Constitutional Law

Sudden insight into terrorism

Posted on March 05, 2011
I just realized ... what do almost all terrorists have in common? 2001: Mohamed Atta, a/k/a Mu?ammad Mu?ammad al-?mir ?Awa? as-Sayyid leads the 9/11 hijackings and mass murders. His fellow conspirators included Abdulaziz al-Omari , Satam Suqami, Abdulaziz Alomari, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Abdulaziz al-Omari...

Brady Campaign must be gobbling antidepressants like jelly beans

Posted on March 05, 2011
President Obama says he believes in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms for self-protection. I doubt he believes a word of it, but it must be pretty discouraging to a group that endorsed him for President: "Along with Sarah and Jim, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters strongly endorses the Obama-Biden ticket and encourages our supporters to vote for them on November 4, 2008...

CBS News on ATF letting guns go to Mexico

Posted on March 03, 2011
Video here. Complete with an agent, still on the job, who talks about it. (That takes serious cojones -- I mean, he has to go into the office tomorrow, with the same supervisor that he's talking about, who now regard him as a "snitch," to be ruined). They're talking thousands of guns that only got to Mexico because ATF supervisors said let them go...

Agents fired beanbags in fatal shootout with border robbers

Posted on March 03, 2011
Further confirmation here. Whoever created that policy should be committed to an institution as a danger to others. The BP agents are being sent out to deal, not with cartel drugrunners, but with robbers who prey upon cartel drugrunners -- hard to envision a more dangerous group of criminals than that...

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Wave of commonsense gun laws

Posted on March 02, 2011
A few months ago, Arizona became the third State to allow concealed carry without a permit. Yesterday, Wyoming became the fourth. And Publicola informs me that a Colorado bill to the same effect is up for a House vote today.

Jim McClure passes on

Posted on March 01, 2011
Obit here. He served as Senator from 1972 to 1991, and played key roles in starting off the gun rights movement. I can recall his leading the legislative fight to curtail the power of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, somewhere around 1977-78, and the first hearings into ATF abuse in 1979, and his serving as Senate floor manager for the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986...

Bleg for ATF rulings on "pinning" collapsable stocks

Posted on February 28, 2011
During the expired "assault weapon" ban, one of the items that counted toward putting a rifle under the ban was whether it had a folding stock. I've heard that some manufacturers responded by "pinning" the folding stock in place, and that ATF approved the practice...

Yet another "Mayor" bites the dust

Posted on February 27, 2011
Snowflakes in Hell has the story. Mayor Gordon Jenkins, of Monticello NY, has been charged with possessing counterfeit-trademarked goods, fraudulent sales tax returns, and possession of pot.

International prizes

Posted on February 25, 2011
What's the Nobel Prize, when you can win this?

WWI sniper relives his experience

Posted on February 23, 2011
Age 84, he still has it. Three shots into 5" at a thousand yards.

WWII sniper relives his experience

Posted on February 23, 2011
Age 84, he still has it. Three shots into 5" at a thousand yards. [typo in title corrected ... I doubt there are many WWI snipers left]

CBS covers ATF gunrunning tonight

Posted on February 23, 2011
Press release: 02.23.2011 CBS NEWS UNCOVERS GUNRUNNING SCANDAL WITHIN THE ATF Agency Secretly Endorsed Practice of Letting Guns "Walk"; ATF Agent to CBS News: "God Only Knows How Many Guns Were Used to Kill People" Tonight on the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC (6:30 PM, ET), CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports on a major scandal building within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), one of America's top law enforcement agencies...

Website on women and guns

Posted on February 22, 2011
Girls Just Want To Have Guns. Created by Regis Giles, daughter of Doug Giles, who is said to have gone boar hunting ... with a spear.

More on BP agent Brian Terry

Posted on February 22, 2011
On Fox News. Confirmation that the gun used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry came from sales by a dealer cooperating with an ATF investigation. Senate Judiciary Committee is said to be investigating. It confirms another detail that was being reported on the internet...

Thought on the mass media

Posted on February 21, 2011
I recently read a book by George P. LeBrun, New York CIty medical examiner in the early 1900s, and who wrote that he was the actual author of the Sulivan Act. What was interesting, also, was his list of reforms that he'd pushed and of which he was proud...

Survey on guns on campus

Posted on February 21, 2011
I don't generally link to online surveys, but this an exception. Someone has created a survey (you don't need to give your email) opposing an Arizona bill to allow CCW carriers on university campuses. "In the event that SB 1467 is enacted into law, we request action by the Arizona Board of Regents to segregate the campuses into armed and weapons-free communities...

Judge Posner and judicial activism

Posted on February 20, 2011
Judge Richard Posner comes from the subset of judicial conservativism that isn't necessarily social conservative nor libertarian conservative, but one might say Borkian conservative -- that views avoiding "judicial activism" as a high value. He's long been publishing in opposition to Heller and McDonald, equating them to Roe v...

More like the media I once knew

Posted on February 20, 2011
Local newspaper runs a story on mass killings, on the front page. There's a big image (contributed by Brady Campaign) on it (the online version is much smaller). The caption, not contained in the online version, says 'MASS SHOOTINGS SAID TO FOLLOW LENIENT GUN LAWS" with the text "Of the 14 mass shootings since 1999 in the US, 10 have occurred in state identified by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has having the weakest or second-weakest gun laws...

Pro gun author on Fox News

Posted on February 18, 2011
Kim Simac, author of the children's book "With My Rifle By My Side," will be on Fox and Friends (either Fox News or Fox News Channel) tomorrow at 6:45 AM Central.

Target practice for the zombies' return

Posted on February 18, 2011
Here are great targets.

Self-defense in Canada

Posted on February 16, 2011
It's getting pretty ugly. Masked gang throws firebombs into man's house at night, he shoots into air to drive them off, and he gets prosecuted for careless use of a firearm and pointing a firearm. The list of court cases being defended against by the Canadian Constitution Foundation is pretty astounding, too...

More on Project Gunwalker

Posted on February 16, 2011
Pdf letter here. I always figured Grassley was OK, nothing better, but this is extraordinary. It's obvious (1) he isn't going to let up and (2) he's getting VERY good internal intel. He knows that the FFL who sold the rifle used to kill Border Patrol Agent Terry had met with BATFE over a year before sale of that firearm, that the local Special Agent in Charge sent a memo to HQ right after the killing, the names of various task forces and when various presentations were made to HQ...

Texas is a great place....

Posted on February 16, 2011
Most visitors to the Capitol have to go thru metal detectors, which can be a slow line on a busy day, but CCW permittees have a lane that sidesteps the metal detectors. So lobbyists and journalists are getting CCW permits in order to get in more easily...

Wisconsin trial court dismisses CCW charge

Posted on February 15, 2011
Story here. Defendant was carrying a handgun in his car, a few days after having been armed at gunpoint, and was then searching for his stolen car, in a high crime area. The handgun was unloaded, although he had a magazine at hand. The court ruled that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to someone in this situation.

Washington Times picks up Operation Gunwalker

Posted on February 15, 2011
Story here.

Guns used in Mexico leaking from approved sales to its military

Posted on February 14, 2011
Story here. "Similarly, an AP video report from May 2009 confirms that ?M16 machine guns? have been seized from Mexican criminal groups engaged in the drug war. ?It?s unclear how cartels are getting military grade weapons,? the AP report states. Narco News offered an answer to that question in March 2009, when it reported that the deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U...

Bob Levy and the real story behind DC gun registration

Posted on February 13, 2011
He has an op-ed In the WashPo on the matter. The Post earlier carried a story to the effect that handgun registration (while, as Levy notes, very low) was much higher as a percent of households in wealthy DC zip codes than in poor areas, with the implication that somehow gun ownership was a privilege of the wealthy who lived in low crime areas...

On Fox News tonight

Posted on February 12, 2011
9 PM EST, Justice with Judge Jeanine. John Kaufmann and I discuss the Roger Barnett case, where we are defending a border rancher sued by illegal entrants. Some about guns, because the guy on the other side is an NYC attorney who thinks a Colt Sporter is an AK, and that when you're in a gully in the middle of the desert you need only dial 911 to get speedy police assistance...

Great reporting by Associated Press

Posted on February 11, 2011
Right here. The first sentence: "The U.S. agency that monitors gun sales has suffered a setback in its effort to increase scrutiny of the bulk sale of high-powered assault rifles in border state gun shops that are a chief source of weapons smuggling into Mexico...

.45 ammo recall

Posted on February 10, 2011
From a Virginia Civil Def. League email; send says he confirmed it with the factory. 2/07/11 FEDERAL and AMERICAN EAGLE 45 AUTO PRODUCT SAFETY WARNING Immediate Action Required FEDERAL CARTRIDGE COMPANY ? 900 BOB EHLEN DRIVE ? ANOKA, MN 55303 ? PHONE 763...

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