(1000 Words)
This is the butterfly knife ban. The People won at the Ninth Circuit court of appeals merits panel. Of course, the Ninth Circuit couldn’t let a win for the 2nd stand, so they are rehearing the case en banc the week of June 24th.

This takes us to the standard filing of briefs by all interested parties. I’m going to be lazy and provide you with the good stuff from the Second Amendment Foundation.

TL;DR

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My wife is committed to our children. There is nothing she will not do for them. This has been true since the day she became a mother.

For her, Easter is an important day. She instilled that in our kids. But one of the other parts of Easter is the Easter Bunny coming to visit and leave eggs, candy, and gifts.

Yeah, my kids have received new bikes for Easter.

My church is not her church. So when they went to Easter Service, I was tasked with “The Easter Egg Hunt”. I’ve been doing the egg hunt for the kids for the last 15 years now. When they were young, the eggs were placed in the open. It was more of a task of collecting than of hunting.

As they got older, the eggs were “hidden”.

One Easter, there was still snow on the ground. My kids were positive the Easter Bunny was real because there were no footprints. They were unable to retrieve some of those eggs without leaving footprints. They still do not know how I accomplished that.

Then the hunt changed. Instead of just finding eggs, there was an actual task. They had to follow the eggs.

Last year’s hunt was a 2-mile trek through the woods to find 275 eggs. They only recovered 263. The rules were simple. If you are standing at an egg, you can see the next egg from that location.

Earlier, there was only one path. By last year, there were sometimes paths that were dead ends. When that happened, they needed to backtrack to pick up the correct path.

The kids are all adults this year. The hunt changed again.

For the last 4 years, it has been our kids and an extra. This year, it was our kids, the extra, and another half dozen friends. The kids and extra were required to bring a friend or the hunt would have been canceled.

The early arrivals were told, “You have your phones, look up “Land Nav.” You have 30 minutes to learn.

The hunt began at 1400. The first part was exactly as it had been in years gone by. They just followed the eggs.

After a bit of milling about, they reached the first cache.

There was a note with the cache. “AA-025-___”. The eggs were arranged in an arrow. There was an obvious path leading in the other direction.

Having been gifted with commo, compass, and range finder, they started trying to figure things out. They finally figured out that it was a range of 025 yards. They were told to follow the arrow. They didn’t go the full distance, getting distracted by a false trail. I got them to move a bit further and they found the second cache.

This was just a pile with a note: “AB-___-175”. It took them a bit before they figured out it was a bearing.

They finally got moving in the correct direction and at the first obstacle, a shed, they stopped. Finally, one of them looked around back, spotted the cache, which was designed to be found, and they learned the second lesson.

In that cache, they found a note: “AC-076-260”. They figured out what it meant, but didn’t know how to do the actual navigation. The one kid who was doing the right thing got instructions on how to do the land navigation.

From there they were on their own.

I was able to listen in as they communicated on the radio.

Two hours later, they arrived back at the house. The path as laid out was 1.5 miles. They likely did between 2 and 3 miles as they did do searches.

I learned that you have to lay out the caches differently when they can use a swarm method to find things. They reported that they had sometimes found caches out of sequence, marked that cache, and came back to it in sequence.

They found some eggs from previous years.

It was such a massive rush to listen to them on the radio as they found a cache and reported the sequence number. It told me about where they were.

They had a blast. Hagar and I had a blast setting the path.

Total caches, BD. That doesn’t include the false paths.

One of the cool stories they told was when they were on the final leg, a neighbor told them that there was a cache up the road a bit. They thought I had planted that neighbor to provide false information. I’m grinning now. I might have to do that next year.

One of the best parts of today, was that I spotted a “grandfather” playing with his grandchild while I was planting a cache.

After we finished the cache, Hagar and I went to the stone wall. I had Hagar lay out a 6 egg scatter hunt for the little while I went and introduced myself to the neighbor. They are a new move in. And this is New England. We’ve been here for 15 years+ and are still the newcomers.

Well, the grandfather listened as I explained what we had done. Then he got the parents’ permission. We all crossed the road and then grandfather and grandkid started the hunt.

The smile on the kid’s face as they found each golden egg and brought it back to their grandfather was worth it.

All of our kids are going to try to make it back here next year for another hunt. We will be using some different techniques next year as well as different eggs.

We will still put some easy to spot plastic eggs out there. But instead of a pile of blue, yellow, orange, purple with one gold egg, there will likely be one visible egg but not huge caches of visible eggs.

(1100 words)

After Heller, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. —No. 167 Andrew Teter v. ANNE E. LOPEZ, No. 20-15948, slip op. at 1–2 (9th Cir.). Justice Thomas went on Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. —#167 in Andrew Teter v. ANNE E. LOPEZ (9th Cir., 20-15948), No. 20-15948.

If the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the individual’s conduct, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” —Rickey I. Kanter V. William P. Barr, 919 F.3d 437 (7th Cir. 2019).

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to claim that the Bruen court said that the plain text portion needed the challengers to prove anything apart from their conduct being within the ambit of the Second Amendment. There is never a need for the challengers to prove that an arm is not unusual or not dangerous.
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B.L.U.F.
Judge Krause beclowns himself in his written dissent. He should have kept his mouth shut so people only thought him a foold. Instead, he chose to write his opinion, removing all doubt.
(2000 words)

The Third Circuit court declined to rehear Lara en banc. This left the merit panel’s opinion that 18, 19, and 20-year-olds are part of the people and their rights shall not be infringed.

Six of the 14 judges would have granted the rehearing. Judge Krause decided to beclown himself with a written dissent.

When The People ratified the Bill of Rights, they did not intend to bind the nation in a straightjacket. They intended to bind the government in a straightjacket.

Our constitution is unusual in that it is built around limiting the government as much as possible, while reserving for the state and the people as much power as they can retain.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. is some of the strongest language in the constitution. It is a straightjacket, binding the government. The government has succeeded in escaping that straightjacket. We are fighting to get it back into that straightjacket.

The Supreme Court, has stated many times, that the meaning of the plain text of the constitution is set when it was adopted and the meaning of the plain text of the amendments is set when the amendment is ratified.
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There have been some “interesting” developments in the Circuit Courts.

Out in the Ninth Circuit court, we are starting to see a game where three judge merit panels are placing 2A cases in limbo, pending the outcome of the Duncan v. Bonta en banc opinion. This is just a delay tactic. It is transparent and not just a nasty game.

The rogue judges on the Ninth Circuit will do anything to stop from ruling in favor of The People.

On the other side of the country, the Third Circuit court refused to hear Lara v. Evanchick en banc. The district court found that the state could infringe on the rights of 18, 19, and 20-year-olds. The merits panel of the Third Circuit reversed and remanded the case back to the district court.

The state appealed for a rehearing, en banc. That rehearing was denied. This is a win for us.

There are still a number of 2A cases seeking cert before the Supreme Court. I’ll continue to monitor to see what happens.

The state has been arguing for two steps in doing Second Amendment challenges. The first is forcing the plaintiffs to “prove” that the Second Amendment is implicated. This is being called into question by the good guys. The arguments from the Second Amendment advocates are getting stronger and more on point regarding rogue inferior courts.

Lawfare is alive and well out in Chicago. New Jersey’s AG penned a letter to Glock signed by the standard evil AG’s demanding that Glock be prepared to be sued into oblivion. Plenty of trade secrets and other things that are sure to “leak” once the state has finished discovery.

I’m dealing with the arsehole neighbor. I had to go measure everything to make sure that the test range was far enough away from the neighbor’s house. It is. He just doesn’t like the sound of gun fire and is doing the “shots fired” through 911. Had to deal with cops.

“I don’t answer questions”. Then the cop lied about the RSA. I now have a copy on hand, just in case.

I’m slowly making my way through —No. 167 Andrew Teter v. ANNE E. LOPEZ, No. 20-15948, slip op. at 1–2 (9th Cir.). It is a good history of Miller. Grist for the Mill.

Of the cases discussed in the blog, do you have any questions? Are there any subjects I should expand on?

Have a fantastic weekend, all. The comments are open.

Initial impressions:

So what is this thing? Well, it is a bearing holding a bushing with an endmill.

When we are trimming cases to length, we use what we can measure. For some cartridges, this makes sense. For others, it is nearly impossible.

Our goal is to have a cartridge correctly seated in the chamber with the bullet at the correct distance from the rifling (or just touching), and the distance from the end of the cartridge to the face of the bolt be correct.

Consider a .45 ACP round. The cartridge is designed to position itself in the chamber based on the mouth of the cartridge. When the cartridge is fully seated in the chamber, the mouth of the case will be resting against a feature in the chamber.

The overall length of the case should be such that the base of the case is at a known, correct, distance from the face of the bolt. Using the mouth of the case allows us good control of bullet to rifling distance.

30-30 Winchester, .45 Colt, .303 British, 7.62x54R all position the cartridge according to the front of the case rim.

With a rimmed cartridge, the thickness of the rim is known. This means that the distance from the base of the case to the face of the bolt is the controlled distance.

By correctly seating the bullet and by making sure that the length of the case is correct, we get control the distance the bullet is from the rifling.

In some senses, rimmed cases are the easiest to measure and keep within specifications.

More modern cartridges seat against the shoulder. This gives good control over the distance between the bullet and the rifling, and supposedly, good control of the distance between the base of the case and the face of the bolt.

The issue is that measuring from that hypothetical shoulder location to the mouth and the base is a little difficult.

We address this by “bumping the shoulder”. This is using the reloading press to reform the shoulder at the correct distance from the base of the case. At that point, trimming the case to length based on overall length should give good results.

To trim a case to length, we need to be able to repeatably cut the case to the same length. Thus, we need to have some way of making sure that the cutter is the correct distance from the base of the case.

On a case with a shoulder, we can either measure from the base of the case or from some other known location on the case.

One method used is to have a rod of known length that pokes out of the flash hole. This stop rod keeps the cutter from getting any closer to the face pressed against the base of the case.

When done correctly, this is quick, easy, and very repeatable.

The issue is that each cartridge needs its own stop rod.

Another method is when the cutter is kept from advancing beyond a known location. If I could, I would use my milling machine for this.

The cutter would spin in the spindle, when the quill is brought down it will stop when it hits the quill stop. Very fast, very repeatable.

Most of the trimming devices that have a lathe like spindle that has the cutter works this way. There is a stop collar that keeps the “spindle” from moving to far.

My issue with that style is that it is a little slower and I don’t trust the stops.

Which takes us to the last time. A trimmer that is based on the distance from a known location on the shoulder to the cutter.

Since we’ve positioned and shaped the shoulder correctly in the reloading press, measuring from the shoulder should be consistent.

This is what the UGLY SRT does.

The SRT consists of 5 major components. The first is the cutter. This is just a standard 4 flute 3/8″ endmill. The size is by a mark I eyeball, so it could be anything close.

The next component is the body. This is a simple bit of turning. It has a slip fit for the cutter at one end and is bored to size on the other end.

The cutter slips into the hole for it and is held in place by two set screws.

A baring has been pressed into place at the other end and makes the third major component.

The next major component is a simple disk with a single set screw in it. This is to allow you to adjust the depth of cut.

The final component is the collet. This slips into the bearing. It has a shoulder to press a case against.

To operate, this is simple. Chuck the endmill into a drill. When the drill is running, the endmill will turn and the housing will turn. The collet and inner race of the bearing will not rotate.

Slide a case into the collet and press it into the cutter. When it bottoms out on the shoulder in the collet, you will have cut the case to a length.

This is very consistent.

Adjusting the depth of cut is also simple.

If you want to make the depth of cut less, you make sure that the adjustment disk held in place and that it is firm against the body. You then release the endmill from the housing, slide a feeler gauge of the right size between the body and the adjustment disk. Tighten the set screws to lock the endmill/cutter in place.

Reposition the adjustment disk tight against the housing and lock it there.

This is dirt simple. It is an adjustment method that I will be using in my designs.

To cut more, loosen the adjustment disk, slip the correct feeler gauge between the body and the adjustment disk. Lock the adjustment disk in place. There is now a gap between the adjustment disk and the body. Release the endmill, push the adjustment disk against the housing, lock the endmill in place.

Everything about this is simple, well constructed. The adjustment process is different but easy.

I’ve only tested on a few cases, but I think this might be my end goal for shouldered cases.

The only downside I’ve identified, so far, is that I have to purchase different collets depending on the case I’m trimming. And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to manufacture them from the tooling I have on hand.

More to when I do my next large trim run.