Tag Archives: news

News – Property Owners Win Again: Tennessee Appeals Court Affirms That Warrantless Searches by Game Wardens Are Unconstitutional

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Warrantless ‘searches’ (which really should be called intrusions) of a person’s property are one of those things that makes me go from 0-to-boogaloo with no stops in-between. It seems that some .gov organizations (local, usually) feel that they’re exempt from needing warrants to roam your property for reasons.

One situation I had been following closely is a case in Tennessee where game wardens, in the name of pursuing their mandate, can come onto people’s property surreptitiously, leave surveillance devices, monitor the property, and it’s all kosher because…reasons, I guess.

To my simplistic way of thinking, unless there’s some truly exigent circumstances, any badge-wearer or .gov employee has zero business being on Zero’s property uninvited.

Apparently a court in Tennessee has agreed with my sentiment:

JACKSON, Tenn.—Late yesterday, the Court of Appeals of Tennessee at Jackson affirmedthat the Tennessee Constitution bars game wardens from conducting warrantless searches of private property. The ruling upholds a circuit court victory for Benton County landowners Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth. Terry and Hunter sued with the Institute for Justice (IJ) after the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) ignored their “No Trespassing” signs by entering and installing cameras on their land. The victory applies broadly to all private land Tennesseans have put to “actual use,” whether by fencing, farming, posting, gating, hunting, fishing, camping, or otherwise.

….

“This decision is a massive win for property rights in Tennessee,” said IJ Attorney and Elfie Gallun Fellow in Freedom and the Constitution Joshua Windham. “TWRA claimed unfettered power to put on full camouflage, invade people’s land, roam around as it pleases, take photos, record videos, sift through ponds, spy on people from behind bushes—all without consent, a warrant, or any meaningful limits on their power. This decision confirms that granting state officials unfettered power to invade private land is anathema to Tennesseans’ most basic constitutional rights.”

….

TWRA thought that its warrantless searches were legal under the century-old federal “open fields” doctrine. In 1924, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect any land beyond the home and its immediately surrounding area. The Court reaffirmed the doctrine in 1984 when it held that property owners have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” on any land the Court deems to be an “open field”—a broad category that, according to a new IJ study, includes about 96% of all land nationwide and at least 92% of land in Tennessee specifically.

For people like you and I , with our particular interests and ideals, the notion of privacy and property rights are of heightened importance. If I’m berming a conex full of guns and food on my forty acres somewhere, the last thing I need is some state agency roaming the acreage without my permission….laying cameras and ground sensors, taking pictures, observing, etc. And, to my way of thinking, that applies to drone surveillance as well. I don’t really expect any sense of privacy from a low earth orbit satellite, but I do expect privacy 80 feet above my house.

I have a similar feeling towards the seemingly common practice of law enforcement slapping tracking devices on vehicles without a warrant. You modify my property with a surveillance device, you better have some paperwork about it or we’re going to have some words in a courtroom.

I applaud the Tennessee court for applying what seems to me as common sense in their decision.

Article – A man kills a grizzly bear in Montana after it attacks while he is picking berries

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This actually didnt happen all that far from here.

A man picking huckleberries in Montana shot and killed a grizzly bear after it attacked and injured him badly enough that he had to be hospitalized.

The 72-year-old man was alone when the adult female charged him Thursday. He killed the bear with a handgun, according to a Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks statement Friday.

The attack happened in Flathead National Forest about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) north of Columbia Falls, a northwestern Montana city of about 5,500 people, according to the state wildlife agency.

For bear deterrent in the woods, I have two options. A handgun is no one’s first choice for defending against a bad-mood bruin, but sometimes you just can’t carry an HK91 everywhere.

How do handguns stack up against bears? Glad you asked. 

 

Nailed it

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From Saturday’s post:

Its just a matter of time before the left starts saying how it was ‘an inside job’ by a Trump stooge to ‘near miss’ the the former President to make him look tough.

and today:

News website Semafor reported that Mehlhorn, in an email to some sympathetic journalists and supporters, said there was a possibility “that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

If you really wanna go for the double-layer of tinfoil, wrap your head around this: it, in fact, was a ploy by the Trump team to make their guy look tough. They were gonna pull some patsy out of the woodwork, give him a rifle with blanks, have him take a shot, get popped by snipers, and Trump would look like a hero as he clutches his ear with a hidden razor blade in his palm to draw some blood. BUT….one of Trumps team was working for the other side and at the last  minute they switched out the blanks for live ammo and it became the real deal.

Yeah, I don’t believe that either. But I’ll bet someone, somewhere does.

Never let a crisis go to waste

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Some events are so big that they cause even the most disparate political forces to agree. After the 9/11 attacks there was a ‘honeymoon’ period where both sides agreed on various things that they normally would not agree upon. These periods always eventually dissipate into the usual partisanship, but not before the newly-discovered-common-ground crowd has done their damage (cough*PatriotAct*cough).

Early reports are saying this kid used an AR-platform of some kind…I’m betting .223 and not something with more zip like a .308 or Creedmoor). And, if it was an AR platform, this might be the impetus that gets us back into Assault Weapons Ban II.

No one condones assassination as a form of remediation in domestic politics. At least, not officially. And no one is going to come out and support that sort of nonsense (well, maybe a few people here and there). So, when some schmuck like Schumer, or one of his fellow travelers, starts clamoring about how ‘both sides must unite to stop this terrible threat’…there might be that ‘unity across the aisle’ moment. After all, if you couch the whole thing in the idea of ‘preserving democracy’ by getting rid of these ‘assassination weapons’ and you don’t support the program…well, then the terrorists assassins have won.

“Never let a crisis go to waste” is the mantra over there. You watch…it won’t be long before this event is used as the impetus to push for some sort of gun/magazine ban. As more details about this event come out you’ll see the pointless questions like “where did the shooter get the gun” and that sort of thing. Then it’ll be a shift into ‘gun safety’ measures with laws being proposed that no politician will be able to oppose without looking like they’re condoning this behavior.

Or maybe not. I’ve been wrong before. But what Im not wrong about is that there are going to be people in Washington who are going to grab this opportunity and public outrage to try and push forward an agenda that might otherwise have not gotten much traction.Probably about guns, but other things are possible too.

I’ll be curious to see what gun/mag vendors pricing and inventory looks like over the next weeks.

Government through attrition

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Its just a matter of time for the left starts saying how it was ‘an inside job’ by a Trump stooge to ‘near miss’ the the former President to make him look tough.

or

They’ll trot out that Trump is so evil that even the people on the right want him off the planet

or

They’l say this was an inside job to discredit the Left

Buckle up, its gonna be an interesting news cycle.

Article – ‘I feel terrified’: Inventor of ‘Glock switch’ technology says he regrets creation

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When Jorge Leon invented at the age of 22 a small device that turns Glock pistols into fully automatic weapons, he said he intended it to be used for the good of society, to help the military and police in his native country of Venezuela.

But 26 years after being granted a U.S. patent for his “fire selector system,” U.S. law enforcement officials say his creation is flooding the streets of American cities with these outlawed machine guns and many have fallen into the hands of teenage criminals indiscriminately using them to wreak havoc on communities both large and small.

“After seeing and reading about all those deaths, those unnecessary deaths of youngsters, of police officers, of broken families, I don’t feel nice about that, I don’t feel good,” Leon, now 59, told ABC News. “I regret filing that patent because … my technology, which was very well protected at that time, is free for everybody.”

It’s not that I’m a person prone to being suspicious, but rather that I “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.” The article here makes the case that the Glock pistol is inherently flawed in that it is easy to convert it to full-happy by the addition of a simple ‘drop-in’ part. The recourse, the article goes on to say, is to force Glock to re-design it’s product to prevent the easy installation of such devices.

Ok, lets look at that more closely. First step, whip the public into a frenzy over the perceived issue and put out a proposal to solve it. In this case the issue is illegal full auto Glocks and the solution is to force a redesign. Second step, ?????. Third step, neutered 10-shot Glocks.

What I mean by all that is that let’s say that, by some bizarre political or legal machination, they actually force Glock to make a change to all subsequent products to prevent the ‘easy’ conversion to full auto. What happens to the millions of Glocks out there that pre-date that design change? Hmmm. Well, a full-auto gun is fairly useless if it can only hold ten rounds, so a magazine ban seems a ‘reasonable, commonsense’ way to ‘de-fang’ the older ‘readily convertible’ Glocks. Or they get redefined as ‘machine guns’ because of their ‘readily convertible’ nature. Or there’s a national recall to existing guns to have them altered to the new design. Or..or…or.

Point is, if they whip up enough hysteria, which this article seems designed to do, it’ll create the casus belli needed to ‘do something’ about that ‘Glock problem’. You have to demonize something (or someone) in the eyes of the public so that when you do come down hard on it, everyone nods their head and says ‘Well, yes, of course.’ We saw this with the Assault Weapons Ban. Folks were buying AR’s and AK’s for years before the media suddenly made the ‘evil black rifle’ into the new cause celebre for the gun prohibition movement.

But, maybe I’m just seeing boogeymen where none exist. It’s possible…Im often wrong about these things.

 

Wrist brace decision

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Bad Person gets caught shoplifting. They pay the fine and move on. They then go back to the same store, not having learned their lesson, and engage in the same behaviour, get caught, and get punished. Now taking it personally, they go back to the store at 2am and burn it to the ground for having the audicity to challenge Bad Person’s activities.

I suspect this is going to be ATFE’s reaction to their most recent oopsie. Specifically, after the SCOTUS smackdown on bump stocks, another court has vacated the wrist brace issue.

ATFE is a group of vengeful law-enforcement pariahs who are very focused on their image. To get taken to the woodshed twice in a few weeks is going to do nothing except encourage them to re-assert their dominance. Whats that gonna look like? Beats me…a magazine ban? Increased wait times? A very legalistic and detailed look at exactly what they do have the authority to do and then them doing that dialed up to 11? FFL dealer audits with the intensity of a colonoscopy for everyone?  Beats me. But I know that often times when you make a bully look bad, he gets mad-bull enraged and doesn’t care what its going to cost for him to avenge his hurt ego.

And yet, even though I know ATFE will come up with some sort of revenge plan, much like Nazis executing 100 civilians for each Nazi killed by a partisan, I still smile warmly to myself at the notion of ATFE getting their hand slapped. I just hope Im not one of those 100 civilians marched out into the woods.

News – Supreme Court strikes down Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks

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The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a “bump stock” attachment does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a “machine gun,” which is prohibited under federal law. The 6-3 vote aligned with the conservative supermajority’s previous decisions in gun cases, such as its 2022 decision to expand gun rights.

The court found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority by enacting the ban on bump stocks, when it determined that the devices were classified as machine guns. Civilians now have access to bump stocks again.

Personally, I have no use for a bump stock. I imagine that if the time comes I ever need a machine gun, there will be plenty of them laying around. However, I am always a fan of ATFE getting cleat marks in their wedding tackle.

ATFE has been overstepping their bounds and creating ‘laws’ out of whole cloth when, in actuality, they can only enforce…not create…regulations.

I will say that while I have no interest in the bump stock for my own use, I think this decision will be an important one in regards to the ‘wrist brace’ issue. We shall see. I do have an interest in the ‘wrist brace’ issue since I’d rather avoid the whole NFA $200 registration nonsense if I can.

Article – Multiple teens rescued from abandoned missile silo, one critically hurt

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Interesting article about a buncha kids that went into an abandoned missile silo and got more than they bargained for. Whats interesting to me is this part:

“We searched for a while,” Rich Solomon, fire chief for Sable Altura Fire Rescue, said during Sunday’s press conference. “It’s a maze of tunnels, twisted metal, an old railway that the military must have used,” he said while describing the silo, which has likely been abandoned since the 1960s.

Old railway, you say? I’m wondering if thats simply some sort of short range rail system for transporting parts from silo1 to silo2, or something a bit more elaborate.

Honestly, if I knew there was an abandoned missile silo nearby I’d probably be eager to explore it too….mostly as a precursor to buying it. I need to test my Google skills and see if I can learn more about this facility……..

Article – Biden to close ‘gun-show loophole’ and expand background checks for firearms

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The Biden administration is moving to expand background checks for gun purchases, fulfilling a key demand of advocates following the deadly shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.

The final rule, expected to be submitted Thursday to the Federal Register by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would eliminate a loophole that has allowed sales of guns without background checks of guns outside of brick-and-mortar stores.

The rule was issued under a provision of the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It requires that anyone who sells guns for profit to have a license and that buyers be subject to a background check, including at firearms shows and flea markets. The administration had been working on the rule since last spring. Once publicized, it will take effect in 30 days.

Remember: if a law allows something that Democrats don’t like, its a ‘loophole’.

Should be interesting to pick this apart and see exactly what is and isn’t defined as being ‘engaged in the business’. The important takeaway here is that if you believe that a paperless gun transaction is important to your privacy and well-being, yo u may wish to make those purchases sooner rather than later.