It’s summer and I’ve gotten a little lazy when it has come to blogging. Sometimes it is just preferable to sit out on the front porch, sipping a drink, and reading a bit of this and bit of that. There have been some things I’ve been meaning to comment on but never got around to it.
First, regarding Charlottesville, “white nationalists”, the Klan, Nazis, Antifa, and the violence that happened yesterday: when two groups filled full of hateful, violent people that I disdain go at hammer and tong, I say a pox on both their houses. It was the same feeling I had after the “Greensboro Massacre” back in 1979 when the Klan and American Nazis shot it out with the Communist Workers’ Party at a “Death to the Klan” rally. I’m with Miguel on this when he says he doesn’t care much about what happens to either group.
Leaving the sensationalism of the mass media behind, one of the bigger stories in the gun community has been the issue of Sig P320s accidentally firing when dropped in a certain way. Sig has issued a voluntary “upgrade” to fix this. If I owned one of these pistols, I’d send it in for the retrofit with the military trigger. It only makes sense from a civil liability standpoint. You can just imagine the questions that a plaintiffs’ attorney would be asking if you dropped your firearm and someone was injured. It wouldn’t be pretty. This post in The Firearm Blog has more on the story along with a ton of links.
While on the subject of recalls, Ruger has issued a recall on some of their Ruger Precision Rifles with the aluminum bolt shroud. The issue is the potential for interference between the bolt shroud and the cocking piece. This safety recall only pertains to those rifles with an aluminum bolt shroud and within serial number ranges of 1800-26274 to 1800-78345 and 1801-00506 to 1801-30461.
In legal news, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on Thursday that the Seattle “gun violence” tax did not violate that state’s firearms preemption law. The lawsuit against the tax was a joint effort of the Second Amendment Foundation, the National Rifle Association, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation along with two businesses, Philip Watson, and the late Ray Carter aka GayCynic. Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation called the decision a “slap in the face to the Washington Legislature.” He also correctly noted that gun owners need to get more involved in Supreme Court races (where the justices are elected).
Dave Workman, editor of The GunMag, has done superb reporting on the issue at Liberty Park Press and Conservative Firing Line. His posts on the court decision can be found here, here, here, and here. I think Dave is correct when he says that the Washington State Supreme Court may have opened a Pandora’s box. I can see these sort of taxes being implemented up and down the West Coast as well in other gun control paradises.
Sebastian had a very thought provoking post on his blog regarding suicide and the unintended consequences of universal background checks. Research conducted at Oregon State University-Cascades found that gun owners were more receptive to suicide-prevention messages if they respected gun rights than if they were neutral. However, as Sebastian notes, universal background checks make it harder for a person to have their family hold their guns if they experience a mental health crisis.
Except Bloomberg has been going state-to-state trying to make that a crime. I have a standing order with family to remove my access to firearms if I ever have that kind of mental health crisis, but in states like Washington, where Bloomberg has been successful, that is a crime if you don’t first get the person in crisis to an FFL to pay hundreds of dollars to transfer the collection to the “trusted individual,” and then pay hundreds more once the crisis ends. The Oregon legislature was smarter, and made an exception to its laws, but there is a factor of “imminence” in the exception. Generally speaking, transferring a firearm to a “trusted individual” in Oregon is a crime. In Pennsylvania, this is also the case for handguns, unless the “trusted individual” has an LTC.
So don’t give me this bleeding heart shit. If gun control people gave a crap about suicide they wouldn’t be pushing for laws that criminalized gun owners for helping out friends.
Hat tip to my friend and podcasting co-host Rob Morse for pointing me to a success in court by NY gun rights attorney Paloma Capanna. Her case, Robinson v. Sessions, is on appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit involves the sharing of information on the Form 4473 for purposes other than purchasing a firearm. The issue before the 2nd Circuit is whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue. In an answering brief, the Department of Justice lawyers acknowledged that the FBI has been running all NICS checks through the Terrorist Screening Database since 2004.
The error below arises from more than 15 years of litigation conducted by the ACLU, Amnesty International, and other groups, seeking to halt civil rights violations for those who are interrupted during travel because of a suspected match of the passenger to the “No-Fly List.” (The “No-Fly List” is a subset of the TSDB.) In those cases, the unlawful search and the invasion of privacy doesn’t begin until the person is pulled out of line and treated differently than other airline passengers going through open and obvious TSA screening procedures.
Plaintiffs in the Robinson case state that the violation of their civil rights begins the moment the FBI secretly uses their personal information from the ATF Form 4473 for the unauthorized purpose of checking them against the TSDB. Yes, a person who gets matched to the TSDB during a gun purchase at an FFL might have greater damages, but the harm hits every American attempting to make a lawful purchase at an FFL.
My friend Laura Carno has brought the FASTER training program to Colorado. The program involves intensive firearms, defensive, and medical training for school personnel in an effort to protect the students in the case of an active shooter event. FASTER was the brainchild of Buckeye Firearms Association and Tactical Defense Institute. She was interviewed about the program and their successes by Cam Edwards of NRA TV this week.
Is firearms training a religion? Regardless of whether it is or isn’t, Kevin Creighton thinks it should be. Looking at the great martial arts, they tend to include an element of religion in them according to Kevin. They helps inspire practitioners to rise about themselves in extraordinary situations. Situations like a gun fight which is definitely an extraordinary situation. Kevin concludes, “A religion of CCW isn’t going to save your soul, but it just might save your life.”
Finally, attorney and Second Amendment scholar Dave Hardy has a new book coming out. The book entitled, I’m from the Government and I’m Here to Kill You: The True Human Cost of Official Negligence, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. I have pre-ordered my copy and would suggest that you might want to do so as well. Dave reports that the official release date is October 10th but it could actually ship earlier. Some of the events covered in the book include Waco, Ruby Ridge, Operation Fast and Furious, and the fallout from atomic testing. As Dave notes in the introduction which is available online:
One might have thought the premise “the King can do no wrong” would
have no application in a nation with no king, but that is not how things
turned out. Indeed, by the time our courts finished, they had immunized
government officials high and low from liability for any wrongful injuries
they inflicted upon the citizens who paid their salaries….
Federal officials have, as we
shall see, blown up hundreds of people, spread radioactive waste over enormous
areas, and ordered their subordinates to commit murder, all with
legal impunity. When the government’s misdeeds were challenged in court,
attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice did not hesitate to conduct
cover-ups, defraud the courts, and intimidate witnesses—all without worries
about disbarment or other discipline. (In this book’s concluding chapter,
we’ll examine how we can deal with these problems.)
When federal civilian employment was small, the risk of being injured
by a negligent governmental employee was trifling. Today, there are over
two million federal civilian employees, a workforce that dwarfs those of our
largest corporations. This enormous workforce has almost complete legal
immunity, no matter how lethal its transgressions.
by 