Snope and Ocean State Tactical
This was a real bummer. We couldn’t get four justices to vote to grant cert. Thomas wrote a powerful dissent.
Unfortunately, if the Supreme Court is only taking two or three Second Amendment cases per term, they will be picky about which cases they take.
I believe that Thomas and Alito want to take every Second Amendment case which allows them to correct the inferior courts or to advance Second Amendment jurisprudence. If I were on the court, I would be the same way.
I believe that if they are being told, “You only get three Second Amendment cases in the 2025 term.”, then it is better to pick cases that advance Second Amendment jurisprudence over just slapping down the inferior courts.
Let’s face it, the Fourth Circuit was told they got it wrong in Bianchi, they then heard oral arguments in front of a three judge merits panel, then took the case en banc before the merits panel released their opinion, then decided they got it right the first time.
For different reasons, mind you, but they always get the same result.
S&W v Mexico
And just in time, a 9-0 opinion from the Supreme Court which advances Second Amendment jurisprudence. Congress passed the PLCAA to protect the firearm industry. PLCAA is designed to stop frivolous lawsuits against those involved with firearm sales, distribution, and manufacture.
There is a very tight exception, which is if the sued party aided, abetted, or committed an actual crime.
Kegan said that this case should have been dismissed at the outset via PLCAA. That third-party actions which are illegal is not the responsibility of the defendants. She went on to say that sales and advertising does not confer responsibility. And that making items that are attractive to third-party evildoers does not confer responsibility.
This is a case that will be used to stop lawfare suits before they begin.
Remington
An asshole killed his mother, stole her Bushmaster AR15, went to a school where he was known, entered the building and killed children, teachers, and staff(?).
Because Connecticut doesn’t allow for armed teachers in the classroom, they had no way of stopping this monster.
The usual suspects then got the parents of some victims to file a lawsuit against Remington. They filed against Remington because Remington had purchased Bushmaster. This lawsuit falls square in the PLCAA protections.
The plaintiffs (bad guys) alleged that Bushmaster had violated CT law by creating advertisements that appealed to bad actors. This violation of the CT law would pierce the PLCAA protections.
The CT supreme court ruled that there was not enough evidence to decide, and allowed the case to go forward.
Remington appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied their petition.
This is not unusual, the case was still in an interlocutory state.
The battle went on and on. Remington went out of business. The name was left with ???, the insurance companies cut a deal with the parents to make the suit go away.
This has emboldened the blood vultures to continue to file lawfare suits whenever there is a mass shooting.
Uvalde
An asshole entered a school in Uvalde, TX. He shot multiple children and adults.
The cops stood around with their thumbs up their collective asses in a circle jerk for over 40 minutes.
A group of border agents rolled up, stacked up, and ended the standoff with a good school shooter. I.e., the shooter is dead.
The usual blood vultures lined up to get parents to front another lawfare attack.
I do not know where that case currently is.
If it is still active, I expect the defendants (good guys) to file notices on the docket pointing to S&W v. Mexico, and that should bring that suit to an end.
Good Teachers Have Skills…
I was at The Fort at No 4 on Wednesday. It was a good group of homeschooled children.
There was one student that was a little mouthy and it changed how I dealt with him.
I have to do better. Even if he and I were cool, it wasn’t cool. As the adult, representing the Fort, I must do better.
It sometimes sucks learning new people skills. No, it always sucks learning new people skills.
Hard Things Made Simple
My entire computing career has been at the bleeding edge of technology. Even when it wasn’t, it was doing things that nobody else had done. Of figuring out how to do something with little guidance.
Back when I was babysitting Cray super computers, there was another site that wanted to upgrade from the Cray specific operating system to Unix (SYSV/UNICOS).
These people were performing cutting-edge research in the medical field.
This type of upgrade is normally a two-week project if pushed but normally three weeks.
I did three one-day prep visits to the site, then did the complete upgrade over a three-day weekend, finishing 20 hours earlier than we expected.
Was this cutting edge? Not really, I just knew it had to be done and did it. My boss’s boss’s boss was there, he kept pizza and coke-a-cola in the ready room and took notes.
One of the difficult things I’m learning is that if it is a hard problem, it is likely somebody else has already published a solution. Go find it.
This just happened to me with Django content Types and generic foreign keys. Sigh, I wish I had known about them 7 years ago.
New Skills
I’ve taken up net making. I’m likely to finish my first round net today. Too many people are telling me that learning a new skill in a couple of days is not reasonable.
Question of the week
What is one skill you would like to learn in the next year?
What is one skill you would like to master in the next year?