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Rahm and Andrew Traver

December 18, 2010 by

In a story in the Washington Post that I linked to yesterday about the BATFE’s proposal to require reporting of multiple purchases of certain rifles was a little tidbit about who pushed the nomination of Andrew Traver in the Obama Whitehouse. Turns out it was Rahm Emanuel according to Ben LaBolt who is a spokesman for Emanuel’s mayoral campaign.

LaBolt said that Emanuel recommended Andy Traver of Chicago to be nominated by Obama to be director of the ATF and was the “point man” in the Clinton administration when Congress passed an assault weapons ban and required background checks for gun sales. Clinton later blamed those bills for the GOP takeover of Congress in 1995.

The plot thickens.

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Time For DC To Pay Up

December 16, 2010 by 9 Comments

Not only did Alan Gura have to fight the District of Columbia over the Second Amendment, now he is having to fight them in an effort to get paid for his efforts in the Heller case. The Legal Times Blog is reporting that the District of Columbia is balking over the bill submitted to the District Court by Gura. Basing his bill for fees on the prevailing market rates for complex Federal litigation, he submitted a request for $3.13 million to Judge Emmet Sullivan. This was for over 3,000 hours of billable time for six attorneys including himself.

The District has countered that they should only have to pay $722,000.

Samuel Kaplan of the District’s Office of the Attorney General argued the plaintiffs’ team had failed to prove why they should receive compensation on par with major law firms in the District. Kaplan called the gun litigation complicated but not complex, a term he reserved for class actions.

Kaplan said Gura’s team did not build the case from scratch, relying instead on what he called decades of scholarly literature on the Second Amendment.

It takes a lot of gall to say the premier case establishing the Second Amendment as an individual right is merely complicated but not complex which is a designation that the District’s attorneys reserve for the cases brought by the bottom-dwelling plaintiff’s attorneys for stuff like cigarette smoking and exposure to asbestos.

Judge Sullivan, according to this account, questioned whether he should take the District’s finances into account when considering Gura’s bill and how much he should be paid from the taxpayer’s money. Gura countered,

telling Sullivan he (Gura) should not be (in) a position that requires him to assess the city’s budget priorities. Sullivan should base his fee ruling on an objective analysis of market rates and performance, Gura said.

My humble suggestion to Judge Sullivan is that if he doesn’t want to use taxpayer money to pay Mr. Gura he should take it out of the assets and retirements of the so-called public officials who passed the handgun ban in the first place as well as those like former Mayor Adrian Fenty who kept enforcing the unconstitutional ban.

The bottom line is that it is well past time for the District of Columbia to stop being cheap bastards. You lost and we won. Now pay up.

UPDATE:  After Mark C. made the comment below, I looked up Alan Gura’s motion for fees. You can find it here. It is brought under 42 USC 1988 as he surmised. If you want to know about the history of the Heller case, it is worth reading the few first pages.

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ISRA On Cook County’s Brief In Wilson v. Cook County

December 16, 2010 by 2 Comments

Wilson v. Cook County is the State of Illinois case challenging Cook County’s Blair Holt Assault Weapons Ban. It was remanded back to the the First District Appellate Court for reconsideration based upon the McDonald decision.

Here is the Illinois State Rifle Association’s take on Cook County’s brief which they released this morning.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Appellate Court defense of the county gun ban (Wilson, et. al. v. Cook County, et. al.) got off to a bad start when briefs filed by the county before the First District Appellate Court were found to contain factual errors. More specifically, these factual errors included the misquoting of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago cases. (The ISRA was a Plaintiff in McDonald). When these errors were brought to light by the plaintiffs, the county hastily filed a motion to withdraw the erroneous briefs in favor of amended versions. Presently, the plaintiffs in the case have moved to strike the amended briefs as the amendments do not remedy the ramifications of the misquotes contained in the original set of briefs. In fact the County may have used their own “errors” to further violate the Court’s rules and to additional arguments and bolster existing arguments in their amended brief.

“We find it interesting that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office would blame ‘electronic errors’ for the tainting of its briefs with misquotes,” commented ISRA spokesman, Richard Pearson. “This situation is made all the more curious given that the misquotes would fundamentally alter the intent of two landmark Supreme Court decisions – D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. In the county’s briefs, the two high court decisions are erroneously quoted as addressing ‘common handguns’ whereas the decisions, as written, do not contain the phrase ‘common handguns.’ There is a clear difference when one addresses handguns versus ‘common’ handguns in that the latter would drastically reduce the types of firearms whose ownership is protected under the Second Amendment.”

“If I were a cynic,” continued Pearson, “I’d suggest that these ‘electronic errors’ were just poorly executed attempts by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office to re-write the Heller and McDonald decisions more to Mayor Daley’s liking.”

The ISRA is the state’s leading advocate of safe, lawful and responsible firearms ownership. For more than a century, the ISRA has represented the interests of millions of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners.

How the heck can an electronic filing system be responsible for misquoting Supreme Court decision? Does the Cook County State’s Attorneys Office have some sort of computer-generated, artificial intelligence system with a random quote generator that writes its briefs? I sincerely doubt that a computer is at fault here. I guess this is just another of the gifts from Cook County and the City of Chicago like President Obama, Mayor Daley, and Andrew Traver.

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Peruta Case Appealed To Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals

December 16, 2010 by

On Tuesday, the attorneys for Edward Peruta, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and the other plaintiffs in the case suing the County of San Diego and Sheriff William Gore over the “good cause” requirement filed an appeal of the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Edward Peruta, Michelle Laxson, James Dodd, Leslie Buncher, Mark Cleary, and California Rifle and Pistol Association Foundation, Plaintiffs in the abovenamed case, hereby appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from the final judgment of the district court, entered in this case on December 10, 2010 (attached hereto as Exhibit “A”); the district court’s order denying Plaintiffs’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment, also entered on December 10, 2010 (attached hereto as Exhibit “B”), and all interlocutory orders that gave rise to the district court’s judgment. Date: December 14, 2010

Unfortunately, nothing about the appeal is showing up yet in the Pacer System for the Ninth Circuit. The above is from the District Court.

As many have commented elsewhere, the Ninth Circuit is one of those weird circuits where you can get a great three judge panel or a horrible three judge panel. Given the very size of the circuit, the nation’s largest, you could have a judge from Alaska, Montana, and Arizona on the three judge panel or you could get two from San Francisco and one from Hawaii. Moreover, with 47 judges on the Appeals Court whose appointment ranges from JFK to George W. Bush, you have a wide variety of judges.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this case. Even a loss here if coupled with a win in another circuits would not be all bad. There are a number of cases contesting carry regulations in other circuits such as Kachalsky in the 2nd, Woollard in the 4th, and D’Cruz in the 5th. Diversity of opinions between the circuits would make it more likely that the Supreme Court would grant certiorari to at least one of the carry cases.

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Washington Post In Tears Over NRA’s Influence

December 15, 2010 by

The Washington Post ran a story today that was intended to be a hit piece on the NRA and its influence on Congress. It is part of their The Hidden Life of Guns series.

In the story they decried the amount of money the NRA spent on Congressional races of which 80% were won by NRA endorsed candidates. However, if you look at the graphic presented for House races, the striking thing is that for the majority of endorsed candidates the NRA spent nothing. As in nada, zilch, zero.

While not true for the Senate, in the House races even when the NRA endorsed candidate lost, their opponent was usually as good on gun rights as the endorsed candidate. I wonder how the Post would like to play that little tidbit.

There are a number of good blog posts on this article in the Post. Instapundit linked to the story with the snarky intro – WHEN IT’S BAD THAT CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS have influence. Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee applies a proper fisking to the story as well.

Finally, in the not connecting the dots category comes this from Don Davis of Don’s Guns and Galleries in Indianapolis who only yesterday they pilloried for being number three on the list of crime guns traced.

Don Davis, 77, has run Don’s Guns and Galleries in Indianapolis for 37 years and says he is one of the highest-volume dealers in the region. A big supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, Davis resigned from the NRA many years ago. “They used to be an organization for the hunter and the fishermen,” he said recently. “Then they got into politics. They’re so political, that’s what they do with their money. Today if you say anything about a gun, they use their money to run against you.”

If it weren’t for the NRA being political, Mr. Davis and his gun shop would have been forced out of business long ago by the gun control forces.

UPDATE:  Sebastian at Snow Flakes in Hell does a good job dissecting the Washington Post article. Also both he and Thirdpower over at Days of Our Trailers caught the bit about Ray Schoenke being paid by the Obama campaign to shill for them to gun owners. I missed that part.

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FNH SCAR Mk20 SSR Approved For Full-Rate Production

December 15, 2010 by

In a press release sent out today from FNH-USA, it was announced that US Special Operations Command had approved the FNH SCAR Mk 20 MOD 0 Sniper Support Rifle (SSR) for full-rate production. The Mk 20 is expected to start being fielded in mid-May 2011.

According to FNH, the Mk 20 was originally meant to be the sniper variant of the SCAR-H which is now designated the Mk 17. However, after the Mk 17 reached the “status of Operationally Effective/Operationally Suitable and Sustainable”, the Special Operations sniper community worked to refine the sniper variant to better suit the needs of long range, precision shooting. After these refinements and revisions, it was designated the Mk 20.

FNH-USA describes the Mk 20 as follows:

The MK 20 features an extended receiver which provides the additional rail space required for mounting in-line night vision and thermal devices with standard/sniper day optics, a non-folding precision stock with an adjustable cheek piece and length of pull that provides adjustability and a more rigid firing position for making long range target engagements, a beefed up barrel extension and barrel profile to reduce whip and improve accuracy, and an enhanced modular trigger that can be configured for single-stage or two-stage operation, requires no adjustments, and is ruggedized for field use. As a part of the SCAR Family of Weapons, the MK 20 shares a high percentage of parts commonality (over 60%) with the MK 17, maintains the enhanced ergonomics and improves accuracy.

The barrel of the Mk 20 SSR is free-floated, chrome-lined, and cold hammer-forged. It has an estimated service life of more than 15,000 rounds.

Back during the summer there was some confusion and controversy on whether the full SCAR line had been approved for Full-Rate Production. Initially, the impression was given by FNH-USA that the SCAR-16 (or SCAR-L) had been approved but this was in error.  Only the SCAR Mk 17 (formerly SCAR-H) and the Mk 13 grenade launcher were approved at that time. With the addition of the Mk 20 SSR, this makes three members of the SCAR family approved for full-rate production and fielding to the Special Operations community.

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Light Blogging Due to Network Outage

December 14, 2010 by

There will be light blogging for today and tomorrow. Earthlink’s DSL is down in our region due to some network problems.

My theory is that the cold weather caused it. It was 5 deg. when I got in my car this morning at 8am. And supposedly North Carolina is the “Sunny South”. As the Instapundit would say, heh!

I’m writing this at the local Public Library. I’m sure they would be horrified to know that guns are being discussed within the confines of the library. Or maybe not – this is western North Carolina and it isn’t Asheville.

UPDATE: Earthlink said DSL would be up by 1:30pm tomorrow. It was up at about 6pm. I have to give them credit for doing a good job.