What does the state want to discover?

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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“The Second Amendment does not apply! You are not Militia!”

Interesting that they should keep harping on that.

The guys in Lexington and Concord weren’t either.

The shot heard around the World on April 19, 1775 was done by regular folks.

Freedom got rolling by the common man properly armed standing against those who were seeking his weapons.

The Militia came later.

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Friday Feedback

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.

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Why am I not surprised?

Let’s say that yours truly or AWA or J. Kb is arrested with property we stole and a non-registered NFA in our possession.  We would probably be in jail with a six or seven figure bail and no chance to see daylight in the foreseeable future, right? Hell, they would call our “favorite” Three-Letter bureau and demand they added federal charges to our basket of legal crap.

But if you happen to be a proper citizen of the great city of Memphis, you get to walk with the blessings of the system:

 

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — More information has been released about a bond hearing that put an 18-year-old back on the street just weeks before he was in a shootout with police, leaving an MPD officer dead.

WREG has obtained the recording of 18-year-old Jaylen Lobley’s bond hearing on March 7, after his arrest for having two stolen vehicles and a Glock converted into a machine gun.

What happened at Jaylen Lobley’s bond hearing (wkrn.com)

He was just a poor “yute” caught in the vortex of Society and apparently the Judicial Powers felt he was a victim.

Judicial Commissioner Chris Ingram was hearing the case to determine if Lobley’s bond would stay at $10,000. The state is able to argue at those hearings if they think the bond should be changed.

“He is 18 so there will obviously be no prior criminal record as far as adult court. I can’t attest to his juvenile record or bring that up,” he said.

 
We know nothing” AKA “We reached a decision with the information we had at the time. sorry we fucked up” excuse.

He says the $10,000 bond does seem low, but since Lobley was to be in court the next day, there was no need to adjust it.

“My suggestion is to keep it the same, but if the court is inclined to lower it, I won’t be upset at that,” he said.

The Judicial Commissioner did lower the bond. In fact, he released Lobley on his own recognizance, without Lobley having to pay anything.

TADA! Go free, young man and let that be a lesson to you: Crime does not pay, but it does not cost you either.

Just weeks later, Lobley and a 17-year-old were in a shoot out with Memphis Police. Lobley and Police Officer Joseph McKinney were killed.

And on that, it has come out that the officer succumbed to friendly fire according to the local D.A. The same people who apparently “misspoke” trying to distance themselves from Lobley’s release.

Shortly after the shooting, the District Attorney’s Office released a statement saying, “The Bond was granted by a Judicial Commissioner following a hearing where our office strongly argued against lowering the bond, citing the defendant’s danger to the community.”

Unfortunately, the recording shows the prosecuting attorney did not put up a fight at all as quoted above.

I wanted to go to Memphis just to check the Bass Pro and the museums inside. Not even staying in the anywhere in city, but bedding somewhere way outside Shelby County.

I truly do not know if it is worth the risk.

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