• Rcd this via internet comm sx Today from a very competent and reliable source today, 13 June 2025
    Ok, ladles and jellyspoons, this announcement will be long and unpopular. I’m sending it out to a couple of groups that I’m affiliated with, some family, and a handful of my closest friends. Everyone gets the same thing. Some of you will probably agree, others will not, and others simply don’t want to hear it.
     Do with it what you will, but a word to the wise… think long and hard before you just ignore it! At least afford me the courtesy of reading it all the way through…
    Please excuse the term, but this afternoon, the shit hit the fan. This is simply too serious to use poop. Again, please read this and consider the implications.
    Now, where to start…? There are a number of issues, so let’s address them one at a time. Let’s start with what could easily and quickly burst into World War 3.0. This afternoon, Israel launched a devastating, calculated, preemptive attack on Iran, followed by another shortly thereafter. Iran will not take this lying down, and I’m certain they will easily be able to recruit some help. My biggest fear is that China may eventually get involved. The US will not stand by and let Israel get annihilated. Russia may get involved to some degree, but probably not directly against Israel.
    Up until now, some of you may be thinking, “OK, yeah, this could be bad! Gas will skyrocket, prices of everything else will probably go up, and our young men and women may be involved in another senseless war! Tsk, tsk… but how much will it REALLY affect me?”
    Saturday is Flag Day, it’s the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States Army, it’s Donald Trump’s birthday, it’s the day that the “No Kings”, “mostly peaceful” protests will be happening in every state in the union. Think about it… (https://www.nokings.org/)
    Do you seriously think these protests will be “mostly peaceful?” I have good money that says the upcoming protests… wait, let’s just call them what they are. They are planned, organized, violent riots. They will be rioting, intending to contribute to the destruction of America. They couldn’t care less about Trump or immigration or anything else. They’re using this as an excuse to bring about as much destruction as possible. It is my absolute opinion that there will be vast property damage, many injuries, and almost certainly some deaths. These protests are not just in the big cities back east and in Kalifornia. (See the attached map and article) No, in fact, one is planned right here in S****L**.
    These people don’t have nearly enough money to carry this out by themselves. So, where is all the money coming from? Some of you have seen this on the news — George Soros, Verizon, Kristie Walton (Walmart heiress) and other America-hating, traitorous scum.
    OK, let’s up the ante a little. We’ve known for 30 years that sleepers and sleeper cells from several Middle Eastern countries have been streaming across our borders and assimilating into our society across the Nation. These are not the troublemakers that you hear about in the news. No, just the opposite. These people dress like us, get jobs, never get in trouble and are hardly noticed by most of us. Here’s a little secret some of may not be aware of… we have some right here in our area.
    So, what better opportunity could these people possibly have to spread terror than to quietly join these planned protests on Saturday? You are about to witness mob mentality like you have never imagined!
    Now, then, for the uncomfortable part. Don’t be stupid! This is not a maybe and THIS IS NOT A DRILL. It’s GOING to happen. To what degree is yet to be seen. So, are you just going to sit and wait and watch and hope it doesn’t happen here? With any luck, it won’t happen right here in V*****. But I have good money that says we’ll see it in Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Farmington, Albuquerque, Denver, Dallas, Ft Worth, New Orleans, Chicago, and a whole slew of others. It may not happen to you, but what about your family elsewhere?
    I am nobody. I’m not a strategist, a fortune-teller, or a prophet. But I have watched and studied this stuff for a very long time.

    Here are a few things that I VERY STRONGLY suggest…
    1. There will likely be runs on banks, grocery stores and gas stations no later than Monday.
    2. Make sure your fuel tanks and propane bottles are topped off TOMORROW, meaning Friday (I’m writing this at midnight Thursday night.)
    3. If you need groceries, get them TOMORROW, Friday!
    4. Get some cash out of the bank and keep it on hand.
    5. Traveling, especially air travel, should not be considered for the next week or so, until we see how this goes.
    6. AVOID CROWDS AT ALL COSTS!
    7. Above all, stay alert! Don’t assume or take anything for granted. If you see something that looks out of place, don’t ignore it, let someone know.
    8. Some of you carry guns, some of you don’t. Right now would be a damned fine time to start!
    9. This is in addition to the preparedness items that you should already have. If you haven’t started preparing yet, you’re too late, forget it.
    10. I hope I stayed up until 1am writing all this for nothing, but I don’t think so. If it doesn’t apply Saturday, it might apply next week, or a month from now. But be assured, your efforts will not be wasted!
    Lastly, pray. Earnestly and often.
    I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

    Minor edits for formatting and suggested grammar fixes.

            

  • Supreme Court Lessons

    There are people who spend a lifetime learning how to predict what the Supreme Court is going to do. The short answer?

    They get it wrong almost as often as us amateurs.

    There are many moving parts involved with court cases. What is allowed and what is not allowed.

    In general, the Court prefers to take cases that are important to the country or which the federal government wants them to take.

    There are things that reduce the chances of a case being granted certiorari, the biggest being a case that is still in an interlocutory state. Interlocutory means that the fact finding part of the case has not completed. A final judgment has not been reached and all other means of redress have not been exhausted.

    Four justices must vote to grant certiorari. Just because one side or the other has a majority, that might not be enough to get a case seen by the Court.

    The question then becomes, what makes a case important to the country, in the eyes of the Court?

    One of the big ones is a circuit split. The country is broken into circuits. Each court of appeals handles one circuit.

    The famous circuit courts are the Ninth, Seventh, Fifth, and Second. If you want a good court for business law, the Second Circuit is the place to go. They deal with it constantly, being based out of New York City.

    The Fifth circuit covers Texas and can be trusted to do the right thing most of the time. The Seventh Circuit is out of Chicago, and there isn’t an infringement they haven’t found constitutional. The Ninth en banc is currently around 250 to 0 for the state and against The People in Second Amendment cases.

    To have a circuit split, different circuits must come to different conclusions given the same fact pattern. In this, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 9th Circuits have all been presented the same fact pattern regarding magazine bans and assault weapon bans. They have all agreed that such laws are constitutional.

    The Fifth has not issued an opinion on that fact pattern because they don’t have any magazine ban or assault weapon ban challenges.

    This means no circuit split.

    The next thing the Court seems to be looking at is correcting past errors. We can look at the history of Roe v. Wade and Chevron and a host of other cases where the Supreme Court started walking back their original opinion shortly after it came out.

    This happens when the inferior courts decide to apply the new case law in ways the Court did not intend. The Court will then take cases that touch on the original issue to “refine” their opinion. In general, the inferior courts seem to ignore this.

    In the end, the Court will issue a new opinion declaring their old opinion revoked, and they will explain why. The Dobbs opinion, overturning Roe v. Way is an example of this. The Court had been limiting the extent of Roe v. Wade for a few decades before Dobbs.

    Chief Justice Roberts prefers this incremental approach over more substantive changes.

    This takes us to the “important for the country” cases.

    Heller was a good example of this. After 8 decades, the Court heard a Second Amendment case. The purpose of the case was to reset the inferior courts.

    The holding in Heller was that the Second Amendment was an individual right. In the process, the Court set up the rules on how Second Amendment cases should be adjudicated in the future. They defined almost every word of the Second Amendment, established the “plain text and historical tradition of firearm regulations”, and established the dangerous and unusual test for banning arms.

    This last is sometimes stated as “in common use.”

    If an arm is in common use for lawful purposes, then it is not unusual. Since an arm can only be banned if it is both “extra” dangerous AND and unusual, this means that an arm in common use cannot be banned.

    When we look at Snope it was a slam dunk. Why? Because it was a repeat of Heller. There is nothing new in it.

    The Supreme Court knows that repeating a past opinion will not change the inferior courts in a positive way.

    To put it differently, if a case is granted certiorari, and then the lower court’s opinion is vacated, and the cases is remanded back to the inferior court to redo in light of some other published opinion and the inferior court reaches the same opinion, doing a full opinion isn’t going to make a difference.

    When we were breaking up with a partner family, the other family came to the negotiation table with an offer of $16,000. They explained how they got that number.

    I used their numbers to show that $16k wasn’t the correct answer.

    The next meeting, they again offered $16k. The justification reason and numbers were different, the result was the same.

    Again, I used their numbers to show that $16k wasn’t the correct answer.

    The next meeting the offered the same $16k with still another justification and set of numbers.

    “Your sister only gave you $16k to buy us out, right?”

    “Uhhhhh, yes”

    The rogue inferior courts keep coming up with the same answer with the same fact pattern with different justifications, every time. See the Fourth Circuit court’s handling of Bianchi v Brown, now known as Snope.

    There are several Second Amendment cases that are currently seeking cert or that will file a petition for a writ of certiorari soon. One of those is Duncan v. Bonta.

    This is a magazine ban case. Unlike Ocean State Tactical, this case is not in an interlocutory state. It should be ripe for taking.

    I do not believe the Supreme Court will take it. It is not the slam dunk of an arms ban. It has too much extra baggage with it, regarding “is it an arm or is it an accessory.” The Court is more likely to take an arms ban because that is a slam dunk, and they can explain that accessories, such as magazines, are arms under the Second Amendment.

    This leaves us some cases regarding the NFA, sensitive places, licensing requirements, and Second Amendment rights following you across state lines.

    All of these cases will advance Second Amendment jurisprudence.

    It Will Cost

    My truck is 15 years old. It has a new frame and the motor appears to be strong.

    Unfortunately, after 15 years, it is showing some of its age.

    Yesterday I got the bad news: New pads and rotors in the front. New calibers on both sides for the front, new wheel bearings for both sides of the front. Replace brake hose crimp in rear right. Two broken brackets that need to be replaced, and a half dozen other things.

    R and R for the wheel bearings is over $700 each.

    The local parts store has everything in stock for me to do the break and bearing work. At over $1000 in parts.

    Rockauto had all the parts available for $450 with $69 in shipping.

    On the 21st I’ll be working on the truck to do all the work I can in the front. The only issue I really see is I might have to replace a short section of hard line.

    Who wants to bet it will be raining that day?

    Website Design and Coding

    Tuesday I arrived at the next step in my museum website project. After three days of frustration, attempting to decide what I wanted to do, I took a step back, went and implemented the shopping cart.

    Things just got simple in the backend. Simple in the front end. Just a small bit of coding before I find my next roadblock.

    Question of the Week

    What preparations are you taking for the “No Kings”, nationwide, mostly peaceful protests? It is taking place tomorrow, June 14th.

            

  • My internal infrastructure is getting better and better. Unfortunately, it is still not stable enough.

    The router is having issues with memory. I need to add more memory to fix the issues. The problem being that I need to take the router out of production to do so. I’ve not been willing to do that.

    The symptom is that connections time out. The fix, restart HAProxy.

    HAProxy forwards traffic to the ingress service. This should be running on multiple servers, but it currently is not. There is an issue which I have not resolved where communications from the second ingress service gets lost, leading to the gateway not responding.

    This means that when the server that runs the ingress service has to reboot, all ingress stops.

    The network is broken into segments, each segment is on a different subnet. Ceph prefers to be on a single subnet.

    My solution was to use OpenVSwitch to create a virtual network for Ceph. This works great!

    This adds a dependency on OpenVSwitch, which should not be an issue.

    The underlaying physical network depends on good routing. The reason I don’t use static is that some nodes have multiple paths and I want there to be multiple paths for every node. This adds a dependency on the routing stack.

    Free Range Routing, or FRR, is the solution. It supports OSPF, which is the correct routing protocol for internal routing. It just works.

    Unfortunately, FRR and the Linux kernel will stop talking to each other. When this happens, we lose routing of the physical networks.

    When we lose routing on the physical network, the OpenVSwitch network stops working.

    If the OpenVSwitch network goes down, then the different Ceph nodes can’t talk to each other.

    All of this is to say, I’m sorry for the issues you have been seeing with this site. Thank you for hanging in there.

    I had to find the sick FRRs and restart them. Once that happened, everything came back to life.

            

  • There are currently riots happening in Los Angeles and other California towns. I’ve so far watched a reporter FAFO and get shot in the leg with a rubber bullet, seen rioters dump rocks off an overpass onto cars below (police and non-police vehicles), witnessed “peaceful” folk set fire to cars, and heard about those self same “peaceful” folk ordering up driverless cars just so they could torch them.

    Someone on Facebook posted this, and I decided to go and find out if it was true. At this point, if “someone posts something” (be it person, so-called legacy media, or new media) I simply don’t trust it and I research and verify. It took me a while. I had to go through an article by the Times of India, and a handful of other places before I finally found the article at the Blaze (which I recommend reading and watching). They posted the actual video in their article, so I can now verify that yes, ABC did actually say this on actual television/video. I am at a complete loss.

    On Facebook, I carefully laid it out. If you said January 6th was a riot, and applauded the people being arrested, held without bail for unreasonable time, and given outrageously egregious sentences… but you say throwing rocks on moving vehicles is “peaceful protest,” just leave. I literally said, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. M’kay, byeeeeee.

    I assumed most people would just delete me, if there were any left who’d bother to comment. I expected that. I didn’t expect to hear people coming in and saying that it was Trump’s fault for “…illegal use of the National Guard and deployment of the Marines,” or that “…it isn’t rioting for the sake of rioting,” or “I agree dropping …(rocks)… on citizens is not right. Dropping them on Humvees, Bearcats, is fair game. The military are illegally there.” I also didn’t think I’d hear, “I’ve seen a couple of articles that stated that at least some of the car fire were started due to the flash bangs that were deployed.” Oh, and, “…that some of the images and videos were from 2020 and not this past weekend.”

    I have informed those people that I am not interested in excuses. Having been lectured for four years about January 6th, which included very little destruction of property (and the proper, imo, charging of those who engaged in vandalism) and only one death (on “our” side, FFS), I am not interested in excuses about why it’s okay to drop rocks on moving vehicles. It’s not.

    (more…)

            

  • Ms. Google will try to get me to read “news” from different sources. Yesterday, she showed me one of many articles claiming that the Trump administration is reacting differently to the riots in LA than they did to the “riot” on January 6th.

    Paraphrasing Mr. Dunn, “Orange man bad. He pardoned those evil J6ers that admitted to …”

    This is an absolutely true statement. Many of the people who were detained for their actions on January 6th did plead guilty to multiple crimes.

    What was not said was that these were people who had been crushed by the juggernaut of the Department of inJustice. These people were often arrested in S.W.A.T. type raids, early morning dynamic entry. They were then held without bond awaiting trial.

    There are multiple reports of these people being held in horrible conditions for many months. There were people who served multi-year sentences before their trial even began.

    They were offered a chance to plead out and if they did not take the plea deal their court date was frequently pushed back.

    It was never about justice, it was about punishment and sending a message.

    So people did plead out. They took the plea so they could get out of the damn gulag. They wanted their lives back. They knew that they would continue to be punished for maintaining their innocences.

    One of the hard things for anybody to understand is that these were people that had never expected to be locked up. They aren’t prepared for prison/jail.

    These aren’t gangbangers that expect to do a few years behind bars to gain cred.

    These were just regular people that were abused by the inJustice system to make a despicable point.

            

  • This is one of my favorite songs. This version is visually great.

    Boring visual, but the music, oh my, that sound. Duke Ellington.

    Or a good video with wonderful sound, 2017: Edmonds Woodway High School. (Darn, I wish my kid’s high school band sounded like this).

    We have to close this out with the divine Ella, with the Duke on the piano.

            

  • When the deep heat of summer hits, and the idea of cooking anything makes you queasy, this is the perfect meal for any time of the day. I adore gazpacho soup because it’s all the deliciousness of a salsa but in a soup. There are layers of delicate flavor that combine to make something incredibly special. Just don’t be like Rimmer on Red Dwarf and ask for it piping hot. 😉

    Ingredients:

    • 2 ½ pounds ripe red tomatoes (about 4 large or 9 small)
    • 1 small Vidalia, sweet yellow onion, or red onion (½ pound), peeled
    • 1 small cucumber (½ pound), peeled and seeded
    • 1 medium red bell pepper, cored and seeded
    • ¼ cup fresh basil leaves, plus extra for garnish
    • 1 large garlic clove, peeled
    • ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
    • 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar
    • ¾ teaspoon fine salt
    • Freshly ground black pepper
    • V8 juice OR tomato juice (optional)
    • curly parsley, Italian parsley, cilantro, green onion (optional, garnish)

    First, prepare your vegetables. You’ll need a blender or food processor bowl, a medium serving bowl, and a small bowl for mixing, all ready to use. Core your tomatoes and cut half of them up into about one inch chunks. The chunks go into your blender. The other half of the tomatoes should be chopped fine and added to the serving bowl. All of the juice and seeds can be tossed in the blender. Do the same with your onion, the cucumber, and the bell pepper, though discard the pepper seeds.

    Add the basil, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and a half teaspoon or so of black pepper, preferably fresh ground. Put the lid on your blender and blend the contents, starting on the pulse and then gradually increasing the speed to high. You want the mixture to be completely smooth, and it will take about two minutes. If there isn’t enough liquid, you can add in a little V8 or tomato juice, a tablespoon at a time until it’s the right consistency and thickness for you.

    Add the liquid to the fine chopped vegetables, and stir well. Again, if there isn’t enough liquid, feel free to add more V8 or tomato juice to make it “correctly soupy” for you. Add in a pinch of salt and pepper, to taste, and set in the fridge to chill. The gazpacho needs at least two hours and up to 24 hours to rest.

    Before serving, give it another taste. It may need a bit more salt. If you like, you can top the gazpacho with finely minced parsley and/or cilantro, or sprinkle it with thinly sliced green onion or chives. Small basil leaves are also a nice addition.

    Notes:

    I usually serve this soup with a side of salad that includes a good protein such as chicken or shrimp. As a fun alternative, you can switch out the V8 and add in Clamato and a splash of hot sauce, and top the soup itself with shrimp for a “shrimp salad soup” that is really tasty. You can also consider adding miniature croutons, tiny shrimp, or even other summer vegetables such as corn, finely chopped zucchini, etc.

            

  • Skill is not knowledge. Knowledge is not skill.

    20 years ago, I made one net with a 4-inch mesh with rope. It was large enough to roll a small boulder into with the backhoe, then I could lift the boulder and move it where I needed before dumping the boulder.

    I designed it to be able to lift in excess of 1.5 tons.

    Once I completed that task, I forgot about making nets.

    The primary reason? In my state, fishing with a net is (generally) not legal. I had intended to make a gill net to take fish from a local river.

    Getting Started

    The cost of tools for netting is very low. You want a netting needle and a sizing stick. I made my sizing sticks from a chunk of wood off an oak tree. I did purchase a set of netting needles. I will make a netting needle shortly.

    Other than the needle and the sizing stick or card, you will need cordage. I started this learning adventure because I saw an ad for “Tarred Bank Line #36”. The price was ok, and it had a nearly five-star rating.

    When it arrived, I found that #36 was larger than I wanted for what I was going to make. I ordered a pound of #15, which turned out to be precisely the size I wanted. Tensile strength of approximately 117lbs and a diameter of 0.051inches.

    The first loops

    They say you can make a net without a sizing card/stick. Don’t bother. The time/cost of a sizing stick is so low and the advantage is so great that it isn’t worthwhile to do without.

    You make a loop. I tied a double half hitch, knowing I was going to be pulling the loop tighter after the first set of loops was cast on.

    Use the sizing stick to make your first loop the correct size. Tie a double half hitch on the main loop. Then make your second loop using the same sequence. Repeat until you have created 16 new loops.

    Pull your main loop tight.

    Second Round

    This is where you start tieing actual net knots. Each loop you add, from here out, will be a tied to an existing loop with a sheet bend.

    Tie the loose end and tie it to a metal ring or a dog clip or carabiner. I would use a carabiner, but I don’t have any handy. Tie a six-foot length of line to the ring. Now anchor the long line to something sturdy, such as the leg of a heavy table.

    I used #36 bank line. I wrap it around something, then put a one-way slip knot in. This allows me to shorten the anchor line as my net gets bigger. Otherwise, I need to move further from the anchor point, which might not be possible.

    To make your first true loop, run your line around your sizing stick, down the front and up the back. Bring your needle from back to front from your first static loop. Pull everything tight, so that the static loop is pulled hard against the top of your sizing stick. Use your thumb to pinch the running line hard against the stick to keep it from loosening.

    Take your needle over the top of your sizing stick and around both lines of the static loop, back to the front. This should leave you with a loop in the running line resting on the top/front of the stick. You want to feed the needle down through this loop.

    Now pull the running light tight, slowly. You should feel and see a bight tightening around the static loop. As it starts to pull up, it will pull out from under your thumb. Make sure that the loop coming from under your thumb snaps on top of the static loop.

    If this knot is made correctly, it will be small, tight and lock the line in place on the static loop and create a new static loop.

    You can now repeat for the next static loop. You will now have two new loops.

    We want to expand the net, so we are going to make a second loop on the same static loop.

    This pattern repeats, 1 loop to a static loop, then 2 to the next loop.

    When done, you should have 24 new static loops, completing your second round.

    Note, you will have been adding loops to your sizing stick as you go. When you need, just slip the loops off the back end of your sizing stick.

    Third Round

    This is where it starts to get fast and easy. From here it is a one for one. You keep going around the net until your needle runs out of line.

    Fourth Round

    If you want to make your net a little bigger, you can do a 1,2 pattern or a 1,1,2 pattern. It all depends on what you require and want. For me, the fourth through final rounds were the same.

    Tieing On

    When you reach the end of the line on your needle, it isn’t an issue. Because the net is a series of knots, nothing will happen as you prepare the next length of line.

    Load your netting needle. Put as much as you are comfortable pushing through your loops. Unlike other fiber things I’ve done, such as knitting, there is nothing difficult in tieing on.

    Once you have loaded your needle. Tie the tail of the old line to the new line using a sheet bend. The loop should be in the new line. Trim the loose ends relatively close. Not so close that the knot will pull apart under tension, but not so long that you have something distasteful.

    The only issue is to make sure that the connecting knot does not interfere with tieing on to the static loops. It shouldn’t be placed within the knot connecting to the static loop.

    Finishing

    When you are done, stop. Trim the tail close, but not too close.

    Now get a larger line to use for the rim and handle.

    I used the #36 line. I should have used something larger. Or I need to whip the line to make a comfortable handle.

    Feed the finishing line through each static loop in the final round. Always feed in the same direction. For me, that is from in to out. But it doesn’t matter.

    You are going to tie the finishing line to itself to create a finishing loop or handle.

    Make sure the finishing loop is large enough that the mouth of your net will open as wide as you want or need.

    It was surprising to me how large the mouth will open.

    Put something in your need to shape it. Hang it by the handles, enjoy the results.

    Conclusion


    The next one will be better.

    Here is an ok video on what I made. I got sizing (16 and 24) from her video.

            

  • The court has issued 40 opinions as of June 7th. We are expecting more before the end of the term later this month.

    Two of those cases were Second Amendment cases, around 5%. We had 2 major opinions, for The People, in the 2023 term.

    The first major win for The People came in Loper Bright. This started life as a case regarding offshore fishing regulations and inspections. The Commerce Department issued new rules regarding inspections of offshore fishing. The rules required the fishing vessel to provide food and bunk space, as well as to pay the cost of the inspector onboard the vessel.

    In short, the boat had to pay to have an inspector living onboard looking over their shoulders, even if they weren’t catching any fish that required the inspector.

    They sued for relief.

    The lower courts applied the Chevron doctrine, which had been interpreted to mean, “What the Federal Agency says is what we have to agree with.” Chevron has stopped many civil suits through the decades. Loper Bright puts an end to that.

    Takeaway ONE

    The court’s job is to decide what the law is, not some regulatory agency. Courts must do their job and not just accept what the government says.

    This takeaway is used in later opinions of the Court.

    NRA v Vullo is our second interesting case, this is one of the lawfare, red tape war waged against gun owners’ rights. The short of it was that the state of NY was pressuring regulated business to stop doing business with the NRA.

    Takeaway TWO

    The government cannot compel a third party to do what the government is forbidden to do.

    Garland v. Cargill was one of the cases that led to the striking of Chevron. In Cargill, the Court found that the ATF exceeded their statutory authorizations.

    Takeaway THREE

    The executive branch does not get to create legislation, even when Congress appears to have granted that transfer of power.

    United States v. Rahimi was a case with bad facts which did get us a reasonable result.

    Rahimi had a TRO against him. He was aware of the TRO. He was in the courtroom when the judge issued the TRO and he had agreed to the conditions of the TRO. Those included “no firearms”.

    Rahimi was and is a violent person. He was charged with multiple crimes and was captured with TRO paperwork and a firearm.

    Takeaway FOUR

    There is no regulation in this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation that permanently removed the right to keep and bear arms.

    Takeaway FIVE

    A violent person can be temporarily denied his Second Amendment protected right.

    Bondi v. VanDerStok

    HELD: The ATF’s rule is not facially inconsistent with the GCA.

    This case is a legal match to Rahimi The question we wanted to be answered in Rahimi, and which was answered, is 18 U.S.C. §921(g)(8) facially unconstitutional.

    To be facially unconstitutional, there can be no situation where the law is constitutional. This means that the law is unconstitutional when applied to 1 million people, but because it is constitutional when applied to the 1,000,001st person, then it survives the challenge.

    In Rahimi, was there any time a person could have their Second Amendment protected rights removed? The answer turns out to be “Yes.” They can be taken away temporarily if the person has been adjudicated violent.

    In VanDerStok it was again a facial challenge. The Court found that there was at least one kit being sold which met the definition of a firearm.

    Takeaway SIX

    There are infringements which will survive judicial review in light of Bruen and Heller

    Takeaway SEVEN

    The Court attempts to be consistent with their previous opinions. This leads to outcomes we dislike.

    Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos

    Takeaway EIGHT

    The Remington settlement caused negative ripples. It emboldened the infringers to ramp up their lawfare actions.

    Takeaway NINE

    The agenda-driven Justices agreed that Mexico did not meet the requirements to pierce the PLCAA protections.

    Takeaway TEN

    AR-15s are in common use for lawful purposes.

    Takeaway ELEVEN

    While it does not require a probable event to pierce PLCAA protections, it does require a true allegation of a crime and plausible connection of the defendant to that probable event.

    Takeaway TWELVE

    PLCAA is a powerful protection against frivolous lawsuits.

    Takeaway Thirteen

    This was a major course correction after the failures in the Remington case.

            
  • Prohibition on bringing of qualified civil liability actions in Federal or State court

    1. In general

      A qualified civil liability action may not be brought in any Federal or State court.

    2. Dismissal of pending actions

      A qualified civil liability action that is pending on October 26, 2005, shall be immediately dismissed by the court in which the action was brought or is currently pending.

    —Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms, 15 USC § 7901 Ch. 105 (U.S. 2022)

    There are five listed exceptions.

    1. The transferor was convicted under section 925(h) of U.S.C. 18. This is part of the gun control action of 1968, as amended.
    2. The seller is guilty of negligence or negligent entrustment.
    3. The manufacturer or seller knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, AND the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.
    4. for breach of contract or warranty.
    5. Death, injury, or property damage resulting from a defect in design or manufacturer of the product, when used as intended.

    Only section iii has any wiggle room. The question then becomes one of “proximate cause”.

    For example, in the original Lilo and Stitch, there is a scene where the child crawls into a washing machine or a dryer. If your child were to watch the movie and then replicate crawling into the dryer or washing machine, and then they were injured or killed, you might be able to sue Disney for that scene because it was the “proximate cause” of the injury.

    Claiming that an advertisement, in a firearms’ magazine, stating “Consider your man card reissued”, is the proximate cause of an asshole killing children and adults in a school shooting is a serious stretch.

    This is precisely what the blood vultures did after Sandy Hook. They had the parents file a lawsuit against Bushmaster, with the novel legal argument that since Connecticut has laws about certain types of advertisements, and because the PLCAA had an exception for sale or marketing, that the suit would evade PLCAA protections.

    This should have required the plaintiffs (bad guys) to prove that not only did Bushmaster produce advertisements that were in violation of CT law, but also that the asshole actually saw the advertisements and that those advertisements somehow incited the asshole to go murder children.

    This should have been thrown out in the lowest court, where the case was filed. Instead, the case made it to the CT supreme court where they said, “This advertising claim might actually pierce the PLCAA protections. Please continue the case to establish a fact pattern.”

    The Supreme Court did not stop this travesty. Remington went under, this lawsuit was part of the reason.

    Since the insurance companies, which owned the Remington Name, settled for a considerable amount, more lawsuits attacking manufactures have been filed. One bad decision leads to more bad decisions.

    Most of the motions for writ of certiorari are simply denied. The only thing the Court says is “Certiorari Denied”. The justices have started adding statements stating clearly that the denial of cert or denial of a stay does not mean the Court has made any judgment on the merits of the case.
    The Government of Mexico brought this lawsuit against seven American gun manufacturers. As required by a federal statute, Mexico seeks to show (among other things) that the defendant companies participated in the unlawful sale or marketing of firearms. See 15 U.S.C. §7903(5)(A)(iii). More specifically, Mexico alleges that the companies aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not.
    —23-1141 Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 2025 605 U.S. Justice Kagan, delivering the opinion of the Court

    Kagan gets it right, Mexico is alleging that S&W et al. were doing something illegal. For that to be true, there would have to be convictions for those illegal acts.

    In the very next paragraph, she slaps down all those that say that the firearms industry is the only industry that can’t be sued. 15 U.S.C. §§7901–7903, bars certain lawsuits against manufacturers and sellers of firearms. — id.

    But PLCAA’s general bar on those suits has an exception, usually called the predicate exception, relevant here. That exception applies to suits in which the defendant manufacturer or seller “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing” of firearms, and that “violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.” §7903(5)(A)(iii). If a plaintiff can show that provision is satisfied—that, say, a manufacturer committed a gun-sale violation proximately causing the harm at issue—then a suit can proceed, even though it arises from a third party’s later misuse of a gun. Or otherwise said, the predicate violation opens a path to making a gun manufacturer civilly liable for the way a third party has used the weapon it made.
    —id.

    Kagan skillfully avoids the advertising part of the law, here. Instead, she gives a concrete example of how the law was intended to be used. If the seller or manufacturer breaks the law by the transfer of the firearm, they can be held responsible for later harms caused by a third party.

    The Mexican Government, seeking redress for this gun violence, brought suit in 2021 against seven American firearms manufacturers. The suit, brought in a U.S. District Court, asserts a variety of tort claims against the defendants, mostly sounding in negligence. The basic theory is that the defendants failed to exercise “reasonable care” to prevent trafficking of their guns into Mexico, and so are responsible for the harms arising there from the weapons’ misuse. Id., at 184a. That theory, as all agree, runs straight into PLCAA’s general prohibition. Mexico’s action, that is, seeks to hold firearms manufacturers liable for “the criminal or unlawful misuse” of guns by third parties—and so, according to PLCAA, “may not be brought.” §§7902(a), 7903(5)(A). The complaint thus tries to plead its way into PLCAA’s predicate exception. It asserts, as that exception requires, that the third-party misuse of guns in Mexico resulted from the manufacturers’ knowing violations of gun laws. See §7903(5)(A)(iii).
    —id.

    Yep, the PLCAA is implicated here, and should protect the defendants (good guys). Mexico is attempting to pierce the PLCAA’s protections by claiming the manufacturers were knowingly violating gun laws.

    Mexico’s complaint survives PLCAA only if, in accord with usual pleading rules, it has plausibly alleged conduct falling within the statute’s predicate exception. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662, 678–679 (2009). Because Mexico relies exclusively on an aiding-and-abetting theory, that means plausibly alleging that the manufacturers have aided and abetted gun dealers’ firearms offenses (such as sales to straw purchasers), so as to proximately cause harm to Mexico. See supra, at 2–3. We need not address the proximate cause question, because we find that Mexico has not plausibly alleged aiding and abetting on the manufacturers’ part. “Plausibly” does not mean “probably,” but “it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Iqbal, 556 U. S., at 678. And Mexico has not met that bar. Its complaint does not plausibly allege the kind of “conscious … and culpable participation in another’s wrongdoing” needed to make out an aiding-and-abetting charge. Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, 598 U. S. 471, 493 (2023).
    —id.

    Wow, this is a big one. To pierce the PLCAA protections, the plaintiffs must prove that the manufacturer’s actions were the proximate cause of the injury. Before that can be done, they must first plausibly prove that the manufacturers added and abetted the illegal act which led to the injury. Mexico has not met the minimum requirements for plausible, much less probably.

    Finally, Mexico’s allegations about the manufacturers’ “design and marketing decisions” add nothing of consequence. Brief for Respondent 23. As noted above, Mexico here focuses on the manufacturers’ production of “military style” assault weapons, among which it includes AR-15 rifles, AK-47 rifles, and .50 caliber sniper rifles. See supra, at 6; App. to Pet. for Cert. 121a. But those products are both widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers. (The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country. See T. Gross, How the AR-15 Became the Bestselling Rifle in the U. S., NPR (Apr. 20, 2023.) The manufacturers cannot be charged with assisting in criminal acts just because Mexican cartel members like those guns too. The same is true of firearms with Spanish-language names or graphics alluding to Mexican history. See supra, at 6. Those guns may be “coveted by the cartels,” as Mexico alleges; but they also may appeal, as the manufacturers rejoin, to “millions of law-abiding Hispanic Americans.” Tr. of Oral Arg 80; Reply Brief 20. That leaves only the allegation that the manufacturers have not attempted to make guns with non-defaceable serial numbers. See supra, at 6. But the failure to improve gun design in that way (which federal law does not require) cannot in the end show that the manufacturers have “join[ed] both mind and hand” with lawbreakers in the way needed to aid and abet. Direct Sales, 319 U. S., at 713.
    —id.

    To translate into language even a leftist can understand, “AR-15s are in common use”

    And that conclusion, we note, well accords with PLCAA’s core purpose. Recall that Congress enacted the statute to halt a flurry of lawsuits attempting to make gun manufacturers pay for the downstream harms resulting from misuse of their products. See supra, at 1–2. In a “findings” and “purposes” section, Congress explained that PLCAA was meant to stop those suits—to prevent manufacturers (and sellers) from being held “liable for the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse firearm[s].” §7901(a)(5). Mexico’s suit closely resembles the ones Congress had in mind:…
    —id.

    Justice Jackson wrote a concurrence. Her concurrence is designed to limit the extent of the actual opinion.

    In her flawed opinion, the only reason Mexico did not prevail is that they didn’t point to a specific violation of state or federal laws. If only they had done that, the court would have allowed them to put it to those evil gun manufacturers.

    She also, intentionally, misstates the reasons for PLCAA. We have observed that lawfare is intended to destroy the defendants. The flood of civil lawsuits was designed to destroy the firearms industry. Even the military said as much.

    According to Justice Jackson, Activists had deployed litigation in an effort to compel firearms manufacturers and associated entities to adopt safety measures and practices that exceeded what state or federal statutes required.—id..

    She has such a strong opinion of the good will and selfless motives of those filing lawsuits.