Month: November 2023

I’m sorry about the quality of this morning’s post. I read it this morning and was, “Did I write this piece of bleep?”

When I started reading the opinion of the Seventh Circuit Court, I was not expecting anything in favor of The People or the Second Amendment. I remember the oral arguments.

What I remember about the oral arguments was the level of disrespect the panel showed to the plaintiffs. How the snark came through in their questions, how belittling they were to the plaintiffs. I remember listening to them attempting to turn semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.

Every excuse I read in their opinion was making me more and more upset. An AR-15 is not a machine gun. It cannot be readily converted to a machine gun. If that were the case, the ATF would have already done it. Any claim that an AR-15 can be banned because it is readily convertible to an M-16 is garbage.

The court is supposed to follow the instructions of their superior court. In this case, the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has instructed them on how to process motions and appeals regarding preliminary injunctions and TROs. The very first step is always, always, to look at the merits.

That means they have to look at the merits. They have to do the analysis. They have to do the work. They did not.

My ranker kept growing. In the end, I did not do a professional job of analysis. I’m sorry. I will attempt to do better in the future.
– AWA

B.L.U.F.
A partial analysis of the Seventh Circuit Court’s recent opinion telling the Supreme Court how it should have been done.
(2350 words)

Drawing your attention to the center ring, we hear Judge Wood say The ink was barely dry on the pages of the Act when litigation began[xCite item=”S78E8A5W” p=8 pos=0] Wow, what sarcasm. Judge Wood, the only reason they waited until then was because they weren’t allowed to file before that moment. Your sarcasm is poor.

When courts are doing serious work, they speak and write in a serious manner. Once the suit was filed and landed in
Judge Kendall’s court …[xCite item=”S78E8A5W” p=9 pos=1] is not a serious statement. The case was assigned to Judge Kendall’s court. Judge Wood continues in the same way.

A more correct way of saying it would have been “The plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction.”
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B.L.U.F.
All about networking. That “and anything else we can think of.”
(??? words)

I was asked to recommend a “Wi-Fi Router”. Unfortunately, that is not a simple question because it has implied assumptions that further complicate it.

So we start with the two primary types of networking, point to point and broadcast.

History

The original “networks” were store and forward point to point. A “message” was created on computer A. Computer A would use a point-to-point connection to transmit the message to computer B. Computer B would store that message until it connected via a point-to-point connection to computer C, wherein it would transmit the message that it had stored to computer C.

These original connections were most often done by “dial up” connections. A “modem” was used to convert digital signals to audio signals. A computer would tell the modem to dial a number, the modem at the other end would answer. The two modems would whistle at each other and communications would begin.

Conceptually, we could consider three different things to be one long piece of wire. The two modems and the telephone system make a long wire. The ability to call different computers is the same as moving the far end of the cable to a different computer.

When computers dedicated more than one port to communications, it became possible to talk to multiple computers at the same time. A computer could be receiving a message from Computer A, while sending a different message to Computer C. Everything was still store and forward.

We then created dedicated computers that had many ports. This allowed that computer to receive and transmit to multiple devices at the other end of the point-to-point connections. We labeled this a “switch”.
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B.L.U.F.
The Seventh Circuit court has decided that English is not their strong point, nor is logic, nor is following the Supreme Court’s orders. Short version. More to come.
(525 words)

The Seventh Circuit court has gone rogue, again. Bruen tells us that the first step is to show that the conduct that is being restricted implicates the Second Amendment.

The Seventh Circuit says that it does. They say that in the very fact that they are discussing the Second Amendment, Heller and Bruen.

From there, the next question to ask is, “Is this a ban of a particular type of arm?” Yes, it is. They are regulating “assault weapons”.

If the modern-day regulation is a ban, the Heller court has completed the second step of the analysis: Is there a history and tradition of regulating arms in common use today?

The Supreme Court said that there is no history and tradition of banning arms in common use today.

They then explained that for an arm to be outside the protections of the Second Amendment, it must be both unusually dangerous and uncommon. In Caetano the Supreme Court set the threshold of “in common use” at two-hundred thousand.

If the more than two-hundred thousand items of that type of arm are in common use for lawful purposes, the modern regulation is unconstitutional.

There is no “military use” criteria. To use their wild example, the Davy Crockett weapon system is not in common use. There were not two-hundred thousand of them made. Not even that many warheads.

The Seventh Circuit has gone rogue because they arbitrarily decided that certain arms aren’t protected by the Second Amendment because the legislators said they weren’t.

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Another week, another change. Hagar finally got me the new fonts. I am responsible for the final look in our header. If you don’t like it, you can say so. If you like it, that would be nice to hear as well.

It has been a long week at this end of the keyboard. The kids cars needed to have their yearly inspection. Blue Haired fairie’s car failed with an “exhaust leak”. That happened for two reasons. Our mechanic had to move on short notice, he is in a different town. He lost his phone number when he moved. We couldn’t find him.

Wife found him. I got an appointment. Ended up having to take kid’s car to be fixed and re-inspected. A few hundred dollars later, it was fixed and passed inspection.

Boy’s car was up later that afternoon. They told him that he needed brake work and new tires. They were getting ready to hand over the car when the left rear brake line let go. Unsafe to travel. I had to drive out to pick him up.

My wife’s car had an ECM failure so was at the dealership being fixed. I came out to find that I had a flat tire on the truck.

In less than 24 hours, 3 out of four vehicles were offline.

We made it through, wife’s care is back. My truck will have a replacement or repair done in the next day. My son’s car should be ready for pickup today.

On top of all of this, I got interested in a couple of my articles and ended up writing until 0100 on one night and 0130 on the next night. I’m running on short sleep right now.

Enough complaining. It is a beautiful day. I have lost enough girth that I can actually practice my draw. I’m working with a shot timer for the first time. I’m only doing 8 rounds a day. It gets me up and outside. All is right with my world.

Now if only the rest of the world was not charging headlong into violence.

B.L.U.F.
Why do the states want a more “Nuanced Approach” and what does that actually mean?
(1400 words)

This is what the state is looking for, a more nuanced approach. This is because there are two different sets of rules that must be followed, depending on “nuanced” or not.

Starting with Although its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated.[xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ p=2132 pos=1] we start to see the state’s problem. The meaning of the Second Amendment is fixed according to those that ratified it. That means it is fixed as to its meaning in 1791.

The meaning of the 14th Amendment was fixed when it was ratified. Unless the people of 1868 thought that the ratification of the 14th included a reinterpretation of the 2nd, which cannot be proved, the meaning of the Second Amendment is fixed at 1791.

The state always starts with implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes [xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ p=2132 pos=2]. This shifts the burden to the plaintiffs (good guys) to argue against the state’s claim. The state claims that “mass murders” are an unprecedented societal concern, except that mass murders have been happening for eons.
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(625 words)
This is another case where the state wants 18, 19, and 20-year-olds to be excluded from The People for Second Amendment purposes, while still treating them as full on adults for other government needs.

I’m not digging through this one, these two paragraphs give us the gist of the appeal.

First, the Appellees (good guys) don’t need to submit any expert reports regarding history and tradition. That is the state’s burden. Nor do they have to “prove” that 18-20 year-olds do or do not “comprise the most dangerous and homicidal age group”.

If they were going to look at who comprises the most dangerous and homicidal groups, you would be hard-pressed not to focus on “the 6% or so that commit more than 50% of all violent crime. Of course, that would be “racist!”

This means that Professor Donahue’s expert opinion as expressed in his report is meaningless. Means-end analysis is not allowed. see [xCite item=”LPGQXCDT” pos=2 pos=2] and [xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ pos=3].

This means that the state rests their entire argument on the report by Saul Cornell, Ph.D.

It is important to note that Saul is not a lawyer. Why is this significant? Because they are not arguing about facts, they are arguing about the law. If they are arguing about the law and what it means, then you must be admitted as an attorney.

When a normal person writes a brief and submits it as an amicus curiae, they do it through counsel. The state didn’t do that. Instead, they brought this guy in as an “expert”.

I can’t locate his declaration, the appendix they reference is not in ECF and I can’t find it in the original case.

On the other hand, I spent a few painful hours, about 10 minutes in total, reading and listening to him.

He is well-spoken, the same way Marx’s writings are to the ignorant.

Regardless, his opinion is not an acceptable supporting argument. The state wants this to become a battle of experts. They bring in their experts to say “guns have always been regulated like X” and we bring in our experts that say “no.” but then have to argue against their expert’s opinion.

At the end of an experts battle, the judge picks one set of experts and says, “you win”.

The actual task of evaluating the law is the judge’s duty. That is literally his job. You will find that most judges are perfectly capable of doing it correctly, when it is not a hot topic.

Conclusion

Another case on its way to the appellate court. They are in the process of setting the date for oral arguments.
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