Archive for category Law

Colorado Gun Laws Violate Constitution and ADA says David Kopel

From Westword.com:

“The ADA requires state and local governments to make accommodations for disabled people, particularly in regard to major life activities,” he says. “And many disabled people have less ability when they’re attacked in their home to retreat to a point of safety or get behind cover from which they can change a magazine. They may have less mobility, or some might have only one arm, for example.

“So it’s more difficult for them to change magazines than do other people — and therefore, even if the magazine ban were constitutional in general, which we argue it is not, the people with relevant disabilities are entitled to reasonable accommodations to larger magazines.”

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Fox News: DHS Flips Out Over 3D Printed Guns

From Fox News:

A May 21 bulletin distributed to numerous state and federal law enforcement agencies and obtained by FoxNews.com states that the guns, which can be made by downloading blueprints into cutting edge computers that mold three-dimensional items from melted plastic, “poses public safety risks” and are likely beyond the current reach of regulators. The guns threaten to render 3D gun control efforts useless if their manufacture becomes more widespread.

Power to the people.

Here is Reason.com’s take on the situation.

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Protesters March Against NY SAFE Act

Newsday.com reports on the protest:

The protesters were encouraged to register to vote, join a political party and get active in political committees. Organizers said the goal is to repeal the law or else in 2014 make its supporters face consequences at the polls. At one table, they handed out voter registration forms and encouraged demonstrators to take them home to family and friends who feel the same way.

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Legal Defense Funds for Armed Citizens

There are a few options for those who want to be sure they have proper representation in the unlikely event they have to use their weapon in self defense.

Armed Citizen’s Legal Defense Network

National Association for Legal Gun Defense

NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund

 

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5th Circuit Says No Handguns for 18-20 yr olds

From SFGate.com:

…the court said that the Second Amendment does not confer a right to carry weapons beyond the home, and therefore the law was within the Legislature’s authority.

What!? The Second Amendment doesn’t allow a person to carry a firearm beyond the home? What world are those justices living in? At 18 a person can join the military and vote for the leader of the free world, both of which impart far more responsibility on that person than carrying a firearm. This is another example, out of hundreds, of our inconsistent laws.

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Plastic Gun “Cat” Is Out Of The Bag

The State Department has stopped Defense Distributed from hosting the files for a plastic gun, but those files were copied thousands of times and are now hosted on sites all over the internet. People have already begun to make the guns and improve on the designs in just a few weeks. Forbes has a good article on the phenomenon.

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David Kopel Discusses Gun Law at NRA Meeting

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OPSEC For Journalists And Leakers

Wired’s Danger Room has some tips for journalists to protect their identity from subpoenas like the one involving the AP.

We now live in a world where public servants informing the public about government behavior or wrongdoing must practice the tradecraft of drug dealers and spies. Otherwise, these informants could get caught in the web of administrations that view George Orwell’s 1984 as an operations manual.

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Anonymity Impossible?

MIT asks the question in an article about how much information individuals create about themselves.

Much of this data is invisible to people and seems impersonal. But it’s not. What modern data science is finding is that nearly any type of data can be used, much like a fingerprint, to identify the person who created it: your choice of movies on Netflix, the location signals emitted by your cell phone, even your pattern of walking as recorded by a surveillance camera. In effect, the more data there is, the less any of it can be said to be private, since the richness of that data makes pinpointing people “algorithmically possible,” says Princeton University computer scientist Arvind Narayanan.

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Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform

This is really scary stuff from Threat Level.

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

more

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Dept. of State Takes Down DEFCAD Gun Files

The Blaze reports that the Department of State has claimed ownership of the information which Defense Distributed had on its website.

A letter to Defense Distributed from the Department of State, Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, Enforcement Division (DTCC/END) explains that while conducting a review of the data posted on DEFCAD it found that the licensed firearm manufacturer might have released ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations)-controlled information without authorization and would thus be in violation.

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Open Carry March on Washington on July 4th

Former Marine Adam Kokesh is organizing the protest. This is going to be interesting.

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U.N. Arms Treaty

Small Arms Defense Journal has a thorough article on the treaty here.

The advertised purpose of the ATT was to require countries who become parties to adopt meaningful and hopefully effective national laws, based on agreed international standards, for regulating the export and import of conventional arms such as tanks, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery, combatant naval vessels, and, presumably, small arms and light weapons.  Realistically, 99% of the energy and rhetoric concerning the treaty has always been about small arms, not larger weapons systems.  It’s also instructive that only about 25% of the world’s countries currently have even rudimentary regulations covering the topic.

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“I Don’t Respect Oath Breakers”

One New Jersey mom has had enough of lawmakers passing laws on “feelings”.

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Ted Cruz Talks About The Gun Vote

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