McDonald gets Cert

The Supreme Court has chosen to hear McDonald v. Chicago next session.  Neither NRA v. Chicago or Maloney v. Rice have been consolidated with it.  As it stands, we're left with Gura's case, which is the strongest and, potentially, the most wide-reaching.

According to Gura, opening briefs are due November 16, and we can expect oral arguments in February.  A decision will be reached by June.

The scuttlebutt is that we'll win.  This will be an interesting test for Justice Sotomayor, as she chose in Maloney to refuse incorporation based on precedent.  The only problem with the Supreme Court doing so is that the precedents against incorporation are incomptetent, morally loathsome and generally indefensible.  It will take a huge intellectual stretch for the Court to deny incorporation based on precedent.

As a Supreme Court Justice, Sotomayor no longer has the option of waffling.  She'll have to take a stand one way or the other, and what she decides here will tell us more about her character and judicial philosophy than the Congressional hearings did.

You tell me that you've heard every sound there is

I doubt there's ever been a piece of music that's had as much of an effect on my life as Revolver.  Never mind that it was recorded half a decade before I was born.  In fact, I wouldn't hear it until the early 1980's, when the survivors of the "psychedelic culture" supposedly inspired by this record had gone on to become corporate raiders and investment bankers.

According to some sources, the Beatles were somewhat influential on musical trends and cultural movements in the late 1960's.  I wasn't around for that, and I couldn't have cared less.  What attracted me to them was the sheer talent they had, and the quality of their output, which has never been matched.

Like just about everyone else, I've heard their early output all my life.  It's hardwired into our cultural DNA.  I wasn't as familiar with their middle-period input until a friend gave me a copy of Revolver.  It was the old Capitol mono mix, and I'd end up literally wearing it out as I pored over every minute detail month after month.  To this day, I know every note and nuance of the record.

With this record, the Beatles had gone from catchy pop band to true artists and innovators.  We take many of the studio techniques they used for granted today, but on Revolver, they were revolutionary.  More to the point, they were judiciously used to complement a suite of nearly perfect songs.

Then 1987 came, and I got to hear the record in stereo when their catalog was issued on Compact Disc.  To say the least, I was disappointed.  I imagine that the CD masters were what George Martin thought people expected, but I found them to be harsh, brittle and completely sterile.

We'd be stuck with those for another twenty years.

Sharks in the Water

Lots of people are openly carrying guns to political rallies.  It's something of a big deal at the moment, what with a Chief Executive blatantly ignoring the will of the people.

Still, overlapping the Open Carry movement with other causes is a bit disingenuous.   These rallies are about health care, taxation and debt rather than the 2nd Amendment.  The signal is lost in the noise, and the media doesn't hesitate to ask the hysterical question, "what's that weirdo doing here with a gun?"

Fortunately, the whole thing has gone on without incident or accident.  When the media has gotten snippy, the rebuttals have been heard.

Let's just be very careful, folks.  We need to be sure that none of this ends up being interpreted as threat rather than demonstration.

And we need to be wary of those among the ranks harboring less-than-noble intentions.

Form Letter for "OMG GUNZ B4N!"

Frankly, I'm really sick of this whole thing.  There's a handy website called Google that dispatches these rumors with a simple query, but it seems that people would rather fly into hysterics over innuendo than check facts.


I am responding to the numerous daily emails I get about the matter by simply cutting and pasting the following into the reply box.  I also have a few printed copies to hand out to address personal queries.  Feel free to reprint and use this.


You do not, and will not, have to report your guns on your income tax forms.

This is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst, an outright lie. SB-2099 was introduced in 2000 by Senator Jack Reed. It never went anywhere, and it does not exist in the current legislature.

There is no Federal licensing or registration scheme pending on handguns.

H.R. 45 (also referred to as the “Blair Holt Act”) is dead. Congressman Bobby Rush has been pushing this since 2000, and it has never gained any traction in the legislature. The current version has not accrued one single co-sponsor since its (re)introduction in January.

Please do not spread rumors of these bills around. If anyone tries to tell you these bills are a threat, please correct them.

This is the equivalent of “crying wolf,” and it distracts all of us from the endeavor of protecting our Second Amendment rights from real threats, should they arise.

"Heaven will smell like the airport"

I've been involved with music most of my life.  I don't recall when it began, but I can clearly remember first hearing Giant Steps and the Bartok quartets.  Once in a great while, a piece of music will give me an epiphany as strong as the first pangs of love, something majestic and transcendent.

From adolescence on, I set about trying to create something that could generate that sort of reaction.  I think I came close a few times.  In one medium or another, I think we all get that chance a few times in our lives.

Neko Case certainly has.  Several times, she's nailed it perfectly.

Team Assegai

Ah, Wipeout.  It's only been ten years since the last proper release from the series game on home consoles.

Argumentum ad Metum

Garen Wintemute is at it again. For those of you just joining us, he's a doctor at the University of California Davis Center who made his mark turning the gun-control debate from a political issue into one of perceived public health back in the early 1990's.

This week, he published a study entitled Inside Gun Shows: What goes on When Everybody Thinks Nobody's Watching. He was assisted by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, which received $175,000 from the Joyce Foundation (pdf) this year for "Gun Violence" research.

As is to be expected, the "research" here consists almost entirely of take-my-word-for-it anecdotes.  The recovering academic in me took immediate notice of the fact that there are very few citations or statistics presented, and that many of those are self-referential (1).