I’m old enough to remember the events. I remember the Feds telling us that there were no federal snipers pointing guns at the defenders. It was just such a shock to see gun sight camera images of those snipers. I mean, they were clear, and I didn’t know that it was possible with the tech of that time.
There was the follow-on standoff. I did watch the state’s video of the ambush and the death of the one protester.
I was asked to write about that saga. To look into the court cases.
It is unlikely to happen. It falls into the same category of research as Ruby Ridge cases, and the Branch Dividians. Interesting, but a boat load of research that I do not have the resources at the current time.
If somebody wants to send me courts and case numbers, I’ll look into it. My research last night didn’t pop anything except anger at the Wikipedia page.
HB 7011 by Parkinson (D): Criminal Offenses – As introduced, makes a person who illegally transfers a firearm to a minor criminally responsible for any resulting act of mass violence or a threat of mass violence in which the minor threatens to use the firearm. – Amends TCA Title 39. (TEXT) Not liking this one. There is no Men Rea attached to it and assumes the person will understand when a “transfer” is illegal. Also, never knowing how legislators will act in the future, the definition of legal transfer can be changed and a kid talking shit in the interwebs suddenly has an adult over the barrel.
HB 7012 by Lamberth (R): Firearms and Ammunition – As introduced, directs the department of safety to provide free firearm locks to Tennessee residents upon request; requires department-approved handgun safety courses to contain instruction on the safe storage of firearms; exempts the retail sale of firearm safes and firearm safety devices from sales and use taxes beginning November 1, 2023; defines firearm safes and firearm safety devices. – Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 17, Part 13 and Title 67, Chapter 6, Part 3. (TEXT) We have Project ChildSafe as law of the land and I would not mind the NSSF getting involved deeply in it as they have been doing this for years now. And again, I support instruction on safe gun storage because I believe it is more effective than a stupid law mandating it. And the total elimination of sales tax is always welcome and only wish it applied to anything guns.
HB 7015 by Lambert (R): Criminal Procedure – As introduced, expands, from certain violent offenses to any felony offense, the offenses for which a person who has been arrested is required to have a biological specimen taken for the purpose of DNA analysis to determine identification characteristics specific to the person if probable cause exists for the arrest. – Amends TCA Section 40-35-321. (TEXT) A big fat NO on this one. Any shitty cop can arrest you for any felony they can come up with and even it you are found innocent or case dropped, you are still forever in a DNA database as if you were some serial rapist.
B.L.U.F.This case is before Judge Benitez. I believe he has a hearing scheduled for mid-September on the merits of the case. In response to the defendants (bad guys/state) whining that the case should be evaluated through the eyes of an expert or historian. Judge Benitez ordered the defendants to declare their experts and to allow the plaintiffs (good guys) the opportunity to dispose them.
The state went back to the well of Spitzer and Vorenberg for another set of declarations. They added Jennifer M McCutchen to the list of infringement loving experts as well.
(2300 words)
Who Are the Players
Jennifer M McCutchen is an Assistant Professor at the university of St. Thomas, Minnesota.
Dr. McCutchen specializes in Early American History and Native History, with a focus on the themes of gender, power, exchange, and diplomacy. Her current project is an ethnohistorical study of gunpowder in the late eighteenth-century Creek Confederacy.
—Jennifer Monroe McCutchen | History, (last visited Aug. 19, 2023)
Michael Vorenberg, associate professor of history at Brown University. In his words:
Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. The book was a Finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. I am also the author of The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents, published by Bedford/St. Martin’s in 2010. I am the author of a number of articles and essays on Reconstruction and the law. These include: “The 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Beginning of Military Reconstruction,” in Christian Samito, ed., The Greatest and the Grandest Act: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 from Reconstruction to Today (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018); Citizenship and the Thirteenth Amendment: Understanding the Deafening Silence,” in Alexander Tsesis, ed., The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment (Columbia University Press, 2010); “Reconstruction as a Constitutional Crisis,” in Thomas J. Brown, ed., Reconstructions: New Directions in the History of Postbellum America (Oxford University Press, 2006); and “Imagining a Different Reconstruction Constitution,” Civil War History, 51 (Dec. 2005), 416-26.
—Declaration of Micchael Vorenberg, Rhode v. Becerra, No. 3:18-cv-00802 (S.D. Cal.)
We round out our merry band of word weasels with Robert Spitzer, in his words:
I am a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland. I was also a visiting professor at Cornell University for thirty years. I am currently an adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law. I earned my Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. I reside in Williamsburg, Virginia.
I have been studying and writing about gun policy for over thirty years. My first publication on the subject appeared in 1985. Since then, I have published six books and over one hundred articles, papers, and essays on gun policy. My expertise includes the history of gun laws, gun policy in American politics, and related historical, legal, political, and criminological issues. My book, The Politics of Gun Control, has been in print since its initial publication in 1995. It examines firearms policy in the United States through the lenses of history, law, politics, and criminology. The eighth edition of the book was published in 2021 by Routledge Publishers. My two most recent books on gun policy, Guns across America (Oxford University Press, 2015) and The Gun Dilemma (Oxford University Press, 2023), both deal extensively with the study of historical gun laws. I am frequently interviewed and quoted in the national and international media on gun-related matters. For over twenty years, I have been a member of the National Rifle Association and of Brady (formerly, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence).
—Declaration of Robert Spitzer, Rhode v. Becerra, No. 3:18-cv-00802, slip op. ¶ 2,3 (S.D. Cal.)
Do you see the buses on the right? Brady kindly provides and explanation.
23 rented buses which is a greater number of volunteers clowning around on the ground, (about a dozen.)
How long did they spend with this poor show? About an hour? During that time, an average of 1,500 firearms were bought by Law-Abiding citizens with the correspondent loads of ammunition.
Yet they believe they are turning things in their favor.
Sixty-five bills on the House side and about a dozen gun related. Withe the usual IANAL caveat and knowing I am still a virgin on the Volunteer State legislative process, I am going to take a swing at one or more of the bills daily. And no outward Red Flag Bill, but one or two may be considered as letting the camel’s nose under the tent.
And as usual, a direct link to the text of the bill so you can read it for yourself and form an educated opinion.
Let us begin.
HB 7001 by Thompson (D): Firearms and Ammunition – As introduced, specifies that classes that qualify as training for issuance of an enhanced handgun carry permit or concealed handgun carry permit must include training on the use of gun locks. – Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 14; Title 39, Chapter 17 and Chapter 445 of the Public Acts of 2023. (TEXT) Even drafted by a Democrat, I have no issues with instruction on keeping guns safely secured.
HB 7005 by Bulso (R): Schools, Private – As introduced, clarifies that a private school serving students in any of the grades pre-kindergarten through twelve is authorized to adopt a handgun carry policy for the private school’s property. – Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 1 and Title 49, Chapter 50. (TEXT) Not seeing an issue if a private school decided it is OK for staff and parents to carry a firearm in their property. Baby steps.
HB 7010 by Parkinson (D): Firearms and Ammunition – As introduced, creates the Class D felony of knowingly inducing or coercing a minor under 18 to commit theft of a firearm or a robbery or burglary offense involving theft of a firearm. – Amends TCA Title 39. (TEXT) How come this is not already a felony? Not only stealing a gun but ANY kind of felony?
Since its inception, the California ammunition background check has been riding at about a 10.8% rejection rate.
Of that, more than 50% were in error. We don’t know if the remaining people were actually prohibited, or if they just didn’t bother to go to the trouble of doing the paperwork.
About 7,500 individuals are rejected each month.
The good news is that the CA DoJ reports that doing all that to law-abiding, responsible citizens resulted in 51 investigations. Those 51 investigations resulted in 15 individuals being arrested.
The state seized 152 firearms, 12 “ghost gun parts”, 237 magazines, and 78,742 rounds of ammunition.
That translates to 3 firearms on average per investigation and 1,500 rounds of ammo.
I was in an institutional kitchen where a meal was being prepared. I saw something that made me cringe in revulsion: They were boiling ribs.
I saw them being pulled out, dripping and steaming from the unholy bath and placed upon steel containers to “rest” but not in peace and then buried which should have been the decent treatment, but to wait for the next unholy step.
Next, they were splashed with what I believe it was that vile chemical secretion known as Liquid Smoke and turned over till the already-tortured slabs were covered with it. What followed next was gallons of alleged BBQ sauce, ribs turned over again and the container covered till it was time to serve the desecrated pork remains to the public.
