B.L.U.F.
Circuit Judge Ho of the Fifth Circuit writes a letter to the Supreme Court explaining what they did in Rahimi and why the Fifth Circuit’s opinion should stand.
(1600 words)

When I read some arguments made by the state, I want to scream about how bad those arguments actually are. The more I read and understand, the more I would like to learn how to write and submit my own amicus curia briefs. The problem is that I would need a lawyer to submit them through.

Besides all of us poor regular people, there is another group of people that are not allowed to submit briefs to the superior courts. That is the judges themselves.

Judge Benitez doesn’t get to submit a brief to the Ninth Circuit rebutting what the state said in Duncan. He is limited to what he wrote in his final judgement. He has developed a robust history in Duncan, but he doesn’t get to point out what parts of that history are important.

Circuit Judge James C. Ho sits on the Fifth Circuit court of appeals. He is part of the group that decided a number of the Second Amendment cases that have been through the Fifth Circuit. That includes the Rahimi case.

On Friday, the 17th of November, the Fifth Circuit court issued their opinion in US v. Kersee, a case that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. Kersee is a case involving domestic violence allegations.

Case History

Starting from the beginning, Mr. Kersee is a strong candidate for the J. Kb.’s pedophile rehabilitation program. He pled guilty to one count of unlawfully transporting a minor over state lines with intent to engage in sexual activity. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 5 years of supervised release.
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Firearms need to be cared for. I’m not good at it. I came to it later in life and just didn’t understand what it takes.

That being said, I’m attempting to do better. Part of “doing better” is actually training with EDC in normal clothing/gear and being willing to send self-defense rounds down range.

This sometimes leads to sending many more range candy down range to overcome my bad habits.

The other day, my wife comes out of the bedroom and is putting on her coat, screaming “Which rifle is the right rifle to kill that (long bleep) rodent!”

It is that time of year when the weather turns and the damn mice come in out of the cold. There is one or more that have made a nest in the crawl space under the bedroom. When they are eating, and we are trying to go to sleep, it is very loud.

The problem is that it sounds like there might be an animal just outside our window. This has led to many a parameter walk by at midnight with the R92. On this particular night, my wife was in bed before me. I was busy writing an article for you guys. So she couldn’t just tell me to go deal.

So she’s looking to take one of the rifles out varmint hunting at around midnight.

It was at that moment that I realized: I don’t know if the Henry Golden Boy has been sighted in.

Longer story shortened, I, blue haired fairie, and wife go outside, I prove that there is nothing out there. She heads back to bed.

The next day, I took that .22 out to the test range and proceeded to put 50+ rounds through it. I sometimes forget just how much fun it can be plinking with a .22. I rang steel, put rounds on paper, and destroyed a small pumpkin.

Then I took out my SIG P938 out to test myself.

It is a small 9 mm pistol. Beautiful sights. I take aim, pull the trigger and click. No bang.

I’ve not shot this pistol in too long. Maybe something is wrong and it needs to be clean. I rack the slide, and it doesn’t go into battery.

I give it a slight push, and it slides into battery. Press, BANG! Clean miss.

Next press and another BANG!

Failure to feed.

Drop the mag, clear the failure to feed. Put the no-bang round back on top of the mag, reinsert mag.

Bang. Click.

Cock hammer, click.

Cycle the gun, finish sending rounds down range, finally ringing steel.

We take everything back inside, and I take the Ruger PC9 out, drop one round into the chamber, click.

Out of seven rounds, one failure to fire, one failure to feed. I need more practice.

When I went back inside, I tossed the round to the blue haired fairie and asked, “What’s wrong with it?”

When I came back to her, she stumbles over the words and says, “I don’t remember what it is called. The spark button didn’t go off.”

I hereby declare that from this time forward, “primers” can also be referred to as “spark buttons” in polite company.

B.L.U.F.
My rambling on the newly issued Supreme Court Code of Conduct.

(2150 words)

The Supreme Court has always had a code of conduct, their formal ethics. It was not published for good reason.

There is only one way to remove a Supreme Court justice, that is through impeachment as described in the constitution. There is no authority given in the constitution for any sort of punishment of a justice, short of impeachment.

Because there is no bite behind the code of conduct, it was sometimes ignored by those justices motivated by agenda and followed, in the most part, by the justices motivated by the constitution and the law.

As an early example of an ethics question, an attorney was nominated for a position on the Supreme Court. They had no experience sitting as a judge. Had written no legal opinions.
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We’ve had some news out of a couple of rogue inferior courts. The level of gymnastic skill exercised by these courts rivals anything ever seen at the Olympics.

On the good news front, the Supreme Court will hear the Range petition for writ of certiorari today. There are three potential answers we can get back: 1) A granting of cert., 2) A denial of cert., 3) A holding pattern where they don’t grant or deny.

When the Court heard Bruen they had a number of Second Amendment cases waiting for a decision on cert. Right after Bruen the Court Granted Cert, Vacated the inferior courts’ opinion, and Remanded the case back to the lower court.

We have had another case docketed requesting a writ of certiorari, Caulkins v. Pritzker out of IL. I’m not very knowledgeable about this case yet. Now that it is at the Supreme Court, I can read the legal filings and find out what’s happening.

One of the short stories about this case is that it went to the Illinois Supreme Court. Two of the judges on that court were asked to recuse themselves because they had accepted a million dollars each from governor Pritzker for their election. This is in violation of the $500,000 limit, but Pritzker did a little hand waving, and it was allowed.

The two judges refused to recuse themselves. They said that it would not influence their opinion on the case. And then sided with the state against The People.

Thus, this petition includes a due process claim as well as Second Amendment claims.

In other news, the Supreme Court issued their code of conduct. I’ve read about half of it and will likely write something about it for tomorrow’s article.

Thank you for all the feedback this week on everybody’s articles.

The comments are open. Please give me some suggests for articles. Yesterday morning’s article was difficult as I had writer’s block.

A professional author friend of mine explains writer’s block as such: Your job doesn’t allow writer’s block. Your job is to write. If you think you have writer’s block, write something, anything. That is what happened.

OH! I almost forgot, that little piece of lawyering had a layer I had missed on the first go around. There were multiple cites to Friedman v. City of Highland Park, Ill. All of those cites were to judges and justices saying how wrong Friedman was. There are cites from Justice Thomas, for example.

The author of the Friedman opinion was Judge Easterbrook. The same judge who was the ghostwriter for the Seventh Circuit court’s opinion that Bevis v. Naperville is requesting a rehearing en banc. That is just a delightful snarky slam on Easterbrook.