For the last bit, we’ve been talking about how the apparatchiks have been moving to try to redefine what the plain text step is in Heller and Bruen

The judge agrees with us, the Seventh Circuit judges, Wood and Easterbrook, looked at their two-step method and said, “The Supreme Court can’t be talking about us.”. Then said they got it right, and the Supreme Court’s opinion matches theirs.

Or as a former president put it: It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. If the — if he — if “is” means “is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. [xCite item=”QCAL66BE” pos=1]

The Seventh feels it can define any word to mean anything they want it to mean.

Having defined the word to mean exactly what they wanted it to mean, they then claim that they have investigated themselves and found that they had done no wrong.

Again, Judge McGlynn takes the Seventh to task. … has come at this question from a different direction … by the Supreme Court.

But here is the kicker, he tells the Plaintiffs that they must brief both arguments. That of the Seventh’s ridiculous contention that you have to prove that an arm is protected under the Second Amendment before the state has an opportunity to prove a historical tradition of regulations. But the Plaintiffs must also argue using the correct methodology, as laid out in Heller and affirmed in Bruen of text.

The state is going to say: The Seventh has told you that LCM’s and Assault Weapons aren’t protected arms, so you can’t challenge the law on the ground that they are protected arms.

They will contend that the Plaintiffs have not met their burden of proving that the arms in question are arms. Since the Plaintiffs did not meet their burden, the state does not have to show a historical tradition of firearms regulation that is a match.

The Plaintiffs are being required to argue that “assault weapons” are protected under the Second. That is the only argument they need to make.

The court has warned the state, “Make sure you brief historical tradition, or you might lose.”

No matter how this goes, it will be appealed. I just enjoy bringing you news of courts and judges that do get it right.

There is every indication that this judge will do the right thing.

New Hampshire got a little more snow and ice yesterday and today. We were prepared for it, no big deal.

I was preparing to go to bed, doing that final sit of the day before showering, when the power went out. Grump.

Finished in the dark. Turned the flashlight on, pointed it at the ceiling, took my shower.

When I got to bed, I spent the 5 minutes using the power company’s app to report the outage. They asked if I was sure.

There were two reported outages. 15 minutes later there were 1000+ in my clump.

About two hours later, power was restored. We lost it again about 30 minutes later. 45 minutes after that, power was restored and has remained steady since.

My point in all of this was that it wasn’t a big deal.

This morning, I power cycled the Optical Network Terminator (ONT) and we had the Internet back. Turned my primary computer back on and went to work.

The discussion about lack of discipline in schools was very intriguing. My personal story of strong vs. weak teachers was in 7th or 8th grade. The first day of school, our French teacher was soft and kind to the students. Our civics teacher read us the riot act. Nobody liked him.

French class was a waste of time. The teacher never had control of the class. The kids did what they wanted, had little or no respect for her. Nobody learned a thing. The disruptions came from two or maybe three kids.

Same group of students in the civics class. No messing around. No disruptions. No issues. He had control of the class from the very first day. By the end of the first month, his class was laid back and fun. He never had to force anything.

Teachers have to be able to control their classrooms. They have to have the skill to do so. And they have to have the backing of the administration to enforce that control.

As one pundit put it in the comments, the admin should respond to parents saying “you can’t do that to my little angel” with “that’s fine, we’ll just suspend him instead, if their behavior after suspension is still unacceptable, we’ll expel him.”

I tried something new this week. Instead of quoting, highlighting and commenting, I instead quoted and highlighted.

That is a bit faster for me, but might require more effort on your part.

[yop_poll id=”2″]

My wife is a teacher. She has been teaching for over 40 years now. When we were in Maryland, she taught at two different schools. One a rural school and one in Baltimore.

While she received extensive support from her admin while at the rural school, not so much in the Baltimore school.

Her most significant weakness, as a teacher, is not being able to command her classroom. She asked me to come and observe her at work in her classroom to give her feedback.

I was expecting to observe, I got put to work. My wife was the primary teacher, there was a secondary teacher and me in the classroom. There were 15 to 20 1st or 2nd graders.

What I observed was that the teachers would ask the children to do things. They would inform them that it was time to do something. They never gave an order. They never told the children what to do.

Not knowing any better, at one point I just said, “Sit Down.” 15 Second later, they were sitting where they were supposed to, attentive to the teachers.

There was no discipline in that classroom.

One year she was dealing with older students. She had run out of ideas for discipline. She couldn’t actually do anything.

I passed on a method I had learned from one of my employees, a former instructor at APG. “When a soldier needs to be disciplined, we’ll have them hold a quarter to the wall with their nose, their hands behind their back.”

My wife used it. Within a week, she had control of the classroom. No more tearful nights, wanting to give up teaching. Everybody in the classroom was better for her, having control over her students.

Wellll, all good things must come to an end. There were no complaints until a father got back from deployment, heard the “punishment” that was being used and blew a gasket. He went to the admin of the school and complained. The admin shrugged with it’s nothing, why are you so upset? He informed them that he learned about it in military training and there was no way his child was going to be treated like a soldier.

3 weeks later, the classroom was out of control.

When we got to New Hampshire, it was much better. When she started at her current school, it was wonderful. She had the full support of her admin, and classroom discipline was a part of the that.

Over time, that has changed. With the remote learning during the panic, it got worse.

Last year was pretty bad. This year has been worse.

It isn’t uncommon to hear her frustration of having had to clear her classroom because one student was acting out.

It isn’t uncommon to hear about “emergency” alerts being given to lock down the school because one of the animals was roaming the halls, destroying and disrupting.

It isn’t uncommon to hear about her having to comfort and help one of her friends and co-workers because an animal had ripped apart a classroom.

The school system is hemorrhaging teachers. Teachers are retiring that 2 years ago had no intention of retiring. Of course, the good ones go first.

I’ve heard stories of the Superintendent following one of these animals as they roamed the halls, trying to keep the child from disrupting other students. The good thing about that day? That student was suspended, for a day.

We aren’t the only people to notice.

Using data from several sources, including the WI Department of Public Instruction and the UW-Milwaukee survey of students, they found that lack of suspensions (discipline) is causing the schools to become increasingly dangerous.

• Suspension Rates Declined in Milwaukee After Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) Agreement.
• Reduced Suspension for African American Students Resulted in Lower Reports of Safety
• Suspension Rates for Other Student Groups Change in a more “normal” manner.
• African American Students Suffer the Most.

I’m told that the phrase “1350” is horribly racist. It refers to a claim that 13% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime. A more correct statement is that 6% of blacks account for 51% of all murders in the United States.

The problem with this statistic is that it is measuring based on numbers that could be misleading. Is that number of blacks that are proven to have murdered because society focuses on their crimes more? Is it that more blacks are falsely imprisoned? Is it some other unknown factor that causes these numbers to be so skewed?

The numbers say that it isn’t racism or “systemic racism”. The numbers and studies indicate that it is a result of behavior patterns that are group-centric.

When behavior is considered, the stop rates are the same between the different groups.

The report I was looking for was a civil suit filed against the PSP claiming that they were racist in choosing who they stopped for speeding. The raw numbers said that the PA state police were stopping more black drivers than expected by census/population density.

Fortunately, they were doing some traffic camera testing at the same time. Turns out that the cameras, which aren’t racist, were flagging speeders at the same percentages as the PSP were stopping people.

All of this is to say, there are normally other reasons that different groups perform differently than “systemic racism”. The more likely reason that African American students were being suspended at higher rates than European American students was because of behavior difference, not racism.

The problem was that to reduce the suspension rate for African American students, they had to stop suspending everybody.

It became an action of last resort. It was ok that 29 kids were in the hallway, not learning because one “learner” was acting like an animal in a classroom. Being such a physical threat that the room had to be cleared.

But we can’t offend Aunt Suzie’s little darling. He might get mad and destroy your classroom.

[xCiteBib]

(1000 Words)
This is the butterfly knife ban. The People won at the Ninth Circuit court of appeals merits panel. Of course, the Ninth Circuit couldn’t let a win for the 2nd stand, so they are rehearing the case en banc the week of June 24th.

This takes us to the standard filing of briefs by all interested parties. I’m going to be lazy and provide you with the good stuff from the Second Amendment Foundation.

TL;DR

Read More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7tVvQHLyo

My wife is committed to our children. There is nothing she will not do for them. This has been true since the day she became a mother.

For her, Easter is an important day. She instilled that in our kids. But one of the other parts of Easter is the Easter Bunny coming to visit and leave eggs, candy, and gifts.

Yeah, my kids have received new bikes for Easter.

My church is not her church. So when they went to Easter Service, I was tasked with “The Easter Egg Hunt”. I’ve been doing the egg hunt for the kids for the last 15 years now. When they were young, the eggs were placed in the open. It was more of a task of collecting than of hunting.

As they got older, the eggs were “hidden”.

One Easter, there was still snow on the ground. My kids were positive the Easter Bunny was real because there were no footprints. They were unable to retrieve some of those eggs without leaving footprints. They still do not know how I accomplished that.

Then the hunt changed. Instead of just finding eggs, there was an actual task. They had to follow the eggs.

Last year’s hunt was a 2-mile trek through the woods to find 275 eggs. They only recovered 263. The rules were simple. If you are standing at an egg, you can see the next egg from that location.

Earlier, there was only one path. By last year, there were sometimes paths that were dead ends. When that happened, they needed to backtrack to pick up the correct path.

The kids are all adults this year. The hunt changed again.

For the last 4 years, it has been our kids and an extra. This year, it was our kids, the extra, and another half dozen friends. The kids and extra were required to bring a friend or the hunt would have been canceled.

The early arrivals were told, “You have your phones, look up “Land Nav.” You have 30 minutes to learn.

The hunt began at 1400. The first part was exactly as it had been in years gone by. They just followed the eggs.

After a bit of milling about, they reached the first cache.

There was a note with the cache. “AA-025-___”. The eggs were arranged in an arrow. There was an obvious path leading in the other direction.

Having been gifted with commo, compass, and range finder, they started trying to figure things out. They finally figured out that it was a range of 025 yards. They were told to follow the arrow. They didn’t go the full distance, getting distracted by a false trail. I got them to move a bit further and they found the second cache.

This was just a pile with a note: “AB-___-175”. It took them a bit before they figured out it was a bearing.

They finally got moving in the correct direction and at the first obstacle, a shed, they stopped. Finally, one of them looked around back, spotted the cache, which was designed to be found, and they learned the second lesson.

In that cache, they found a note: “AC-076-260”. They figured out what it meant, but didn’t know how to do the actual navigation. The one kid who was doing the right thing got instructions on how to do the land navigation.

From there they were on their own.

I was able to listen in as they communicated on the radio.

Two hours later, they arrived back at the house. The path as laid out was 1.5 miles. They likely did between 2 and 3 miles as they did do searches.

I learned that you have to lay out the caches differently when they can use a swarm method to find things. They reported that they had sometimes found caches out of sequence, marked that cache, and came back to it in sequence.

They found some eggs from previous years.

It was such a massive rush to listen to them on the radio as they found a cache and reported the sequence number. It told me about where they were.

They had a blast. Hagar and I had a blast setting the path.

Total caches, BD. That doesn’t include the false paths.

One of the cool stories they told was when they were on the final leg, a neighbor told them that there was a cache up the road a bit. They thought I had planted that neighbor to provide false information. I’m grinning now. I might have to do that next year.

One of the best parts of today, was that I spotted a “grandfather” playing with his grandchild while I was planting a cache.

After we finished the cache, Hagar and I went to the stone wall. I had Hagar lay out a 6 egg scatter hunt for the little while I went and introduced myself to the neighbor. They are a new move in. And this is New England. We’ve been here for 15 years+ and are still the newcomers.

Well, the grandfather listened as I explained what we had done. Then he got the parents’ permission. We all crossed the road and then grandfather and grandkid started the hunt.

The smile on the kid’s face as they found each golden egg and brought it back to their grandfather was worth it.

All of our kids are going to try to make it back here next year for another hunt. We will be using some different techniques next year as well as different eggs.

We will still put some easy to spot plastic eggs out there. But instead of a pile of blue, yellow, orange, purple with one gold egg, there will likely be one visible egg but not huge caches of visible eggs.

(1100 words)

After Heller, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. [xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ p=8 pos=0 pos=0]. Justice Thomas went on Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. [xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ p=8 pos=1].

If the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the individual’s conduct, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” [xCite item=”75DAVPP7″ p=8 pos=2].

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to claim that the Bruen court said that the plain text portion needed the challengers to prove anything apart from their conduct being within the ambit of the Second Amendment. There is never a need for the challengers to prove that an arm is not unusual or not dangerous.
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B.L.U.F.
Judge Krause beclowns himself in his written dissent. He should have kept his mouth shut so people only thought him a foold. Instead, he chose to write his opinion, removing all doubt.
(2000 words)

The Third Circuit court declined to rehear Lara en banc. This left the merit panel’s opinion that 18, 19, and 20-year-olds are part of the people and their rights shall not be infringed.

Six of the 14 judges would have granted the rehearing. Judge Krause decided to beclown himself with a written dissent.

When The People ratified the Bill of Rights, they did not intend to bind the nation in a straightjacket. They intended to bind the government in a straightjacket.

Our constitution is unusual in that it is built around limiting the government as much as possible, while reserving for the state and the people as much power as they can retain.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. is some of the strongest language in the constitution. It is a straightjacket, binding the government. The government has succeeded in escaping that straightjacket. We are fighting to get it back into that straightjacket.

The Supreme Court, has stated many times, that the meaning of the plain text of the constitution is set when it was adopted and the meaning of the plain text of the amendments is set when the amendment is ratified.
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There have been some “interesting” developments in the Circuit Courts.

Out in the Ninth Circuit court, we are starting to see a game where three judge merit panels are placing 2A cases in limbo, pending the outcome of the Duncan v. Bonta en banc opinion. This is just a delay tactic. It is transparent and not just a nasty game.

The rogue judges on the Ninth Circuit will do anything to stop from ruling in favor of The People.

On the other side of the country, the Third Circuit court refused to hear Lara v. Evanchick en banc. The district court found that the state could infringe on the rights of 18, 19, and 20-year-olds. The merits panel of the Third Circuit reversed and remanded the case back to the district court.

The state appealed for a rehearing, en banc. That rehearing was denied. This is a win for us.

There are still a number of 2A cases seeking cert before the Supreme Court. I’ll continue to monitor to see what happens.

The state has been arguing for two steps in doing Second Amendment challenges. The first is forcing the plaintiffs to “prove” that the Second Amendment is implicated. This is being called into question by the good guys. The arguments from the Second Amendment advocates are getting stronger and more on point regarding rogue inferior courts.

Lawfare is alive and well out in Chicago. New Jersey’s AG penned a letter to Glock signed by the standard evil AG’s demanding that Glock be prepared to be sued into oblivion. Plenty of trade secrets and other things that are sure to “leak” once the state has finished discovery.

I’m dealing with the arsehole neighbor. I had to go measure everything to make sure that the test range was far enough away from the neighbor’s house. It is. He just doesn’t like the sound of gun fire and is doing the “shots fired” through 911. Had to deal with cops.

“I don’t answer questions”. Then the cop lied about the RSA. I now have a copy on hand, just in case.

I’m slowly making my way through [xCite item=”H7824SZ9″ pos=0]. It is a good history of Miller. Grist for the Mill.

Of the cases discussed in the blog, do you have any questions? Are there any subjects I should expand on?

Have a fantastic weekend, all. The comments are open.

Initial impressions:

So what is this thing? Well, it is a bearing holding a bushing with an endmill.

When we are trimming cases to length, we use what we can measure. For some cartridges, this makes sense. For others, it is nearly impossible.

Our goal is to have a cartridge correctly seated in the chamber with the bullet at the correct distance from the rifling (or just touching), and the distance from the end of the cartridge to the face of the bolt be correct.

Consider a .45 ACP round. The cartridge is designed to position itself in the chamber based on the mouth of the cartridge. When the cartridge is fully seated in the chamber, the mouth of the case will be resting against a feature in the chamber.

The overall length of the case should be such that the base of the case is at a known, correct, distance from the face of the bolt. Using the mouth of the case allows us good control of bullet to rifling distance.

30-30 Winchester, .45 Colt, .303 British, 7.62x54R all position the cartridge according to the front of the case rim.

With a rimmed cartridge, the thickness of the rim is known. This means that the distance from the base of the case to the face of the bolt is the controlled distance.

By correctly seating the bullet and by making sure that the length of the case is correct, we get control the distance the bullet is from the rifling.

In some senses, rimmed cases are the easiest to measure and keep within specifications.

More modern cartridges seat against the shoulder. This gives good control over the distance between the bullet and the rifling, and supposedly, good control of the distance between the base of the case and the face of the bolt.

The issue is that measuring from that hypothetical shoulder location to the mouth and the base is a little difficult.

We address this by “bumping the shoulder”. This is using the reloading press to reform the shoulder at the correct distance from the base of the case. At that point, trimming the case to length based on overall length should give good results.

To trim a case to length, we need to be able to repeatably cut the case to the same length. Thus, we need to have some way of making sure that the cutter is the correct distance from the base of the case.

On a case with a shoulder, we can either measure from the base of the case or from some other known location on the case.

One method used is to have a rod of known length that pokes out of the flash hole. This stop rod keeps the cutter from getting any closer to the face pressed against the base of the case.

When done correctly, this is quick, easy, and very repeatable.

The issue is that each cartridge needs its own stop rod.

Another method is when the cutter is kept from advancing beyond a known location. If I could, I would use my milling machine for this.

The cutter would spin in the spindle, when the quill is brought down it will stop when it hits the quill stop. Very fast, very repeatable.

Most of the trimming devices that have a lathe like spindle that has the cutter works this way. There is a stop collar that keeps the “spindle” from moving to far.

My issue with that style is that it is a little slower and I don’t trust the stops.

Which takes us to the last time. A trimmer that is based on the distance from a known location on the shoulder to the cutter.

Since we’ve positioned and shaped the shoulder correctly in the reloading press, measuring from the shoulder should be consistent.

This is what the UGLY SRT does.

The SRT consists of 5 major components. The first is the cutter. This is just a standard 4 flute 3/8″ endmill. The size is by a mark I eyeball, so it could be anything close.

The next component is the body. This is a simple bit of turning. It has a slip fit for the cutter at one end and is bored to size on the other end.

The cutter slips into the hole for it and is held in place by two set screws.

A baring has been pressed into place at the other end and makes the third major component.

The next major component is a simple disk with a single set screw in it. This is to allow you to adjust the depth of cut.

The final component is the collet. This slips into the bearing. It has a shoulder to press a case against.

To operate, this is simple. Chuck the endmill into a drill. When the drill is running, the endmill will turn and the housing will turn. The collet and inner race of the bearing will not rotate.

Slide a case into the collet and press it into the cutter. When it bottoms out on the shoulder in the collet, you will have cut the case to a length.

This is very consistent.

Adjusting the depth of cut is also simple.

If you want to make the depth of cut less, you make sure that the adjustment disk held in place and that it is firm against the body. You then release the endmill from the housing, slide a feeler gauge of the right size between the body and the adjustment disk. Tighten the set screws to lock the endmill/cutter in place.

Reposition the adjustment disk tight against the housing and lock it there.

This is dirt simple. It is an adjustment method that I will be using in my designs.

To cut more, loosen the adjustment disk, slip the correct feeler gauge between the body and the adjustment disk. Lock the adjustment disk in place. There is now a gap between the adjustment disk and the body. Release the endmill, push the adjustment disk against the housing, lock the endmill in place.

Everything about this is simple, well constructed. The adjustment process is different but easy.

I’ve only tested on a few cases, but I think this might be my end goal for shouldered cases.

The only downside I’ve identified, so far, is that I have to purchase different collets depending on the case I’m trimming. And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to manufacture them from the tooling I have on hand.

More to when I do my next large trim run.