The other day my lady walked into the liquor store and bought a couple of bottles of wine. They required her to show her ID before they would sell alcohol to her. They didn’t make a record of what she bought and her official ID.

The other day I picked up meds for my wife. At the drive through window I gave her name and date of birth and they handed me some controlled substances. They didn’t even ask for my ID. Last spring I had a cold, I purchased some cold meds from that same pharmacy. I had to show my ID before they would sell to me. They did record it so that they knew how much cold medication I was purchasing.

If you walk into a store to purchase a firearm they require you to show your official identification, answer questions that extend beyond “are you a prohibited person”, fill in your current address (which must match what’s on your ID) and then the FFL records the make and model of everything you purchase. If you purchase more than two pistols (or assault weapons?) within a week he is required to file a multi-gun purchase report with the BATFE.

The form 4473 must be kept for 20 years. If the FFL retires during that time the 4473s are transferred to the ATF where they are suppose to just be kept but today they scan into a searchable database.

What law in 1791 required that you identify yourself before you purchased a firearm?

What tradition of gun laws in 1791 required a shopkeeper to keep records of who purchased what?

Is the GCA unconstitutional as it currently exists? We’ve already seen one judge strike down one part of the GCA. Is there more coming?

Thursday my daughter came to me to warn me that one of her chickens had been attacked. It was separated living quarters on the porch but that the food that had been in the bin was now not in the bin. Don’t be surprised if I hear the chicken moving around.

Sure enough, that night I heard something on the porch and it sure as heck wasn’t a chicken. A quick glance at the cameras shows that there is another racoon on the porch.

Rather than just plug my ears with ear plugs I put on my good ear muffs with the active cancelation. I can hear so clearly with them on that I forget I’m wearing them.

I grab the 30-30 Winchester and head out to the porch. Mr trash pirate heads down the steps with me covering him. Waiting for him to move where it is safe to fire. While tracking him I hear trash pirate number 2. I turn to find a BIG arse racoon.

BOOM. Again, one dead ‘coon. A work the lever and go out after number 1, calling for daughter and lady to come deal with the dead ‘coon.

I track halfway around the house and no racoon. I’m heading back towards the porch and I hear the now familiar refrain “He’s not dead!”

Since I know that I got a good center of chest shot in to ‘coon number 2 and that ‘coon number 2 was not moving when I moved out the door, something is up. I immediately start looking for racoon number 3.

Sure enough, the damn thing is hiding behind the leg of the table, his beady little eyes tracking me. I can’t put a shot into his chest. No clear shot.

There is a good shot into the T of his head.

As I start to bring the rifle up I see out of the corner of my eye both lady’s put their hands over their ears. I’m taking a bead at the center of the T. It is a target about 1 in in diameter. I check backstop again before pressing the trigger. The racoon spasms and goes into his death throes. I feel like shit. I must have missed and now the damn thing is in pain and bleeding out.

My lady says to my daughter “Its not in any pain, it is just death throes” so I’m stuck. I really can’t do anything about it.

I step off the porch and carefully bring the hammer back down.

I have had ONE unintentional discharge in my life. I was at our back yard range letting the hammer down on a Marlin 30-30 lever action with a scope. The hammer had a side extension and as I was lowering the hammer it slipped and BANG. Into the ground about 10 feet in front of me.

I swore there would never be another.

My current method is to put the thumb of my off hand between the hammer and the back of the firing pin. Then using my strong hand I hold the hammer back and press the trigger. Holding the trigger back I slowly let the hammer down. When the hammer is resting on my off thumb (or nearly so) I slip my off thumb out of the way and continue lowering the hammer.

Regardless, I lowered the hammer and continued my search for trash pirate number 1. No joy.

When I return to the porch it looks like there was a blood bath there. We removed the first dead ‘coon to process him.

We went to take care of the second and found that half his head was missing as well as his left jaw. I felt so bad. Until my lady, while picking “stuff” up picks up a piece of racoon and says “Well this is a first for me, brains.”

So it was instant death for them both.

In the mean time we’ve got one more out there. I’m sure he’ll be in the freezer soon.

What do you do if you hate armed citizens and the Supreme Court of the United States as just told you to suck it up, the right to keep and bear arms belongs to every citizen, in their homes and out? You immediately attempt to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms in new and even more offensive ways.

Lawmakers in NJ have submitted a bill that would require people wishing to carry to get accidental discharge insurance and to have non-family references. All part of that “good moral character”. They have also increased the cost of applying for permission to exercise their rights.

Of course they have a huge list of “sensitive places” where you are not allowed to carry.

“The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year stripped away the right for states to regulate who is able to carry concealed weapons in public,” said Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D). “This bill, ensuring gun owners prove a legitimate reason for carrying concealed handguns in public, is a promising step in the right direction.”

New Jersey continues to be a leader on gun safety with laws that help keep our communities safe. This bill will help prevent gun violence with common-sense standards to require training, promote gun safety and prevent firearms from being carried into sensitive locations. https://t.co/M79Vq0350G

— Senate President Nick Scutari (@SenPresScutari) October 13, 2022

Scutari & Coughlin Announce Major Gun Safety Initiative

As always, more infringements against people that follow the law which will do nothing to stop those that are criminals.

Democratic state lawmakers rewrite gun carry laws to require insurance, non-family references to carry a gun

H/T to Pistoleer Birdog357

First, I am not a lawyer. This is my understanding as an outsider that has studied this stuff for way to many years.

We are going to start with a paraphrased incident that happened a number of years ago.

A young man got into an argument with his step-mother. He was very upset. It was the end of the line for him. So he told his parents “I’m out of here”. He packed up and was heading to a friends place that had space for him.

The last thing he did before he left is he transferred his firearms from “safe storage” in the house to the trunk of his car.

He left on a two hour trip, a two hour trip. As he was driving to his new home, he gets a call from the NJ state police. He answers. The officer on the phone is with his step mother. She is very concerned about him. Seems that she is reporting that he is suicidal and that the cop just wants to make sure that everything is OK.

Young man says “yep, I’m on my way to my friends place. Everything is OK, I’m just done with her.”

The young man terminates the conversation.

Cop calls back. Cop will just not let it go and insists that the young man return for a “wellness check”.

Having been convinced that this would just take a few minutes the kid turns around and drives back to his parents place. When he gets there the cop and he have a conversation. Cop is friendly and seems to indicate that everything is fine now that he has had a chance to talk to the kid in person. Then says “Your mother says you have some guns?”

“Yeah, they are in the trunk. I’m not going to leave them here.”

“Can I see them?”

“Sure.”

Cop opens the trunk, find the guns, properly stored. Then proceeds to arrest the kid on a firearms violation.

The cop claims the kid is in violation of NJ laws on transporting firearms because he wasn’t going to the range, going hunting, or on his way to his home.

The kid is in a world of hurt. Ends up in prison all because of a wellness check and some fucking unconstitutional laws.

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At trial, the kids lawyer claimed that the kid was protected by the 18 U.S. Code § 926A – Interstate transportation of firearms and that the law was unconstitutional.

The court ruled that since it wasn’t interstate transportation it wasn’t protected. They then ruled that since the 2nd amendment only applies to the militia and not to individuals the law was constitutional.

The judge made the ruling regarding constitutionality based on rulings from the 3rd circuit court.

In the US, courts are layered. At the bottom is the district court, above that is the circuit court (appeals court) and above them is the supreme court. The rulings of the supreme court cover all courts. The rulings of a circuit court covers only those courts within that circuit, and a district court’s rulings can only be used as supporting arguments. When using a district court’s rulings, it is better if that court is in the same circuit.

Decisions in other circuit courts make their way into district level decisions all the time.

One of the reasons gun rights kept losing was because of a couple of opinions issued by anti-gun circuit courts.

The circuit courts said that building on United States v. Miller which said:

The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.

This wording was taken as mean that the 2nd amendment did not guarantee to the citizen the right to keep and bear any weapon

This case was cited by different courts in the 1960’s and later to deny standing to people. The gist is that if you do not have the right to keep and bear arms, that it only applies to the militia, then you can’t have had your rights infringed, thus you have no standing, case dismissed.

There is a huge difference between “case dismissed” and a ruling being made. You have the right to appeal a ruling, you have no right to appeal the dismissal of your case.

This meant that every law that limited your right to keep and bear firearms was constitutional in the eyes of many many courts. The government worked hard to keep it that way. There were multiple times when the government was willing to take a loss on an individual, district court, case rather than have it move up the appeals process toward the supreme court.

It wasn’t unusual to have a state fight tooth and nail for a decision at the district and circuit court levels and then refuse to appeal to the supreme court, if there was a chance of loosing. Even when the supreme court was stacked to the left, there was always the possibility that the court would decide in favor of our rights over the governments wants.

What this lead to was laws that got that young man. The laws in NJ said it was legal to transport a firearm directly to and from your home. The fact that the kid turned around and drove back to talk to the cop meant that he wasn’t going directly. If the place he returned to was his home, then when he left he was in violation of the law. If his new home was the new place, when he returned he was in violation of the law.

His only option under the state’s law would have been to continue to his new home and leave the guns there. BUT, because of everything else, he could have been found in violation of a number of “you must obey the cops” type laws. They kid was screwed the moment his step mom called the police.

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All of this takes us to two interesting cases, for us. The first is a case out of West Virginia. During a traffic stop the police found that Randy Price was in possession of a firearm with an “altered, obliterated or removed” serial number. As a convicted felon he was a prohibited person.

In a criminal trial, the defendant can use a number of defenses. One of those defenses is to claim that the law under which the defendant is charged is a violation of the defendants rights.

This is what Prices lawyers did. Since it was clear from the evidence that Price was in possession of the firearm, and that the firearm had its serial number “altered, obliterated or removed” if the law was constitutional then he was guilt and on his way to prison.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled that the part of the GCA of 1968 as changed in 1986 was unconstitutional.

The government argued that the requirement that a firearm have a serial number and that it can’t be defaced is a “commercial regulation” and as such does not infringe one ones right to keep and bear arms.

A firearm without a serial number in 1791 was certainly not considered dangerous or unusual compared to other firearms because serial numbers were not required or even commonly used at that time. While I recognize there is an argument,
not made by the Government here, that firearms with an obliterated serial number are likely to be used in violent crime and therefore a prohibition on their possession is desirable, that argument is the exact type of means-end reasoning the Supreme
Court has forbidden me from considering. And the founders addressed the “societal problem” of non-law-abiding citizens possessing firearms through “materially different means”—felon disarmament laws like Section 922(g)(1). Bruen, 142 S. Ct.
at 2131. Under Bruen, this is “evidence that [the] modern regulation is unconstitutional.” Id.

The burden falls on the Government to “affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the [or analogous to a] historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 2127. The Government has not done so here, and I have no choice but to find 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) unconstitutional.
— Judge Joseph Goodwin

This case does not directly affect any of us. We are not Mr Price so it does not bear on us. It doesn’t even bear on people in the same circuit court. This is because district court rulings are not binding on any other case or court.

The government could appeal this, they will not. They will not because if this case is heard at the circuit court level and the circuit court agrees with the district court, then 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) become unenforceable for all states within that circuit court.

Normally we would say “it would become unconstitutional” That is not the language I choose to use because I agree with Judge Goodwin, the law is unconstitutional and is thus no longer law.

This little case is a first step in the dismantling of the GCA of 1968, the changes made in 1986, the crime bill of 1990 and the NFA of 1934.

We are highly likely to see this same reasoning in other courts.

Of note, Judge Goodwin was appointed by Clinton.

The second case we are watching is the CCI case(s) in NY state. The reason why this case is so important is that all of the possible loopholes in the Bruen decision are in this infringement. Every single thing that we were worried about, “sensitive places”, “good moral character”, “training requirements”, “in person interviews” and a host of other requirements are in this pile of steaming bullshit.

Unfortunately for the state of NY, the suit has been filed against them, it is not a criminal case against a single (or group) of people. If it was a criminal case, the state could fight tooth and nail and then not appeal if they lost. This would allow them to keep the law in place and every person would have to fight it individually. Because it is a suit against the state they have to fight. If they lose, they CCI will no longer be law. If they appeal they could get a win which would be appealed to the supreme court. There is a high likelihood that the court would grant certiorari, vacate and remand the case right back to the circuit court.

There really isn’t a winning path for the state of NY in the CCI. Their only hope is to delay the process as long as possible.

Bottom Line

These cases in states where we don’t live do have ramifications for us. These are the sorts of cases that lead to bigger outcomes than we expect. These are the sorts of cases that lead to removal of all permitting requirements. Or national repreprocity, or the NFA being overturned.

We live in a good time and place for gun rights.

United States v. Randy Price
Judge rules federal law banning guns with serial numbers removed is unconstitutional
Guns & Gadgets YouTube Page

The Kenosha Kid made it onto Brandon Herrera’s YouTube channel for gun meme review.

Have fun watching.

A couple of weeks ago we covered the story of Michael Palacios and his unhappy experience at a NYC McDonalds.

He was so unhappy he took an ax and threatened and attacked customers. He assaulted a number of people there.

Fortunately for the good folks of NYC, the police were there after the violence had stopped to arrest Palacios.

Being a violent criminal who was “well known to law enforcement” he spent a couple of hours in jail before being released without bail.

On Sunday he was arrested again. This time for graffiti and grand theft. He stole a “expensive bike” from a nearby coffee shop and then took off. The police gave chase before finally catching him.

He broke the $3500 bike (Why was it not secured?)

He was charged with “grand larceny, two counts of criminal mischief, possession of stolen property, making graffiti and possession of graffiti instruments”. He was also charged with a graffiti violation for an incident in June.

Given his one many vandalism spree after his violent assault on multiple people, he again spend a few hours in jail before being released without bail.

We all are praying and hoping that he learned his lesson this time.

NYC man released without bail for McDonald’s ax attack arrested again and released without bail

First, if you have not read OldNFO’s Grey Man series, go do so. JL Curtis Amazon Web Page

What is a “gray man”? He is the man or woman that you don’t notice. He is the man you walk by every day and he is just part of the background. He doesn’t stand out in anyway. He isn’t overly loud in voice, character or looks. He is equally comfortable in his Dickies work pants with grease under his fingernails as sitting in a fine restaurant, dressed correctly for the place.

He is the guy sitting at the bar, nursing a drink and paying no attention to anybody or anything that hears everything that is said and notices all that happens around him.

He is the unnoticed.

It is difficult to be that person. Sometimes you want what is comfortable and not what is gray. Sometimes you want to be tacticool or the gal that wants to be in the 3 in heels looking like a million dollars with every eye focused on her.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand that gray doesn’t mean the color. You would stand out much more at a beside the street in “gray” clothing than wearing a high vis safety vest and hardhat.

The gray man is able to walk into a secured dorm because he feels like just another student in the rush of students going in. The backpack on his back is a student like backpack. He walks into the office building and nobody notices because his computer bag is just a computer bag. His briefcase is just that.

His lunch bag doesn’t attract attention either.

How do you become a gray man? You start by shutting your mouth and listening. You open your eyes an observe.

If you want to be noticed, stare at somebody. Learn to watch somebody without focusing on that person. Don’t stare. The last thing you want to hear is “Are you looking at me!?!? What are you looking at old man/runt/pussy?” Or “Are you looking at MY girl?”

Learn to observe.

Keep your ears open. If you are sitting at the bar or in the dinner or restaurant, what is the conversation going on around you? Are they talking about the amazing touchdown that happened or are they talking about something else entirely?

Learn to sit where you can observe yet not be seen observing. You don’t sit in the back corner. You sit near the back. You sit with your back angled towards the wall. You choose where you sit so that your firearm is protected yet you can still reach it.

For high speed low drag people, have you ever tried to draw your weapon while sitting at your kitchen table? How about when you are sitting on the sofa or in the easy chair? When was the last time you sat in a chair with arms? The chair arms at many dinning room tables will interfere with your ability to draw your weapon. That appendix carry is nice, how about when you are sitting? Are you carrying in the small of your back? Can you reach your gun with out drawing attention to yourself?

Driving down the streets of my town, one in five vehicles is a pickup truck. 3 out of five are four wheel drive. One in 100 is a sports car. One in 1000 might be an expensive sports car.

The guy in the Ford Crown Vic with tinted windows stands out. Panel vans on the street stand out. Dark Suburbans with dark windows stand out.

In DC, a pickup truck stands out. A Prius does not. There are more four door sedans rolling around than you can shake a stick at.

What you drive needs to be gray. In NYC, for the longest time, the best gray vehicle was a bright yellow cab.

What you wear needs to be gray. If you are walking into an office building where they wear suits and ties, wear a suit and tie. If you are walking into places that require a hardhat, wear a hardhat. It use to be that the most invisible man in the building was the guy with a hardhat on and a clipboard.

Stay away from the tacticool clothing. You are carrying an IFAK, make sure it is not obvious. Ankle kits are a good choice for not showing your IFAK.

Your EDC firearm needs to be concealed. If what you are wearing doesn’t allow a full size weapon, then don’t be all mocho and refuse to carry a smaller gun. A little 7 shot 9mm pistol in a pocket holster is a good start.

If you carry a knife, make sure you carry two. One that doesn’t freak the mundanes. My boss once stopped at my desk and asked me to open a box that had just arrived. I was busy and just took my primary and did the wrist flick thing and a 3 1/2in blade was suddenly in my hand. It sort of freaked my boss.

I have a very practical swiss army knife that I should have used.

My briefcase is a Hazard 4 “Ditch” laptop/soft briefcase with the Removable flap. It is a little tacticool but not so much that people notice. It has a main compartment which has a hook and loop holster for a full size firearm. It has a hook and loop where I have a first-aid kit. It has all the little pockets along the side for spare mags and other things. There is a couple of tetra paks of flavored tuna. Along with a Ka-Bar “spork”. There is a full size padded pocket that holds my laptop.

With the flap closed and latched you can open a zipper and gain access to the side compartment to pull out the laptop. Push to quick release buckles and the flap is free and you can then gain access to the double zippered main compartment.

It has places for moral patches, and I do have some on my bag. But they are silly things. Like “Rub dirt in it, sooner or later everything stops bleeding”. Them’s that know can guess there is a first aid kit in that bag.

For my Truck Gun I went with a NC Star Vism Discreet Carbine Case.

It is designed for a 16″ AR-15 broken down. All of the separators and tie down loops can be moved around. With a little bit of fiddling there is room for a Glock in a OWB holster, the PC 9 Carbine and easily a dozen mags. I’ve also used it with a broken down AR-15, that same glock pistol, three AR 30 round mags, one 20 round AR mag, 6 Glock mags

When closed it looks like a slightly oversized laptop bag. Given the size of laptops today, it gets no attention.

My family has doctors, nurses, EMTs and other medical professionals in it. I am well aware of the process of medical internships and rotations. I was going to write something about it but then DiveMedic did a much better job.

B.L.U.F.

Unlike engineers, doctors are expected to make diagnosis and medical decisions that require them to have good working knowledge of the human system right now. Engineers can wait till the morning to ask an expert in a different field.

JKB over at gunfreezone asks why medical training requires doctors to do rotations in specialties that are not their own, pointing out that engineers in one field don’t have to also do internships at a civil engineering firm, a mechanical engineering firm, a structural engineering firm, and a chemical engineering firm. He states that it looks like a complete waste of the student’s time. The reason that medicine does that is actually pretty simple, so let me give a simple explanation.

It isn’t likely that a mechanical engineer will do something that will have a direct effect on a chemical engineer’s job. That chemical engineer isn’t likely going to have an issue with avoiding the problems that a structural engineer is having. Imagine if a mechanical engineer tightened a screw a quarter turn, and this caused the hydraulic fluid to become acidic and then the building collapsed. Not so in medicine. Sure, people in medicine tend to specialize, but the human body is a complex system, and changes to one system have profound effects on the others.

Let’s say that I am in cardiology and I have a heart failure patient who is in fluid overload. There are a number of drugs that one could choose from to get rid of those fluids. I could try furosemide, or perhaps bumetanide. Perhaps torsemide, or even hydrochlorothiazide. Any of those medications would likely solve your patient’s issues, but which one of these is going to be detrimental to the patient’s kidneys? Do I want to choose a potassium sparing or a potassium wasting diuretic? How will that react with the patient’s preexisting autoimmune dysfunction? I could consult a nephrologist, an endocrinologist, and an immunologist, but doctors largely don’t stand around most of the time having huge arguments. That only happens on TV shows, not because there are no egos involved, because there are. Medical people are just too pressed for time to keep doing that, so wouldn’t it be easier if I already knew?

So for that reason, most in medicine learns a little about every system and specialty before going on to gain a deep understanding of their specialty. Nurses, doctors, PAs, NPs, all of them.

The first comment on that post complains about sterile fields and how they are “superstition.” Sterile fields are there to prevent post procedure infections. You can’t see infectious agents. Perhaps you didn’t touch anything. Or maybe you bumped into something that was covered in S. aureus and didn’t notice. How do you know? Can you be sure? If you are wrong, you will know in couple of days when your patient goes septic. You can’t bet a patient’s life on “the ten second rule.” Certain behaviors are high risk, so procedures get written in to the process to reduce or eliminate those higher risk behaviors. That includes treating everything that “breaks field” as though it was covered in an infectious agent- because it might be, and there is no way to know for sure. So you toss the offending object aside, and use one that you KNOW is sterile.

As an example, the most common cause of hospital caused infections is a CAUTI (Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection). It’s caused by a catheter introducing a pathogen into the urinary tract. That can affect the kidneys. It can cause Acute Kidney Injury. In some cases, that can cause Chronic Kidney Disease and ultimately kidney failure, or it can cause septicemia (a blood infection), which leads to death. Because of this, there are procedures that need to be followed when inserting, caring for, and ordering indwelling catheters. Can you violate that procedure and get away with it? Sure. A few times. Maybe only once. But one thing is sure, you will eventually wind up with a septic patient. So the procedure is there to prevent that.

My grandfather on my father’s side was a union organizer.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was in the union.

My wife is in a union.

The unions of my grandfathers’ time were creating a better working environment than existed. They were creating a balance. They did create a balance between speed and profit against health, safety, and wages.

When I was in high school I got a chance to read the longshoreman’s contract. The one thing that got me was that a longshoreman got paid even if he didn’t work. If he was at the hiring hall on time all five days and he did not get at least 40 hours, the difference between the hours he did get and 40 were “made up” to him.

At the time a longshoreman that didn’t work was bringing home more money than my mother as a degree nurse.

The scam part of it was that most jobs were handed out by 0730, 0800 was pushing it. You were “on time” if you were at the hiring hall by 0900.

Now I was never a member of the longshoreman’s union. I was a kid and I might have misunderstood what I read, but that is what I came away with.

Today that is what unions do, they push for higher wages, less work, for example less students per teacher, and better benefits.

But they came into existence because there was not balance. A company had all the power. Striking was difficult and dangerous.

It was possible to be born into a mining town, be down in the mines by the time you were 10, work until you could no longer work, from health issues or crippling injuries, or death. For the entire duration of you work life, you were forever in debt to the company.

On your first day of work they company gave you your gear. They set the prices and every payday you had to pay some of it back, to pay for the equipment they gave you on credit. Your equipment wore out and you had to replace it. On credit.

The company owned the home you lived in, you were paying for it from your paycheck.

The food you purchased at the company store was bought on credit. And you paid for it out of every paycheck.

It wasn’t uncommon for a man to come out of the mines at the end of the week and owe the company more money after paying his entire wages back to the company, than he owed at the start of the week.

Tennessee Ernie Ford brought that story to life:

A modern take: