Of Arms & the Law

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By: David Hardy

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David Hardy

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The US Commission on Civil Rights contends they exist, but Commissioner Gail Heriot takes that apart. “This report should not have been published in this form. When the results of an empirical study don’t come out the way Commission members hoped and expected that they would, the right thing to do is usually to publish those results anyway. Why hide useful information? Instead, the Commission sat on the report for years. Then it decided to discard the draft written by our staff and publish instead a transcript of the witness testimony received at our briefing that took place on…
I’ve filed amicus briefs in them for Firearms Policy Foundation et al.: Folajtar v. Rosen. Issue: 2A as applied to a person convicted of a nonviolent felony. Holloway v. Rosen. Issue: 2A as applied to a person convicted of a state misdemeanor (DUI with a prior), which GCA treats as a felony (a state-designated misdemeanor, but carrying more than two years’ potential imprisonment). Interesting aspect: under state law, his driving privileges were revoked for 18 months and firearms rights not affected at all, but under federal law he loses his firearm rights forever, for an offense that had…
Greer v. US, docket. Issue: Whether, when applying plain-error review based on an intervening United States Supreme Court decision, Rehaif v. United States [which held that, in a felon in possession case, the government must prove the defendant knew he’d been convicted of a felony}, a circuit court of appeals may review matters outside the trial record to determine whether the error affected a defendant’s substantial rights or impacted the fairness, integrity or public reputation of the trial. US v. Gary, docket. Issue: Whether a defendant who pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a felon, is automatically…
I noticed he stopped sending emails a few months ago, and did not reply when I tried to reach him. I kept searching. This is all I can find on him. The Deming, New Mexico funeral home didn’t know what got him, just recalled that no one attended his services. We’d been in communication since the days of usenet and talk.politics.guns, in the early days of the internet. He made a couple of custom knives for me, and they are beauties. He was an expert in the martial arts, had once gone up against Bruce Lee’s sparring partner, who…
End of year ruminations from David Codrea. A core problem is that ATF has never followed the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 USC 522. That statute provides for three levels of disclosure. “[S]ubstantive rules of general applicability … and statements of general policy or interpretations of general applicability formulated and adopted by the agency” are to be published in the Federal Register, from which they are edited into the Code of Federal Regulations. “An AR-15 receiver becomes a receiver and thus a firearm when the area that holds the fire control group is milled out” would plainly fit here. “Final opinions,…
Even at the Parkland school shooting. The 11th Circuit notes, “The students allege that the Parkland tragedy was exacerbated by government blunders before and during the shooting. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office failed to act on the “many dozens of calls” it received that warned of Cruz’s dangerous propensities. Although Sheriff Scott Israel and Superintendent Robert Runcie knew that Cruz might be dangerous and Runcie was warned that the school had inadequate security, neither official attempted to improve school security. And Scot Peterson, the police officer in charge of school security, was nicknamed “Rod”–short for “retired on duty”– for…