The ACLU blog post on the Heller decision has racked up 150 comments so far. Only one gives mild support of the ACLU position. Most are just as toxic as my comment (see also my blog post).

I wonder if they will get the message. I doubted it at first but now I'm beginning to wonder. Even incredibly bigoted newspaper editorials against gun owners get a small percentage of people supporting them.

Interesting stuff. The VPC blog author is really something special.

He/she must have borrowed Ronnie Barrett's time machine to dig this one up.

We look forward to showing him ‘bitter'. Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment. Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories. I can assure him he’s wrong on both.

Chris Cox
NRA chief lobbyist.
July 1, 2008
NRA Plans $40M Campaign Blitz
[Even us a red-necked knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, can see Obama is the enemy of gun owners. Cox and company are just getting the facts out.--Joe]

At 21:14 PDT the last open position for Boomershoot 2009 filled up. From the moment registration was wide open (2008 participants got a 24 hour head start) until it was full took eight days, four hours, and thirty seven minutes.

There will be people that can't make it for health, work, family, and financial reasons so don't give up. Read what is says here about the "waiting list". There are also two positions that have been donated to the King County Friends of the NRA which will be auctioned off early next year sometime.

I also know some bloggers who have a "big tent" and might accept a few more people to share their shooting positions.

The ACLU has a blog posting explaining their position on the 2^nd Amendment in a post Heller world:

So, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about the ACLU’s stance on the Second Amendment. For those of you who didn’t catch our response in the blog comments, here it is again:

The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.

As always, we welcome your comments.

My comment is awaiting moderation. I wonder just how welcome it will be. I give it to you here in case it doesn't see the light of day:

Fortunately it is the Supreme Court and not organizations such as the KKK or the ACLU that is the binding interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.

We now have the ACLU explicitly denying what the Supreme courts calls a specific enumerated right. This is even more egregious than the KKK demanding segregated bus seating, water fountains, and restrooms since the Constitution doesn't enumerate the right for integration of public and private accommodations.

I had supported the ACLU in their support of the KKK because I thought the issue was one of free speech. Perhaps I was wrong in my assumption. Perhaps the issue was the ACLU enjoys the company of similarly minded bigots.

Update: They posted my comment along with many others. The last time I looked all the comments were very critical of the postion the ACLU has taken.

Via Sebastian we find out the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law angle is being used in the San Fransisco lawsuit.

I would rather the Federal Marshals showed up and arrested a bunch of them but I’m still smiling. It’s a step in the right direction.

There is a certain amount of truth to this:

Partisans on both sides will argue about whether Mr. Obama’s equivocation represents a clarification or a reversal of his previous statements on the subject. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. Far more important is that the gradual disintegration of the gun control movement that once drove Democratic politics is now pretty much complete. For decades, the true meaning of the Second Amendment has been the subject of wrenching public debate. But last Thursday, when the Court expressly and historically extended the right of gun ownership to private citizens, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president merely shrugged.

Compare what Obama has been saying about guns to what Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and many others were saying in the mid-90's. We are winning. We have landed on the beach and are advancing but we have not won.

The bigots still need to be put in their place. And that place must be political extinction. They must share the same small and narrow-minded corner of history as the KKK. It's up to us to make it happen. We do that by reminding the people in the middle that these bigots are trying to deny people "a specific enumerated right" (Scalia's words and you should adopt them) in the Bill of Rights. This is stronger than the right to vote. This is the equivalent of someone attempting to deny someone free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (again the courts specific examples which the 2^nd Amendment is on par with). Just like the Democrats were the party of the KKK 80 years ago Democrats are now the party of gun control. Those bigots must be made to feel just as unwelcome in any major political party as the KKK is today.

The core issue of "judicial scrutiny" is now established -- better than we had dreamed -- in what will be known as Famous Footnote #27 (p56). Laws impinging on the Second Amendment can receive no lower level of review than any other "specific enumerated right" such as free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (the Court's list of examples).

This is a tremendous win, and overlooked in all initial reviews I've seen. Attorney Mike Anthony was the first to spot it, way to go Mike. "Strict scrutiny," which many folks sought, is a term without formal definition that could prove problematic. I was hoping for a test of some sort and got more than I hoped for. By recognizing 2A as a "specific enumerated right" the majority ties 2A to the rigid standards and precedents of our most cherished rights. That's as strong as there is. Very clever indeed.

Alan Korwin
June 30, 2008
Heller Decision -- Deeper Analysis
[Korwin is a lawyer specializing in gun laws (www.gunlaws.com). Take what he has to say seriously.--Joe]

Doing a Google blog search for "schumer" (as of right now) yields my post in the number 31 position.

How did I discover this? Via my sitemeter I discovered someone at the U.S. Senate had done such a search:

Domain Name		senate.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP Address		156.33.63.# (U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms)
ISP		U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Virginia City  :  Arlington Lat/Long  :  38.8782, -77.1054 (Map) Distance  :  2,068 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Jun 30 2008 11:38:02 am
Last Page View		Jun 30 2008 11:38:02 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://blogsearch.go...ring=d&sa=N&start=30
Search Engine		blogsearch.google.com
Search Words		schumer
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...tASlipperySlope.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...tASlipperySlope.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Jun 30 2008 2:38:02 pm
Visit Number		324,849

I've mentioned this before but a reminder that this is your last chance to vote for me can't hurt.

The back story:

There were 40 gun bloggers, including myself, that participated in the 2nd Amendment Blogger Bash at the NRA Convention last month. There is now a contest to select 10 of those bloggers to participate in “Gun Blogger Summer Camp”.

Action item:

Would you please vote for me? Go here and find “The View From North Central Idaho” near the bottom of the list: http://www.para-usa.com/new/special/blogger_contest06-08.php#vote click on the radio button and submit it. You don’t have to put in your address and phone number unless you would like a chance at attending the camp as well (one lucky voter will get to attend with the blogger winners).

Please do it today. This is the last day of the contest.

Thanks!

We have lots of evidence that Obama is just another anti-gun bigot but some of his statements deserve more attention.

From here we have:

I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people's traditions.

Emphasis added. Notice how he switches from "illegal handgun usage" to taking "illegal handguns"? This is the language of weasels. People use guns illegally. But Obama says he wants to take handguns off the streets. He is attacking the wrong thing and he is attempting to confuse the issue.

And from here we have:

...he claimed to have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms" — while also seeing the need for "common-sense, effective safety measures" to protect "crime-ravaged communities."

And:

"I'm a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms. I'm a believer in homeowners having a firearm to protect their home and their family," Obama said. "It's hard for me to find a rationale for having a 17-clip semiautomatic." http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=1AE9B6AE-D8A7-6619-6DA493C9771D0676

Since these "common-sense effective safety measures" include bans on numerous types of firearms this is like saying he supports the 13^th Amendment but thinks it's okay for some communities to keep slaves as long as their skin is a certain color.

Via Xenia's fiancée John.

I'm not paranoid, everyone is just plotting against me to make me think I am.

Anthony Q. Bachler
June 16, 2008

U.S. versus Miller is essentially gone as guidance for interpreting the 2^nd Amendment. To replace it we have the much superior D.C. v. Heller.

To celebrate Kimberly Joe and Joseph Kim went out to the Boomershoot site. This is their story told with pictures.

This is Kimberly Joe making explosives and putting it in zip lock bags and cardboard boxes.

This is the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives required for appropriate celebration.

Here is the Firearm portion of the celebration.

This is end of the AT&E.

Remnants of Miller.

Remnants of the explosives.

Remnants of the tobacco.

Shooters and firearms post Miller and Heller.

Though the legal system has mostly consoled and protected batterers, when a woman is being beaten, it's the batterer who has to be stopped; as Malcolm X used to say, by any means necessary--a principle women, all women, had better learn. A woman has a right to her own bed, a home she can't be thrown out of and for her body not to be ransacked and broken into. She has a right to safe refuge, to expect her family and friends to stop the batterer--by law or force--before she's dead. She has a constitutional right to a gun and a legal right to kill if she believes she's going to be killed. And a batterer's repeated assaults should lawfully be taken as intent to kill.

Andrea Dworkin
Trying to Flee
Los Angeles Times
October 8, 1995
[It's rare that I would agree with Ms. Dworkin but this time we are in perfect alignment. As we advance through the enemy territory in a post Heller world we need to claim this demographic. Of all the potential supporters and voters women are the single largest and easiest to convert to friends. Let's make the most of it.--Joe]

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Justice Antonin Scalia
June 26, 2008
District of Columbia et al. v. Heller
Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit.

Despite getting only about three hours of sleep on Wednesday night last night I spent quite a bit of time chatting in IM with Sean and exchanging emails with Jeff Knox (of the Firearms Coalition) until well after midnight. One of the things Jeff told me was that his dad, Neal Knox, had put something similar to my Just One Question on bumper stickers in the late '70s:

Where has a gun law reduced crime?

It works for me. As usual, we stand on the shoulders of giants whether we realize it or not.

He also told a story from Chris Knox (here just below the Pink Pistol link) similar to some other stuff I have said about Pink Pistols, etc.:

During a water cooler discussion about guns an openly homosexual co-worker of mine was asked whether he held a CCW permit. "I'm a faggot in Phoenix," he replied. "Do the math!" As with women, the self defense angle gets very close to home for the homosexual community.

Some are calling the Heller ruling a slippery slope. And the lawsuits being filed (and here) might be used as evidence for that claim.

I don't see it quite that way. It's more as I told Sean last night in IM:

It's like we have landed on Normandy, held, and advanced a couple miles with materials, men, and supplies pouring in behind us.

It's going to be a very long and difficult fight. Every challenge to their bigoted beliefs will be a rallying cry for them. They will scream and yell, and refuse to obey the law of the land as long as they can. It will be little different than when blacks were declared equal citizens and they were still stopped for driving while black, jailed, beaten, and even convicted in kangaroo courts on phony charges. It won't be until we start convicting the bigots on 18 USC 241 and 242 (the rough equivalent of the Nuremberg trials in my Normandy analogy) will they start to back off.

BTW: A little birdie told me there will be more lawsuits announced on Monday. This is going to be very broad front war. We outnumber them and can out supply them. We can exhaust their resources, diminish their ability to put up effective resistance, and sap their will to fight. Some will even surrender without putting up a fight.

I'm reminded of the words of Charles Schumer:

We're here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true! We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!

U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer
November 30, 1993
NBC Nightly News

Eat them Chucky!

This seems like as good a time as any to bring this to peoples attention:

I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

Antonin Scalia
September 2004

In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

Justice Antonin Scalia
June 26, 2008
District of Columbia et al. v. Heller
Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit.
[It sounds to me like D.C. just became a shall issue politicial entity. That's overstating things just a little but not by much.--Joe]

The ink isn't dry on the Heller decision and we have already attacked the bigots in Chicago.

I was worried when I first heard of it. I was worried it was someone that didn't know what they were doing and they would mess it up. The Second Amendment Foundation is involved which helped ease my worry some. Reading the entire complaint I broke out into a big smile. I can hear Alan Gottlieb's mischievous voice and carefully calculated plan coming through. Then at the very end I saw the attorney--Alan Gura.

As Sean just told me in IM, "Yeah, baby! Sleep well, Mayor Daley".

But that's not all! The NRA is on the attack in California as well and perhaps New York. There should not be any rest for the wicked.

This is going to be great for the election in November too. It will have a very strong component of the gun rights issues. And I think we can get out the votes better than the other side can. Plus with the Heller decision on our side with Obama flip-flopping it's going to look bad for him.

I've discussed the ACLU and gun rights before and have been anxiously wondering how they would take it once the individual right issue was "clarified" for them. If they get on board with us then that would be really, really big.

Others have expressed an interest in what the ACLU has to say on the Heller decision. It's not much but what do you expect on day one of a new era? They are suffering some severe cognitive dissidence right now. They have to decide if they want to be intelluctually honest or if they want to keep their donors.

I think I'll write them a letter very similar to this one to help get the point across.

Today daughter Kim received her concealed weapons permit (as they are called in Idaho). She called me up a couple minutes after getting the mail and was so excited I could barely understand her.

Don't mess with my daughter:

Expect them to do anything within their power to prevent such an outcome, hide it, redefine it, or try to take credit for it somehow.  Keep a sharp eye.

Aside from throwing out the D.C. ban there is other good stuff for future victories in the decision:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

...

Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

...

We think that JUSTICE GINSBURG accurately captured the natural meaning of “bear arms.” Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes participation in a structured military organization. From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.

...

[I]t has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .

I'm only about 1/5 of the way through and I have to save the rest for later. I have a dentist appointment and work to do.

Find them here.

I skpped to the bottom and found something I expected by Justice Breyer:

The argument about method, however, is by far the less important argument surrounding today’s decision. Far more important are the unfortunate consequences that today’s decision is likely to spawn. Not least of these, as I have said, is the fact that the decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States. I can find no sound legal basis for launching the courts on so formidable and potentially dangerous a mission.

Simply because it will be disruptive to existing (unconstitional) laws Breyer thinks that is a valid reason to allow the D.C. ban to stand. Try that reasoning on laws which mandate where minorities sit on a bus or which drinking fountains they can use and see what people think.

10:12 Tom Goldstein - Heller affirmed.

SCOTUSblog
June 26, 2008
LiveBlog: Opinions | 6.26.08

In a few hours my world will change. I've been actively involved in gun rights since Bill Clinton (spit, spit) was elected. He was the reason I bought my first gun. My second gun was because of Diana Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and of course Clinton again. A significant part of Boomershoot and the website for Boomershoot was because of a law pushed through by Diane Feinstein.

Ruby Ridge was a motivator for my first gun too. I lived just a few miles from where that went down and know things that were never in the news reports. By the time the Butcher of Waco did her thing I was fully immersed and, as Barb will tell you, very difficult to live with.

Those were very dark days. Many leaders in the gun rights movement believed we had lost and were only fighting a holding action that merely slowed down the inevitable. I remember one prediction in the news group talk.politics.guns that captured the sentiments of many at the time. I didn't save a copy because I didn't want that sort of thing on my computer. I just went looking for it in the news groups archive--it took me 45 minutes to find it:

Robert Lewis Glendenning
Sep 4 1994, 10:39 am

Newsgroups: alt.politics.org.batf, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns, alt.conspiracy
From: rlgle...@netcom.com (Robert Lewis Glendenning)
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 1994 16:21:41 GMT
Local: Sun, Sep 4 1994 9:21 am
Subject: Re: The Revolution

During the next 3 to 5 years, the Supreme Court will rule on a gun
case. This case will have national media attention, and every gun owner,
libertarian and proto-revolutionary will be watching closely.

If they rule by the plain meaning of the Constitution, it will be a
signal that we are moving back to Constitutional rule.

If they rule for the federal government, it will be a signal that
the gov has permanently escaped the Constitution. In this case,
I expect:

1) That every major federal building in the US outside of WDC and
army bases will be burned in the next 48 hours.

2) That the Federal gov's ability to enforce laws will be restricted
by the lack of anybody willing to identify themselves as a federal
employee.

3) That many states will pass resolutions demanding return to
Constitutional gov, and opting out of federal control via the 10th.

4) That the US Congress capitulates by passing a revolution
pledging return to the Constitution, and listing a preliminary set
of laws which they intend to repeal. This list will include all
Federal gun laws.

Note that this is as close to a bloodless revolution as one can
imagine.

In preparation for these events, may I suggest that you learn all
about your local federal buildings?

Lew
--
Lew Glendenning rlgle...@netcom.com
The CONSTITUTION, the WHOLE CONSTITUTION, and NOTHING BUT the CONSTITUTION.

We are now hours from that moment Glendenning predicted. What will be the result? The only thing I am certain of is that neither of predicted potential outcomes will come to pass. Even if the Heller decision goes against us all the Federal buildings will be standing 48 hours and even 48 weeks later--barring an severe earthquake someplace. Overturning the D.C. gun ban and declaring the 2nd Amendment is an individual right won't put the government "back on the path to righteousness" or any such thing.

Some people have been predicting (here and here for example) a favorable ruling on Heller will mean the anti-gun forces will find it difficult to raise money and get people excited if they know they can't actually ban guns. Sort of like if they can't win the fight with a knock-out they won't even bother to stay in the ring and knock all the teeth out of their opponent. I'm not convinced of this.

When the south lost the war of northern aggression and all their slaves were freed did they suddenly start treating blacks as equals? No. They paid little regard to the Federal laws protecting blacks as they discriminated against, scorned, beat, and lynched blacks for 100 years after that decision was made. I believe we could still have a 100 years of political fighting ahead of us still. It could, for all practical purposes, be an eternal fight.

I don't really think freedom is a natural state of mankind. Some semblance of freedom has only really existed for about 200 hundred years in a relatively small portion of the human population out of the roughly two thousand years that we have any sort of written history. I think the concept of "the tribe" is more important that the individual was a powerful meme that enabled our distant ancestors to be more successful than their individualist neighbors. That concept selected for anti-freedom mindset at a fundamental level in the personality of the human race. It was only in a small subset of the world population that the individual, the smallest minority, was regarded as important as "the tribe". That resulted in a remarkable burst of economic and personal freedom that, in the big picture, was extremely shocking.

Western culture developed the concept of individual freedom and, in essence, conquered the world. It went against the inherent personality of all the civilizations and tribes before it. We did not breed that out of the human mind as that concept took root and flourished. At best it was suppressed in a sufficient number for a short (on the civilization scale) time. The group that values the individual is less inclined to kill or put the anti-individual person at a serious disadvantage of passing on their genes than the other way around. Hence you can think of the meme of individual freedom as sort of a recessive gene. The "tribe is more important" meme is more like a dominate gene. Hence freedom is likely to always be unfinished business.

So how will a positive Heller ruling affect us? As I said in my first line my world will change. I will be in a better position to claim the anti-gun people are bigots just like those that promoted the Jim Crow laws against blacks. If we are to come close to anything resembling a complete victory I believe that meme will be the key. We have to drive those bigots into political extinction. We can, and probably must, leverage concepts that already resonate with the majority of people. The comparison to minority (non-whites, Jews, gays, women, etc.) rights of all types is the most winning strategy I can think of. Sure the courts and legislatures will need to overthrow the existing repressive laws against us but that only comes after the public opinion has changed. They aren't leaders. They are servants of the people and only enforce the will of the people. To win we must make the will of the people match our mindset. That is the job ahead of us.

If Heller goes against us my world will change in a different way. I don't want to contemplate that scenario. That is the stuff of nightmares and dark ages.

I expect we will have some semblance of a win but still I'm sad. It could just be the late hour as I write this but a significant component is the freedom fighters that carried the fight for decades before I ever said a word or donated a single penny to the cause who didn't make it to see this day. Neal Knox (and here) especially comes to mind. I met and talked to him at two different Gun Rights Policy Conferences. I was very, very impressed by him and I wish he could have seen this day. The best tribute we can pay to him is to win the fight.

Let's celebrate and analyze the ruling for a few days then--Let's roll.

I changed a setting on my blog a few days ago and apparently there are some bugs associated with that feature.

It turns out that some of my blog posted only showed up for me. I wondered why some of my posts didn't get the attention I though they should. Now I realized that  their invisibility contributed to that.

The rest of the world was being deprived. Once I realized this could mean the end of the world as we know it I changed the setting back to the original. Still the postings did not show up. I finally hand edited the .xml and the missing posts appeared. The RSS feed still didn't work but it was 1:30 AM and I went to bed anyway. This morning I found another field in the .xml that needed to be fixed so I went all geeky on that the RSS feed was populated and probably everyone is wondering, "Where did that come from?"

So now you know. I'm using a "daily build" of software under development and, surprise, surprise, it has bugs. But you probably already knew that from all the time my blog waits several minutes to respond or just plain says, "Service unavailable." Now that Boomershoot 2009 registration is almost complete maybe I can spend some time on upgrading my blog software.

Put simply, if the phrase "the people" connotes an individual guarantee in the First and Fourth Amendments, it logically follows that the same term, used in the same document (the Bill of Rights), in the same series of amendments within that document, should also be construed as guaranteeing the preservation of an individual, not "collective" right.

The next portion of the operative clause necessary to the determination of whose right the Second Amendment protects is the sentence predicate -- "shall not be infringed." This language indicates that "the right to keep and bear arms" was not created in the Amendment, but rather preserved by it. Id. at 382. The right to keep and bear arms was viewed at the founding as a natural right that preexisted the formation of the national government. Thus, the Second Amendment was guaranteeing its preservation by providing that it "shall not be infringed." Case law from the late-nineteenth century expounding on the purpose for the Bill of Rights supports this interpretation of its plain meaning.

Daryl Manhart
February 11, 2008
Brief of Maricopa county attorney’s office and other prosecutor agencies as amici curiae in support of respondent.
[No Heller decision today. We are assured, by the Chief Justice, that the Heller decision will be announced tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

It was suggested to me by a fellow activist that we should celebrate the decision, assuming we get the expected result, by going out and drinking Miller beer. In a sense it would be "Miller Time". I'm not much of a drinker of any type of alcohol so one of the first things I will be doing is going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. The next non-work thing I'll be doing is having lunch with a fellow gun-nut. Then in the evening my Lautenberg victim friend is coming over to get his guns back. All his legal troubles have been resolved in a satisfactory manner--other than the expenditure of way too much money and time.--Joe]

I never been called this before:

Joe Huffman, the full-throated Second Amendment activist

For some reason that brings to mind "deep throat" and there is no version of that phrase that applies to me. Particularly in the context of the Pink Pistols as was the case in this post.

It must be something new. The rest of the post was nice. I think it was a compliment.

I have a huge backlog of things I want to blog about but I have been rather distracted by other things.

Barb and I had barely seen each other for several weeks. The week after I went to Louisville for the 2^nd Amendment Blog Bash (and NRA Convention) Barb went to Sacramento to visit her sister. Then I had a very busy time at work and was unable to go on vacation with Xenia, Barb, and her family to Montana.

Finally, on Wednesday, Barb arrived at my bunker in the Seattle area and we tried to make up for lost time. I did make it out of bed long enough to go to work for a few hours and we go to dinner and see a movie (Get Smart -- It had it moments, but there were some parts that were too silly for me) with son James and daughter Xenia. But for the most part we were pretty much inseparable.

Then Saturday I started opening up Boomershoot 2009 registration for staff, on Sunday for 2008 participants, then yesterday for the general public. Even though that is mostly automated it has resulted over 170 emails being received or sent plus countless hand edits of data files and fixing of obscure bugs in my code.

One bug was particularly "interesting". If two shooting positions used the same phone number for registration and I then tried to swap the shooting positions of those two entries then both entires would be deleted (I had a back up and it wasn't that tough to recover from the bug). That bug had existed since day one over a year ago and I just now tripped it.

In any case that spike of Boomershoot activity will soon settled down because the event is almost full (91%) with only seven positions still open as of 11:00 PM. I was surprised at the number of bloggers that took me up on the offer. Those free spots are costing me a LOT of money in the short term. David and Phil have a big tent and are filling it with bloggers. Other bloggers signed up include BillH of Free in Idaho!, Matthew from Trigger Finger, Kevin of Smallest Minority, Barron Barnett, and of course Ry, Xenia (not really "signed up", it's more like "drafted"), and I. I expect Lyle at UltiMAK (who blogs here with me) will sign up too.

Speaking of Matthew in the context of Boomershoot, he just put some new posts with pictures and text up from Boomershoot 2008:

• Driving to Boomershoot
• Friday fireball! (That wasn't a fireball, this is a fireball and it was actually Sunday not Friday)
• View from the Berm

Ry nails this one:

The private military company Blackwater has found an unusual way to skirt federal laws that prohibit private parties from buying automatic weapons. Blackwater bought 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmasters, gave ownership of the guns to the Camden County sheriff and keeps most of the guns at Blackwater’s armory in Moyock.

Unusual, as in, illegal. Not only are these straw purchases, but they’re straw purchases of Title II firearms. Good for me, not for thee.

One might conclude this little arrangement might not last much longer:

The agreement between Blackwater and the Sheriff's Office could be an illegal straw purchase, said Richard Myers, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A straw purchase, Myers said, is when one person fills out the federal firearms registration form to obtain a weapon for another person's use.

"I prosecuted several when I was with the U.S. attorney," Myers said. "If I were Blackwater's attorney, I would be concerned about whether this is a genuine purchase or a straw purchase."

Sheriff Perry said he did not consult a lawyer about the agreement until recently, when the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI inquired about the arrangement.

My guess is the Feds will "decline to prosecute" and ignore the whole thing. Those laws weren't really intended to apply to everyone. Just the people the Feds want to keep in their place.

It would amuse me if the Feds do push the issue and Blackwater and friends (the local sheriff) use the Heller decision to defend themselves. They would be a great "poster child" for our side on this issue.

The effects of gun violence on African-American citizens are particularly acute; in 2004 alone, all but two of the 137 firearm homicide victims in the District were African Americans, most of them between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine years old.
 ...
The principal characteristic of the District’s firearms legislation that is being challenged in this case--a rule that prohibits handguns while permitting shotguns and rifles (see D.C. Code § 7-2502.02)--was enacted over 30 years ago, in 1976, after the District Council received substantial evidence that handguns were disproportionately linked to violent and deadly crime, and posed unique risks in an urban setting. See PA101a-04a, 112a. In sum, the District’s handgun regulations are reasonable, passed by a legislature, in line with long-standing historical practices and Supreme Court precedents, and recognizes the unique circumstances posed by the link between the District’s high crime rate and the prevalence of handguns.

Theodore M. Shaw
Brief of Amicus Curiae the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. in support of petitioners.
[I just don't understand how someone smart enough to pass law school could overlook the dangers inherent in making such an argument. If African-Americans are particularly at risk (and although not mentioned are also the most frequent perpetrators) then in addition to concluding the violation of the 2^nd Amendment is "reasonable" then one could make the equally abhorrent argument for "reasonable" violation of the 13^th Amendment. That being, "Some people just can't be trusted with their freedom. We need to put them back on the plantation where they will be looked after and safe." And from the NAACP of all people.--Joe]