Constitutional Law

NRA and Brady Center finally have something to agree on

Posted on January 18, 2010
Article here: "Obama got an "F" on every issue the Brady Campaign scored, according to its report card."

David Young takes on Chicago's supporting amici

Posted on January 18, 2010
Here he takes on the historians' amicus, with a promise of more to follow, and here he deals with the amici's treatment of State bills of rights.

5 point checklist for bank robbers

Posted on January 15, 2010
At Legal Blog Watch. It starts with punctuality. Don't arrive at the bank after its doors are locked.

More on the NFA database errors

Posted on January 14, 2010
David Codrea goes into it here. Essentially, it's a federal felony to have an unregistered NFA firearm (machine gun, short barreled rifle or shotgun, etc.). ATF is tasked with maintaining the registry of those. But for decades it's been known that the registry has major omissions...

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Interesting post Heller case

Posted on January 14, 2010
Right here. Plaintiff challenges California's "may issue" CCW statute, and a federal district court at least says that his claim survives a motion to dismiss. Hat tip to Gene Hoffman....

Vlog of Second Amendment scholars conference

Posted on January 13, 2010
Right here, courtesy of Josh Blackman. It's video of a panel involving myself, Josh, Ilya Shapiro, and Prof. Adam Winkler.

Interpreting text

Posted on January 12, 2010
People hate lawyers because 99% of them give the rest of us a bad reputation. People hate law profs because some think and speak like this: "Larry seems to argue that our own normative or empirical notions cannot play a role in fixing the semantic content of constitutional text: In his words, the belief that "semantic content is determined after the fact of communication on the basis of what we would like an utterance to have meant given our practical concerns" is a "fundamentally confused" way to think about interpretation (page 103)...

My latest article

Posted on January 12, 2010
"Ducking the Bullet: District of Columbia v. Heller and the Stevens Dissent". As you might expect, I don't give the dissent a very good review.

CCW on campus proposal in Ariz.

Posted on January 11, 2010
Report here.

WashPo on getting a handgun in DC

Posted on January 09, 2010
Story here. "It took $833.69, a total of 15 hours 50 minutes, four trips to the Metropolitan Police Department, two background checks, a set of fingerprints, a five-hour class and a 20-question multiple-choice exam. Oh, and the votes of five Supreme Court justices...

New article by Brannon Denning & Glenn Reynolds

Posted on January 05, 2010
"Heller, High Water(mark)? Lower Courts and the Right to Bear Arms". It deals with the lower courts' responses to Heller. The conclusion is that while courts haven't gone wild in striking down gun laws (surprise!) they seem to be giving Heller a better welcome than they gave some other decisions that "changed the ball game...

Comments sought on Clark County NV range

Posted on January 05, 2010
BLM has issued a second Environmental Assessment for the planned Clark County shooting range in southern Nevada; here's the EA. Comments are open until January 29. A quick skim of the EA leaves me with the question of why they had to do it. It sounds as if the statute was clear; give this specific land to the county for this purpose, at no cost...

Egad!

Posted on January 03, 2010
The First Circuit has ruled that an LEO can respond to a carrier of a concealed arm by throwing down on him, detaining him even after he produced a permit to so carry, and then seize the firearm despite the permit. The court apparently reasons that even though the fellow has a CCW permit, there is no system in place for the officer to confirm that it is real, ergo it was reasonable to seize the firearm.

Review of book on Justice Scalia

Posted on January 03, 2010
In the NY Times. Hat tip to Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell, who notes, "Posner?s knowledge of the scholarship that has surrounded the Second Amendment recently leaves much to be desired, and one wonders whether Harvie Wilkinson has read the Congressional briefs in Heller and McDonald, where a substantial majority of the ?political branches? came down in favor of an individual rights view of the Second Amendment...

A birthday

Posted on January 01, 2010
Just learned today is David Kopel's birthday. I suggest everyone swamp him with birthday greetings. His email is .

Passing of a genuinely heroic figure

Posted on December 31, 2009
I refer to Col. Robert L. Howard, of Waco TX. Special Forces, five tours in Vietnam, eight purple hearts, a Medal of Honor, and two more nominations for that which instead got him a Distinguished Service Cross and a Silver Star.

Chicago's brief is online

Posted on December 31, 2009
Pdf is here. Reading it now. Thoughts after a quick read: stylistically, well-written. The argument against due process incorporation involves taking what the Court has said and not what the Court has done. The Court has said that "fundamental rights" are something of a narrow class of rights ...

The fruits of Heller

Posted on December 30, 2009
I remember the pre-Heller predictions that striking the DC handgun ban would lead to carnage. Well, here it is: "DC Homicides, In National Trend, Hit Lowest Level Since '64". [Here in Tucson, they hit the lowest level since 2001]

Upcoming legal conference on the right to arms

Posted on December 30, 2009
The American Association of Law Schools is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans in early January. In conjunction with that, Don Kates and the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund are presenting a two day seminar on the right to arms. It?ll be held at the Radisson Hotel, in Kenner, LA,...

Bloomberg's blueprint

Posted on December 29, 2009
Snowflakes in Hell has a copy. It's a list of 40 recommendations sent to the White House, aimed at making gun ownership more burdensome and costly.

Marcus Lutrell addressing NRA convention

Posted on December 29, 2009
You won't hear a speech like this at a Brady Campaign dinner...

A Rifleman in No Man's Land

Posted on December 28, 2009
America's First Freedom, January, has my article "A Rifleman in No Man's Land." (It's not in the online edition). I'll post scans of some of the correspondence mentioned in it. The core of the article is that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a fad of military anti-marksmanship, which NRA fought against...

Beyond belief....

Posted on December 28, 2009
A letter to the editor from a Boston teacher, regarding school shootings. He argues that speedy evacuation of an attacked school is just unfair, because it "unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others...

NPR on McDonald v. Chicago

Posted on December 27, 2009
Audio here. Strange part is that they're interviewing the reporter who wrote the Chicago magazine story... electronic media reporting on print media rather than on the story itself. Reporter at least admits her own "personal biases," and says she was surprised at the plaintiffs' points being persuasive.

Profile of McDonald v. Chicago plaintiffs

Posted on December 27, 2009
An interesting study, in Chicago magazine.

Airline security

Posted on December 27, 2009
Crime, Guns, and Videotape has some thoughts. It's become what gun control used to be -- something happens, pass another law to show "we did something," whether or not that has any relationship to present or future. Here -- without advanced screening sensors, it's going to be hard to stop a primitive with explosive under his clothing...

Chicago: alternative outcomes

Posted on December 25, 2009
Ilya Shapiro lists five different possible outcomes for McDonald v. Chicago. It's a very good analysis.

Online early books on shooting and ballistics

Posted on December 25, 2009
AccurateShooter.com has the links to them on GoogleBooks. I remember reading a hardcopy of The Bullet's Flight from Powder to Target as a grade schooler. A great early (1909) book by a fellow who had to invent much of his own equipment (he had a device to measure velocity that consisted of two circular pieces of wood, maybe a yard apart and with a common axle, rotating at high RPM...

The world turned upside down....

Posted on December 23, 2009
Chuck Schumer goes hunting. And then the Fourth Seal is opened...

14 Amendment roundup

Posted on December 22, 2009
Dave Kopel has it at the Volokh Conspiracy. And my upcoming Akron L. Rev. Strict Scrutiny piece, "Originalism and its Tools: A Few Caveats", is available thru SSRN.

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