Covering 54,000 American adults, making it the largest survey to date. There have been studies (where states had registration, or some other means of documenting whether a specific person had a firearm) that found telephone surveys come in somewhat low, by about 10% I seem to remember. Still, the findings of this one have several relevances.

32% of American adults reported owning a gun.

It estimates that firearms are used in self-defense 1.67 million times a year, supporting Gary Kleck’s big study. Half of those occurred outside the home, on the owner’s property, and a quarter occurred off his property,…
Continue Reading Interesting survey on gun ownership

I just received this from Steve Halbrook:

Some of you might be interested in our 3rd Annual Firearms Law in Virginia Seminar 2022, Oct. 14, https://www.vacle.org/product.aspx?zpid=7674. It’s both in-person and remote. Among other speakers, we’ll have Virginia Supreme Court Justice Stephen McCullough, Kyle Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards, Fairfax Circuit Judge Richard Gardiner, Erin Murphy of Clement & Murphy, ATF Counsel James Vann, and myself. CLE credit approved for VA and DC.
Continue Reading 2nd Amendment CLE for attorneys

At SSRN. It deals with NYSRPA v. Bruen, and in particular with the questions of (1) how many of those medieval restrictions on bearing arms even applied to the American colonies and (2) could 18th century Americans even have known of them?

The Court has often spoken of how we adopted the common law, but the fact is that (1) the colonies made their own laws, by judges or by legislatures, and adopted whatever they thought was suitable — which the English restrictions on bearing arms were not — and (2) all our sources on English law were only…
Continue Reading My latest law review manuscript is online

Story here. 10 dead and 15 wounded.
Continue Reading Mass killing in Canada — with a knife

The War on Guns has the story. To register one, you must also send a photo of it.

I bet they are trying to avoid what happened during the 1986 ban on registering newly-made full autos. As the deadline approached, makers of full autos, realizing prices would skyrocket once the ban went into effect, began rushing out and registering receivers. Those who made folded receivers, ones bent out of sheet metal, stamped out as many pieces of sheet metal as they could, stamped them with a serial number, and registered them without finishing them as receivers, then finished making them…
Continue Reading Registration of pistol braces will require a photo of the firearm

As part of the state’s “massive resistance” to the Court’s enforcement of the Second Amendment, a restrictive carry bill was proposed in the legislature. Last night it defeated or died, together with another bill to add taxes to firearm sales.

With the Court’s striking of “good cause” requirements, this means that Californians now can get carry permits and carry, a big loss for the other side!

Big hat tip to reader Andrew Endsley…
Continue Reading Restrictive carry bill fails in California!

From the Daily Mail. If you want insightful news about the U.S., read the British papers. In the days when I was on the east coast, I monitored American elections over the BBC shortwave.
Continue Reading So much for our "woke" criminal justice system….

The Volokh Conspiracy answers Biden’s latest display of dementia.. (Eugene definitely knows the 2A but isn’t a gunny, so he had to check it out). I wonder if Biden thinks the .223/5.56 has a muzzle velocity in the 15,000 fps range (that would make it rather flat-shooting, if the bullets would just hold together) or the average rifle has one of about 600 fps?
Continue Reading The AR-15 has five times the velocity of any other firearm?

Can a federal magistrate judge issue a search warrant? Magistrate judges aren’t nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They are chosen from among attorneys by the judges of the district. They can’t try a civil case unless both parties agree, nor any criminal felony or misdemeanor above a petty offense. In a civil case, they can *recommend* what the district judge should do on a motion, but cannot decide it. As the article points out, until recently they weren’t called “magistrate judges,” but simply “magistrates.”
Continue Reading An interesting question regarding the Trump search warrant

Story here. I don’t see the class action, nor the 14th Amendment involvement. He plans to sue Daniels Defense, well, he’d better have a way to get around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and this Texas case.
Continue Reading Lawsuit planned over Uvalde shooting

August 21, 1982, at a hotel in the Maryland suburbs of DC. I, Frances (Avery), and Harlon Carter. Carter and his sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy Neal Knox, created the modern NRA.

Harlon died in ’92, Frances died in ’03, Neal died in ’05, all of cancer.
Continue Reading 40 years ago today

Just incredible.
Continue Reading IRS agents in gun training

A letter referencing FBI’s desire to “audit” their CCW license holder list. What business has FBI “auditing” lists of CCW holders? And how would you audit it anyway? The AG quite properly tells them where to stick their request. I wonder if FBI ever bothered to comply with the Privacy Act, which requires agencies to make public their databases and the “routine uses” of each.
Continue Reading A rather extraordinary letter, MO Attorney General to the FBI