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Firearms Policy Coalition Sues California on First Amendment Grounds – Again

August 8, 2016 by

The Firearms Policy Coalition has sued the Legislative Counsel of California, Diane Boyer-Vine, for her attempts to suppress free speech. The suit centers around a blog post that posted publicly available addresses and phone numbers of Assembly members who voted for gun control. The post by FPC member “Publius” on his or her blog, The Real Write Winger, was removed by WordPress.com after the Legislative Counsel said it violated California law. The suit, as described in the press release below, seeks to have California Government
Code section 6254.21(c) declared unconstitutional and to enjoin its enforcement.

This is the second lawsuit this year that the Firearms Policy Coalition has brought this year on First Amendment grounds. In the first lawsuit which they won, they challenged the California Legislature’s ban on the use of video footage from floor debates in political ads. This is an interesting tactic as it forces judges to apply, in most cases, strict scrutiny.

More on the lawsuit and the whole back story is below:

SACRAMENTO (August 5, 2016) A just-filed First Amendment lawsuit challenges the State of California’s attempt to censor a political blog using an unusual and unconstitutional “takedown” process authorized by a state statute. The lawsuit is funded by the Firearms Policy Coalition, and filed on behalf of one of the Coalition’s members.


“Publius” (a pseudonym, since the challenged law carries a criminal penalty) runs a political blog under the alias “The Real Write Wringer” and writes extensively about California politics, civil liberties, and the Second Amendment.


The case, Doe Publius v. Diane Boyer-Vine, Legislative Counsel of California, seeks a restraining order against and challenges California Government Code section 6254.21(c), which broadly restricts the publication of the home address or telephone number of any “elected or appointed official” on the Internet.


Following California Governor Jerry Brown’s July 1 signing of six new gun control laws, the FPC member (pseudonymized as “Publius” in the lawsuit due to potential criminal liability) published a post on July 5 saying, in part, “… below is the names, home addresses, and home phone numbers of all the legislators who decided to make you a criminal if you don’t abide by their dictates. So below is the current tyrant registry. These are the people who voted to send you to prison if you exercise your rights and liberties. This will be a constantly updated list depending on future votes ….”


Soon after, the political blog’s hosting site, WordPress.com, received a censorious takedown letter from the California Legislative Counsel threatening litigation if the “tyrant registry” wasn’t removed due to the “grave risk” that it supposedly posed to the safety of elected officials.


In her letter, Deputy Legislative Counsel Kathryn Londenberg told WordPress.com that “My office represents the California State Legislature” and that it had “come to [their] attention that the home addresses of 14 Senators and 26 Assembly Members have been publically [sic] posted on an Internet Web site hosted by you without the permission of these elected officials.” She went on to say that if the content was not taken down within 48 hours, “we reserve the right to file an action seeking injunctive relief, as well as associated court costs and attorney’s fees.”


WordPress.com, which sees about 83 million unique monthly visits, and Automattic capitulated immediately, removing Publius’ “tyrant registry” content and subsequently barring them from publishing any similar content.


“Our Publius lawsuit argues that a State of California statute and the Legislative Counsel’s demand letter threatening legal action and penalties unconstitutionally forced WordPress into taking down the material,” explained Brandon Combs, president of Firearms Policy Coalition.


“Our member’s truthful, non-threatening speech was attacked mere days after the elected subjects of their speech carpet-bombed the Bill of Rights in the largest legislative attack on Second Amendment rights in decades.”


“FPC will not tolerate it or its members voices being censored by any government.”


“The First Amendment protects the publication of facts about government officials, especially facts drawn from the public record,” explained Eugene Volokh, an attorney and UCLA law professor working on the Publius case.


“Of course, the First Amendment doesn’t protect true threats of violence, but the statute and the California government’s demand letter forbid all publication of these facts, whether or not accompanied by threats.”


The publication of legislators’ addresses and phone numbers can serve a variety of lawful purposes. For example, residential picketing is allowed in many places, and concerned citizens can hardly engage in such picketing to demand action from their legislators without knowing where they live.


And even where a local government has a valid content-neutral restriction on residential picketing, marching through residential neighborhoods, or even walking a route in front of an entire block of houses, is likely constitutionally protected conduct.


In Brayshaw v. City of Tallahassee, 709 F. Supp. 2d 1244 (N.D. Fla. 2010), the ACLU of Florida challenged a similar statute and got it struck down in an order by United States District Court Judge Richard Smoak, who held that the Florida law was facially “invalid as unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”


Following the victory, Randall Marshall, ACLU of Florida Legal Director, said that it “cannot be a crime to publish truthful information. With very rare exceptions, courts protect the publication of truthful information that is already available to the public.”


Publius is represented by Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay of Benbrook Law Group as well as Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who has written and taught extensively about the First and Second Amendments.


Before joining the UCLA faculty 20 years ago, Volokh clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court. He also operates the popular legal blog “The Volokh Conspiracy,” now hosted at the Washington Post.


A copy of the complaint, which includes exhibits containing the censored content, can be viewed or downloaded at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-05-Complaint-with-Exhibits-filed.pdf.

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Commutations And Felons In Possession

August 5, 2016 by 3 Comments

It is within the power of the President of the United States to both commute sentences and grant pardons. President Obama used that power on Wednesday to commute the sentences of 214 individuals. This was the greatest number of commutations at a single time.

These commutations are being portrayed as being for mainly “nonviolent drug offenses”. President Obama went on Facebook to argue that our drug laws are too harsh and that Congress needs to institute sentencing reform.

But this is a country that believes in second chances. So we’ve got to make sure that our criminal justice system works for everyone. We’ve got to make sure that it keeps our streets safe while also making sure that an entire class of people like Sherman (Chester) isn’t relegated to a life on the margins.

The impression given is that many of those who had their sentences commuted were convicted of having relatively small amounts of drugs. How the Obama Administration defines “small” is open to debate.

Would you consider five kilograms of cocaine a small amount given the approximate street value per kilo is around $30,000? At least 15 of those convicted had this much or more in their possession when arrested. Of course it would be hard to top Ralph Casas of North Miami Beach who was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 9,445 kilograms of cocaine.

What does get me is that not all of these are “non-violent felons”. Jazz Shaw at Hotair.com points out that about a fourth of those who had their sentences commuted were also convicted of crimes involving firearms.

Basically one in four of the commuted sentences were for gun charges. First of all, when you’re packing heat as part of your drug dealing business you’re not exactly projecting the image of the non-violent criminal, but that’s hardly the point here. We’re being lectured on a daily basis by Barack Obama and his Democratic allies about the need to shut down the flow of weapons, end gun violence and every other catch phrase you can imagine which involves limiting the Second Amendment rights of law abiding gun owners. We are also assured of the need to curb the power of “the gun lobby.” In response, conservatives regularly point out that we might want to enforce the gun laws we already have on the books first and deal with the actual criminals who are trafficking in illegal guns. (Which are used in the vast majority of gun crimes in this country.)

Going through the list – and I may have missed some – I found 25 convicted felons in possession of a firearm. For some reason I don’t think these guys went through a NICS check. I know for sure that Kenneth Lee Kelley of Westville, OK didn’t go through a NICS check because he was convicted of not only two counts of being a felon in possession but also for having a stolen firearm. Nor did Ervin Darnell Worthy of Akron, OH who had a firearm with a altered serial number.

Joshua Boyer of Tampa, FL takes the prize for most interesting firearms offense. He was convicted of having possession of a firearm that was not registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. If I were to speculate, Mr. Boyer was emulating Jack Miller of US v. Miller fame in that he had a sawed off shotgun. He may, of course, had a full-auto firearm or a silencer.

Frankly, I really am not that sympathetic to junkies who ruin their lives by their choices. I am at the point where legalizing all drugs is starting to make some sense given the militarization of the police, overuse of SWAT teams, etc. However, knowing that junkies will do anything for their next fix including killing you or me for the change in our pockets, I am not that sure that commuting the sentences of those who facilitate drug use is the correct thing to do if we want to “keep our streets safe.” I don’t necessarily know the correct thing to do but commuting the sentences of many of these felons doesn’t quite sit right with me.

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Highest July On Record For Adjusted NICS Checks

August 2, 2016 by 4 Comments

The National Shooting Sports Foundation released their adjusted NICS checks numbers for July 2016. Let’s just say upfront that all the gun control talk coming from Democrats is having an impact. It’s just not the one they want.

From the NSSF Bullet Points:

The July 2016 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 1,210,731 is an increase of 27.9 percent compared to the July 2015 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 946,528. For comparison, the unadjusted July 2016 FBI NICS figure of 2,187,190 reflects a 37.6 percent increase from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 1,589,462 in July 2015.

As you can see in the graphic below, July 2015 had been the highest on record as well and it just overwhelmingly eclipsed.

The next graphic shows the year over year results by month. For the last twelve months, the adjusted NICS checks numbers were greater than the same month in the prior year.

As always, NICS checks are not a perfect correlation with gun sales as many states use the NICS System for carry permit purposes and as a CCW is accepted in lieu of a NICS check in many states such as North Carolina and Texas.

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Interesting Move On The Part Of Campari

August 2, 2016 by 4 Comments

Gruppo Campari has been the corporate owner of the Wild Turkey Distillery since 2009. In a very interesting move, they have named actor Matthew McConaughey as the Creative Director for Wild Turkey and its signature bourbons. According to reports, he signed a multi-year deal that will have him writing and creating advertising spots for the bourbon brand in addition to appearing in ads for it.

From AdWeek:

Often the hire is perceived as a stunt, but Melanie Batchelor, senior marketing director of whiskey for Wild Turkey’s parent company, Gruppo Campari, says that isn’t the case this time.

“I know that [celebrity creative director] can be a title that’s talked about by a number of other companies, but our experience has been that Matthew has had an extremely high level of engagement,” said Batchelor. “He’s been involved in every single piece of the process, from writing the ads—he’s obviously starring in the ads, and he’s also directing the ads—so he’s both in front of and behind the camera.”

The ads mark the first time that McConaughey, who has also appeared in ads for brands like Lincoln, has served as a director.

“When making a movie, you have two hours to tell a story,” said McConaughey in a statement. “Here I have 30 seconds to reintroduce the world to this authentic American brand that has helped shape an entire U.S. industry: bourbon. It will be a very interesting and fun challenge.”

I will admit to thinking when I heard the news that it was a joke. However, after seeing the video short that he produced below, I’ve changed my mind. I really don’t think Master Distillers Jimmy and Eddie Russell would have appeared in the video if McConaughey wasn’t serious about it and about their bourbon.

We toured the distillery after attending the NRA Annual Meeting. I remember our tour guide was a salty old former USMC drill instructor from Salisbury, North Carolina. We talked bourbon and Cheerwine. Watching the video, it reminds me of both the unique location of the Wild Turkey Distillery overlooking the Kentucky River and of the tour we had.

I guess if having McConaughey on board as creative director pays off for Campari, executives in Sesto San Giovanni will gladly be saying, “Alright, alright, alright”, with an Italian accent. I think they will also be trading their Negronis for Boulvardiers as it combines two of their signature products.

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Sorry For The Light Blogging

August 1, 2016 by 2 Comments

Sorry for the light blogging this past week. We just got back this weekend from St. Louis where we were visiting family and friends.

I did get to visit with fellow gun blogger Charlie Foxtrot and his wife. He helps us on The Polite Society Podcast and he blogs at Not One More Gun Law. After a lifetime of living in Southern California, he is still somewhat amazed at the change in the role of the gun culture in local politics. He noted that politicians in California would never mention their NRA-PVF grades especially if they were better than a “F”. By contrast, in Missouri, candidates fight over who is more gun friendly and brag on it.

I also got to visit a really great reloading shop in St. Charles. Graf’s Reloading – not be confused with Graf & Sons – is a full-service shop dedicated to reloading. While they have a small gun counter, reloading is their specialty. Seeing row after row of just bullets in any weight, style, or caliber was amazing. If you are in the St. Louis area and have time, they are just off of Interstate 70 in St. Charles. I found their prices to be very competitive and cheaper than the Bass Pro Shop down the street.

My granddaughter Olivia Grace traveled with us to St. Louis and was a big hit. She is fast approaching one and a half. As the picture below shows, she might have a future in reloading as she was quite interested in the bags of bullets.

We also trolled a number of thrift shops while in the St. Louis area. I picked up that cast iron pot in the picture at thrift shop and think it will be just right to serve as a lead melting pot. For $4 it can’t be beat.

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Happy Birthday Knife Rights

July 25, 2016 by 5 Comments

Today is the 10th birthday for Knife Rights. We owe a debt of gratitude to Doug Ritter for taking the initiative to form the organization. The post below tells about the article that inspired him to take action and the successes that they have had over the last 10 years.

July 25, 2016: Knife Rights was born ten years ago today after I read an outrageous and highly inflammatory article headlining the Wall Street Journal, entitled “How New, Deadly Pocketknives Became a $1 Billion Business” demonizing so-called “tactical knives.” A discredit to the Journal, the overwrought and sensationalist article was filled with distortions, misrepresentations, innuendo, outright lies and cherry-picked quotes pushing a transparent rabid anti-weapon and anti-freedom agenda. But, the story didn’t quite spark the anti-knife response the reporter probably hoped for — in fact, it had precisely the opposite effect.

Reading that article I became incensed at the blatant, misguided attack on our everyday tools. I realized that there was no NRA for knife owners. There was no aggressive, proactive grassroots organization working to stop the U.S. from sinking into the anti-knife, anti-freedom pit that already exists in Europe and the U.K.


That article ignited a new civil rights movement. Over the past decade Knife Rights has literally rewritten knife law in America. More knives and more freedom couldn’t have been further from his objective, but that’s exactly what he got. Thank you, Wall Street Journal.


One wonders what the editors were thinking when they chose to illustrate that fateful article with their poster child for evil and dangerous “tactical knives” – a diminutive Buck Knives “Metro” lock-blade keychain folding knife / bottle opener with a 1.125-inch one-hand opening blade. In any case, it demonstrates the absurd idiocy of assigning malevolence to an inanimate object based on physical characteristics. No knife is inherently “deadly” — that’s an irrational and nonsensical label.


A cornerstone of Knife Rights’ principles is that inanimate objects like knives must be used by someone against another in order to become deadly weapons. Even then, often they are used for self-defense, not offensively. Knives are simply essential everyday tools used by millions of Americans at home, at work and at play and occasionally they are “arms” used to protect a life. Removing knives from statutory lists of per se (intrinsically) “deadly weapons” is an ongoing goal of Knife Rights.


We formally founded Knife Rights in December of 2006, adopting the slogan “A Sharper Future™ as our objective. The foundation for Knife Rights was expressed as “Essential Tools – Essential Rights™.”


It took a few years to get our legs under us, but in 2009 Knife Rights provided the key grassroots knife owner’s component of a coalition of groups that opposed U.S. Customs’ efforts to redefine a switchblade to include these same one-hand opening knives. The end result was that Congress passed a fifth exception to the Federal Switchblade Act that protected one-hand opening and assisted-opening folding knives.


Springboarding off that success, in 2010 we began our efforts to rewrite knife law at the state level. Knife Rights passed the nation’s first ever outright repeal of a state knife ban (switchblades, dirks, daggers and stilettos) in New Hampshire and the nation’s first ever Knife Law Preemption bill in Arizona, ridding the state of its inconsistent patchwork of local knife restrictions. This proved all the naysayers wrong; those who said it couldn’t be done.


It was, indeed, possible to repeal switchblade and other knife bans. Having proved those defeatists wrong, we have never looked back. Since 2010 we have been going gangbusters, proving again and again that Knife Rights can do what was once though impossible:

21 PRO-KNIFE BILLS PASSED IN 15 STATES!

Alaska ● Arizona ● Georgia ● Indiana ● Kansas ● Maine ● Missouri ● Nevada
New Hampshire ● Oklahoma ● Tennessee ● Texas ● Utah ● Washington ● Wisconsin

8 ANTI-KNIFE BILLS STOPPED!

Florida ● Maryland ● New Jersey ● New York ● Nevada ● Washington



Knife Rights has also been active in federal and state courts protecting and advancing knife owners’ rights. Never backing down from a challenge, our first lawsuit filed five years ago took on New York City’s persecution of retailers and tens of thousands of knife owners carrying common pocketknives. While that lawsuit is still ongoing, we’ve been involved in one way or another with a dozen other lawsuits or trials where knife owners’ rights were imperiled. We have been on the prevailing side in every one!


Knife Rights is The One Getting It Done™ for knife owners in America. With the generous support of many of you reading this, our success is unprecedented, unparalleled and unrivaled.


However, we cannot rest on our past wins. The fight continues and it takes money to accomplish what we do. Your donations are the engine that drives us forward.

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Good Little Statists

July 21, 2016 by 4 Comments

I saw this tweet from the Violence Policy Center applauding the moves yesterday by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D-MA) to rule by edict regarding AWB state-compliant firearms.

When you consider that their founder and executive director Josh Sugarmann was the person who popularized the term “assault weapons”, it all begins to make sense. He meant for the term to be used to confuse the general public into supporting bans under the guise of “anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun”.

Healey and Sugarmann are the people that George Orwell warned us about in 1984. They are the good little statists from the Ministry of Love intent on making us submit to their will. The term “assault weapon” is nothing but Newspeak – the controlled language meant to limit freedom of thought. Those earnest men who assembled on Lexington Green in April 1775 must be rolling in their graves to see what has become of their state.

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Governing By Edict In Massachusetts

July 20, 2016 by 14 Comments

The gun prohibitionists and anti-rights forces just love the word “loophole”. They love it so much in Massachusetts that the attorney general has decided to arbitrarily reinterpret the commonwealth’s assault weapons (sic) ban.

Attorney General Maura Healey (D-MA) announced her edict in the Boston Globe today. She says that as of today, if a firearm has either components that are interchangeable with AR-15s and AKs from the free states or an “operating system” that is essentially the same, it is banned.

From the Boston Globe:

The gun industry has found a way to exploit our laws, a loophole of potentially horrific proportions. And it’s time we act.

The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban Congress allowed to expire in 2004. It prohibits the sale of specific weapons like the Colt AR-15 and AK-47 and explicitly bans “copies or duplicates” of those weapons. But gun manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to define what a “copy” or “duplicate” weapon is. They market “state compliant” copycat versions of their assault weapons to Massachusetts buyers. They sell guns without a flash suppressor or folding or telescoping stock, for example, small tweaks that do nothing to limit the lethalness of the weapon.

That will end now. On Wednesday, we are sending a directive to all gun manufacturers and dealers that makes clear that the sale of these copycat assault weapons is illegal in Massachusetts. With this directive, we will ensure we get the full protection intended when lawmakers enacted our assault weapons ban, not the watered-down version of those protections offered by gun manufacturers.

The directive specifically outlines two tests to determine what constitutes a “copy” or “duplicate” of a prohibited weapon. If a gun’s operating system is essentially the same as that of a banned weapon, or if the gun has components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon, it’s a “copy” or “duplicate,” and it is illegal. Assault weapons prohibited under our laws cannot be altered in any way to make their sale or possession legal in Massachusetts.

We recognize that most residents who purchased these guns in the past believed they were doing so legally, so this directive will not apply to possession of guns purchased before Wednesday. In the dozen years since the federal assault weapons ban lapsed, only seven states have instituted their own assault weapons ban. Many of those bans have been challenged (unsuccessfully) by the gun industry, and we anticipate our directive may be too. But our job is to enforce state laws and to keep people safe. This directive does both.

Healey claims a “moral obligation” to come out with this edict. Methinks it more political grandstanding that any sort of moral obligation.

It will be interesting to see what is meant in real life terms by having an “operating system (which) is essentially the same as that of a banned weapon.” Does that mean any and all semiautomatic rifles that use direct gas impingement are banned? Or, in the case of an AK, does this mean all firearms with short stroke gas systems are banned?

You have to wonder if Remington will restart their production of their Model 7615P pump action .223 that took AR15 magazines. It would be a nice in your face workaround to Healey’s edict.

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Going Old School

July 18, 2016 by 3 Comments

Ian from Forgotten Weapons blog goes old school at this run and gun steel match in Arizona. Who am I kidding. Ian always goes old school!

In this video, Ian uses a Roth Steyr 1907 made in 1910 to run the match. He said this about the pistol:

The 1907 was used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, and is in my opinion one of the best pistols of World War I. It is a solid and durable design firing a reasonably powerful cartridge (for the time, at least – 8mm Steyr is a 113gr projectile at about 1070fps) and with reasonable sights and good handling. It is mechanically innovative, with a firing mechanism functionally identical to today’s “safe-action” systems. The striker is halfway cocked by the action of the gun cycling, and the remaining half is done by the trigger press. The 1907 uses a proprietary stripper clip holding 10 rounds, with a movable follower built in. Pressing down on the clip’s follower puts an even pressure on the cartridges, helping to make it a very smooth design to use – I would rate it as equal or better than any other type of stripper clip I have used.

Even with an antique gun using an antique cartridge Ian still comes in 17th out of 21. Considering he was using stripper clips to reload and not magazines, that is pretty damn good.

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So What Is Long Range?

July 14, 2016 by 3 Comments

Long range can have a lot of meaning to shooters. If you live in the East and deer hunt in heavily forested areas, it might be 50 yards. Out West, it might mean 4-500 yards.

Brian Litz of Applie Ballistics does a good job of explaining long range and extended long range in this new video released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Brian will be holding one of his 2-day Advanced Ballistics seminars in Sophia, North Carolina this November. Sophia is a farming community just south of Greensboro. The cost of his seminar is $500. However, if you use the promo code ABSEM100 at checkout, the price falls to $400. For two full days plus all of his books, DVDs, and software, that’s quite a deal.