The following is the dissent of Judge VanDyke in <i>Duncan v. Bonta.  It is not a legal argument.  He leaves that for his fellow judge, Judge Bumatay.

Judge VanDyke and Judge Bumatay are two of the voices of sanity coming out of the Ninth Circuit court.

This dissent is a justifiable take-down of the actions of the Ninth Circuit court since, well, the 1960s. It was written before Bruen.  The observations about the Ninth Circuit continue to be true today, post Bruen.

When this case was GVR from the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit punted it back to Judge Benitez, at the district level, I expected a quick response.  It was not quick.

Today, while thinking about it, I believe that Judge Benitez was actually playing a waiting game before issuing his ruling.

Everybody knew that the state was going to appeal Judge Benitez’s ruling.  The Ninth Circuit’s administrative panel was likely, no highly likely, to grant a stay.  We all knew this.

But, and this is a huge but, the case would then be assigned to the merits panel.  It is my belief that Judge Benitez was waiting for a favorable merits panel before issuing his opinion.

This is why the Ninth Circus began its razzle-dazzle tap dance, claiming the case was a “come back” to be assigned to the same en banc panel that had ruled against The People originally.

If they had not been able to take it to the en banc panel, we would have had another favorable ruling from a merits panel in the Ninth Circuit.

This is pretty easy reading.  There are a few citations, but it is not overly heavy on them.  The language is written for The People and not for lawyers.

Enjoy.

I largely agree with Judge Bumatay’s excellent dissent. And to paraphrase James Madison, if judges were angels, nothing further would need be said. But unfortunately, however else it might be described, our court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence can hardly be labeled angelic. Possessed maybe—by a single-minded focus on ensuring that any panel opinions actually enforcing the Second Amendment are quickly reversed. The majority of our court distrusts gun owners and thinks the Second Amendment is a vestigial organ of their living constitution. Those views drive this circuit’s caselaw ignoring the original meaning of the Second Amendment and fully exploiting the discretion inherent in the Supreme Court’s cases to make certain that no government regulation ever fails our laughably “heightened” Second Amendment scrutiny.

This case is par for the course. The majority emphasizes the statistical rarity of law-abiding citizens’ need to fire more than an average of 2.2 shots in self-defense, but glosses over the statistical rarity of the harm that California points to as supporting its magazine ban. Instead of requiring the government to make an actual heightened showing, it heavily weighs the government’s claim that guns holding more than 10 rounds are “dangerous” (of course they are—all guns are) against a self-defense interest that the majority discounts to effectively nothing. Once again, our court flouts the Supreme Court’s exhortation against such “a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach” to the Second
Amendment. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 634 (2008).

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I added some nasty pictures of my very messy and dirty shop after the MORE

Yesterday was another cleaning day. I tore the rotary table apart to inspect and clean it.

As expected, there were several areas that were out of sight that needed to be deburred.

Taking it apart was straightforward.

All but one machined surface was nicely done. For a slow speed tool, it is very nice.

That one place was the actual worm. The leading thread, which isn’t in contact with the worm-gear, was buggered to hell and gone, razor sharp and just plain nasty.

A bit of work with a file and that was fixed. The good news is that the shop towel I was using discovered that razor and not my fingers.

I will be redoing parts of the cleaning with some serious degreaser. I wasn’t able to get it entirely clean.

There was nasty grit in places. All the grit has been removed.

I intend to put it back together today. I’ll have to replace one socket head screw because the head stripped while removing the screw. This means I need to find my box of metric socket head screws. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

All said, I’m happy with this purchase.

Tomorrow the dividing plates arrive. I hope that the inner hole matches the shaft they are to go over. If I need to machine a bushing for the two plates, that’s no big deal.

The rotary table is missing the three tapped holes to hold the dividing plates in place.

This is not an issue. The disk where the holes go is a separate casting. It will go in the milling machine with no issues. I’ll either transfer punch the holes or I will do a simple 3 hole pattern using the DRO.

If I was being really cool, I would mount it on the rotary table and drill and tap the holes that way.

P.S. I finished the new chuck key for the old chuck. It looks damn nice. I’m actually proud of my work on it. I might have to polish one handle to make it look a little better, but neither the less, it is pretty.
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