster to support our clients. There are 6 nodes (servers) in our cluster. 4 are ours, two are theirs. Their nodes are used for the “control-plane”. This is what controls our cluster. When we tell our cluster to do something, it is the control-plane which orchestrates the other nodes.

We run two ingress pods. The node balancers send traffic to these pods directly to our nodes in a round-robin. If we need to upgrade our ingress, the cluster will create a new ingress pod, make sure it is up and running, then terminate one of the old ingress pods. It then launches another ingress pod, when that is up and running, it terminates the last old one.

There is NO downtime as this happens.

The ingress sends handles external SSL and internal traffic to services. The cluster receives traffic at the service and forwards that traffic to which ever pod is providing the service. If we run at least two pods, we will not have downtime. We set things up so that pods run on different nodes, if possible, so a node failure doesn’t take down all the pods.

Which brings us to the tail end of all of this. Our pod.

Our pod, in this case, is running WordPress. If the pods can mount a file system in ReadWriteMany then multiple pods can access the same files at the same time. WordPress has a directory of content. These are files that we upload, images, PDFs, videos, themes, and a boatload of other things. We want to have that directory accessible by all our WordPress pods.

We don’t have to worry about the database, that runs in its cluster. If one of the database engines dies, the others take over with no loss of function. We run a hot spare style of replication. We could use a multi-master version, it isn’t worth it at this time.

And this brings us to The Issue. Linode provides us with persistent volumes. This works perfectly for many situations. Unfortunately, those persistent volumes are ReadWriteOnly. This means that only one pod can access the files at a time.

Since there is only one pod, there is no redundancy. If that pod fails, the site goes down. If the node that the pod is running on fails, the pod fails, the site goes down.

On good days, when a pod fails, it is restarted and the replacement is up and running shortly thereafter. Downtime is low, but not zero.

Linode isn’t going to offer a ReadWriteMany anytime soon.

Which brings me to Ceph!

Ceph is a distributed block storage system with the ability to run a distributed file system on top of that block storage.

All I should need to do is deploy it to my cluster. Sure, if I want to buy 3 more nodes/servers and a bunch of disk space for them. Think $1000s of dollars per month.

But there is a version for Kubernetes called “rook”. It can even use persistent volumes. After a few days of fighting this on my local Kubernetes cluster, I finally got it working. All that was required was to deploy it to Linode.

12 hours of fighting and I finally got it mostly functional. Until I went to allocate block storage for Ceph. Linode doesn’t allow block persistent volumes! ARGH! I’m stopped.

Then around 2300 Monday I got it. I used the same volumes that Linode’s persistent volumes used and attached them directly to my nodes as block storage. Amazing! It works.

Today I got it all configured and running. I will be upgrading GFZ to be a HA site in the upcoming weeks.

The world is better.

There are many tropes in story telling. One of them is “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

People misjudge others all the time. I recently watched a video of a “prank” gone sideways. A “prankster” filled a gas can with water, went into a parking lot, found somebody sitting in their vehicle, poured the water on the vehicle and then pulled a lighter.

The “joke” is to see the fear in the people’s faces when they believe they and their vehicle are about to go up in flames.

The sideways was when the “prankster” went up to a pickup with an older man inside. As he started to pour the water, the driver got out with a pistol in his hand. The “prankster” then was recorded with fear on his face. Running for his life, screaming that it was just water.

The “prankster” had misjudged his target.

Another trope is the mentor telling the younger newbie, “Listen to that old fart, he’s old in a profession where you die young.” Old doesn’t mean stupid. Old doesn’t mean without means. Old, fat and slow can still be deadly fast.

I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn’t know how to use it. — Matthew Quigley, demonstrating his skill with Colonel Colt’s revolver”.

B.L.U.F. Another District Judge gets it wrong because they are another rogue judge.

---

The first thing we notice is that judge Rudolph Contreras uses the Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island to get his definitions. When a multiple-round device like an LCM is attached, a handgun becomes a ‘semiautomatic’ weapon, meaning that it is capable of rapidly firing several bullets, one right after another.[xCite item=”Q7FCDJKN” p=”2-3″ pos=0] quoting the judge in Ocean State Tactical.

He also plays the language game. The law talks about “ammunition feeding devices”. He switches to “magazine” and once there talks about them as simple boxes. This is precisely the issue that the recent briefing to the Supreme Court addressed. By using the term “ammunition feeding device” throughout their brief, they make a solid case for why it is an arm and not just a box.

The good news is that the plaintiffs (good guys) did establish standing. All the plaintiffs have licenses to carry in D.C. All of them declared that but for the regulation, they would carry ammunition feed devices capable of holding more than 10 rounds. And some of them attempted to register firearms and were denied because the feed devices were “too big”.

Here we start to see the thumb on the scale On December 1, 2022, the Court permitted three nonprofit organizations, Brady, Gifford Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and March for our Lives to jointly submit an amicus brief in support of the District.[xCite item=”Q7FCDJKN” p=4 pos=1]. I have yet to find a 2A case where these groups don’t have their grubby fingers in there, pounding the table and attempting emotional blackmail.

Playing Stupid

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I normally write my daily postings the night before. The article about pulling bullets was written Friday night for Saturday morning. After I wrote the article, around 2322, I decided it was time for bed. And got distracted on the way there.

The reloading press was right there. I had warmed up the scale before starting the article. So I sat down and reloaded the bullets I had just pulled.

Per the Hornady manual, 14.5gr of Alliant 2400 under a 156gr HDY GTX. Success!

Today I did a test firing. The .357 Mag was an afterthought.

I couldn’t find any 30-30, I knew I needed to load some. That required I find the 30-30 brass and prep it, locating the powder, then setting up the reloading bench for 30-30. The first crate I checked was labeled “brass”. Yes, it was full of brass, none of the brass was 30-30. The next two crates were labeled bullets, not worth checking.

This required more digging. I cannot find the crate or ammo can that should be full of powder, nor can I find the can or crate full of 30-30 brass.

I do find the 30cal can labeled “30-30”, I open it, hoping to find cases. Nope! Instead, I found the mother load. Two boxes of bullets. Old bullets. A couple of plastic ziplock bags labeled for 30-30. A bag with a single case ready to reload.

The bottom half of the can was full of loaded, ready to use 30-30.

Using the instructions I got from the owner of boxes for ammo, I started backing them in nice white boxes. 6 boxes, 20 rounds each of 30-30. I don’t need to reload any 30-30 today!

I took the Marlin 30-30 with scope out to try to zero it. Not a lot of joy there. I need to do it again. Since I was taking the 30-30 out, I took the Ruger GP100 with .357 Mag loaded up. Fired off the cylinder. Perfection. All the cases ejected as they should. No sighs of over pressure on the primers, and I’m below max load.

The 30–30 Marlin punched my shoulder harder than I expected. It didn’t zero. I’m not sure what is going on there. My Winchesters, firing the same loads, do an outstanding job of ringing steel and punching holes in paper, exactly where I want. Iron sights and all.

Sunday I need to finish digging through the reloading room. I know there is a couple of cans of powder in there. I just need to find them.

When you make a mistake, own up, do the right thing.

I didn’t do the right thing. The right thing was to pull all the bullets for the hot loads I made. I didn’t want to because it is a bit of work, and I’m lazy. It should be safe to unload them through the R92.

Lazy, safe, reloading do not work. You have to be careful, you have to do the right thing, every time.

I have two or three powder throws. I do not use them. The consistency I was getting with them wasn’t good enough.

The two presses I have are both Lee presses. One is an OLD single stage. I like it. I don’t use it. At this point, my main complaint, using it to deprime, is no longer an issue as I use a different method. The press I do use is a Lee Turret press.

When I started using it, I used it as a turret press. Everything was all setup and I could crank out the rounds quickly and easily. First I would deprime, then clean the cases in a wet tumbler. From there, it was time to run it through the turret press.

Put the case in shell holder. Handle down to resize the case. While the handle is down, place primer in the primer cup. Handle up to insert the primer and rotate the plate to the next station. Handle down to flare the mouth, throw the powder charge. The Lee charger is semi-automatic. As the case presses into the die, it causes the charger to throw one charge. Handle up, place bullet in the case. Handle down to seat the bullet. Handle up to move to the next station. Handle down to crimp the case. Remove the cartridge, put the case in the shell holder, repeat.

Today, I use the turret press as a quick change plate. There is a universal depriming die, sizing die, mouth flare, bullet seating+crimping die. I rotate the plate to the die I want, then use it like a single stage press.

Which brings us to how I do it now. I have an automatic powder measure. You input the weight you want, press the “drop” button. The machine twists a trickle tube until the scale reads exactly the weight you wanted.

It takes just a few moments to throw the charge accurately. I have a standalone powder charger stand. I have just the base in it. This gives me a big enough target that I don’t need a funnel. I hold the case mouth against the bottom surface, pour the pan into the top and the case is charged.

The pan gets placed back on the scale for the auto-throw. Once it stabilizes, it will start throwing the next charge. While that charge is being thrown, I’m putting the case in the press, putting a bullet on and seating it along with the crimp.

Not as fast as a progressive, by far. Not as fast as just using the turret press. But it is the way I do it today.

So back to pulling bullets. I have a collet puller which hasn’t worked for me. Instead, I use an inertia puller. Put a round in the puller. Hit it on a hard surface a few times, the bullet pops out. It works, it just takes more of an effort than I like, as a lazy person.

Now that all the bullets are pulled, I can reuse the bullets and put the correct charge in place.

Thank you to everybody who told me I was being a dumb ass. I was. Your gently chiding was enough to make it clear I needed to do the right thing.

This is what I was thinking of:

Since the video, they did discover that the SLAP rounds that he was firing were not military surplus. That they were way too hot and the cause of the exploding 50 BMG rifle.