Month: June 2025

Yesterday’s article was a surprise to me. I started the post with one mindset, and ended in a different place. Occasionally, it helps to talk out your issues.

It started with my statement, Snope should have been GVRed.

Why? Because the Supreme Court has already done a gun ban case. It is a slam dunk, easy case.

Slam dunk, easy cases, don’t make good law. Just like bad facts make bad law, easy cases don’t advance the law.

Every case the Supreme Court takes is important. They intend it to be important. While every case is important to somebody, or to a group, not every case is important to the country or the Court.

Every Second Amendment case is important to me. I want every court at every level to make a good ruling based on the plain text of the Second Amendment and this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. To do anything less is to flaunt the rule of law and our founding documents.

Too many judges are agenda-driven hacks, black robed wannabe tyrants, operating their rogue inferior court as if they are the supreme authority of this nation.

When an inferior court makes a bad decision, their superior court should step in and set them right.

If every inferior court judge had every bad decision slapped down, there would be many fewer bad decisions. On Monday, the court decided 116 cases.

Of those, three cases were an invitation to the Solicitor General to file a motion on how the US Government stands in the case.

Two were, “You can proceed as a pauper, you must pay to play.” One denial of cert had two dissents written. The rest are denials. Most of which are dealt with by being put in a column titled “Denied”. Nothing more.

If the Supreme Court was capable of dealing with more cases in a meaningful way, then I could see them taking these slam dunk cases.

Unfortunately, the court has painted itself into a corner in what they feel they can say. I can wish all I want that a GVR would say more than “in light of Rahimi“, but a GVR never has more than “do it over obeying this new opinion”. This should be happening with more targeted language.

But they don’t.

Instead, they hear 65 to 70 cases per term. They decide which cases will have the most impact on our country. Which cases will bring common understanding across all the circuits.

They choose. And right now, Roberts is not going to let more than a couple of Second Amendment cases be heard per term.

I agree with Thomas and Alito, the Court should have dealt with Snope in some way other than ignoring it.

Dealing with it now might make a difference in the next few years.

More likely, it would not have accomplished anything. The Court is supposed to set guiding principles. It isn’t supposed to be fixing individual results.

Assume the Court said, “AR-15s are arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment. They are in common use. They cannot be banned.”

What would change in the Ninth Circus court? The First, Second Third, Forth and Seventh Circuit? Nothing.

“The Supreme Court has said that Semi Automatic rifles are arms under the plain text, they are most similar to machine guns which can presumptively be banned.”

Or they require a permit to own an “assault weapon”. It is no longer “banned”. Instead, you are required to register as an assault weapon owner, pay $1000/year per assault weapon.

They didn’t ban those evil assault weapons, they are just making sure that people treat the ownership of such weapons seriously.

We need to see advancement in the Second Amendment.

When Bruen was decided, multiple cases were GVRed. Those cases are making their way back to the Supreme Court. If the Court takes any of them and produces a major opinion, like Heller, or Bruen, then we are on track.

So I’m licking my wounds and preparing to fight for the rights of The People to keep and bear arms.

I belong to several writer’s groups on Facebook, partly because I like to connect with other authors and partly to hear about new opportunities when they come by. One of the groups I belong to is run by a very successful cookbook author (who I’m not at liberty to talk about in public, as the group is private and very bougie). The owner posted this video, and then left us to comment on it before coming back. I’ll skip to the good part: if you watch about five minutes of it, you’ll get the whole gist.

Basically, what she says is cookbooks are training you to think you’re bad.

That’s right folks, the recipes you’ve been enjoying in your family for the last umpteen years, the ones you’ve snatched off the internet? They’re apparently actively attempting to strip you of your abilities. I can’t make this shit up. Here’s a quote:

“I want to show you that your cookbooks are more than just lists of instructions for how to cook your next meal. Your cookbooks are in fact deeply judgmental stories telling you that you are not already good enough at doing mundane household tasks.”

What I got from the half of this travesty that I managed to watch is that because a cookbook usually contains a story, it’s only a vehicle for the author to tell you that you’re a failure, because if you weren’t a failure, you wouldn’t need to read the cookbook. As a secondary message, apparently we’re also being told that if we cook like Rachel Ray, we’ll look like her and be rich like her. As near as I can tell, the only thing cookbooks aren’t communicating to you, is how to cook. She’s adamant that people cannot possibly learn to cook from a book, and that it must be transmitted from person to person.

I’m aghast that this woman, Dr. Rachel Rich. She’s a doctorate, so that means she has a PhD in this stuff. Per her own words, “…I’m a historian at Leed Becket University and co-editor of the journal Food And History. I’ve been researching and writing about cookbooks for over 20 years…”

So, is there enough information out there to keep a food historian busy for over 20 years? Absolutely. It’s a fascinating subject, and one which has important connections with today’s world. Not only are food historians bringing the past to life in a way that no other historian can, they’re also behind the revival of several old types of food, plants that were popular in the middle ages or earlier but that had faded into obscurity in modern times. That’s important because we can learn about plant genetics, and how to better feed our growing population by studying those plants and the recipes that they were used in. So yes, there’s a ton of information out there, and a solid researcher could spend a lifetime tapping it.

Instead, this Dr. Rich is handing out this pap.

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During the term, the Supreme Court has multiple conferences. The Friday conference is when they decide which cases will be granted cert, which will be denied, and other issues relating to cases, outside of opinions.

On the following Monday, they publish their order list. This is a list of all the cases they have an action on. Some of those a denial of cert, others are denials of moving forward as somebody that can’t pay filing costs, others are invitations to the federal government to speak up on the case.

The only people in the conferences are the 9 justices. There are no law clerks, no bus boys, no secretaries. It is just the nine of them.

When evaluating a motion for a writ of certiorari, it only takes 4 justices to grant the writ.

A case that is granted cert can be quickly handled by vacating the inferior court’s decision and remanding the case back to the inferior court. This is normally accompanied by instructions to “do it over, right, in light of a recent opinion”.

I would have loved to see the Court GVR Snope with “in light of Heller and Bruen“. Not that it would have done anything when dealing with the Fourth Circuit, but it still would have been an interesting method of dealing with these rogue inferior courts.

If they are not GVRing a case, but simply granting cert, they will schedule oral arguments and set deadlines for all briefs to be filed. They never state a dissent or make a statement when a case is granted cert.

If they deny cert, most times it is a simple list of cases with a short sentence at the end, “the motion for certiorari is denied.

The Snope case is ripe to be heard by the Court. It has been kicking around since 2013. It was one of the cases that was seeking cert while Bruen was seeking cert. It could have been the case to move Second Amendment jurisprudence forward.

The Court did the right thing in taking Bruen. Snope, known as Bianchi at the time, was a simple repeat of Heller. Bruen advanced our cause significantly.

The holding was that the Second Amendment extends outside the home. That is huge. It is much bigger than saying, “It is a gun ban case, we decided it in Heller, you can’t ban guns in common use for legal purposes.”

The Supreme Court only hears 70 or so cases a year. That is across all parts of the legal landscape. First Amendment, Fourth and Fifth amendments, environment and a host of other subjects.

The question becomes twofold, how many Second Amendment cases will the court hear in a term, and what are the best cases to take?

The Supreme Court heard Rahimi in the 2024 term (current term) as well as VanDerStok.

Was Snope the right vehicle for the next major Second Amendment opinion?

Maybe not. If the Court could hear every Second Amendment case presented to them, then yes. This was a slam dunk case for The People.

It would not have advanced Second Amendment jurisprudence in any significant way. It would be a redo of Heller.

Justice Thomas would have written, either as the author of the opinion or in a concurrence, that the plain text is plain, there is no evaluation to do. But it would still just be another Heller.

We have other cases coming forward. My feelings were that an opinion in Snope would have addressed these other cases, but maybe we need to have the court look at sensitive places?

When the Bruen opinion issued, I remember focusing in on “sensitive places”. It was obvious to me that many of the rogue states would laser focus on making as much of their state “sensitive places” as possible. The goal isn’t to make every place illegal for you to carry, it is to make it so legally dangerous that you don’t bother.

Every time something comes up on Craigslist that I want which is in MA, I evaluate it in terms of drive time and danger. Because I have to leave my firearm behind when I travel into Mass. It is painful.

There are two east-west roads near me. One is faster to certain towns in NH. But, it dips into Mass for part of that trip. I refuse to use that route, even if it adds 15 to 30 minutes to trip time.

Now imagine thousands of little “legal guns prohibited” areas in a state. What happens if you’re driving to pick up a rabbit hutch, and you drive past a school. With the way some states work, that could be a felony.

So the Court could be looking for a sensitive places case. Or, one that I would like to see, a reciprocity case? How cool would it be if the court found that whatever requirements my state requires is all it takes for me to be able to carry any state?

I’m disappointed. I never expect anything of Roberts. I was hoping for better from Amy.

This is a war. It is better to not lose this battle and continue to make headway in the Supreme Court.

Boy am I disappointed.

I’m feeling down from the SCOTUS lack of spine. I was looking for a song about good things to come. Instead, this came to mind.

Today, the Supreme Court denied cert in both Snope and Ocean State Tactical.

Thomas and Kavanaugh wrote dissents. Alito and Gorsuch joined Kavanaugh in his dissent. Amy and John sided with the agenda driven left of the court.

Because Ocean State Tactical is in an interlocutory state, they will have at least another two bites at the apple. If this outcome is any indication, I do not expect a positive result.

On the better news front, Kavanaugh listed several cases that are making their way up the chain and will be or are seeking cert.

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I was in 2nd grade when I decided I was going to make a table and chairs. I had watched my grandfather make things. It couldn’t be that hard. With my mother and grandparents providing the material, I made a table and chair.

It was a success. Was it sturdy enough for an adult to stand on? No. Regardless, for a 2nd grader, it was very much a success.

As a 4th grader, I watched my father rebuild the engine of our VW Microbus. He used the original “idiot” book to do it.

From my father, I learned how to break concrete, how foundation forms were put in place, how concrete was poured and how to frame in a room. When I say, “I learned”, it means that I had my hands on the tools doing. I had the blisters to show for it.

A few years later, 6th grade or so, I purchased my first motorcycle. When it needed work, I am the one who tore it down and rebuilt it. And then got it back together and running.

That was my success. My father didn’t lay hands on that motor or motorcycle. It was mine, and I was going to do.

Did I mess up? You bet I did. I don’t remember the failures because they were mine. I learned from them. Then I went and tried again. Today, 50 years later, I can still hear the sound of that MX-80 screaming back to life.

My parents let me own my failures, they let me own my successes. They never stole my success nor my failures from me.

Years passed. It didn’t matter what it was, I was willing to try. I was willing to fail. I tried learning how to draw. I spent four months drawing hands. In the end, I decided that I preferred photography.

When my brother and I needed to work on the VWs, we pulled the engines ourselves. We could tear down and rebuild an engine on the side of the road. How do I know we can? Because we did. It was in a gas station parking lot. Bro and I pulled the engine from the VW, tore it down enough to get to the broken, removed and replaced the broken part. Put the whole thing back together and put it back into the bus.

We did it between 1700 and 0200, then we drove another 400 miles the next day to get to my grandparents.

“Can do” isn’t the correct version of our attitude, it was more like, “We’ll make it work.”

Today, children aren’t allowed to fail. Even in simple things. My son made a wonderful meal the other weekend. I was asking him what went into it. We are about done, but still discussing things, when my wife pipes up to tell me a spice that was in the meal.

I knew it was there. I wanted my son to tell me. She stole his success.

I’m lucky, my kids do know how to succeed because they also know about failure.

My second wife refused to try new things. She explained the reason thus:

As a child, her mother would look at what she was going to attempt to do, then her mother would tell her, don’t bother to try, you can’t do that.

How can you succeed if you don’t try? How can you fail if you don’t try?

It is said that Edison said, “We didn’t fail, we just learned another material that doesn’t work as a filament.”

We learn so much more from failure than we do from success.

Consider a class of 20 students. We can fit a bell curve to those students. There will be a mean and standard deviation for those students. From that, we can determine which will get As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. It is standard statistics.

We do this by using an instrument to measure something about those students. If we have an instrument that gives every student a 100%, we know nothing. That instrument is useless.

We want an instrument in which nobody gets 100%. At the same time, we need to be careful of the outliers on the high end. If you have somebody who gets 100% on a test where everybody else is getting 50% or lower, you can’t design your test/instrument to have the outlier get a 95%

One of the interesting things my mentor taught me about digital cell phone communications is that the protocols strive to match a 90% raw error rate. If the error rate is higher than that, the phone uses more power to get a cleaner signal. If it is better than that, the phone reduces power until it is running at that 90% error rate.

At 90% error rate, the algorithms can repair the damage and give a perfect digital signal.

If we were running at 100%, we would never know when we were using too much power.

We live in a society where the ego of a student is much more important than long-term success. We give out participation awards. We have games where we ‘don’t keep score.’

There is an old joke: A man walks up to a baseball diamond where some kids in a youth league are playing. He asks one of the fathers/couches, “What’s the score?” “We don’t keep score. We play for the joy of the game.” One of the kids yells over from the dugout, “We’re ahead 5 to 3.”

My children know that if they ask for feedback, they will get honest feedback. If they don’t ask, they will get a proud parents’ response. My kid’s friends know the same.

It also means that when I give out a “well done”, it means something. My kids know that their mother will always praise whatever they do, no matter how bad it is.

“Everybody makes mistakes!” is something I’ve had shouted at me.

Yep, that’s true. But not everybody learns from their mistakes. You cannot learn from your mistake if you don’t know you made a mistake. You can learn from your mistakes if you’re not allowed to make mistakes.

I’m learning how to turn wood. I’ve learned not to stand in front of the work when I first apply the cutting tool. Why? Because that damn bowl coming off the spindle at 1300 RPM HURT. I’ve learned a little.

I have seen some people decock the hammer of a firearm with their thumb between the firing pin and the hammer. I thought it was stupid. It is how I do it now. I had the hammer slip one time with a loud bang when the hammer stopped moving. It will not hurt all that much to have the hammer fall on my thumb if it stops a round from going “that-a-way”.

It is easy to see how stealing their successes can be bad. Stealing their failures is worse.

Every so often, it is worthwhile to just sit back and enjoy the show. Get more popcorn.