Moore v. Harper is a case that was just heard by the Supreme Court regarding who has authority over regulations for federal elections.

The Elections Clause requires state legislatures specifically to perform the federal function of prescribing regulations for federal elections. States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78, the scope of legislative authority is governed by the commission under
which it is exercised. Here, that commission is contained in the United States Constitution, and it is federal law alone that places substantive restrictions on state legislatures performing the tasks assigned them by the federal Constitution. The most prominent discussion of the Elections Clause in the early republic occurred during Massachusetts’ 1820 Constitutional Convention.

— David H Thompson, Esq. Before the Supreme Court

This is of interest in terms of gun rights because the court is being asked to look at the intent of the Constitution, as written and when the bill of rights was ratified, 1791.

START OF QUOTE

Justice Kavanaugh: What about the historical practice over time, which has certainly developed in a way that state constitutions do regulate federal elections? What weight, if any, do we place on that?

Also, there are some federal statutes as well that are cited by the other side. I just want to make sure you’ve had a chance to
talk about those as well. So the —

Mr Thompson: Yeah.

Justice Kavanaugh: — historical practice in the states and those federal statutes.

Mr. Thompson: Your Honor, we think the way to think about this is consistent with the Court’s opinion in Bruen last term where it looked very focused on the time of the founding, 1791, obviously, we’re looking for the public meaning of the Constitution. As that founding generation passes away, Adams and Jefferson die on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, as we get out of the 1820s, there’s very limited information you can get as to the original public meaning of the Constitution.

But — so it can be a confirming — that subsequent history as in Bruen can be a confirming historical tradition that — that — but it can’t undermine what the text and the founding era history show to be the case.

Justice Kavanaugh: Thank you.

END OF QUOTE

This is great news for gun rights. This is another place where the Supreme court gets to say “Text, History and Tradition at the time of the ratification of the bill of rights.”

The key to this is that when the 14th amendment was ratified it did not change the meaning or understanding of the Bill Of Rights or the Constitution, it merely stated that the protections guaranteed under the Constitution extended to each Citizen and could not be violated by state law.

This case also means that more and more judges and courts will become better informed about how to use “Text, History and Tradition” of the constitution.

In Oregon we had some good news. Not great but good. As we’ve discussed in the past the way that cases proceed is through a a case being seen in a inferior court and then appealed upwards. There are two paths, the state and the federal paths. Under the state path there is the lower court, then the appeals court and then the State Supreme Court and finally the Supreme Court of the United States.

Under the federal path there is the District court and above them is a circuit court of appeals and above that is the US Supreme Court.

In Oregon the Oregon Firearms Federation and Gun Owners of America had filed suit in federal district court. In the US district court, Judge Karin Immergut denied the request by OFF to place a injunction on measure 114, or at least parts of it. OFF and GOA, having been around the block a few times, had also filed suit in state court.

Judge Raschio of the state lower court did grant the injunction. The DoJ of Oregon requested an expedited/emergency judgement on that ruling (A mandamus petition). The Oregon Supreme court heard and answered. They upheld the injunction put in place by Judge Raschio.

Upon consideration by the court.

Relators petition for a writ of mandamus is denied. Relators’ motion to stay the circuit court’s order dated December 6, 2022, which temporarily restrained defendants and defendants’ agents from enforcing Ballot Measure 114 (2022), as of 12:01 am. on December 8, 2022, is dismissed as moot.

This order is issued without prejudice as to the filing of any future petition for a ‘writ of mandamus or other motion in this court by any party in relation to any other rulings in the underlying proceeding.

— Signed Martha L Walters Chief Justice, Supreme Court [of Oregon]

IANAL so have no idea why it is dismissed as moot, just that it was.

Good things this way come.

Well it has been a good week for some court cases and a bad week for others.

Trying to figure out what is actually going on in different court cases has been a huge learning task for me.

So it is that time of week when y’all can let us know how we are doing and what you would like more of or less of.

Given my addiction to lever action rifles (at this time) I find myself amazed at the number of different calibers that are available in the lever action line.

So it is that horrible day when your SO says “Too much is too much! You have to reduce to two calibers and two only!”

What would you choose?

I’m thinking that I would take .45 Colt. I have pistols and rifles in that caliber. For the other caliber maybe 45-70. I want something that hits hard and can be used for taking large game. On the other hand having an AR-15 in 5.56 is also very very useful.

Anyway, let us know what you are thinking.

This reminds me of an Internet outage in the ’90s.

When you buy a circuit from the circuit provider you tell them the type of circuit you want. If it is a big enough circuit they will provide you with alternate routes.

In the days when OC-12 was a “big circuit” one was ordered for post. They had to lay cable up from the south and down from the north. If either segment was “cut” then all the traffic could be carried via the other segment. Redundancy.

Now the magic of buying circuits is that you specify what you are buying “T1” for example. This slow by today’s standards at 1.44Mbit/s. It is so slow that your provider will use different technology to deliver it. In one case it was by two pairs of copper using standard digital technologies. It took two pair bonded together to get the speed wanted. No issue as the equipment for doing the bonding was cheap and easy to use.

The Federal Government decided they wanted an east-west circuit. It was supposed to be a fairly fast circuit. Part of the requirements in the contract was that the circuit be fully redundant. This meant that one path was through the north of the US and the other path was through the south of the US.

All of this documented in the contracts.

At the time the contract was issued this meant that each path was its own physical piece of fiber.

But shortly thereafter technology moved on and it became possible to move significantly more data over the same physical links.

The provider looked to take advantage of this and let a contract for two new circuits, again redundant, again north south paths.

Everybody is happy. Government, provider, and sub provider are all doing the right thing.

The sub-provider is constantly working to improve the infrastructure and upgrade circuits when they can. In the course of this they upgraded a couple of circuits and then re-balanced everything.

The sub-provider was still providing two circuits, the two circuits were redundant. The sub-provider was providing great service and they continued to grow.

Then one day the Internet Segmented into two parts barely connected. Traffic that use to flow over these east-west circuits now had to travel east from the east coast around the world to get to the west coast.

Multiple circuits were down. The primary and redundant backups for the Federal Government were both down. Other internet circuit providers had lost both of their east-west circuits. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!

It seems that over the course of time our sub-provider had been offering very good prices for circuits. They had the latest and truly greatest technology. And as time passed more and more circuits were being carried by this one sub-provider. Their southern cables were the fastest in the country. Their northern cables not so much so they had moved some circuits from the northern cable to the southern cable.

All of which was allowed by their contract. The government contract was with thier provider, not the sub-provider.

It seems that a couple of good ol’ boys were out in the swamps hunting and decided to blow of some steam. They decided to use the targets hanging from poles as their point of aim. In the course of their shooting they managed to cut, in multiple places, in the middle of a swamp, that sub-providers main east-west PHYSICAL cable.

Since multiple “redundant” circuits were all running over the same physical cable when that cable was cut all the circuits failed.

It took many hours for that cable to be repaired.

Now to make things even a little bit scarier, my understanding is that the original contracts were let to two different providers with two different cable system. Those two providers at some point started using the same sub-provider and so even though it was two different providers, the redundant system failed.

Our infrastructure is fragile. Timothy McVeigh used an ANFO explosive to take down a building. Think of what would have happened if he had just parked that van on the middle of the George Washington Bridge and gotten into a different vehicle to drive away. Depending on the tamping around that charge it might very well have dropped the bridge right in the Hudson. Even if it didn’t drop the bridge, it would have done enough damage that it would be months if not years before that bridge was fully inspected and cleared for traffic again.

And there is no way that they would be able to inspect every truck that travels over every bridge.

The saying is “two is one, one is none.” The idea being that if you only have one of something and it breaks you are no shit out of luck.

If you have two of something and one breaks you still have the other and can keep on going. More importantly, you now have a parts thing to be able to repair your second thing.

It also turns out that I like having rifles in pistol calibers with a pistol to match. Which is why I have a Ruger PC-9.

As part of my prep I figured that there might come a time when it was hard or impossible to get smokeless powder. I know how to make black powder. I know how to create the right type of black powder for pistol or rifle loads. This lead to my first rifle/pistol purchase. A Marlin lever action in .45Colt and a Pietta SAA in .45 Colt.

I like both, they are fun to shoot. The only issue I’ve ever had with them was rounds that had bad primer seating. This lead to failure to fire in .45 Colt and .45ACP. My first squib. And it was good to see that I caught it and knew what it was.

Then I ended up in the situation of having a bunch of 30-30 brass and nothing to use it with. This lead to a Model 1896 Winchester (pre ’64) in 30-30 WCF. Which lead to another Model 1896 (’64) in 30-30 WCF. Which lead to a Merlin in 30-30 Win. Which lead to another Model 1896 (Pre ’64) in 30-30 WCF.

Then my daughter fell in love with a Springfield Trapdoor in 45-70. This lead to a Henry lever action in 45-70. Now that thing hits HARD.

While all of this was going on I found a want to shoot without losing brass. Brass is getting hard to get and my standard range has range officers that are on broom patrol. If they see brass on the ground they sweep it out into the lanes where it can’t be recovered by the shooter. On a good day I recover maybe 75% of my brass but on some days I consider myself lucky to recover 40%.

A revolver would allow me to retain all my brass. I decided to go with .357/.38SPL because I had .357 brass and the only other rimmed pistol caliber I had was .45 Colt.

Then the critter shoot of 2022 took place. 30-30 was a little too big and .22LR was too small. This elevated my desire for a lever action in .357 Magnum quite a bit. My LGS had a Rossi R92 in .357 Mag but it was ugly and I didn’t like the buckhorn sights.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it is darn hard to drive past my LGS when I only get out that way once a month or so. I had gone to get my daughter’s car worked on and on the way back I stopped to take a look. Boy was I in luck.

They had a Rossi R92 from the 1990’s (I think) and the wood was beautiful. The finish was ok with only a little bit of wear. It had a U notch rear sight. It shouldered well and was just beautiful. It followed me home.

I got it home and took it out to the test range. The test range isn’t all that long but it allows me to test functionality of a firearm. Does it go bang when you press the trigger and does the steel ring?

Here I found “the” problem with the R92. When loading the last cartridge loaded doesn’t center in the receiver. Since it doesn’t center the lifter doesn’t popup and so you can’t chamber that round. You can reach down into the receiver and move the cartridge to the left and it will center correctly and then everything will function as designed.

When everything is working correctly, this is how it is suppose to look.

And for you all that are worried about safety, this is a dummy round. The primer is expended and there are a couple of BB’s in the case that rattle when you shake it. So visual and audible markings to let me know it is a dummy round.

Rossi firearms have a reputation for not being the best in terms of fit/finish/QA. This means that almost any part of the firearm that isn’t user visible is likely to be unfinished or not well finished. If you go online you will find many many stories of R92’s that have the cartridge hangup when you load the last round.

The standard issue is that the leading edge of the loading gate is “razor sharp”. The fix is to make it a bit flatter and make sure the case head doesn’t hang up there. So I took it apart.

Had to look this next part up. You need to use a thin wire to capture the main spring. I just use a paperclip. That paperclip now lives in the tool kit.

Once the main spring is captured you can remove the bolt/finger link pivot, the hammer pin/screw and remove the lower tang and hammer assembly.

John Brown loves his locking bars. These bars have a screw/pivot pin on one and a hole on the other. If you pull the finger lever out with the loading gate down you will have the lower locking bar fall off. If you are like me, that bar will then bounce off the nice mat and land on the floor, covered in gun oil it will collect anything that hasn’t been swept up.

There is a rabbet on the locking bars, this picture shows how they should line up.

With the locking bars and finger lever out of the way you can remove the lower tang and hammer assembly. Some people have noted that their R92 required them to backoff the lower tang (partially remove it) before they could remove the finger lever with attached locking bars.

When reassembling it is important to watch the trigger pin. It will sometimes slide downward and if it does the lower tang will not go into the receiver.

Now that the hammer is out of the way you can remove the bolt. The ejector is a real pain in the butt. It has a very heavy spring. It consists of three parts, the ejector itself, the ejector spring, and a small collar. The collar is caught on a finger in the bolt and the spring pushes against that. If you lose the collar your rifle is not going to be able to eject rounds.

The loading gate can now be removed by removing one screw.

Of course, having gotten this far I didn’t actually take the gate off. Regardless, the inside is all rough cast. For people that don’t understand, think of the outside surface of a new cast iron pan. It is very rough. Not quite at sandpaper levels but close.

On the inside of the gate is a ramp leading away from the leading edge. At the end of that ramp is a flat surface. ALL of those surfaces have to be polished so that the rim of the case doesn’t hang up on them.

Once I had done that cartridges no longer hung up on the loading gate. At least not as often. I’m going to have to go back in and readjust the geometry a little and some other stuff. Regardless, it is much better now and I’m looking forward to a little bit of dry so I can go run a dozen rounds through it to verify functionality. (And loads)

Putting the rifle back together is a pain in the ass. You need to be able to completely seat the bolt in order to get the pivot hole in the right place. The ejector spring is so hard it is almost impossible to push the bolt in that far by hand.

The answer is to use a dummy round OR an empty .357 case. A .38 SPL case is not long enough. You hook the rim under the extractor hook, lever it down against the ejector and its spring, slide the entire bolt into place until the mouth of the cartridge is chambered. Now you can fiddle the finger lever and the locking bars back into place.

Once it is close, carefully align the hole in the bolt with the hole in the finger lever and push the pivot pin back home. The surrations on the pivot pin go towards the removal hole. The first part of the insertion should be finger pressure. You should be able to get the pin flush with the side of the receiver with just finger pressure. If the pin is not going in, it means that the holes are not aligned. Play with the finger lever until the holes align.

Once the pivot pin is in place you need to use a punch to make sure it is fully seated. The gun will not operate if the pivot pin is not fully seated. The finger lever will jam/not move.

I do love my lever action rifles. They are a lot of fun to play with. They came in everything from .22LR up to a hard hitting 45-70. They come in different barrel lengths from light 16″ carbine lengths to longer 24″ rifles. Many can have scopes added to them, my 30-30 Marlin came with a scope. You can add peep sights with different adjustments. They are fast and versatile.

The downside is that they are complicated. Compared to an AR15 they have a monstress number of parts that you can lose. The amount of time it takes to get down to the point where you can clean them properly is a bit daunting. Screws come loose and have to be tightened as part of your preventative maintenance. It takes practice to be able to load them easily.

There is a limited set of angles that you can hold them in where they will function when cycling a round.

Still I’m looking for more. I want to add a .22LR to the collection.

Equipment used for photography:

Nikon D5100 (Used body purchased from B&H Photo), onboard flash, Nikon ED AF-S Nikkor 28-70mm 1:2.8 D. The lens is part of my kit back when I was doing film photography.

21-1255 Bianchi v. Frosh was heard by the fourth circuit court of appeals on Tuesday Dec. 6th, 2022. As of today, the 7th, I have not been able to find a transcript of the oral arguments. Once I find a transcript I’ll have more to say. I really don’t want to transcript it myself nor pay somebody else to do so.

Nothing was decided. One of the pundits I follow, a 2A lawyer, seems to feel like things will go our way but that there were issues in the line of questioning.

The gist, as he tells it, is that the judges on the panel wanted the plaintiffs (good guys) to prove that AR-15s are covered within the scope of the second amendment. The argument should have been Heller “common use means it is covered.” Caetano says that greater than 200,000 is “in common use”

The path that the state is taking is to turn Bruen upside down and force the good guys to prove that the thing is covered and that there are no laws that are analogous to the law being challenged. Bruen specifically says that it is the Government’s task to prove that a law that is analogous existed in 1791. It is upto the Government to prove that an arm is not within the scope.

The state’s argument is that there should still be means-end to determine if an arm is just to evil/nasty/lethal/black to be covered by the second amendment.

In better news, parts of measure 114 out of Oregon have been stopped temporarily. The state is saying they need more time to get the permitting/training/registration system in place and the people arguing that it should never happen. So the judge put a delay on it for the time being.

This should mean that people in Oregon can still buy firearms.

I didn’t see the PSA warning about shipping to Oregon before and I had not looked for it. I don’t see it today either when I did look for it. I don’t know if it was removed but there is nothing in their “firearm shipments” section that indicates a ban on shipping to Oregon.

So J.Kb. thinks it was crazy for me to shoot a racoon with a 30-30. Maybe… (So people without a warped sense of humor get it, this is all in fun. Both J.Kb. and myself are having fun with this topic.)

The first time I went out on the porch because my wife was hearing “sounds out there” I didn’t think it was a human but it could have been anything from a chipmunk to bear. I wanted something with me that would stop it, whatever it was. That means I’m not picking up the 5.56 nor a .22LR.

That takes me to pistol calibers. Again, not enough stopping power for a bear. This lead to a compromise, 30-30 Winchester. I’m pretty sure that I can put multiple rounds on target with any of the 30-30s I own and if it was a bear of the size we have around here, I am positive it would be stopped with that 30-30.

Other choices are 7.62×39. Nothing but FMJ for that. 7.62×51. Big ass rifle with a scope, bolt action. About the same stopping power as the 30-30 at shorter ranges. 30-06 (M1), it would be nice but again a very long heavy rifle and it is currently set for two legged mode. FMJ.

This takes us up to the big boy, 45-70. Now I have a lever action at that size and it would be the right round for bear. But here’s the thing. It wasn’t handy. It is at the other end of the house with some of the other lever actions. I’d have to take a few extra minutes to go get it and make sure it was the right one.

In the meantime there is something on the porch and we have an injured chicken on the porch being cared for by my daughter.

So it was grab the 30-30.

Now after the first Racoon was dead and I saw there was another, I switched to a bolt action .22LR. It took 3 rounds to kill that Racoon. All three were kill shots but only the last was to the head causing it to cease to feel or function.

This is compared to the 30-30 which put the critter down with just one shot and instantly.

Now this lead to some discussion and the .357 that was on my wish list suddenly got a slightly higher priority.

And then a beautiful Rossi R92 in 0.357Mag followed me home. That is a story for tomorrow, but for today, it is the ready gun for small/medium critter work. I did a little gunsmithing on it yesterday and it is now running at 100%. It hits where I am.

Only thing happening on that front right now is working up a better 0.357Mag load. Currently I’m using hollow point cast bullets making a 115gr projectile sitting on top of a hefty load of TiteGroup. It works but isn’t a load I’m happy with.

Today I went to the LGS/sporting goods store and was happy to buy a pack of small pistol primers off them (9mm reloads) and they had 2400 there! Amazing. So that came home and when I have some brass I’ll be working up a load for .357Mag.

I do use a chronograph when working up loads.

There is this a class of fiction called “FanFic.”  It can be good, it can be bad, it can be awful.  The concept is that you take your favorite TV or Movie characters and write a story about them.

I believe it was Alan Dean Foster that wrote a bunch of Star Wars novels.  James Blish wrote Star Trek novels.  These novels extended the universe for these characters.

There are lots of stories written by random fans about their favorite characters.  Just be careful if you go looking because you will find every type of story imaginable.  Many of them Pornagraphic.  If you have a favorite TV or Movie character it is almost a certainty that somebody has written a story about them doing the dirty in the dirtiest possible way with all sorts of different characters.

In the same way there are singer/songwriters that write and perform songs about their favorite TV or Movie characters.  This is called “Filk”  A play on the word “folk”.

In addition there are a number of songs that are written and performed at Ren Faires and SCA events which are modern takes done in older styles.

Note, this group has lots of NSFW songs.

This is a Ren song. If you are part of the cast and make it to the after hours party this is the sort of song you might here.

Hope you all enjoy.

Postscript: There is a song done to “Roll The Chariot” or “Drop of Nelson’s Blood” set in the Firefly Universe. If you happen to know the title or have a link, please let me know.