Archive for category Law

Making Your Own Firearm Has A Long History

From Slate.com:

While the technological ingenuity and legal maneuvering of makers such as Wilson and Imura may strike us as quintessentially modern, in fact the work of these garage gunsmiths hearkens back to the first experiments with gun-making in the late Middle Ages, an era before firearms became the province of corporations—and centuries before their subjection to any kind of government regulation or oversight.

The story begins with that most dastardly of medieval inventions, gunpowder, first developed in China probably during the Tang Dynasty before gradually making its way to Western Europe by the middle of the 13th century. Initially the use of gunpowder weapons on the medieval battlefield was limited to larger artillery pieces such as the pot-de-fer and theribauldequin. Soon, though, gunsmiths began experimenting with smaller, increasingly portable weapons that could be carried more easily across a battlefield.

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California Wastes Millions Trying To Confiscate Guns

From The Washington Post:

This is a slow, painstaking process, and it has fallen behind in recent years. After the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013, lawmakers gave the gun seizure program a $24 million infusion to fund more agents to knock on more doors. The goal was to investigate every one of the 20,000-some people who remained on the illegal gun owner list.

Part of the problem is that it is hard to keep up with the new people being added to the list all the time. Last year, agents conducted 7,573 investigations and seized 3,286 firearms. At the same time, 7,031 gun owners were newly flagged. The state has hired 18 additional agents to bolster its 33-person unit, and has been trying to staff up more.

California is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and police officers’ time looking for “criminals” while real crime and police work is being avoided. Is it any wonder why people are leaving California in droves?

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Surveillance Planes Tracked Over Baltimore

From The Washington Post:

Discovery of the flights — which involved at least two airplanes and the assistance of the FBI — has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to demand answers about the legal authority for the operations and the reach of the technology used. Planes armed with the latest surveillance systems canmonitor larger areas than police helicopters and stay overhead longer, raising novel civil liberties issues that have so far gotten little scrutiny from courts.

 

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Defense Distributed Sues State Department

From The New York Times:

Now, with a high-powered legal team behind it, Mr. Wilson’s company,Defense Distributed, a self-described “anti-monopolist digital publisher,” has filed suit against the State Department claiming that its efforts to stop him from publishing his instructions, which are no more than computer code, amount to a prior restraint on free speech. The 25-page suit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Austin, Tex., is an innovative and apparently unprecedented effort to use the First Amendment in support of the Second.

From Wired:

Wilson’s gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn’t publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.

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“Assault Weapons” Can Be Banned If It Makes People Feel Better

From 7th Circuit Court of Appeals:

…the majority found that “[i]f a ban on semi‐automatic guns and large‐capacity magazines reduces the perceived risk from a mass shooting, and makes the public feel safer as a result, that’s a substantial benefit.”

The judges didn’t judge the case from a legal perspective but from how the public feels about it. They are no longer judges if they simply bow to the whim of the public.

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Concealed Carry And Legal Non-residents

From The Washington Post:

A federal district court in North Carolina held Friday that North Carolina may not discriminate against permanent resident noncitizens in issuing licenses to carry concealed guns. (Messmer v. Harrison.) The U.S. Supreme Court’s D.C. v. Heller decision said that general bans on concealed carry of guns are constitutional, because the have been around in many states starting with the early 1800s. But the Supreme Court held that state laws discriminating against noncitizens — even as to activities that aren’t themselves constitutional rights — usually violate the Equal Protection Clause. That seems to be the court’s rationale in this case.

 

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Gun Issue Creating “Two Americas”

From Reason.com:

Is America once again splitting into free and unfree states? At least on the issue of self-defense rights, that seems to be the case—so says Jennifer Carlson, a University of Toronto sociologist who includes gun issues among her areas of study. At the Wall Street Journal she writes that it no longer makes sense in the United States to talk about national gun policy, but instead to recognize widely divergent trends at the state level that are taking Americans in different political, cultural, and technological directions.

 

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Texas Cities Can’t Opt Out of Open Carry

From Dallas Morning News.com:

Under the bill, Texans with a concealed handgun license would be able to carry handguns openly in a shoulder or belt holster. The Senate passed a similar bill last month.

Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, said “unfettered open carry” is not allowed in any of the country’s 12 biggest cities. But if the bill becomes law, it would break new ground by permitting open carry of handguns in four of them — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, he said.

 

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Oregon Bill Expands Background Checks and Provides For Confiscation

From Breitbart:

The Statesman Journal reports that Prozanski pushed the measure in spite of the testimony against expanded background checks from law enforcement personnel like Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer. Palmer cited the the ineffectiveness of background checks to show that the passage of SB 941 is really just a way to get government more heavily involved in regulating the Second Amendment. He called it “borderline treasonous,” and said his sheriff’s department would not enforce it.

Oregon Sheriff says he won’t enforce new law:

Sheriff Daniel, who is the new top cop for Josephine County which shares a border with northern California, told reporters that believes this latest gun control law goes against his county’s charter. He also said his department doesn’t have a sufficient number of deputies to pursue lawbreakers who are committing a frivolous misdemeanor.

 

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ATF “Tweaking” “Sporting” Definition For Ammo

From Gun Rights Examiner:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ classification of pistol grip only firearms with 14” barrels that fire shotgun shells and are over 26” in overall length as neither “shotguns” nor National Firearms Act “Destructive Devices” or “Any Other Weapons” has created a situation wherein the agency must either quietly save face or have it exposed that untold numbers of good faith gun owners currently legally possess firearms problematic for the government to allow. In order for that status quo to continue, ATF, in conjunction with certain members of Congress and lobbying interests, is working at “tweaking” its definition of the arbitrary “sporting use” term, insider sources tell Gun RightsExaminer. And with that will come a push to expand definitions to allow for further importation bans on certain types of presently legal ammunition.

 

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NJ Governor Pardons Pennsylvania Single Mother

From The Blaze:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Thursday pardoned Shaneen Allen, a single mother arrested last year for bringing her legal handgun into New Jersey from her home state of Pennsylvania. She initially faced a felony charge and years in prison, but was later permitted to enter a pretrial intervention program.

 

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Dhimmitude And Disarmament

Forthcoming article from David Kopel:

Under shari’a law, non-Muslims, known as dhimmi, have been forbidden to possess arms, and to defend themselves from attacks by Muslims. The disarmament is one aspect of the pervasive civil inferiority of non-Muslims, a status known as dhimmitude. This Essay examines the historical effects of the shari’a disarmament, based on three books by Bat Ye’or, the world’s leading scholar of dhimmitude. As Ye’or details, the disarmament had catastrophic consequences, extending far beyond the direct loss of the dhimmi’s ability to defend themselves. The essay concludes by observing how pretend gun-free zones on college campuses turn the adults there into 21st century dhimmi, unable to defend themselves against murderous predators.

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Former Civil Servant: Hillary’s Email Excuse is Laghable

From Politico:

In this case, which is truly unprecedented, no matter what Secretary Clinton would have one believe, she managed successfully to insulate her official emails, categorically, from the FOIA, both during her tenure at State and long after her departure from it—perhaps forever. “Nice work if you can get it,” one might say, especially if your experience during your husband’s presidency gives you good reason (nay, even highly compelling motivation) to relegate unto yourself such control if at all possible.

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When Is a NICS Check Required?

From Prince Law Offices, P.C.:

It’s no secret that ATF told at least one FFL they need to run a NICS check on trustees picking up NFA firearms on behalf of a trust. In a letter addressed toDakota Silencer, ATF explained:

The term “person” is defined by the GCA at 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(1), to include “any individual, corporation, company, association, firm, partnership, society, or joint stock company.”

ATF has interpreted the GCA exception in sections 922(t)(3)(B) and 478.102(d)(2) to mean that firearms transfers are exempt from a NICS check when they have been approved under the NFA to the person receiving the firearm. Unlike individuals, corporations, partnerships, and associations; unincorporated trusts do not fall within the definition of “person” in the GCA.

Because unincorporated trusts are not “persons” under the GCA, a Federal firearms licensee (FFL) cannot transfer firearms to them without complying with the GCA. Thus, when an FFL transfers an NFA firearm to a trustee or other person acting on behalf of a trust, the transfer is made to this person as an individual (i.e., not as a trust). As the trustee or other person acting on behalf of the trust is not the approved transferee under the NFA, 18 U.S.C. 5812, the trustee or other person acting on behalf of a trust must undergo a NICS check. The individual must also be a resident of the same State as the FFL when receiving the firearm.

There is a lot of technical legal speak in this post but it is fascinating how the government has spun such a tangled web of laws that may actually cancel out or contradict one another.

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Second Amendment Enforcement Act

From NRA-ILA:

This week, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) introduced “The Second Amendment Enforcement Act of 2015” in the U.S. Senate and House respectively.  These bills would restore the fundamental individual right for law-abiding D.C. residents to Keep and Bear Arms to defend themselves in accordance with the law.  This bill would also conform D.C. law to federal laws in regards to governing firearms commerce, while also allowing D.C. residents to purchase firearms from licensed dealers in VA and MD, without the current hassle of D.C.’s onerous firearm registration system.  The D.C. permitting system would also become streamlined, allowing for more law-abiding D.C. residents to legally obtain a permit and carry concealed firearms for self-defense.

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