Legal

Policies are not laws

You guys don’t make it easy. The rabbit hole nearly ate me alive. At issue is how people are sentenced after they are convicted of one or more crimes. This is about U.S. v. Matthew Raymond Hoover yet touches on a cert denial at the supreme court just a few weeks ago.

We read about the number of criminals that are being set free on a catch and release basis. This is happening in the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor looks at the person being charged and decides on what charges to bring. PoC in blue city, low charges, white cis, higher charges. The prosecutor looks at what the cops say they are charging the person with. He then decides what the actual charges will be.

Example, a white female, 85 years of age, no criminal history, walking in the people’s house taking pictures. Charged by the special investigator with unlawful entry and interfering with an official proceeding. The prosecutor, looking at the totality of the person, the person’s history, the charges brought to them by the special investigator, decides to charge her with all of the above as well as incitement. He tells the court that she is a flight risk.

Counter example, a black male, 19 years of age, two felony convictions, a long history of gang involvement, multiple charges of violence against person. The cops picked him up for stabbing a pregnant white woman, at the scene, with the bloody knife in his pocket. He has previously attempted to evade arrest when warrants were issued. Including out of state flight. The prosecutor charges him with illegal possession of a weapon recommends that he be released with no bail.

This is “prosecutorial discretion”. It means that when the suspect gets to court, the court will try him for illegal possession of a weapon. That’s it. The attempted murder will never be heard by the court.

This is not what this article is about.

This article is about what happens after the suspect is found guilty.

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Andrew Teter V Anne e. Lopez (9th Cir.)


B.L.U.F.Brick by Brick, Row by Row, we build our freedoms.

The 9th Circuit court of Appeals got it right. What does it mean? What did the state attempt? How did the court opine?


In April 2019, another legal battle began. A long shot case that the plaintiffs knew would drag out for years if they made any progress, or they would be shutdown almost immediately.

Under the Second Amendment, Defendants retain the ability presumptively to regulate the manner of carrying arms and may prohibit certain arms in narrowly defined sensitive places, prohibit the carrying of arms that are not within the scope of Second Amendment’s protection such as unusually dangerous arms, and disqualify specific, particularly dangerous individuals from carrying arms. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 627.
Teter v. Connors, No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 11 (District Court, D. Hawaii)

This is from the good guys. In the original complaint, they are giving the state the presumption of the power to regulate. They also give the state the power to regulate “unusually dangerous arms”. This is not what Heller said, and we know this because the Bruen court made it absolutely clear that it is dangerous and unusual. If the arm is in common use, it is not unusual, and it cannot be banned.

This was Bruen quoting and explaining Heller

This is the equivalent of watching the puppy cower when their owner comes home. They try so hard to be good, but they fear being smacked again. Or maybe the battered spouse is a better analogy.
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You win some, You lose some

Today we heard a great opinion out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They found that knives are arms. As arms, they are presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Finally, they found that the government had not met their burden of finding a law from the founding that supported their modern infringement.

There is another court ruling out today. This one out of the Supreme Court.

GARLAND, ATT’Y GEN., ET AL. V. VANDERSTOK, JENNIFER, ET AL.
The application for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is granted. The June 30, 2023 order and July 5, 2023 judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, case No. 4:22-cv-691, insofar as they vacate the final rule of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 87 Fed. Reg. 24652 (April 26, 2022), are stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.

Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would deny the application for stay.

There will be a great gnashing of teeth over this. It affects many people, it isn’t great, but it isn’t horrible either.

In late June and early July, the District court found the ATF’s frame and receiver rule to be a violation of law, NOT on Second Amendment grounds. The ruling basically said, “The ATF can’t make law, this “regulation” is them attempting to re-write the law. If Congress wants the law to be as the ATF wants it to be, Congress has to pass that bill.”

Currently, gun control bills in the Congress are fraught with risk for both sides. The gun grabbers do NOT want people looking hard at §921 and exactly what the GCA of 1968, as amended, is worded. §922 is under attack in multiple cases, having somebody challenge the rest of the GCA on constitutional grounds is not something that they want to see happen.

The state had asked the Fifth Circuit for a stay of the injunction granted by the District Court. The state was asking for a stay until the Fifth Circuit heard the case. The Fifth Circuit told them to go pound sand. The state then made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court looking for that stay.

Normally, these are quick. This took a little longer than Alito wanted.

What this means is that the frame and receiver rule is back until the Fifth Circuit renders their opinion. It looks like that could happen rapidly. The Fifth doesn’t like having their decisions overturned.

It is important to note that the Supreme Court did not rebuke the Fifth. Unlike what was done to the Second and Seventh circuits.

Now the state will drag their heels on this. The 3 judge panel will issue their findings. Regardless of how that goes, the losing party will ask for an en banc hearing. That will happen. If the Vanderstok loses, they will appeal. Their goal has always been to get this to the Supreme Court.

If the state loses, they might just tuck tail and take the L rather than get the Supreme Court involved.

So while this was a step back, I consider it an “ok” outcome. We will win in the end.

On the “Well, that’s to be expected.” Roberts came down on the side of the state. There is nothing strange about that. I just don’t trust him.

I would like to know what Amy Coney Barrett was thinking. She didn’t join with Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

§922(g) needs to go away

It is getting bad inside my brain. A couple of articles went past my feeds talking about an arms seizure in MA and straw purchases. I started reading and immediately went to my court sources to get the actual court documents. Rather than trusting what the reporter had to say.

Weapons seizure uncovered Holyoke family’s love affair with illegally obtained firearmsTeter v. Connors, No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 11 (District Court, D. Hawaii)

It is a shitty picture of some lovely old weapons. I haven’t even attempted to identify any of them.

The box of stripper clips in the foreground is nice, the pile of magazines in the sink is interesting. I would be happy to take all of those off his hands.

Public personas aside, the Augustos stand accused in both federal and state courts for amassing a stockpile of guns ranging from World War II models to semi-automatic rifles and an Uzi. The elder Augusto is not legally authorized to possess any of them due to an old criminal conviction, a lawyer in the case says.
id. ¶ 12

I’ll spare you the search, the Uzi they are referring to is a semi-auto version. There are no NFA items in the collection.

As always, the reporter is trying to induce a panic. Was this a large collection? Yes. If this was in a free state, the actual collection would not have been an issue. In MA, it is unlikely that they had registered all those firearms. Much less the magazines and ammo.

The nature and circumstances of the offense are serious, but include mitigating factors that weigh in favor of the requested below-Guidelines sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1). The offense is serious in that it enabled his father, Daniel A. Augusto, Jr., to add to his vast arsenal of hundreds of firearms, ammunition magazines, rounds of ammunition, firearms manufacturing equipment, and firearms paraphernalia. (D.3, at ¶ 5). As even the defendant conceded during his second interview with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”), many of the firearms were located outside the safes throughout the house because “it honestly got to the point where there was no room in the safes, so stuff just started going everywhere.” (D.3, ¶ 12(d)).
id. ¶ 13

English is tricky. Were there hundreds of firearms? Were there hundreds of magazines? Were there hundreds of rounds of ammunition? Or did they just lump them all together to get scary numbers? The statement made in the court filing was that there were more than a dozen semi-automatic rifles … in one of the bathrooms …id. ¶ 18

The state is attempting to make it sound horrible, they are attacking this man for not having all of his guns in safes.

… obsessively collected firearms to the point that they could not store them safely.​Differences Between Facial and As-Applied Challenges to the Constitutionality of a Statute - Bona Law, (last visited Aug. 10, 2023)

Right now, there are two loaded pistols and a dozen loaded rifles within feet of me that would not be considered “safely stored” in MA. If I still had the grandkid coming over, I’d store some of them differently.
Against this dangerous backdrop, two factors mitigate the defendant’s offense: first, he conducted all of his straw purchases for his father, rather than a stranger; and second, he did not benefit monetarily.
Complaint – #1 in Teter v. Connors (D. Haw., 1:19-cv-00183), No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 26,27

I didn’t know there was a “not for money” clause in the don’t buy guns for others.

… the defendant has recognized that his offenses were serious; they contributed to a highly dangerous situation inside his home; and he is better off never possessing firearms or ammunition again.
Andrew Teter v. ANNE E. LOPEZ, No. 20-15948 (Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit)

This man is going to lose his Second Amendment protected rights because the government is infringing on his father’s Second Amendment protected rights.

I didn’t find what the father was convicted of doing that made him a prohibited person. It is pretty obvious that he has not been doing evil in a long time.

I’m watching the §922(g) cases wind their way to the Supreme Court. I believe that the court is going to spank the government hard. In Heller, in the dicta, they indicated that §922(g) was presumed to be constitutional. They didn’t clarify that “presumed” means, “We didn’t look at it. That is a question for another day.”

There is no historical regulation nor tradition of stripping The People of their right to keep and bear arms because they are not virtuous people. That is what §922(g) does.

This is just an example of how there are intended consequences.

Of note, I’ve not seen a single story come across my feeds of a person being convicted of straw purchases that was a bad person.

Maybe that’s because they are either getting a sweetheart deal OR they are getting so stitched up that they didn’t stack the federal gun crime on top.

Hanson v. D.C. (ammunition feeding device ban) – Updated

B.L.U.F. Another District Judge gets it wrong because they are another rogue judge.

Somehow, I managed to analyze this case twice. The first was back in April. The quoting is better, the references/citations are better. The snark is about the same. I believe it suggests that I’m getting a little better at this.

The first thing we notice is that judge Rudolph Contreras uses the Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island to get his definitions. When a multiple-round device like an LCM is attached, a handgun becomes a ‘semiautomatic’ weapon, meaning that it is capable of rapidly firing several bullets, one right after another.Teter v. Connors, No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 11 (District Court, D. Hawaii) quoting the judge in Ocean State Tactical.

He also plays the language game. The law talks about “ammunition feeding devices”. He switches to “magazine” and once there talks about them as simple boxes. This is precisely the issue that the recent briefing to the Supreme Court addressed. By using the term “ammunition feeding device” throughout their brief, they make a solid case for why it is an arm and not just a box.

The good news is that the plaintiffs (good guys) did establish standing. All the plaintiffs have licenses to carry in D.C. All of them declared that but for the regulation, they would carry ammunition feed devices capable of holding more than 10 rounds. And some of them attempted to register firearms and were denied because the feed devices were “too big”.

Here we start to see the thumb on the scale On December 1, 2022, the Court permitted three nonprofit organizations, Brady, Gifford Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and March for our Lives to jointly submit an amicus brief in support of the District.id. ¶ 12. I have yet to find a 2A case where these groups don’t have their grubby fingers in there, pounding the table and attempting emotional blackmail.

Playing Stupid

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O.F.F. v. Brown, Judges Opinion Pt. 2

B.L.U.F.More of analysis of the horrid opinion offered by Judge Karin Immergut out in Oregon.

I’ve since learned that she spent most of her career, before becoming a district judge, working as a prosecutor for the government. She was actually a prosecutor for the ATF. OF course, she found a gun infringement constitutional.


It is pretty clear that the judge was picking and choosing experts, facts, and testimony to get the conclusion she wanted. This is clear from the following:

Plaintiffs offered the chart as an industry report through the testimony of Salam Fatohi, who serves as the Director of Research at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (“NSSF”). Tr. 6/6/2023 356:4–5. Although this Court received the chart in evidence, see Ex. 33 at 7, in assessing the weight and credibility to give Mr. Fatohi’s testimony, this Court notes that the NSSF is a plaintiff in this case and has been a plaintiff in several Second Amendment challenges to firearms regulations. The NSSF is a firearm and industry trade association which advocates for the firearm and ammunition industry. NSSF members have a significant financial interest in the outcome of this case.
Teter v. Connors, No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 11 (District Court, D. Hawaii)

The EVIL gun lobby wants this, we can’t accept their testimony. How about the fact that Everytown, Brady, and a dozen other groups all pile on when there is a Second Amendment Case? Should their testimony be discounted because they have been a plaintiff in several Second Amendment challenges? Maybe the judge should disallow Paul Clement from representing Second Amendment plaintiffs because he’s been involved with several Second Amendment challenges?

Does she really think that all these anti-gun people don’t make money from litigating? I’ve looked at some of the tax filings for some of these groups, they seem to spend significant amounts of money on the administrative and executive salaries.

Nevertheless, based on the parties’ pretrial stipulation, this Court finds that millions of Americans today own LCMs. But this Court also finds that the number of LCMs possessed by Americans is influenced to some degree by whether a firearms manufacturer sells a particular model of firearm standard with an LCM, and whether that firearm is sold standard with more than one LCM. Tr. 6/5/2023 44:16–19; 67:6–17.
id. ¶ 12

What is she talking about? That most people don’t buy extra magazines for their firearms? Technically, I guess that is true. My M1 Garand came with zero enblocs. I think I have over 50 of them now. All but a few loaded. My PC-9 came with one magazine. I’ve never even loaded it. I purchased 6 Glock magazines to feed it, and then purchased a Glock with a couple of magazines.

My first AR-15 came with two magazines. One was 5 rounds and the other 10. None of the other AR-15s came with magazines. I don’t know how many magazines I currently have. I still have one 5 round mag, and one 10 round magazine. I do have a few 20 round mags, but most of my magazines are 30 rounds.

It does not matter why The People decide to purchase extra magazines or if they just use the magazine(s) that come with their guns. They have decided that ammunition feeding devices with more than 1, 5, 7, 9, 10, or 15 rounds is what they want, those purchases are protected under the Second Amendment.

Plaintiffs offered only limited anecdotal evidence of LCMs actually being used in self-defense. Mr. Ayoob described an incident in which a law enforcement officer fired thirty-three rounds in pursuit of an armed bank robber. Tr. 5/30/2023 39:24–40:16. On cross-examination, Mr. Ayoob also testified about an incident in which two individuals fired nine and three rounds, respectively, at an armed intruder. Tr. 5/30/2023 56:16–57:14. On re-direct, Mr. Ayoob testified to two other incidents with civilians firing more than ten rounds in self-defense: two brothers who owned a jewelry store and fired between thirty and forty rounds to stop an attempted robbery, and one gun shop owner who used an M16-rifle and a sub-machine gun to stop an attempted robbery. Tr. 5/30/2023 95:15–96:13.
id. ¶ 13

The judge is incorrect in how she categorizes these anecdotal incidents. They are examples of people using their arms to actively defend themselves. They were using those arms for lawful purposes, such as self-defense, by possessing them. They prove The People chose these arms in common use today for lawful purposes.

Conclusion

I’m now behind the curve, here are a couple of YouTube videos that go into just how bad this opinion is.

I might come back to this, but with multiple issues with the k8s cluster resulting in a full day of ClusterFuck and then another 30 minutes of minor CF today. I have not had time to do any more wading through this swamp.



Oregon Firearms Federation, Inc. v. Brown, Judges Opinion

The Judge Said What?

B.L.U.F. An analysis of the horrible opinion out of Oregon where the district Judge decided that arms aren’t covered under the Second Amendment and that there is a history and tradition of requiring government approval before you can exercise your Second Amendment protected rights.

This opinion is 122 pages long. This is not a complete analysis. I don’t think I can stomach that much muck.

Inserted a title and added a “more” block to take the text-wall off the front page


When I originally looked at Judge Karin Immergut, I was hoping for better from her. She was appointed by President Trump. Unfortunately, it appears that her time in liberal cesspools has corrupted her judgement. She has degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, Amherst College, and UC Berkeley School of Law. To say that she was educated in leftest incubator schools is a fair statement.

The Question

Before this Court are two core questions: (1) can the State of Oregon limit the number of bullets to ten, that a law-abiding citizen can fire without reloading; and (2) can the State of Oregon require firearm purchasers to obtain a permit, which imposes various requirements, including a completed background check, safety training, and consideration of mental health status, before purchasing a firearm. After a weeklong bench trial, this Court concludes that the answer to each of these questions is yes. Accordingly, Oregon Ballot Measure 114 is constitutional.
Teter v. Connors, No. 1:19-cv-00183, slip op. ¶ 11 (District Court, D. Hawaii)

This is a horrible statement of the actual questions in the case. 1) Is banning ammunition feeding devices based on characteristics in violation of the Second Amendment protected rights? 2) Is requiring a member of The People to get state approval before they are allowed to purchase constitutional?

Even with her horrid wording, she should not have been able to find that BM114 is constitutional.

Holding

As explained below, Plaintiffs have not shown that the Second Amendment protects large-capacity magazines, defined as magazines capable of firing eleven or more rounds without reloading.
id. ¶ 12

I’ll use the words of Paul Clement et al.:

Just last year, the Supreme Court confirmed once and for all that “the Second Amendment protects the possession and use of weapons that are ‘in common use.’” N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 2128 (2022) (quoting District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 627 (2008)). Rather than respect that clear teaching, Rhode Island veered far in the opposite direction, banning all devices that feed ammunition into semiautomatic firearms and are “capable of holding … more than ten (10) rounds,” R.I. Gen. Laws §11-47.1-2(2), -3(b)(1)(i), even though tens of millions of Americans own hundreds of millions of those devices as integral components of the firearms they keep and bear for self-defense. Under a straightforward application of Bruen, HB6614 is profoundly out of step with our nation’s history of firearm regulation and a violation of the Second Amendment.
id. ¶ 13

She even messes up Supreme Court dicta This Court also finds that the text of Oregon’s permit-to-purchase framework is consistent with the type of regulation that the United States Supreme Court has deemed constitutional under the Second Amendmentid. ¶ 18. The Supreme Court never said that any permitting scheme is constitutional, only that shall issue states are assumed to be constitutional.

The court then went forth and said, “If you get a 2A case, look to the plain text, history and tradition to make your ruling. That means …”

We should not have been surprised because she granted Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety’s motion to intervene based on Federal Rule 24 of Civil Procedures, 24(b).

(b) Permissive Intervention.
(1) In General. On timely motion, the court may permit anyone to intervene who:
(A) is given a conditional right to intervene by a federal statute; or
(B) has a claim or defense that shares with the main action a common question of law or fact.
​Differences Between Facial and As-Applied Challenges to the Constitutionality of a Statute - Bona Law, (last visited Aug. 10, 2023)

I believe that she is referring to 24(b)1(B) has a claim or defense that shares with the main action a common question of law or fact the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety is an anti-gun group that uses emotional blackmail constantly.
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