We’ve been following a couple of cases in NY state regarding their CCIA law(s) where the state immediately post Bruen created a set of requirements that turned NYS from “May Issue” to “Shall Issue, but you can’t carry anywhere”.

This case was first heard by United States District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby. Judge Suddaby said that the CCIA looked bad to him but that the people suing in the lawsuit did not have standing.

GOA et all went back and got more plaintiffs to join in the suit and refiled. The state attempted to have the case assigned to a different judge. Judge Suddaby said “NO”. Took the case back.

The plaintiffs requested a temporary injunction to block the CCIA. Judge Suddaby granted the temporary injunction but held it for three days for the state to appeal. The second circuit court vacated the temporary injunction.

A short time later Judge Suddaby granted an injunction blocking parts of the CCIA. This time he did NOT hold it to allow the state to appeal.

An injunction is granted when the judge feels that the case will win on the merits. I.e. there is no evidence that needs to be presented in order for the person requesting the injunction to win.

The state, as expected, appealed to the second circuit which again overturned Judge Suddaby’s injunction.

At this point no more progress can be made on the case until the second circuit court hears the appeal. This could be next week or it could be next year or it could be years from now. It is a good bet that the second circuit would love to push it out as far as possible.

At this point the GOA threw a monkey wrench into the shinagagins of the second circuit and the state of New York.

TO THE HONORABLE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CIRCUIT JUSTICE FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT:

Without providing any analysis or explanation, the Second Circuit has stayed a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district court in New York that was carefully designed to limit New York’s enforcement of a sweeping gun control statute, enacted as retaliation against New York gun owners for having prevailed in this Court’s decision in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). The district court’s injunction was supported by a detailed 184-page opinion, meticulously tailored to follow this Court’s framework established in Bruen. In contrast, the Second Circuit’s stay pending appeal was issued based only on a single conclusory assertion, yet with the effect of indefinitely suspending the protections afforded New Yorkers by the Second Amendment and affirmed by this Court in Bruen. The Second Circuit’s stay should be vacated in order to uphold the right of New Yorkers to keep and bear arms, as well as to vindicate the authority of this Court over the circuit courts.

his Court’s Opinion in Bruen was issued on June 23, 2022. Only hours later,
New York Governor Hochul promised to “fight back”:

We just received some disturbing news … the Supreme Court … has stripped away the State of New York’s right and responsibility to protect its citizens … with a decision … which is frightful in its scope of how they are setting back this nation…. This decision is not just reckless, it’s reprehensible. It’s not what New Yorkers want, and we should have the right of … what we want to do in terms of gun laws in our state…. [O]ur governor has a moral responsibility to do what we can … because of what is going on, the insanity of the gun culture that has now possessed everyone up to the Supreme Court…. We’ve been ready for this … We’ve been working with a team of legal experts … I’m prepared to call the legislature back into session… We are not going to cede our rights that easily, despite the best efforts of the politicized Supreme Court…. No longer can we strike the balance… Shocking. They have taken away our rights…. This is New York. We don’t back down. We fight back…. I’m prepared to go back to muskets…. We’re just getting started here.

Just eight days later on July 1, 2022, the New York Legislature responded to Governor Hochul’s call to defy this Court’s authority and resist Bruen’s protection of Second Amendment rights, enacting the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (“CCIA”). After extensive briefing, a hearing, and oral argument, the district court enjoined portions of the CCIA in a 184-page opinion. Shortly thereafter the Second Circuit, without providing any reasoning or analysis, granted New York’s request first for a temporary administrative stay, and then a stay pending appeal, allowing New York’s repudiation of Bruen back into effect without so much as a brief explanation.

First, without providing any analysis of the factors for determining whether a stay is warranted, the panel nakedly asserted that it had “weighed the applicable factors … and … upon due consideration … conclude[d] that a stay pending appeal is warranted.” App.002a. Tellingly, the Second Circuit did not take issue with a single factual finding or legal conclusion from the district court’s well-reasoned 184-page opinion. Nor did the Second Circuit claim that the district court had abused its discretion or otherwise erred in any part of its opinion granting Applicants preliminary relief. The Second Circuit’s unexplained and unsupported order deprives Applicants of the “careful review and a meaningful decision” to which they are “entitle[d].” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 427 (2009).

The CCIA stands in direct defiance to Bruen’s central holding that governments cannot keep “ordinary, law-abiding citizen[s]” with “ordinary self-defense needs from carrying arms in public for that purpose.” Bruen at 2150. The Second Circuit’s stay of the district court’s preliminary injunction allows New York’s novel, anti-Bruen law to strip New Yorkers of their right to keep and bear arms in a sweeping and unprecedented way, along with the collateral damage of violating multiple other constitutional provisions. Applicants, along with countless others like them, are being irreparably harmed each day this patently unconstitutional law remains in place, eviscerating the right of ordinary, law-abiding New Yorkers to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Additionally, this case presents issues of national importance with respect to states that enact laws in explicit defiance of this Court’s decisions.

Nor does the district court’s opinion represent an outlier, as its decision is not the only one striking down portions of the CCIA as unconstitutional. Rather, there have been a total of three opinions issued by district courts in New York concluding that various aspects of the CCIA are unconstitutional. Yet as in this case, the Second Circuit has granted stays pending appeal in those other cases as well – again, without providing any reasoning or analysis. See Christian, et al. v. Nigrelli, et al. (2d Cir. 22-2987, Document 40); Hardaway, et al. v. Nigrelli, et al. (2d Cir. 22-2933, Document 53). One might think that the Second Circuit – being the circuit whose opinion was recently reversed by this Court in Bruen (N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Beach, 818 Fed. Appx. 99 (2d Cir. 2020)) – might find it appropriate to at least provide some basis for its decision to stay multiple lower court decisions which have faithfully applied the Bruen framework. But one would be wrong.

This Court should vacate the Second Circuit’s unreasoned, knee-jerk order granting a stay pending appeal.

This is addressed to Justice Sotomayor because she is the judge assigned to oversee the second circuit court. This will not be seen by just her but by all of the justices.

The second circuit court issuing a “stay pending appeal” is what got them in trouble. I believe that this renders any decision by Judge Suddaby moot pending that appeal being heard by the second circuit. Because the Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that “a right delayed is a right denied” this appeal to SCOTUS is likely to be noticed and acted upon.

Of interest, there is no need for oral arguments or anything else on this sort of appeal. The Supreme Court can issue their decision on this request at anytime. Like tomorrow, if they want to.

Related proceedings are:

• Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 1:22-CV-0986 (GTS/CFH), 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 201944 (N.D.N.Y. Nov. 7, 2022) (order granting preliminary injunction).
• Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 22-2908 (2d Cir. Dec. 7, 2022) (order staying preliminary injunction).

EMERGENCY APPLICATION FOR IMMEDIATE ADMINISTRATIVE RELIEF AND TO VACATE STAY OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION ISSUED BY THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Our Grand Leader put out a request for help. He needed some primers. The problem is that a few years ago the feds changed the shipping rules on HAZMAT.

Primers qualify as HAZMAT. In order to ship HAZMAT you must take your package to a “HUB”, UPS or FedEx and do all the right paperwork. This paperwork includes your license to ship HAZMAT. What? You don’t have one of those?

That’s right, us normals can’t ship primers any more.

Anyway, I contacted our Grand Leader and after talking about what he needs I discovered that he was in need of some .45ACP to reload. Since primers are HAZMAT I couldn’t just ship him a $10 tray. Instead I have to put the primers in cases and ship the primed cases. Which are not considered HAZMAT.

Since I have some spare (sort of) .45 ACP I went to the wall of shame, I.e. Dirty cases, and pulled down some .45 ACP. It was ugly as sin.

So I decided to clean the brass again before priming and shipping. And I wanted SHINY brass, like new.

These and a bunch of other brass went into my ball mill for processing.

I use stainless steel pins as media. The first tumble is for 45 minutes with media and Dawn liquid dish soap. Be careful not to use to much Dawn as it does suds up.

About 5 to 10 minutes into the first tumble the drive belt broke. The replacement material arrived today. It is a little painful as you have to make your own belts from the material. It took 3 or 4 tries before I got it exactly right.

So 3 or 4 days after I put the brass into the water the tumble started and ran to completion.

The water in the drum is then poured out. I pour it into a bowl to catch any media or brass that might escape. Everything is rinsed two or three times and then just enough water to cover the brass and media is added.

One small squirt of Dawn and about a table spoon of LemiShine. Then the brass tumbles for another 45 minutes.

This is what went in:

This is what came out after priming:

Here are the cases ready for our Grand Leader:

All that remains is to pack them and ship them which will happen tomorrow.

I’m a firm believer in climate change. The climate changes. FULL STOP.

How much of the current change in climate is the direct result of human actions? That’s a different question. I remember reading about the changes in climate post 9/11. With so much air travel stopped and so many people just not driving there was a measurable change in temperatures/climate.

While the doomsayers claim the damage is not reversible, the measurements after 9/11 suggest that it is reversible and without much real effort. I don’t know.

I use to follow the science of “climate change” a bit more closely. I longer do. Part of the issue is that there is so much political capital invested in climate change that I do not believe that it is possible to get balanced answers.

When they say “follow the science” don’t forget to also “follow the money.”

Years ago I did some work for a part of NOAA. One of the things that we were doing was digitizing all of the old weather records. These were hand written records going back a hundred years. All of these were being manually entered into the system to be processed.

What we observed was that the temperatures were about the same a 100 years ago vs what we were seeing at that time, mid 1980s. We were looking because there was a huge concern that the next ice age was overdue and we should expect the glaciers to be advancing south from Canada in day.

In the 1970’s I read an article in Popular Science that said that scientist were considering shooting rockets over the poles in order to disburse a fine powder of carbon which would absorb heat from the sun in order to stop the ice age.

A few years later it was “global warming” which was the problem. The temperatures were rising and the world as we know it was going to end because the temperature was going up.

When it didn’t happen as predicted the words changed to “climate change”. This is sort of like talking about “carbon footprint” or “reducing carbon emissions”. The reason it is bad language is that “carbon emissions” they are talking about are actually CO2 emissions. People do remember the days of horrible air pollution.

They remember the filth of London from all the coal burning stoves that put real carbon into the air. Carbon that turned things black. People know that carbon is black and dirty and hard to clean up. Anybody that has ever had to clean a camp pot knows the black carbon film a campfire leaves behind.

So when people hear “carbon emissions” they don’t think of an odorless, tasteless, clear gas, they think of the smoke spewing chimmies of times gone past.

“Climate Change” is such a magical term. If you don’t agree that man is causing horrible changes to the climate of the earth you are a “climate denier”. If the summer is hotter than last year it is proof of climate change. If the summer is cooler than last year it is proof of climate change.

There is no way to disprove the climate change position which makes it pseudo science, at best.

Recently there was a breakthrough in nuclear fusion studies.

On Tuesday [Dec 6, 2022], the head of the Department of Energy and other federal scientific leaders announced that a fusion reaction they ran at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved net energy, meaning the reaction generated more energy than was put in to initiate the reaction. It’s the first time humankind has achieved this landmark.
–CNBC

This is a huge breakthrough. They pumped in two megajoules of energy and three megajoules came out. While there have been a number of announcements in the past saying somebody had gotten fusion to work, most of the time the amount of measured energy was so small as to possibly (likely) be a measurement error rather than actual fusion.

To think of this we need to understand some units. A Joule is a measure of Energy. The average American household consumes around 29.5 kWh per day. This is around 106.3MJ

They dumped in a half hour worth of Energy use and got out 45 minutes worth of energy.

This is wonderful news. This is a true breakthrough. Yes, I’m repeating myself. Now that they have accomplished this, multiple times, and it looks like other groups should be able to reproduce, they can start work on making this all work in a smaller package.

This is a step towards large amounts of power available for much lower costs. My Grandkids will likely see the first nuclear fusion power generators dumping power into the grid. Depending on a number of things these fusion reactors might even become small enough to putt in a house or maybe power trains or trucks or at some point, even cars.

Absolutely amazing.

So the left is celebrating. If this works as it should this should end our dependence on fossil fuels for powering modern society.

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This article goes on to say that they have heard it all before and it is likely just the same old hype without any real path to success. Even if it did work it is years away from commercial power plants using fusion.

“Here, scientists are clear. Fusion power will not arrive in time to save the world.”

The only path that is ever possible for these cultist is to stop using fossil fuels right now and destroy our civilization. Because… reasons…

Many songs tell a story. Everything from “Sink the Bismark” to “Tornado”, the songs tell a story. There are also albums that tell a story. Sometimes they are called “concept” albums.

Some of the famous ones are “Tommy” by The Who and “Peter and the Wolf”. One of my favorites is “The Ballad of Calico” by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. Unfortunately it hasn’t been released on CD so there are only bootleg versions available.

The digital copies I made from my LPs have gone away somewhere along the line of moving from computer to computer.

Here is a link to the complete album: The Legend of Anne Bonny

Here are two of my favorite tracks from the album:

Here is the song that Karliene turned into the complete album:

First it is important to know that every argument made has to be designed such that the inferior court can claim to be following the guidelines set forth by the Supreme Court. If the inferior court is not following those guidelines then the case will be overturned.

The only question in these cases of not following the Supreme Court guidelines is when will the bad rulings be overturned.

In March of 2004, Heller’s suit against the District of Columbia was first ruled on by District Judge Sullivan. Judge Sullivan took the stance that the Miller opinion of May, 1939 limited the Second Amendment to those that were members of the militia.

Shelly PARKER, et al., Plaintiffs, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., Defendants.

The actual decision issued by the Supreme Court doesn’t say that. What it does say is that “These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. ‘A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.’ And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.”

This required the gun banners to twist the words of the Supreme court to mean that ONLY members of the “militia” were covered by the second amendment and that the “militia” no longer meant “all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense”.

By redefining the term “militia” the gun grabbers created the concept of “collective rights” in regards to the second amendment.

UNITED STATES v. MILLER et al.

Once this was done most courts just dismissed second amendment claims from individuals as having no standing. In order to affect this, many states passed laws making “militias” illegal. Yeah, 1st amendment violations right there.

The case was then appealed in decided March, 2007 in the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

The District of Columbia argues that the prefatory clause declares the Amendment’s only purpose — to shield the state militias from federal encroachment — and that the operative clause, even when read in isolation, speaks solely to military affairs and guarantees a civic, rather than an individual, right. In other words, according to the District, the operative clause is not just limited by the prefatory clause, but instead both clauses share an explicitly civic character. The District claims that the Second Amendment “protects private possession of weapons only in connection with performance of civic duties as part of a well-regulated citizens militia organized for the security of a free state.” Individuals may be able to enforce the Second Amendment right, but only if the law in question “will impair their participation in common defense and law enforcement when called to serve in the militia.” But because the District reads “a well regulated Militia” to signify only the organized militias of the founding era — institutions that the District implicitly argues are no longer in existence today — invocation of the Second Amendment right is conditioned upon service in a defunct institution. Tellingly, we think, the District did not suggest what sort of law, if any, would violate the Second Amendment today — in fact, at oral argument, appellees’ counsel asserted that it would be constitutional for the District to ban all firearms outright. In short, we take the District’s position to be that the Second Amendment is a dead letter.

This is the circuit court’s analysis of the state’s argument. The state’s argument being “only the militia” and “the militia no longer exists.”

(sidebar) Ok, I’m new to this legal analysis stuff. I’m a computer nerd, not a lawyer. I read and put my best interpretation on things. I try and locate original documents and quote them and link to them. In light of that when I read something like the following, it helps to tell me I’m doing this correctly.

The District claims that Miller’s historical account of the “Militia” supports its position. Yet according to Miller, the militia included “all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defence” who were “enrolled for military discipline.” And Miller’s expansive definition of the militia — qualitatively different from the District’s concept — is in accord with the second Militia Act of 1792, passed by the Second Congress.[11] Act of May 8, 1792, ch. XXXIII, 1 Stat. 271 …

(end sidebar)

The state then argues “The District responds that, notwithstanding the broad language of the Code, a judge would likely give the statute a narrowing construction when confronted with a self-defense justification.”

So 3 years after the district court decided the case the appeals court decided the case again and held that the district court is reversed and the case remanded. (A win for Heller)

Another year and a half go by before Heller is decided in June of 2008. Figure 5 years from start to finish.

1. The right is collective to members of the Militia and the Militia no longer exists
2. The firearm wasn’t in common use in 1791
3. It doesn’t matter what the law actually says, if you use your firearm in self-defense the judge will cut you a break

With Heller we have the Supreme Court telling all the inferior courts and all of the different little government tyrents that the second amendment is an individual right.

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2788 – 2816.

Then the court gives words that the gun grabbers will twist:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller‘s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 2816 – 2817.

and finally:

The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D.C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 2817 – 2822.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al., Petitioners, v. Dick Anthony HELLER.

With Heller the collective right gambit was put to rest. The second amendment defines a individual right, not a collective right. Given this ruling it instantly became clear that all other gun control laws could be challenged on a second amendment claim. The states were in a panic. They had to adjust their arguments so they added the following:

4. The second amendment right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited so at least some laws must be constitutional
5. Concealed weapons can be banned
6. Arms can be prohibited in sensitive places
7. Laws can restrict the commercial sale of arms and all sales are commercial
8. Laws banning dangerous and unusual weapons are allowed
9. The core right of the second amendment is self-defense within the home
10. Standards of scrutiny are allowed
11. Heller did not apply to the states

Argument 1 was no longer available but they added 8 new arguments.

The biggest of their arguments were “not unlimited”, “dangerous”, and “standards of scrutiny”. Given that standards of scrutiny was allowed that means there must be a method of determining what level of scrutiny should be used. That was by addressing how much the infringement encroached on the “core” right of self-defense within the home.

Once level of scrutiny was accepted by the infringement allowing courts, the argument turned almost entirely into making the case that what was being banned wasn’t covered by the second amendment or if it was, the infringement was so minor as to not exceed the good of the challenged law.

In most cases argued they didn’t try to prove that the arm was not covered by the second amendment but instead went directly to getting a means-ends balancing that would allow the state to keep whatever law they had put in place.

Since Heller specifically stated that prohibitions on concealed weapons was constitutional, the states that were “no issue” continued to not issue concealed carry permission slips and most of the may issue states continued to have egregious requirements on who could get a concealed carry permission slip.

It only took 2 years from Heller before the Supreme Court heard and decided their next second amendment case Otis McDONALD, et al., Petitioners, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.

McDonald
The state argued “Chicago and Oak Park (municipal respondents) maintain that a right set out in the Bill of Rights applies to the States only when it is an indispensable attribute of any “`civilized’” legal system. If it is possible to imagine a civilized country that does not recognize the right, municipal respondents assert, that right is not protected by due process. And since there are civilized countries that ban or strictly regulate the private possession of handguns, they maintain that due process does not preclude such measures.”

The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Judge Milton I. Shadur Presiding, agreed with the city and found in their favor. Even if the second amendment was an individual right, it didn’t apply to the states because the second isn’t indispensable and that is proven because some countries have completely banned guns.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court.

Chicago and Oak Park are poorly placed to make these arguments. After all, Illinois has not abolished self-defense and has not expressed a preference for long guns over handguns. But the municipalities can, and do, stress another of the themes in the debate over incorporation of the Bill of Rights: That the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule. See New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311, 52 S.Ct. 371, 76 L.Ed. 747 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”); Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 40-53, 98 S.Ct. 2156, 57 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978) (Powell, J., dissenting) (arguing that only “fundamental” liberties should be incorporated, and that even for incorporated amendments the state and federal rules may differ); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon. How arguments of this kind will affect proposals to “incorporate” the second amendment are for the Justices rather than a court of appeals.

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, and Village of Oak Park, Illinois, Defendants-Appellees.

The Supreme court heard oral arguments just 9 months later and issued their opinion in June, 2010.

The Supreme court actually said that the seventh circuit court did the analysis correctly. They then said that their old opinions that limited the scope of the fourteenth amendment were no longer to be used. “In the late 19th century, the Court began to hold that the Due Process Clause prohibits the States from infringing Bill of Rights protections.”

The 7th circuit court referenced UNITED STATES v. CRUIKSHANK ET AL. which was decided in 1874-1875.

On the good side for us was that the Supreme court held that the judgement of the circuit court and district court was reversed and the case remanded.

It seems that “reversed” is a stronger statement than “vacated”.

This ended the 11th argument but allowed everything else to stand.

We saw small government infringers (cities and such) attempting to zone gun stores out of existence. “No gun stores within 200 yards of a school, church, or playground/park” sorts of things. Which created a zoning nightmare for a gun store with maybe three buildings in a city meeting the requirements and nobody willing to lease in those locations. Some of these were struck down, some were not. They just didn’t make much headway. What they did do is give the gun grabbers hope and motivation.

The big new argument was “dangerous and unusual weapons” should and could be banned.

In logic there is a law called “De Morgan’s Law” which states “the complement of the union of two sets A and B is equal to the intersection of the complement of the sets A and B.” All of that mathy gobbly gook is really important in figuring out what happens when you negate a statement.

Consider the statement “laws banning dangerous and unusual weapons are allowed”. This can be read as Laws banning dangerous weapons are allowed and laws banning unusual weapons are allowed”

But what if it was read as “a weapon must be both dangerous and unusual before it can be banned”? This is how the opinion of the Supreme Court is actually written. A weapon must be BOTH before it can be banned.

By inverting the statement by moving the “not” to a different location the gun grabbers take advantage of the fact that most people don’t know how to do that correctly.

In logic it is written as “NOT (A AND B)” the gun grabbers state that this means “NOT A AND NOT B” but the correct application of logic rules is actually “NOT A OR NOT B”.

With this word game played, the gun grabbers went to the “this thing is so dangerous that it could and should be banned.” The courts heard this and used this as part of the reasoning they used in determining what level of scrutiny to apply. Most often this was expressed as “This thing is not covered by the second amendment but even if we assumed it was it would not survive challenge under means-end”

In addition all of the “Gun Free Zones” were still considered constitutional.

This was the set of arguments used for the next 8 years. In 2019 NYR&PA v. City of New York, New York was heard in the district and second circuit court of appeals and was granted certiorari to the Supreme Court. The city immediately changed their laws to allow transportation of firearms out of the city. This didn’t seem to convince the court so the state then passed a law making it legal to transport firearms out of the city. This caused the supreme court to declare the case moot and sent it back to the circuit and district courts.

This was a interesting case because it first showed just how much New York City is a state/country unto its own and how the state of New York will do just about anything to support NYC. The entire process of mooting the case was to make sure that the case was not heard by the supreme court.

This tells us that the gun grabbers were afraid of what might happen.

And what “might happen” did happen in June of 2020. In June of this year Bruen was decided by the Supreme Court.

Since Heller and McDonald, the Courts of Appeals have developed a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Heller‘s methodology centered on constitutional text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny. Pp. 2126-2130.

What a wonderful opening statement from Justice Thomas.

With this statement the Supreme court invalidated argument 10.

The test that the Court set forth in Heller and applies today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding. Of course, the regulatory challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruction generation in 1868. But the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated, even though its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 404-405, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911. Indeed, the Court recognized in Heller at least one way in which the Second Amendment’s historically fixed meaning applies to new circumstances: Its reference to “arms” does not apply “only [to] those arms in existence in the 18th century.” 554 U.S. at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783.

This statement puts an end to arguments 5 and 7.

Now we get to some of the words that will be twisted “And no party disputes that handguns are weapons “in common use” today for self-defense.” In the same paragraph Thomas eviscerates the “core second amendment right” argument “Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, and the definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry. Moreover, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,”

And with that argument 9 is gone.

Then we have this gotcha:

Consider, for example, Heller‘s discussion of “longstanding” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” 554 U.S. at 626, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Although the historical record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century “sensitive places” where weapons were altogether prohibited—e.g., legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses—we are also aware of no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions. See D. Kopel & J. Greenlee, The “Sensitive Places” Doctrine, 13 Charleston L. Rev. 205, 229-236, 244-247 (2018); see also Brief for Independent Institute as Amicus Curiae 11-17. We therefore can assume it settled that these locations were “sensitive places” where arms carrying could be prohibited consistent with the Second Amendment. And courts can use analogies to those historical regulations of “sensitive places” to determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.

So here we have another example of the limits of our court system. “we are also aware of no disputes regarding…” This is Supreme court jargon for “nobody brought it up so we can rule on it”. The entire sensitive place argument put forth in Heller is reaffirmed here because it hasn’t been challenged. If it is challenged it is likely to fall, for the most part.

To see this you only have to note that under Miller “arms” was what the militia/military would use. Under Heller it is what is in common use and NOT restricted to just arms the militia/military would use. Sometimes these movements in what the law means is not seen as the primary event in these opinions.

NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., et al., Petitioners v. Kevin P. BRUEN, in his official capacity as Superintendent of New York State Police, et al.

This takes us to the post Bruen state of laws.

The arguments being put forth are:

1. It doesn’t matter what the law actually says, if you use your firearm in self-defense the judge will cut you a break
2. The firearm wasn’t in common use in 1791
3. The second amendment right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited so at least some laws must be constitutional
4. Arms can be prohibited in sensitive places
5. Laws banning dangerous OR unusual weapons are allowed
6. There is a law from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that banned things like this

We saw them using argument 1 in California where they were arguing that because the state said they were not going to apply the “pay all costs if any part of challenge is not affirmed” that it was OK. The state in Bianchi v. Frosh and all the other magazine bans are using “It wasn’t in common use in 1791.”

Of course NY, NJ, CA and IL are all going down the path of “everywhere is sensitive to somebody” and making it impossible to carry a firearm outside of your home. Some of the stupids of this idea extend to the point where you might have the right to have a firearm in your apartment but not have the right to actually carry it in the hallway to get to and from your apartment.

Again, there seems to be language in the Bruen decision that implies that the court hasn’t really made an opinion on sensitive places. Having NY State go so very overboard would be a good thing if it got to the Supreme Court as they are much more likely to slap down a huge over step than they are a small one.

In reading most of the arguments going on about bans it all centers around turning that “and” into an “or” in argument 5. If that is possible then it becomes a situation where the court has to decide if the weapon is dangerous and by definition guns are dangerous.

For most of the other cases the state argues strongly that they should be able to bring in laws from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as proof of history and tradition.

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Thank you for your responses to the poll. I really wasn’t expecting it to turn out the way it did. I’m likely to come back and do an update on this post as I’m sure there are errors in it.

I’m going to attempt to do an extra post today.

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Every day we read article regarding “Gun safety”. Normally this is propaganda for “ban guns”. It is the same way that it is “gun violence” and not “violence”. The words are twisted in order to hide the true meaning.

Questions that you can ask any of these “gun safety” groups that will expose them almost immediately are “How many gun locks have you given away?” “What educational programs do you have to teach children gun safety?”, “How many classes have you run to teach gun safety?”, and so on. What you will quickly find is that the only thing they have is a petition for you to sign demanding that somebody in government make things safer by banning guns.

Over the last year or so a small trickle of articles have been showing up. These articles are about groups that are running gun safety courses. They are giving training. They are teaching people how to be safer when they handle or are exposed to a gun.

If nothing else, they are teaching the four rules of gun safety.

1. Treat the gun as if it is loaded.
2. Never point a gun at something that you are not willing to destroy or kill
3. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it
4. Keep your booger hook off the bang stick until you are ready to shoot. (Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot)

Yes, we have to apply reason to these rules. Nonetheless these are the four rules.

I firmly believe that every gun owner should get some level of firearms training. I’ve been handling firearms consistently for many years. I never had that “gun safety course” until I took advantage of a reader’s offer to provide official NRA training for my wife and myself.

We had a great time and I did learn a bit. She learned even more. That was the day she fired her AR-15 for the first time and after examining the results has decided that is her goto weapon for a self-defense situation. We still need to do more manual of arms training but today she knows how to and is capable of charging the weapon. She knows how to manipulate the safety. And she knows how to put rounds on target exactly where she wants them, up to about 50 yards.

So when I see an article talking about “gun safety” groups attempting to “reduce gun violence” I have already prejudged the situation. Another bunch of lying gun grabbers misusing language to hide their attempts to infringe.

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This group is out to make a buck. They sell training courses. But here is an article on the local TV news telling people where to go to learn a little bit about guns and gun safety. Real gun safety.

And if they are interested, they can sign up for an actual class.

The owner even talks about how this is not training for blacks but instead is for everybody.

Thank you to Black Agenda Alliance, Inc for running this seminar and I hope it leads to more people getting training and a few bucks in your pockets.

I’ve always been a cheap arse bastard. Years ago I started making my own black powder because buying it was just to expensive. This required a little bit of investment but I more than broke even.

One of the tools I purchased was a ball mill. It is a small table top mill, about 3 liters in size. It is hex shaped so it moves the media better than a round mill and it has a 1/8in replaceable rubber liner.

I’ve used it to mill all sorts of things. When I got into reloading I just used it with water and a little dish soap to clean my brass. The brass came out looking pretty good.

Later I purchased stainless steel pin media specifically designed for cleaning things like cases. Switching to Dawn dish detergent along with a Lemi Shine as a final rinse gave me wonderful results. Brass looked as good as new.

The problem is that it is messy. It takes multiple water changes and rinses to get all of the soapy water out. You have to be careful not to let the media wash away.

Since I was interested in powder coating bullets I finally picked up a vibrating tumbler. But I never used it to clean cases. I still tumble cleaned and then put the cases in the food dehydrator to dry them.

Recently I switched to using that vibrating tumbler to clean cases. It does an ok job but not new brass clean. The images I shared the other day of the .38 special with the bottom of the primer broken out was run through the tumbler for an hour. It is clean but not great.

So I struck a deal with a friend to send him some primers loaded into .45ACP cases. I’ve a few hundred .45ACP cases that are ready for reloading. Except they are straight from the range and are not clean enough to reload. So I decided to tumble clean them before I primed them and sent them off.

I got everything ready… Put the tumbler in its base and powered it up. It started doing its magic.

About 5 minutes into the first 30 minute run it stops. I hear a whine but no tumbling action.

The twenty plus year old power belt had snapped.

So I’m stuck until the belt material gets here. I pride myself on being prepared. I didn’t have a spare belt. I didn’t have the material to make a proper belt. On Monday I could likely get some big rubber bands from the PO to use for a bit. But I don’t have it here and now.

So tumbling will have to wait until the new belts are made. That will happen on Monday. If all goes well I should be able to ship out fifty cases to my friend on Tuesday.

Bah Humbug

This was my gift for myself which arrived yesterday. It isn’t like I don’t have a half dozen different dies that will deprime cases. My goto till yesterday was a Lee Precision universal decapping die. This is just a standard Resize + Decapping die with a huge chamber so that just about anything will fit inside. The only thing that contacts the shell id the pin that pushes through the flash hole.

I like this but it does require that I spend time in the reloading area when I really want to be with family. Thus I decided to get a hand depriming tool. I choose the Frankford Arsenal one.

First, it is a solidly constructed. The only thing that seems even remotely questionable is the rather long spring with no guide. It works so they must have gotten that right. It takes a little bit of hand strength to operate but still very nicely made.

It comes with three plastic collets. They don’t have to be anything stronger than plastic as they are only used to center the case. You can see where two of them are hooked under to the bottom of the tool. I did manage to knock one off over the course of depriming a couple of hundred cases but that was more me being a bit klutzy rather than an issue with the tool.

Once you choose the right collet you put it in place and screw down the adjustment cap until the collet just fits the cases. This works fine. It took a couple of tries to get it where I wanted it but once I did it worked great.

The next part is in the instructions and of course I didn’t remember. You have to manually tilt the holder down before you attempt to squeeze the grip. If you don’t it doesn’t work. Follow the directions.

You have to make sure that the case is seated deep enough that the pin is in the flash hole. If you don’t then the first squeeze will align the case more correctly and the second will actually punch the primer out.

So the biggest downside to this thing? If you tilt it upwards it will spill spent primers out. They go everywhere. And they are freaking hard to find on carpet. Other than that, zero issus.

Now for the request…

A few years ago some friends gave me buckets of shell cases. Like 3 five gallon buckets worth. They had picked them up at a private (home) firing range. Some of the cases were a couple of days old, some where a couple of years old. I got them all.

They were processed and then ended up in trays waiting for a time when I needed them.

This lead to the following:

Instead of the primer coming out it pushed out the bottom of the primer. Thankfully I do full inspections of my brass and noticed not only these with the bottom of the primer still hanging on but also a number of cases with the walls still inside the primer pocket.

Any ideas on how to get the remaining parts of the primer out?

Right now I plan on using the primer pocket tool for removing military crimps/staking. Since I made myself an adaptor I can do it with a power drill so no big deal. But if anybody has any other ideas, please share.

It is clear that some states feel that the best thing to do is to disarm their citizens. We’ve seen this happening for years. The gun bans start small and just grow. With each small step the next step is larger and makes it harder and harder to keep and bear arms.

The people pushing for gun bans of one sort or another don’t care about the constitution. They have made that clear in words and deeds. They feel that they have a right to a “do over” in regards to the right to keep and bear arms because of things. Yet they do not want to do it via a constitutional amendment. Instead they attack everything to do with guns in order to make an infringement tolerable to the masses.

As an example we have an article in The Atlantic:

These new attacks are so extreme that even laws supported by the gun industry are coming under threat. Until not so long ago, an overwhelming majority of leaders in the firearms industry, in which I spent more than 25 years as a sales executive, accepted the necessity of regulations like the ones that flowed from the 1939 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Miller, which upheld the 1934 National Firearms Act. That statute severely restricted the sale of sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and fully automatic weapons such as the “tommy guns” used by criminal organizations like Al Capone’s.

Miller thus clarified the balance between individual freedoms and collective safety as a sound constitutional test for all gun laws. This finding led to other bedrock laws such as the federal background-check system, or NICS, which was instituted in 1998. This statute protected citizens by making it harder for criminals to obtain firearms, while also providing reasonable liability protection for responsible gun manufacturers. Up until the late 2000s, most people I knew in the industry approved of laws enabled by the Miller standard that helped prohibit “bad guys” from buying guns.

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Except that Miller didn’t actually say anything about balancing rights. What it said was pseudo-quote “because nobody came before us to tell us that a sawed off shotgun is a military arm we have to rule that sawed off shotguns are not covered by the second amendment”. The terms they used actual protect military-style arms more than civilian-style arms.

The Miller decision gave more protections to any firearm used by any military than it did to a fudd’s lever action rifle. Even though lever-actions were used by the military they were never awarded a large U.S. military contract thus they were less likely to be considered militia arms.

States heard the cries of gun banners demanding that guns be banned and said “it is unconstitutional” but they looked for ways around it. While gun grabbers were very vocal in their demands, the voices of gun owners and gun rights were less likely to be heard.

The blunt truth is that the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting or personal protection from individuals. That is a happy side effect. The second is about preserving our rights against tyrannical government, foreign or domestic.

We had just fought a major war with one of the super powers of the time. We won because of many issues but one of the biggest was that we had the means to wage war. The People had both small arms and “crew served weapons”. Not just bearable arms, but cannon.

The “shot heard around the world” happened because the British were marching to confiscate arms. They were intending to remove gun powder, guns and cannon from the colonist. They were met with armed resistance and the U.S. of America was birthed, screaming and crying into battle.

People don’t like to be labeled with negative terms. They seek to avoid it. For the last few years we attempted to avoid the term “far right extremist” and “racist” and “child killer”. These labels are powerful. It is only now that we are starting to look the accusers square in the eye and say “Fuck you.” The words lost most of their meaning.

The number of times we have been told that we are murders because we didn’t immediately give up our guns when somebody else shot a child is nearly countless. It happens everytime we stand up for our rights. The gun grabbers want to push that lable of “murder” on anybody that disagrees with them.

After Sandy Hook social media was awash with people demanding that we give up our guns. One person was adamant that anybody that wanted to own an AR-15 was responsible for the murder of those children and teachers. I turned the argument upside down and accused her of wanting children to die because she would not allow teachers to be armed. I used every tactic that had ever been used on us on her.

I found out from a friend that knew her personally that I had reduced her to tears. She was an older lady who had been teaching for years and was well known for her love of children (In a good way J.Kb.!). She couldn’t understand why anybody would say she hated children and wanted them killed.

She never figured out that she had been saying exactly the same things just a few posts before about people that owned AR-15s.

State legislatures are filled with gun grabbers. They hear these cries from the people and are able to say to the people “We will do something about this!” They are willing to say that they are going to ban or limit some part of gun ownership and then say it does not infringe.

There were a few ways of doing this pre-Bruen. The first was to claim that the second amendment only applied to militia and by extension was a collective right reserved for the state. Heller said “nope, it is an individual right.” The gun grabbers then like to argue that the law is balanced against government/society needs.

The argument against an individual right comes from the Miller decision which mentioned a militia wouldn’t use a sawed off shotgun so a SBS isn’t covered. It said nothing about means-end

(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553, 23 L.Ed. 588, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 264-265, 6 S.Ct. 580, 29 L.Ed. 615, refutes the individual-rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. Pp. 2812 – 2816.
— Heller

Here is the wording which the gun grabbers hang their means-end arguments on from Heller:

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 2816 – 2817.

“Is not unlimited” was taken to mean that there are laws that are acceptable infringements. The only question was what should be used to determine what is allowed and what was not.

The answer the courts came up with was “means-end”. As stated before, this allows the court to run a balancing act with their thumb on the scales. First they use the phrase in Heller “… such as self-defense within the home” to indicate what the “core right” protected by the second amendment is. This allows the court to decide if a law is infringing on the right of the individual to protect themselves within the home.

If it is not that single core right then it is a lesser right and gets less protection. Once that is decided the court then gets to balance the “good” that the government says a law will do against the level of infringement.

On cross-motions for summary judgment, a distinguished judge in the District of Maryland ruled in August 2014 that the FSA is constitutional and thus awarded judgment to the defendants. See Kolbe v. O’Malley, 42 F.Supp.3d 768 (D. Md. 2014) (the “Opinion”). Addressing the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims under the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), the district court expressed grave doubt that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are constitutionally protected arms. Nevertheless, the court ultimately assumed that the FSA implicates the Second Amendment and subjected it to the “intermediate scrutiny” standard of review. In the wake of Heller, four of our sister courts of appeals have also rejected Second Amendment challenges to bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, including two (the Second and District of Columbia Circuits) that utilized an analysis similar to the district court’s.

–Kolbe v. Hogan

Here the 4th circuit court describes what the district court did. The district court “assumed” that the Firearms Safety Act was an infringement but only for the purposes of analysis. The court then decided that because the core right of the second amendment wasn’t implicated that they would use intermediate scrutiny. Under intermediate scrutiny the district court ruled that the FSA was constitutional.

Even though the court agreed that “large capacity magazines” and “assault weapons” were arms under the second amendment definitions.

The case was appealed to the fourth circuit court where a three judge panel decided that the district court got it wrong. They did this by moving their thumb from “intermediate scrutiny” to “strict scrutiny”.

In early February of 2016, a divided three-judge panel of this Court vacated the Opinion’s Second Amendment rulings and remanded to the district court, directing the application of the more restrictive standard of “strict scrutiny” to the FSA. See Kolbe v. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016). Pursuant to its reading of Heller, the panel majority determined that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are indeed protected by the Second Amendment, and that the FSA substantially burdens the core Second Amendment right to use arms for self-defense in the home. We thereby became the first and only court of appeals to rule that a ban on assault weapons or large-capacity magazines deserves strict scrutiny. Meanwhile, the panel affirmed the district court’s denial of the plaintiffs’ Fourteenth Amendment claims. On March 4, 2016, the panel’s decision was vacated in its entirety by our Court’s grant of rehearing en banc in this case. We heard argument en banc on May 11, 2016, and the appeal is now ripe for disposition.

The key words are “…substantially burdens the core Second Amendment right to use arms for self-defense in the home.” Even here the three judge panel is still considering the second amendment to have a “core right”. If the item isn’t used for self-defense in the home it is not protected under the second amendment.

The decision of the three judge panel was appealed by the state and the fourth circuit court vacated the panels ruling because it decided to hear the appeal. In other words: Our little court didn’t get it right so we are getting a do over with 9 judges.

As explained below, we are satisfied to affirm the district court’s judgment, in large part adopting the Opinion’s cogent reasoning as to why the FSA contravenes neither the Second Amendment nor the Fourteenth. We diverge from the district court on one notable point: We conclude — contrary to the now-vacated decision of our prior panel — that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment. That is, we are convinced that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are among those arms that are “like” “M-16 rifles” — “weapons that are most useful in military service” — which the Heller Court singled out as being beyond the Second Amendment’s reach. See 554 U.S. at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (rejecting the notion that the Second Amendment safeguards “M-16 rifles and the like”). Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage. Nevertheless, we also find it prudent to rule that — even if the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are somehow entitled to Second Amendment protection — the district court properly subjected the FSA to intermediate scrutiny and correctly upheld it as constitutional under that standard of review.

Here the court has intentionally conflated AR-15 with M-16s. M-16s can be regulated via the NFA because the NFA has not yet been challenged directly post Heller. In order to make the FSA constitutional the court had to treat “assault weapons” as NFA items.

They continue with a statement that because the en banc. fourth circuit court move their thumb back to intermediate scrutiny, even if they considered assault weapons and LCM’s protected arms, means-ends allows them to be banned.

The state’s argument:

In support of its motion for summary judgment, the State proffered extensive uncontroverted evidence demonstrating that the assault weapons outlawed by the FSA are exceptionally lethal weapons of war. A prime example of the State’s evidence is that the most popular of the prohibited assault weapons — the AR-15 — is simply the semiautomatic version of the M16 rifle used by our military and others around the world. Accord Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 603, 114 S.Ct. 1793, 128 L.Ed.2d 608 (1994) (observing that “[t]he AR-15 is the civilian version of the military’s M-16 rifle, and is, unless modified, a semiautomatic weapon”).

The good news is that in June of 2022 the Supreme Court of the US Granted certiorari to Bianchi v. Frosh, vacated the fourth circuit court’s ruling, and remanded the case back to the fourth circuit court. Since Bianchi v. Frosh was decided based on Kolbe v Hogan this means that Kolbe v. Hogan should no longer be considered good law.

We will have to wait to see what the fourth circuit rules regarding Bianchi v. Forsh