Constitutional Law

But what about zombies?

Posted on October 03, 2010
NRA's National Firearms Museum is opening an exhibit that includes a cased .38 for use against vampires. I personally think you need more stopping power for the undead...

Prosecution for selling guns to the Indians

Posted on October 02, 2010
Story here.

Second Amendment as a teaching tool

Posted on October 02, 2010
That's the title of a paper by a number of law profs .... illustrated here. Many of the major battles of Con Law are long past, and so its modern controversies tend to be, well, rather trifling and often only barely based on constitutional issues. That's hardly true of the right to arms...

Speaking of problems in New York

Posted on October 02, 2010
Headline: "Kirkwood man shoots wife, then kills himself; woman in critical condition." The attacker was a felon who had been paroled two months before. And the gun... "The gun used in the shooting was stolen from a New York City police property room in August 2000...

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Another defensive shooting shooting in Chicago

Posted on September 30, 2010
It seems to be becoming the new fad. Or perhaps this was always happening, and the media only now covers it -- which might be even more significant. Note the mantra: the shootee admits to throwing a rock or brick through the woman's window, the neighbors say he harasses everyone, and his family and friends say "He wasn't the type of little boy to do that; to throw a brick in an old lady's window like that...

4th Amendment, that obsolete detail....

Posted on September 30, 2010
Mobile backscatter x-ray units are coming into use, to scan the inside of vehicles from a distance. I have some difficulty seeing how x-raying a vehicle is not a "search" (applying passive infrared imaging to a house has been held to be a search, and this involves active rather than passive imaging), and how doing it to every vehicle, with no reason to suspect criminality, is not "unreasonable...

San Diego concedes in suit over open carry

Posted on September 29, 2010
CalGuns Foundation happily announces that San Diego, in reparation for having arrested a person engaged in legal open carry, has agreed to clear his record and cough up $35,000. The officers didn't know, and San Diego PD had not trained them to know, that in CA open carry of an unloaded firearm is lawful, and thought that the fact he had loaded magazines on him (lawful, too) made it a loaded gun.

Trouble in NJ, too.

Posted on September 28, 2010
An attorney is busted for bribing another inmate to confess to possessing the gun that his client, a convicted violent felon, had. We can only guess what he was up to when, before this, he served as chief prosecutor and chief judge ....

NYPD has some serious problems

Posted on September 28, 2010
When an attorney sets up a webpage to advertise his willingness to represent officers suing NYPD after being sanctioned for failure to meet quotas or for complaining of corruption, things must be getting pretty serious. And here's a pdf of the latest lawsuit's complaint...

Mayor's group's report on "gun trafficking"

Posted on September 28, 2010
MAIG's report is here. It's grabbing headlines on a theme of "49% of crime guns trace to only ten States." First problem: those ten States have about 52% of the US population, so it'd not be surprising that they account for 49% of traces. According to the 2000 Census, the US population was then 281 million, and the population of the ten States was 149...

Mock jury research on shooting burglars

Posted on September 26, 2010
Study here. "Jurors" were given written summaries of a situation and asked if they'd convict or acquit, and if they convicted, what sentence they would impose. The scenario involved a homeowner encountering a burglar under ambiguous conditions tending toward shooting not justified (burglar makes a verbal threat but no moves -- technically, that might not be enough...

Handy calendar of post-McDonald events

Posted on September 25, 2010
Only Guns and Money has a convenient calendar of upcoming events in the McDonald followup cases. Strange to think back ... five years ago, no one would have foreseen any of the coming events. Even a year ago, the total of real right to arms (2nd or 14th Amendment challenges) was, what, McDonald and 1-2 other cases...

Madison WI proclaims peaceful open carry is disorderly conduct

Posted on September 24, 2010
Press release here. Five open carriers went into a restaurant. One patron called police to check them out, stating she "felt uneasy" despite their calm behavior. The city is classifying it as disorderly conduct (disturbing the peace), noting "The DC statute does not require an actual disturbance take place, only that conduct in question is of a type that tends to cause or provoke a disturbance...

IG report critical of "Operation Gunrunner"

Posted on September 21, 2010
Story here. It does repeat the false mantra that "80 percent" of guns confiscated in Mexico come from the US. But it notes that ATFE does not cooperate or share intel with ICE, and ATFE tracing operations in Mexico get little cooperation with ATFE in the US, and supervisors pushing small investigations that can be completed quickly rather than larger ones...

New article on Privilege or Immunities

Posted on September 18, 2010
By Alan Gura, Ilya Shapiro, and Josh Blackman, online here. It'll be in Cato's upcoming Supreme Court Review.

Thoughts on tracing of guns in Mexico

Posted on September 18, 2010
Here's an AP article on tracing of guns seized in Mexico. A few thoughts: 1. "In all, the military has 305,424 confiscated weapons locked in vaults..." :The Mexican government has handed over information to U.S. authorities to trace 12,073 weapons seized in 2008 crimes...

Vegas police kill CCW permittee for legal conduct

Posted on September 17, 2010
Story here. Hat tip to reader Russ Howard...

Self-defense in Brooklyn getting great press

Posted on September 17, 2010
The 63 year old grandfather who popped a burglar in Brooklyn is getting great and favorable coverage. Here's the New York Post, the the Wall Street Journal, and the Gothamist. The last end with: "Goldstein's neighbors were relieved: One told the Post, "Hopefully, he'll make people think twice about coming here and knocking down doors," and another said, "As a person who's been an opponent of gun ownership, I'm glad he had one now...

lawsuit against EPA refusal to ban lead bullets

Posted on September 17, 2010
Press release here.

Excellent article

Posted on September 16, 2010
At Reason Online, an excellent article on Chicago and its aftermath, by Brian Doherty.

Another Bloomburg Mayor bites the dust

Posted on September 15, 2010
Eddie Perez, former mayor of Hartford, gets three years in the big house. Crimes included accepting bribes and committing extortion. I'll have to update my website for Gun Owners Against Illegal Mayors. Hat tip to reader Gene Hoffman....

A good place to bank

Posted on September 15, 2010
I wish this bank had a branch in Tucson! Hat tip to Len Savage...

Comment spam today

Posted on September 14, 2010
Well, at least it's interesting. Spammers post spam comments linking to sales sites, because part of a site's Google ranking is based on the number of links to it. Today's crop includes a sales site for helicopters, a place selling tapestries in Europe, and three from a place selling plastic water bottles.

More Guns, Less Crime

Posted on September 14, 2010
Bob Owens points out that in 2009, Americans bought a record 14 million firearms and about 14 billion rounds of ammo -- and violent crime rates fell.

Oral argument set in Nordyke

Posted on September 10, 2010
Gene Hoffman of CalGuns reports that the 9th Circuit has ordered oral argument, 15 minutes for each side, on October 19 at 1:30PM in Courtroom 1. This is the one where the 9th Circuit panel (3 judges) issued a ruling, then the entire Circuit voted to rehear it en banc, then after the Chicago decision the Circuit voted to scrap the en banc and send it back to the three judge panel again...

Illinois

Posted on September 10, 2010
I'm at the NRA Board meetings, and last night talked with some Illinois activists, and the conversation turned to their former governor Blago. The consensus was that the jury hung 11-1 for conviction because he only bought one juror. He apparently kept two governor's limos at the capitol...

Supreme Court to hear case on mandatory minimum sentence

Posted on September 09, 2010
Abbott v. US is set for argument on October 4. Here are the briefs, which include some interesting amici.

BATF budget

Posted on September 08, 2010
Here's the pdf. I know it's been remarked that the only sector of the economy (other than guns) that is growing is the government sector. Look on p. 10. In the last ten years the agency's budget has doubled, from half a billion to a billion, and its employment has increased by 20%, from a little over four to a little over five thousand people.

San Fran's only gun store fights for permit to open

Posted on September 08, 2010
Story here.

5th Circuit rules no jurisdiction over Italian manufacturer

Posted on September 07, 2010
The ruling was that plaintiff had failed to establish either general or specific jurisdiction over the foreign company. Opinion, in pdf, here.

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