Month: April 2024

And that’s how you do it.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Police said a burglary suspect was shot in self-defense by the homeowner in the Trinity Hills area on Saturday morning.

Anton Cosby, 32, is accused of breaking into the home on Shreeve Lane just before 6 a.m. Saturday. The victim and his family woke up to the sound of banging on the front door and windows.

The homeowner retrieved his firearm and gave Cosby repeated commands to leave. He told Cosby he would fire his weapon, according to police. Cosby then allegedly broke the kitchen window and began to climb through when the homeowner shot him once in the arm.

Police: Nashville homeowner shoots burglar in self-defense (wsmv.com)

Homeowner did not break perimeter and even gave advance warning of consequences; Critter chose to continue bad behavior.

Behavior was ballistically modified.

Police said Cosby dropped his revolver near the kitchen sink and ran away.

I am guessing that he won’t be able to plea misunderstanding or some other BS.

the District Attorney’s office has determined the victim was acting in self-defense and is not expected to face charges for the shooting.

It is sad that we still have to cross fingers and hope for this kind of decision rather than expect it.

Cosby will be charged with aggravated burglary, felony vandalism, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm while intoxicated

And he will probably get charges reduced, low bail or even released without it. And I am not making this up as it seems he has at least three felony charges in his past that never made it anywhere past the system and has not served one day of prison time for them.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

I recently picked up 8.75 inches of 5.5 DuraBar, a type of cast iron. This is to become the backplate for a lathe chuck.

Friday afternoon, I started work on the backplate.

Since I repaired me horizontal bandsaw, cutting 2.75 inches off the bar was trivial. While the saw was working its way through those 5.5+ inches, I turned the jaws around on the chuck and got ready.

My saw did an outstanding job. It was time to start working on the blank.

The first operation was to face the raw end. The raw end had a sticker on it and was too rough to think about. It had around 0.25 of variation.

Since this is an interrupted cut, it requires light cuts until we are cutting almost completely. I was taking 0.050 cuts at the end. About an hour to get the first face done.

Normally, you would flip the piece and face the other side so that the two faces are parallel to each other. Since the purpose of this job is to end up with one face perpendicular to the spindle, that was not required.

The next operation was to poke a hole through the center of the disk. I did that in three steps, spot drilling, 3/8in starter drill, then a 7/8in taper shank drill.

I then bored the hole out to 1.125inches. Perfect.

The next step was to turn down the face to create a 0.625 boss with a 0.25in radius. Doing that operation was time-consuming, but I got it done. It looked great. That huge corner radius made it work.

My only issue was that my 0.5″ button toolholder needs to be kicked out. I didn’t notice at first, which required some adjustments. All the final passes were free-handed.

That was the end of Friday’s progress. I would have done more, but I couldn’t find my large, 18″ adjustable wrench to get the chuck off.

Saturday started with getting the chuck off. I found a tool that I could use, a couple of light taps with a dead blow hammer and the chuck came loose. It is still held on by at least an inch of thread engagement.

You would rather not drop the chuck on your ways, it would damage them. I use a piece of 3/4in plywood. I then started unscrewing the chuck.

I was using my left hand to support the chuck.

I stupided.

You can’t tell from that image, but my ring finger is the color of a purple grape. It is swollen by about 30%. It is no longer painful after taking meds.

Oh, did you suspect that I’m a touch typist? I use that finger often to type characters on the left of the keyboard.

Regardless, that stupid is even more stupid as I was contemplating making a cradle for the chuck, as Joe Pie suggested in one of his tips videos a few months ago.

I didn’t. I am suffering the consequences of my stupid.

After I had my “oops” I continued with my measurements. Turns out that a Craigslist purchase a couple of years ago has paid off again. I have not only my personally purchase’s 0-1″ micrometer, but that purchase came with 0-1″, 1-2″, 2-3″, 3-4″, 4-5″, and 5-6″. I’m happy to have found them again.

Once I have my measurements, I put the chuck back on the spindle and go to work boring to minor ID for 1 7/8×8 threads.

I hit my mark at 1.753 instead of my target of 1.750. Still within the specifications for 1 7/8×8.

Because I was set up to do the boring, I then bored to 1.887 0.250 deep. This is the most critical operation. The spindle has a registration boss at its base. This pocket needs to fit snugly on that boss. The better the fit, the more repeatable returning the chuck to the lathe will be.

I hit 1.8875. That’s spectacular for me. All is going well.

After lunch, I came back out and made that cradle. It took 15 minutes on the band saw.

That’s ready for the next time I need to pull the chuck.

I then cleaned up the lathe, cast iron chips had gone everywhere. Yes, I wear good protective eye wear.

The next operation is to single point the thread. This requires me to rotate the cross slide from 29 degrees to 119 degrees. This was done. I then indicated my tool post square.

It was time to cut threads.

This is where stupid number two comes in.

Normally, I use a dial indicator when cutting to depth. Because I wanted accurate locations, I used my micrometer stop.

That works for most things, but isn’t as accurate as using the micrometer stop. Nor is it as easy.

I had been using the micrometer stop for the boring operations. I now moved it out of the way to use the dial indicator.

And it doesn’t fit with the micrometer stop in its parking location.

So this is where error number two comes into play. I think I have a “regular” boring bar with a high-speed toolholder at the end. If I had bothered to find this and if I had bothered to grind a tool for grooving, I would have cut a relief groove inside that bore.

When you are cutting a thread on a lathe, the tool moves to the left in sync with the rotation of the spindle. At 8 threads per inch, the tool is moving at around 0.5 inches per second. I need to stop the forward motion at exactly the right spot. If I do not, then “bad things” will happen.

If I had that relief groove, I have more of a landing spot.

Using the dial indicator, if I over shoot, nothing bad happens. With the micrometer stop bad things can happen.

And bad things did happen. I missed.

Once I had everything straightened back out, I tried to recover.

No luck with that. I didn’t notice, but that crash rotated the cross slide, it rotated the tool post, it pulled the tool out of the toolholder. Yeah, everything was wrong. The good news is that nothing broke.

I’m cutting threads at the back of the hole, but I can’t seem to get things to work at the front. Nothing is working.

The tool post looks wonky. I slap a wrench on it and prepare to square it up again. As I start to loosen the nut, the entire cross slide rotates. That explains everything! I get the cross slide back in place and try again.

Nothing is working as expected. I can’t pick up the threads. I can’t seem to cut. It is just weird.

Looking hard at the boring bar, I decide to check to see if it is still square to the toolholder. It isn’t. That fixes it all, right?

Nope, the tool post is still twisted.

In the end, I get everything straightened out. I try to pick up the threads. At which point I realize that I’ve chewed the treats to shit.

The part is junked. I’ll be boring out the mess I made in the center, then that chuck of cast iron goes into the scrap bucket, and I’ll start all over again.

At the time I scrapped this part, I had about 6 hours of labor into it. I’m slow. I had turned around 4 pounds of cast iron into chips of the original 16 pounds.

Regardless, I had fun making chips.

I Was Just Following Order!

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.

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.