Gun Free Zone

Where a Redneck Jew, a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.

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I Was Just Following Order!

Apr 21, 2024 awa 0 comments
Paul Koning says:
April 18, 2024 at 8:20 am

You stated that the judge is required to follow the rulings of higher courts. I see two problems with that blanket statement. First, there’s also the ruling of the Supreme Court. Second, the Constitution is a higher authority than any court, and if a judgement is in conflict with the plain meaning of the Constitution then it is every judge’s sworn duty to support the Constitution and not any conflicting judgement.

Archer says:
April 18, 2024 at 11:57 am

What Paul said. Where the Circuits are in conflict with SCOTUS and/or the Constitution, why is a judge required to follow his/her Circuit instead of SCOTUS or the Constitution?

IANAL, but it seems to me that in the interests of justice, adhering to the Constitution first, SCOTUS second, and the Circuits a distant third should get cases resolved faster and with fewer appeals.

Paul Koning says:
April 18, 2024 at 3:10 pm

I would take it further than that. Any judge who defers to a higher court judgement while knowing that the judgement is wrong and in defiance of the Constitution has violated his oath of office. So I would argue that it’s not simply an option to ignore such a decision, but a sworn duty.

No. Simply no.

I give you Judge Easterbrook, Judge Wood of the Seventh Circuit court, who looked at the Heller and decided it didn’t apply to the states. That was their “honest” understanding of the Constitution. Since the Second Amendment didn’t apply to the states, only state constitutions could be used to defend the rights of “the [little] people”.

I give you Judges Jacobs, Lynch, and Lee for the Second Circuit court, who looked at Bruen and Heller and decided that 3 regulations from 1837 and 1843 (past the founding era) excluding people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses, and alcohol additions from militia service plus some unknown regulations restricting firearms in schoolrooms met the requirements of this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulations.

They reasoned that since alcoholics, mentally defectives were banned from Militia’s, not from keeping and bearing arms, that justified modern infringements on people who are neither alcoholics nor mentally defective.

I give you Judges Kayatta, Selya, and Gelpi. Who, using Bruen and Heller, found that even if the presumed that LCMs and “assault weapons” are arms (but they don’t know for sure), found that they are not in common use for self-defense. Thus, they are not protected.

But, you say, these are those nasty circuit courts coming up with these horrible opinions. But it isn’t just the circuits. It is happening in anti-gun courts everywhere.

Look at the fact that of the half dozen or so cases that were combined for the Seventh Circuit to hear, only one was in our favor. The courts in all other cases found that PICA was constitutional. Out in Oregon, we see the same thing. The district courts are finding the state’s infringements constitutional.

We are a land of common law. That means that the law means the same thing for everybody everywhere in the country.

When it is not, a superior court will bring it into agreement.

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What does the state want to discover?

Apr 20, 2024 awa 3 comments

Continuing from our last article, Cases are won and lost before they are heard, we look at —No. 36 Lafave v. The County of Fairfax, Virginia, No. 1:23-cv-01605 (E.D. Va.).

The state wants discovery. They put the plaintiff’s (good guys) reasoning as:

Plaintiffs’ position: Plaintiffs’ position is that no discovery is required in this case, which presents a pure question of law to be resolved by the Supreme Court’s instructions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). The only issue presented in this case is whether the County’s ordinance is consistent with the Second Amendment, as analyzed under Bruen. Bruen itself was resolved solely on the pleadings. See 142 S. Ct. at 2124-25, 2135 n.8; see also id. at 2159 (re: “deciding this case without a trial and factual findings;” “The record before us, however, tells us everything we need on this score.”) (Alito, J., concurring). Bruen requires judicial reliance on historical analogues, particularly Founding-era laws, for which no expert testimony is necessary. All relevant historical information can be provided by briefs and declarations. In the event the Court believes there should be a discovery schedule, Plaintiffs do not object to the schedule proposed by Defendants below.
—id. at 1–2

The plaintiffs are correct. No discovery is required. Are the plaintiffs part of The People? Do they wish to keep or bear an arm? If the answers are both yes, the plaintiffs’ burden is met. The burden then shifts to the state to demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.—New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. V. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 8 (U.S. 2022)

Not only was Bruen resolved solely on the pleadings, so were Heller, McDonald and Caetano. I’m not sure about Stables.

When the question is purely of law, there is no need for experts. The experts are the courts. The parties bring forth their arguments via pleadings. The court reads the pleadings, listens to the arguments, evaluates case law, and then issues their opinion.

“Expert testimony” is expressly forbidden to give legal opinions. If there are legal arguments, the parties must present them, as their own experts.

In one of the Ninth Circuit cases, the state is arguing that certain expert testimony is actually opinions of law and must be discarded.

Even if the state was arguing about “The People” or “arm”, there are no experts involved.

Defendants’ position: Defendants disagree with Plaintiffs’ position that no discovery is required in this case. District courts in Second Amendment cases since Bruen regularly provide for both fact and expert discovery—including written and document discovery, expert disclosures, and depositions—just as in other civil litigations. See, e.g., Schoenthal v. Raoul, No. 3:22-cv-50326, Dkt. 45 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 21, 2023) (case management and scheduling order providing for fact and expert discovery in Second Amendment challenge to Illinois law restricting guns on public transit); Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Town of Superior, No. 1:22- cv-02680, Dkt. 49 (D. Colo. Jan. 19, 2023) (same, in Second Amendment challenge to local Colorado ordinances restricting assault weapons and large-capacity magazines); Jones v. Bonta, No. 3:19-cv-01226, Dkt. 105 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 18, 2023) (same, in Second Amendment case remanded by the court of appeals for further proceedings in light of Bruen). And, contrary to Defendants’ assertion, courts have relied upon expert testimony and other evidence developed through discovery in deciding post-Bruen Second Amendment challenges. See, e.g., Or. Firearms Fed’n v. Kotek, — F. Supp. 3d —-, 2023 WL 4541027 (D. Or. July 14, 2023) (rejecting Second Amendment challenges to Oregon firearm licensing and large-capacity magazine laws after a week-long bench trial with twenty witnesses, including eleven defense expert witnesses).
—#36 in Lafave v. The County of Fairfax, Virginia (E.D. Va., 1:23-cv-01605), No. 1:23-cv-01605, slip op. at 2

The state offers a powerful argument. Surely, overpowering the weak argument of the plaintiffs, who relied on Supreme Court opinions and holdings. The state tells the court that other district courts allowed expert testimony and discovery.

This is as bad as the Seventh rejecting arguments for The People because courts inferior to them had ruled against The People.

Ignoring the courts that found for The People.

This discovery process can be very intrusive and expensive.

The reality of this is that the discovery process will add 5 months to this litigation.

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Friday Feedback

Apr 19, 2024 awa 6 comments

When I was nerding, I was complaining about the amount of effort I was going through to just display a line of text with proper word wrapping. I introduce you to, QTextLayout which does exactly that. I’m in the process of debugging the newly re-written code.

3 steps forward, two steps back. Regardless, I feel better about it.

On the other hand, I started reading the transcript of Delaware State Sportsmens Association Inc v. Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security, 23-1633, (3rd Cir. Mar 25, 2024) ECF No. 118. My blood pressure went up. I’ll be reading the rest of it and presenting some feedback. Suffice to say, the judges in the case asked questions that indicate that they have reading comprehension issues.

The left is busy screaming that Justice Thomas has no business hearing a case regarding the persecution of the J6 victims because his wife was “participating in the insurrection.”

Isn’t it amazing how the most heavily armed group of people in the world, showed up for the insurrection and forgot to bring their guns?

The number of J6 victims that were persecuted for having scary looking tactical gear and med kits is not surprising.

Note, I do have far too many spelling errors. “Prosecution” and “persecution” are two different words.

We are also watching the trial of Trump. If I wasn’t already sick from what they were doing to the J6 victims, I would have more sympathy for what they are doing to him.

This weekend will be “fun”. I’m going to be making a backing plate for a lathe chuck. I picked up a “chunk-o-iron” this week. 5.5in in diameter, 8.76 inches long. I should be able to get at least 3 backplates out of that. The cost of one backplate, if they made one to fit my lathe, would cost more than twice the cost of the raw stock.

This will be an adjust true collet chuck. When I’m done, it should be able to maintain 0.0002″ TIR. That is beautiful.

There are three primary types of lathe chucks. There is an “independent” chuck, a “self-centering” chuck, and then collet chucks.

The chuck is attached to a backplate which mounts on the spindle of your lathe. You machine the face of the backplate in place on your chuck. The better you do, the better your check will be centered.

When using a self-centering chuck or a collet chuck, you are stacking total indicated run out, TIR. The backplate will have some run out. By doing the final machining in place, you can reduce that greatly. You leave a boss on the face and that fits into a recess in the back of the chuck.

If that fit is very close, there is very little movement that can be done to cause run out. But there might be some.

When using an independent jaw, each jaw moves independently. Normally, that would be a four jaw chuck. By carefully measuring the run out, you can determine which jaw is the furthest from the center. You can tighten that jaw and the work will move closer to the center.

If the jaws are already tight, you can loosen the jaw on the opposite side slightly. Using this method, you can easily get your work running true (no run out) to within 0.0005.

The magic of an “adjust true” chuck is that it combines a self centering chuck or a collet chuck with an independent type of adjustment.

You put the backplate with chuck onto the spindle. You put a known quality pin in the chuck. You can now shift the front part of the chuck independently to get that very low TIR.

Using a collet chuck, you can take the work out of the chuck, do something to it, put it back in the collet. It will have the same run out as it had before.

This allows me to do some things more easily.

I’m glad you all got to laugh at my misfortune of losing some of my music. The magic of streaming music has introduced me to 1000s of songs I would never have heard otherwise.

What artist or song from your past have you listened to recently and said, “that’s horrible?” For me, it was Olivia Newton John’s “Physical”. I thought I would enjoy that blast from the past, I didn’t.

What artist or song have you discovered today that you would not have enjoyed in the past? For me, it is all the old time swing bands and Frank Sinatra.

The comments are open.