Yobbery in the UK

News comes this week that Gun crimes in England have doubled over the last decade.

In Lancashire alone, the rate has risen by nearly 600%.  London police are breaking with age-old  tradition by sending out routine armed patrols, armed with Glock 17's and H&K MP-5's.  Previously, the only armed officers in the Metropolitan area were the CO19 tactics units.

By all accounts, the United Kingdom should be relatively unscathed by gun violence.  The English government has been abridging its citizens' rights to firearms ownership by increasing degrees since the 1903 Pistols Act.

Following the 1996 Dunblane Massacre, English gun control efforts came to their peak.  The Firearms Act of 1997 outlawed nearly all functional firearms in civilian hands, and English citizens were left with no choice but to turn in their guns.  The result was the largest peacetime confiscation of firearms I can recall, and it resulted in the complete annihilation of what was once a thriving gun culture.

The ostensible aim was to reduce violent crime.  As shown this week, the measurable result was failure.

So, what went wrong?

Some Bargains Aren't

Gun show reloads strike again.  Fortunately, the gun was intact.



This is a casing from a 9mm reload, fired from a Glock 19.  It's a standard-pressure, 115gr FMJ sold in bulk at local gun shows.  What you're looking at is a case-head failure.  This can break a gun really quick.

It can also lead to severe injury.  Saving a few bucks isn't worth taking such risks.

Citizen's Arrest

I recently spoke with a lady whose daughter had been the victim of an attempted abduction.  The daughter was able to repel her attacker, and the mother was able to get a description of the perpetrator and the license-plate number of his vehicle.

A crisis was averted, and thanks to a keen sense of observation on the mother's part, the criminal will likely be apprehended in short order.

The mother has a license to carry a firearm.  In playing the events over in her head, it occurred to her that she might have been justified in using her weapon to hold the man for the police.  She asked me about it, and I had to give an honest answer.

Painful as it may be to hear, that answer is an emphatic "no."

The Myth of "Non Lethal"

Ever since Taurus started marketing this silly gun, I've been saying something like this would happen:

The gun, a model known as "The Judge," was loaded with bird shot, and Davis took aim at her husband and emptied all five of the weapon's chambers as he fled through the yard, Bonnett said. He was hit in the upper and lower back by two blasts before escaping, Bonnett said.

Connie Davis shot her husband after he admitted to a prior affair.  Full stop.

It doesn't matter that the loads were likely insufficient for causing serious bodily harm.  Ms. Davis leveled a deadly weapon at another human being and pulled the trigger.  That's the salient fact, and it illustrates my problem with the Taurus Judge.

Cobb County GFL Renewal

Just a heads-up for anyone applying for a Georgia Firearms License in Cobb County: my recent renewal took fifteen days.  I applied on 09/28 and received it today.  That's eleven business days.

In truth, the license was issued 10/06, so make that six business days.  Mark that as a huge improvement in the four-month wait I endured when I renewed in 2005.

Silly thing still looks like it was printed and laminated by an elemetary-school art class.  Fulton County has started issuing hard plastic licenses that look more professional, and which are far easier to fit in a wallet, but I guess I'm stuck with this one until 2014.

Sunday Info Dump

New Ahrends stocks for one of the S&W Combat Magnums. The wood is Cordia.

A few days ago, I spoke to a friend who's a lawyer friendly to the LGBT cause in Atlanta, and the scuttlebutt is that there's an amicus curiae brief in favor of the appellants in McDonald v Chicago. We're going to be keeping some strange...ahem...bedfellows on this one.

Which means two things. First off, I need to get a good shave and iron a shirt if I'm to hang with that crowd!

Second, people from all political sectors are going to be interested in the outcome. This case is about an entire doctrine of Constitutional interpretation; the 2nd Amendment is only a vehicle.

All of which means we've got to be accepting and open-minded when dealing with our new allies. This is a chance to truly "mainstream" the 2nd Amendment in the pantheon of civil rights, not just in the courts, but in public opinion. Every chance we get counts, but this is the big one, gang.

Where's My Nobel?

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Price this morning.

I've no idea why.

Actually, I do.

He's not George W. Bush.

No, that really is the reason: I'm not being the least bit flippant or cynical.  The Left in this country did a thorough and enthusiastic job of painting the former President as a monster and a warmonger, and of course, Northern and Western Europe were glad to accept that picture.

So, now we've got a more "cosmopolitan" Chief Exectutive, a man who pushed the Camelot image to the hilt in his campaign and promised to "reach out" to the world, and the navel-gazing Norse progressives couldn't be happier.

After all, he buys fully into their pet environmental policies, soundly echoing previous winner Al Gore.  He wasted no time in going on a world tour to apologize for our supposed failures as a country, going so far as to bow deferentially to Saudi princes.  Never mind that we're still in Iraq, long after he'd promised to remove troops, or that we're still in the process of building troop levels in Afghanistan.

Nope.  Apparently, he's a man of peace despite this.  Despite the ~150 other people who could have been chosen.

Many people are asking what he did to deserve this, and even among the Left, the answer is largely, "nothing."

In fact, the answer is actually, "absolutely nothing."

You see, the nominations are made February 1st.  President Obama had only been President Obama for a few days.  He didn't have a chance to do anything.

This isn't recognition; it's cheerleading, or the most transparent and ridiculous sort.  When it was awarded to Al Gore for his wildly inaccurate and discredited movie, I observed that the Nobel Prize had lost a great deal of credibility.  If there was any doubt, today's award certainly removes it.

Tragedy and a New Low for the AJC

Last year, Meleanie Hain made headlines when she openly carried a firearm to her daughter's soccer game in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.  She broke no laws in doing so, but found herself in a legal battle with local officials, which she won in time.

Evidently, there were problems in her household, and last night, she and her husband were found shot dead in their home.  The PAFOA has a thread running in which people who knew her personally are discussing the case.  At the moment, few hard facts about the situation are available.

But that doesn't stop Cynthia Tucker from turning the issue into easy political fodder.

Before the facts are in, before police have released the particulars, Ms. Tucker has used the incident as fuel for an editorial on gun regulation.  She should be ashamed of herself.

Obviously, she has an obligation to put a certain amount of ink to paper, but nothing justifies capitalizing on a tragedy in such a way.

She is commenting--and getting paid to do so--on an event that is still scant on facts, and one that did not even occur in Georgia. Is there no city-level corruption, budget shortfall, crime or woe in Atlanta at the moment, or has she just run out of ideas?  Really, is it that easy to get a Pulitzer nowadays?

Whatever the case, any decent person, journalist or not, should spare Ms. Hain’s family the additional grief and show a little respect for the dead.  I've little use for Ms. Tucker, or the newspaper for which she writes, but this is unacceptable. 

I urge everyone reading this to contact the editors of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and register their disgust.

Edit:  As of this afternoon, reports are that Hain and her husband had been dealing with marital problems for quite some time.  One of their three children told witnesses that the husband shot her.  She leaves behind a 10-year-old son and two daughters, aged 2 and 6.  Scott, her husband, was a parole officer and likely had a government-issued firearm of his own.

Prominence and Permanence

As the we prepare to reignite the debate on the meaning and implications of the Privileges or Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment, we find ourselves reaching back to the 19th century for guidance and interpretation.

From the Georgia Supreme Court, we have two interesting pre-Civil War precendents.  In Nunn v. State, Chief Justice Joseph H. Lumpkin nullified a state-level handgun ban by interpreting the 2nd Amendment as an injunction against all governments, as opposed to a limitation only on Federal powers.  Nunn v. State has gained quite a bit of notoriety over the last few years, and is likely to be cited in the arguments for McDonald v. Chicago.

Lumpkin subsequently revisited the issue in Campbell v. The State of Georgia.  James Campbell was convicted of voluntary manslaughter based in part on the deathbed testimony of one Alfred Mays.  Campbell's attorneys argued that Mays' testimony was inadmissible as evidence as its use would have contravened the 6th Amendment right of Campbell to be confronted by witnesses against him.

Dead men may tell tales, but they cannot address a jury.  Prosecutors argued that the right to confront witnesses did not bind the State courts since the Bill of Rights did not enjoin the States.  Though affirming the judgement of Judge Starnes based on other evidence, Justice Lumpkin took ample opportunity to refute the exclusionary argument.

While the amendments to the Constitution of the United States were primarily intended to be restrictive upon the powers of the General Government, and not the Legislatures of the several States--yet they are "declaratory" of great principles of civil liberty, which neither the national nor the State governments can infringe. (...) The right of a party accused of a crime, to meet the witnesses against him, face to face, is no new principle. It is coeval with the Common Law. Its recognition in the Constitution was intended for the two-fold purposes of giving it prominence and permanence.

They Walk Among Us

This is not the actual person, but it's pretty close.  Don't call me with stuff like this at 10:15 on a Saturday morning.  I haven't had my coffee yet.

Creepy Stranger:  "You ever shot a Desert Eagle?"

Me:  "Yep."

Creepy Stranger:  "That's bad ass, ain't it?"

Me:  "It's...um...different.  Can I help you with something?"

Creepy Stranger:  "You know, I carried one when I was in Desert Storm, or as we called it, 'Desert Joke.'  I was in the first chopper that touched down."

Me:  "Folks who served there might not appreciate..."

Creepy Stranger:  "I can say what I want.  I was Special Force.

Incorporation: a Brief Primer

McDonald v. Chicago has officially been docketed, case number 08-1521.  Notice the wording of the question presented:

Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses.

Though the Due Process clause is mentioned as a fallback approach, Gura's case hinges almost entirely on the Privileges or Immunities clause.

Ideally, we'll see Slaughterhouse overruled and the resurrection of the Privileges or Immunities clause it so wrongly gutted.  Cruikshank and Presser would logically follow, and we'll see a return to the total incorporation model.

Flower

I can see why some folks wouldn't care for this game. You can't dual-wield weapons, the team deathmatch mode is sorely lacking, and the final boss is a pushover.

If that last sentence meant nothing to you, then you'll likely enjoy it.