B.L.U.F.
Senior Circuit Judge Keene wrote the dissent in this case. She is unhappy with the majority opinion because that opinion would find most, if not all gun-control regulations, unconstitutional.

Because this goes against her agenda, she latches onto footnote 9 of the Bruen opinion to justify why any set of objective hoops placed to hinder a member of The People from keeping and bearing arms is constitutional. It doesn’t matter how long it takes nor how much money it takes, nor what those hoops are. As long as the state must grant permission at the end, that regime is constitutional.

(4200 words)

On November 21, the Fourth Circuit court issued their opinion on Maryland Shall Issue’s challenge to Maryland’s “Handgun Qualification License”.

This is a permit to purchase. Before you can purchase a handgun in Maryland, you must first submit fingerprints, undergo a background investigation, take a four-hour-long firearms safety training course which includes firing at least one round. After that is completed, you can submit your application for your HQL.

The state has 30 days to approve or deny the application, after they receive the application. We know that “the state” has a habit of not “receiving” things they want to receive. If they haven’t “officially” received the application, the clock hasn’t started. In addition, the 30 days is not clearly defined in law. Is that 30 business days or 30 calendar days? And how long do they have to inform the applicant of the determination? Or, as one state is doing, they are granting appointments for fingerprinting 6+ months in advance.

The reality of this egregious infringement is that it is likely three months from the decision to get an HQL before you have one.

The three judge panel reversed the district court’s “contrary decision”.

This means that the case is not going back to the district court. It can only move forward to the Supreme Court. The state has 21 days to appeal, IIRC. Reversing a decision is “You got it wrong, we don’t need you to mess it up again, it is wrong, and we are setting it right.” This is better than vacating and remanding a decision. When a case is vacated and remanded, the case is sent back to the inferior court where they do the case all over again, collecting new arguments and evidence.

So the Fourth Circuit panel did the right thing the right way in a reasonable amount of time.

Of course, there is always the thorn in your side in a case like this. That thorn is Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan. Born in 1950, making her 73 years old. She was nominated by Obama in 2009 and appointed in 2010. She assumed senior status in 2021.

Yes, that type of judge.

The Dissent

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The whole country lives between wallet inspections pic.twitter.com/xzgESKXwn8

— falconryfinance@bsky.social (@FalconryFinance) November 24, 2023

They do have vans equipped with all sort of gadgets to see if you have a TV up and running. Then again, Faraday-caging a room shouldn’t be that hard.

As seen somewhere in Israel recently.

Thank you for all the suggestions I got from people that understand Linux.
Don’t click the more button unless you want to read Linux geek stuff.

(1300 words)
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It has been a good week. A week to be thankful for.

Oregon had a massive win in regard to measure 114 and its follow-on bill. A state court granted a permanent injunction against the entire mess. Measure 114 is currently on life support.

This was at the lowest level in the state courts. Sort of at the “district” level if compared to the federal courts. The final judgement can be appealed to Oregon’s appeals court and from there to the Oregon Supreme court. From the Oregon Supreme court, there is an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

It will be interesting to see what the state does. If they don’t appeal, this is a loss but only takes out the permit to purchase and magazine bans. If they run it up the chain, they could lose and set a precedent for Oregon or the entire country.

The case was decided as a state constitutional challenge, not a Second Amendment challenge. I’ve not read the court’s opinion and might not. One of the lawyers I follow read a part of the opinion that struck me as particularly intriguing. The court applied a plain text, history and tradition test, against the Oregon state constitution. Very cool.

One of the first cases GVR out of the Supreme Court post Bruen was —Wikipedia: Barbara Milano Keenan (Jun. 2023). The Fourth Circuit court heard oral arguments shortly after the case was GVR. They still have not issued their opinion on that case.

That case is a direct challenge to —Maryland Shall Issue, Inc. V. Wes Moore, No. 21-2017, slip op. at 22 (4th Cir. Nov. 21, 2023) which, is the Fourth Circuit court’s means-end case law.

In an entirely different case —id., the Fourth Circuit issued their opinion supporting The People and upholding the rights protected by the Second Amendment. It was a three—judge panel. The case challenges Maryland’s permit to transfer/purchase a firearm. It is a so-called Universal Background Check.

In addition, Maryland requires a “handgun qualification license” or HQL. It is that HQL that was struck down by the Fourth Circuit. That opinion is in my to-do queue.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you did not participate in this American Tradition, I hope your Thursday was joyful.

On the not fun side of things, Wed. I started the upgrade of my primary computer. In the process of performing that upgrade, my system stopped booting. The system is booted, now, but it required some magic to accomplish.

The gist of which was to boot off an external device, get to the grub menu, escape to the grub command line. Install the GPT partition module. Type the magic incarnations “linux (hd5,gpt1)/ROOT/ubuntu@/boot/vmlinuz-6.5.0-13-generic -root=ZFS=rpool/ROOT/ubuntu” with no errors. From memory.

I’m still fixing things, maybe it will get better. If not, I do know how to “fix” it.

Comments are open, I’m eager to hear your feedback.

Very interesting, especially when you consider the source.

When I started blogging, the numbers given were about a third of all households owning guns, a significant number and yet treated as a miniscule minority.  But ours was and still is a war of attrition which led and still leads to results.

And a friend in Facebook made an interesting comment :

I wonder if actual ownership numbers are rising or folks are just more willing to admit it.

We have known that the reported number is low anyway.

I mean we see record nics check numbers time after time but that can be for a few reasons