Let’s hope so . . . Is This the Supreme Court’s Next Big Second Amendment Case? – “At issue in Peruta v. California is a state law that says conceal-carry permits will only be issued to those persons who have demonstrated to the satisfaction of their local county sheriff that they have a ‘good cause’ for carrying a concealed firearm in public. What counts as a ‘good cause?’ In the words of one San Diego official, ‘one’s personal safety is not considered good cause.’ In effect, the local sheriff has vast discretion to pick and choose who gets a permit and who doesn’t. Because the guidelines are unclear there is a severe risk of arbitrary enforcement. As one previous court ruling on the matter observed, ‘in California the only way that the typical responsible, law-abiding citizen can carry a weapon in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense is with a concealed-carry permit. And, in San Diego County, that option has been taken off the table.'”
A glimmer in the Garden State . . . It’s Official: Judge Signs Order Overturning NJ’s Ban on Tasers and Stun Guns – “A week and a half ago NJ2AS informed you of our court victory which got the State of New Jersey to admit in court that its ban on taser and stun guns was an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution that recognizes our right to keep and bear arms. Well we mentioned in that article that all that was needed for it to be official was for a judge to sign it. Well the Judge signed it. Don’t go out and buy a taser just yet though, the State has been given 180 days to promulgate regulations on the purchasing, possession and carrying of tasers and stun guns.”
Would he have sued the Ford dealer if he’d been run over with an F-150? . . . Ind. Supreme Court dismisses wounded officer’s claims against gun shop – “In an opinion filed Monday afternoon, the court dismissed Dwayne Runnels’ 2013 lawsuit claiming damages against KS&E Sports, an Indianapolis-based sporting goods store, and the store’s owner, Edward J. Ellis. Runnels alleged the store sold a handgun to an individual who resold it to another man who used it to injure him months later. He also claimed the shop was a public nuisance.”
The latest Cabot Guns project from master engraver Otto Carter is taking shape. This one’s titled “Angels and Demons” and will be unlike any engraved firearm you’ve seen before. Stay tuned.
Is it really a conspiracy if they’re doing it so openly? . . . The Conspiracy To Dismember Heller – “’Our peculiar security,’ (president Thomas Jefferson) concluded, ‘is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.’ One can only presume that both this letter and its sentiments have escaped the attentions of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals—which, in February of this year, took it upon itself to strike a serious blow against D.C. v. Heller, and thereby to undermine the Second Amendment at the root.”
A Marine’s .50-caliber sniper rifle failed during a firefight — so he called customer service – “Don Cook, a Marine veteran who’s been maintaining M107s for more than two decades, told National Geographic in 2011 that he one day received a call to Barrett’s workshop from a harried young Marine. During maintenance of the unit’s M107, the Marine had bent the ears of the rifle’s lower receiver; the next day, after engaging the enemy, they discovered the rifle wouldn’t fire consistently. Despite the unit’s lack of tools (and time), Cook knew exactly what to do. The armorer instructed the Marines to use the bottom of the carrier to bend the ears back down. Within 45 seconds, the weapon was firing properly. “Thank you very much,” Cook says they told him, then he heard a dial tone. They had a firefight to get back to.”
This should be about as useful as those Baby on Board signs back in the ’80s . . . Boynton Beach man hopes invention will save lives – “A Boynton Beach man hopes his invention will help reduce the number of police shootings that happened at certain traffic stops. Dolkens Bruno created a “Gun Onboard” sticker for licensed gun owners. It’s called Carrier Shield. ‘I came up with it after somebody got shot,’ Bruno said.”
The complicit (NYT) parroting the corrupt (The Trace) . . . Road Rage Cases With Guns More Than Double in 3 Years, Report Says – “When the former N.F.L. player Joe McKnight was shot and killed last year in what the authorities described as a case of road rage, it was a high-profile example of what has been a marked increase in the use of guns in such confrontations, a new analysis shows. The analysis was published by The Trace, a nonprofit news organization focused on gun violence. It found that cases of road rage involving a firearm — where someone brandished a gun or fired one at a driver or passenger — more than doubled to 620 in 2016, from 247 in 2014.”
Black Guns Matter Helps Inner-City Residents Discover Power of Second Amendment – “(Maj) Toure and several group members are coming to metro Phoenix for the first time on May 5, offering free gun-safety training, a discussion on numerous firearms-related topics, and a Q&A with instructors, legal experts, and activists at an Avondale gun shop. The group has no affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Toure emphasized that he’d like to see people of all colors at the events. He said the name refers to the fact that most guns are black.”
Gun on Board huh? And have yer “official” concealed carry badge too…dumbest shite I’ve seen today(yet!)
Are there that many legal carriers getting shot on traffic stops anyway? I can think of only one example.
Regardless, better ideas that advertising to the world that you have a gun in your car:
1) Keeping hands on the steering wheel and informing the officer you have a firearm without reaching for it
2) Keeping your license handy and well away from your firearm such that there is no way an officer would see said firearm during the course of the stop
3) Not deciding to take out and unload your firearm while intoxicated as the officer is walking up to your car (good intent, very stupid idea).
Something about a fi rearm with demons engraved on it just seems like bad karma.
TTAG had an article on it a number of weeks back where they showed some of the concept artwork.
Don’t know about ‘karma’, but the ‘Demons’ art had to me a distinct creepy Holocaust vibe to it…
Yes. I have mixed feelings but not 50:50.
Too much like a gremlin for my money…
But then I tend to see beauty in function. And, if I’m honest, I have more of a brutalist aesthetic, tending towards Kill-o-Zapist, when it comes to firearms.
+1 for the Douglas Adams reference!
And glad to see Maj Toure still workin’ it around the country… watch a vid of his work and you’ll simply start smiling.
Gremlin, maybe, if you mean this one:
https://youtu.be/2sR5D7JlO3s
“But then I tend to see beauty in function.”
By that standards a Cabot has to be the ugliest damn gun in the world.
I think he’s quite well rendered – the demon resembles Chernabog, from Disney’s Fantasia.
WRT Peruta . . . while the 9th Circuit’s en banc decision is truly awful, be careful what you wish for regarding a cert petition
There are four solid pro-2A votes (Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch).
Unfortunately, there are currently four rock-solid anti-2A votes (Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomajor).
Which means Anthony Kennedy would be the deciding vote on whether Heller/MacDonald is lobotomized or expanded.
No thanks. While he joined the majority in Heller and MacDonlad, he’s just too unpredictable, and apparently quite enamored with the adulation of the Georgetown social circuit.
It’s painful (especially for the folks trapped in the PRC[alifornia], but like a good hunter sometime you just gotta wait for the right time to take the shot. And now ain’t it.
The odds are that one or more of Kennedy, Ginsburg, or Breyer will leave in the next three years, and thanks to Harry Reid all we need is 50 votes in the Senate. Wait for that and PDT to appoint one more Justice, and *then* it will be time to make the move.
Fortunately, I suspect it’s a moot point. As neither side trusts that Kennedy will come down with them, I doubt there will be the requisite four votes to grant cert. Possible exception: if Kennedy’s former clerk (Gorsuch) has any stroke with him and Kennedy gives him an Indian sign that he’ll go pro-2A (or will retire at the end of the current term, as has been rumored), then ignore the foregoing.
No 2A cases to the Supreme Court until Ginsburg is in the ground and a Trump appointee is in her place. Unfortunately, being 80 and senile is no reason to lose your seat on the supreme court. And she does have a personal trainer to keep her “in shape”.
“Which means Anthony Kennedy would be the deciding vote on whether Heller/MacDonald is lobotomized or expanded.”
Correct. And that is potentially dangerous.
Can SCOTUS re-list it for next term? As you mentioned, Kennedy is suspected of bailing out in June.
(The very thought of Kennedy bailing out warms the cockles of my cold, black, heart just imagining the Left loosing their sh!t over what that means to destroying any scrap of their cancerous Progressive agenda…)
If it looks like Kennedy might retire in June as is being rumored, I’d suspect that a couple of pro-2A justices might keep relisting Peruta so that it the cert decision is postponed long enough to see if he follows through on a decision to retire, and then grant cert. So yes, there could be some behind the scenes machinations at the Court that would push the case into the next term (which starts in October) if looks like there might be a replacement for Kennedy in the works. Indeed, the case has already been relisted five times, so there’s a good chance that’s exactly what’s going on. (The next conference is tomorrow, so Monday morning we’ll see if they relist it again or make a decision on granting/denying cert.)
They could also delay the case by asking for the Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the federal government. That would be another way to delay the decision and push it into the next term.
(For those of you not familiar with Supreme Court practice, petitions for writs of certiorari–which is how 99% of appeals go to the high court–are voted on at periodic conferences of the justices. It takes four votes to grant cert (issuing a writ of certiorari means that the Court has agreed to hear the case), but >99% of cert petitions fail to gather that. However, justices can ask that a case be relisted (i.e., carried over to the next conference), and thus defer the up-or-down decision on cert. There can be no small amount of gamesmanship in this process, and some cases are relisted multiple times, especially if there is a pending change in the Court’s membership. However, all of this is behind closed doors, and all we and the parties can do is watch.)
I’d guess that perhaps Dwayne needs to sue Duncan Donuts.
Dang it!! Beat me to it!
The summary is not a terribly accurate description of the issue raised in Peruta. The issue presented by the petition for cert is whether there is a right to bear arms outside the home [I]in some fashion[I]. The case started out as an attack on the permissible scope of the sheriff’s discretion, contending that all that was required to satisfy the good cause requirement in the California CCW statute, while Sheriff Gore contended that applicants had to demonstrate exceptional good cause distinguishing their risk of harm as greater than that of an average citizen (meaning of course that average citizens were precluded from exercising their 2A rights). The trial court granted judgment in favor of the Sheriff, concluding that California’s allowance of “open unloaded” carry gave Plaitniffs an adequate manner to exercise their rights. However, after the appeal was filed, California banned “open unloaded” carry in all urban areas, which meant that concealed carry was the only manner of carry.
The original three judge panel agreed with plaintiffs. With the State conceding in argument that there was a right to carry outside the home, the panel cruled that the State had to permit carry in some fashion–and since it had elected to allow CCW but banned OC, then the state had to issue to all eligible citizens.
At this point, the State, which had not been a party and had indeed argued that it was not a proper party, intervened and sought review by the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth granted review, and its decision, issued last year, ignored the actual question presented, and instead concluded that the only issue it needed to decide was whether the Second protected a right to concealed carry, explicitly stating that it was “leaving to another day” the question of whether the second protected a right to open carry. This move was disingenuous, as it was intended to delay as long as possible a recognition of a right to bear arms. Unsurprisingly, the court concluded that there was no right to carry concealed.
Plaintiffs delayed as long as possible in seeking Supreme Court review, but such a request cannot be delayed indefinitely; plaintiffs were lucky to have been able to wait until Justice Gorsuch took the bench. And as noted, the issue presented by the petition is whether there is a right to carry in some manner outside the home. Factually the case is a good, and the opportunities to raise this issue in the Ninth Circuit are vanishingly small. The only other opportunity is raised in a still pending case, Nichols v. State, in which Mr. Nichols, in pro per, argues that the only right protected by the second is a right to bear arms openly (and loaded). Although Mr. Nichols, ho is not a lawyer, did an admirable job on his opening brief, his reply to the State’s (rather poorly written) brief was disastrously incomprehensible. One must be concerned about his ability to present the case at oral argument or later to the Supreme Court.
Great write up, thanks for that
We need to be more pro-active on this.
We should be flooding the litigation pipeline with cases like Peruta.
It can’t hurt us, and the payday could be massive…
And yet if you carry a Daisy BB pistol across the state line into NJ you can still do hard time.
Makes perfect sense.
That cop should also sue the spoon factory if the case is allowed to go through…. i would say he should have used cover more effectively, but at his size his options would have been limited.
I’ll agree with above commenters, that now is not the time for SCOTUS rulings on guns. The court is in need of at least one more change. The fact that we need to play a “2 min warning drill” type of game in order to give people freedom in this country sickens me. I think the only questions that need to be asked in a ruling are:
1) Does the enabling cause more good than bad?
2) Does the enabling give more freedom?
If the answer to both is a Yes, then rule in favor. If not, we can argue semantics and details after that initial judgment is reached.
As long as you’re filing ridiculous lawsuits, Officer Dwayne, why not sue the oil company who refined the diesel used in the truck that carried the ore to the smelter to refine the lead used in the bullet?
On the road rage thing; only one third of road rage fatalities are gun related, according to safedriving.com. The other 2 thirds are accidents, inentional hit and runs, or the result of physical altercations. Now, if you look at years passed, you will see that despite a constant rise in these incidents, the rate of injury and death resulting from all the different types combined has actually decreased. You might be tempted to think that better car design is responsible for most of this, and you’d probably be right. But nothing is stopping ME from claiming that guns on the road are actually making us safer.
United Airlines could learn a lesson or two about customer service from Barrett. I wonder if they engrave their customer service phone number on the weapon.
They wouldn’t let anyone from CA fly on their biggest planes? Ha.
I understand your comment, couldn’t resist.
Yeah I forgot about that, but then, CA didn’t really want to be in the market anyway.
Back when I was single, I used to take women on first dates to the gun range.
Many of these women want some form of self-protection, but have no desire to own a gun. The most common reason I heard from single women about why they don’t want a gun in their home is “I don’t think I could kill anybody” followed by “I have a child in the house.”
Now I know a lot of you guys are rolling your eyes, but the fact is that most people don’t want a gun and have no desire to kill anybody. If a Taser gives a woman confidence that they aren’t going to kill, and it gives them the psychological push to purchase the weapon, then it’s a win-win.
And in all honesty, I was an Army infantryman for 20 years and sent to OIF and OEF 4 times. I’d love to have a non-lethal option for self-defense. If I never have to point a gun at another human being again, I’ll be a happy man.
I live in NJ and I can tell you that the NJ legislature is probably going absolutely ape right now at the thought of people buying Tasers on Amazon.com “Because Guns.” Odds are they will pass a law that will subject electronic weapons to the same permitting scheme as regular pistols. So it’s a win, but not a slam dunk. We shall see…
“In effect, the local sheriff has vast discretion to pick and choose who gets a permit and who doesn’t.”… Yes, donors to the re-election fund deserve their Rights!
Look for no more action on the Second Amendment. The Recent assault rifle bans by the East Coast States and California’s soon to be confiscation of them will stand. People in power want absolute power no matter if they are far right or far left. The Scalia decision was nothing more than an aberration in history and as you can see has already been dismantled and forgotten by the disingenuous and corrupt U.S. Court System. The Courts are a joke in regards to the Constitution and always has been.
California’s most recent laws do not entail any confiscation of assault weapons, only registration of those that have certain features (namely bullet buttons). Rifles may be modified so that they do not constitute “assault weapons,” and thus need not be registered. The law was intended to ban the sale of any new rifles in the State, but as “featureless” rifles are perfectly legal, the law failed in its objective. Currently, there are no bills pending that will change the law. The State also banned the possession of all 10+ mags, including previously “grandfathered” mags owned prior to 2000. Any noncompliant mags must be turned into the police, destroyed, or removed from the state.
What you say id right, in so far as it goes.
But explain why a registry is needed? What good does it do for the state to have such a registry?
There is no way to determine from a bullet of expended shell casing whether or not the round was fired from an offending gun, is there? I don’t think there is.
So why the registry, if it serves no purpose except to irritate otherwise lawful citizens, and cost money the taxpayers have to pay? I can think of only one reason.
Saying that the law, so far, doesn’t call for confiscation (or, to put it more kindly, “turn in”) does not mean there won’t be such a law.
After all, Hillary is on record, with several other high-ranking Dems, as wanting just that. We came *this close* to getting Clinton as president.
A gun registration scheme, even if only for a very narrow portion of the guns available, can have only one purpose, and it isn’t to know where to send annual notices of a bake sale.
The Fourth’s reasoning is akin to a court declaring that the word “up” in a law means 100% opposite the pull of gravity and nothing else, so that a man cannot be said to have gone up a hill if he ascended a slope, only if he went straight up and somehow arrived at the peak.