JustOneMinute

Legal and Illegal

The Times settles an argument no one is making:

The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant

The Trump administration’s first year of immigration policy has relied on claims that immigrants bring crime into America. President Trump’s latest target is sanctuary cities.

“Every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities,” he said last week. “They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.”

They quote Trump mentioning "illegal" immigrants, and one might wonder just what sort of sanctuary legal immigrants are granted in a sanctuary city, but the rest of the article is about all immigrants, legal or otherwise. That certainly pins down the question of whether tech engineers on H1-B visas are a crime risk. As to why Trump might need a border wall to keep out legsal immigrants, don't ask.

They do provide a fun chart:

I know they will like this chart too:

1993 was a peak year for crime, so baseline games are being played here. Still, case closed, right?

Time's Up On Wall Street

The NY Times exposes a horrific Morgan Stanley honcho. Geez, sexual harassers and abusers on Wall Street - who knew? My two cents, relying on my fading memory, is that Hollywood and the Legacy Media needed to clean their own houses in order to maintain a shred of credibility as the Trump Resistance. As a related example - Al Franken was getting a pass from his fellow Dem Senators until polls showed that the Democrats might actually win in Alabama if they showed a bit of consistency while screaming about the shenanigans of Republican nominee Roy Moore.

In any case, the political imperatives of Wall Street and Big Business are different, so they got off easy. So far.

Here To Help

They're from the Medicare branch of the government and they're here to help:

Medicare Is Cracking Down on Opioids. Doctors Fear Pain Patients Will Suffer.

Officials are close to limiting doses of the painkillers, but doctors say doing so could put older patients into withdrawal or lead them to buy deadly street drugs.

Jacob Sullum of Reason covered this in frightening detail.

 

Gun Control Made Simple

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens bloviates in the Times about gun control. Like many public speakers he warms up the audience with a joke:

John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment

No, that is the headline, not the joke, Wait for it...

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday.

Oh, please. Not since the last big march, or the one before that, or the one before that, or... no wait, that was the deplorable Tea Party rally.

Look, liberals live in cities. They have no trouble rousting the faithful for a quick bus ride and a bit of sloganeering. Later they watch themselves on the news and convince themselves that the country has spoken. Come election time they are shocked to learn about flyover country and the unreconstructed troglodytes lurking there. How has this escaped the learned Justice Stevens?

The headline is a spoiler but eventually he reveals his latest fantasy:

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Does the Justice realize that "semiautomatic weapons" includes most handguns sold today? It's times like this that the aggressive ignorance of the gun controllers makes a sensible conversation difficult. 

As to repealing the Second Amendment, please - that would require a runaway Constitutional convention (exciting!) or a 2/3 vote in each chamber of Congress and then ratification by 38 states. Has he looked at an electoral map? 

Evidently not:

Overturning [District of Columbia v. Heller] via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform. 

"Simple". Right, a Congress that won't expand background checks will vote to repeal the Second Amendment.

Back in Realityville, this is yet another reason for progressives to regret the nomination of the Hillary Clinton. Had she manged to eke out a 2016 win (YES, in the Electoral College - sort of like how the team with more first downs does not beat the team with more points) she could have picked the replacement to Justice Scalia. Five lockstep liberals would then have "interpreted" the reasonable regulation caveats of Heller to cast the Second Amendment into oblivion.

Well, we dodged a bullet, as it were. As to Justice Stevens' goal here, this may simply be a cry for help from a deranged mind. More charitably, his hope may be to plant the crazy flag so far to the left that the formerly ludicrous - e.g., a renewed assault weapons ban - seems sane by comparison. He's trying to crack open the Overton Window a bit.

A Hero In France

'Unhappy is the land that needs a hero' was never more true. Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame showed remarkable courage and character.

Saturday Afternoon

Here we go again!

McMaster Out, Bolton In

Maybe new NSA Bolton will deliver a Nixon-to-China endorsement, or at least grumbled acceptance, of the Iran deal? Here's hopng! Or maybe we can be scuffling with North Korea, Iran and China without a Secretary of State.

Corporate Fascism, But In A Good Cause!

The party of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders turns to the Big Banks to do their legislative lifting:

Citigroup Sets Restrictions on Gun Sales by Business Partners

Citigroup is setting restrictions on the sale of firearms by its business customers, making it the first Wall Street bank to take a stance in the divisive nationwide gun control debate.

The new policy, announced Thursday, prohibits the sale of firearms to customers who have not passed a background check or who are younger than 21. It also bars the sale of bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. It would apply to clients who offer credit cards backed by Citigroup or borrow money, use banking services or raise capital through the company.

The rules, which the company described as “common-sense measures,” echo similar restrictions established by some major retailers, like Walmart. But they also represent the boldest such move to emerge from the banking sector.

"Common sense". My common sense (not to mention the NY Times its bad self) tells me that age discrimination is illegal in New York and many other states. Is Citicorp dropping any clients who won't ignore the law, does their corporate policy apply in states where allowed but not New York, or is this a bit of a PR stunt abetted by agenda-driven cheerleading, aka "reporting"?

Yet Another Snow Day!

If I don't hurry outside and rev up the Greatest Toy Ever this snow, too, shall pass.

As Much As I Hate Seeing A Nazi Win Something...

The Republicans in Illinois-3 managed to draw some ghastly headlines which will be fodder for late night comedians and Paul Krugman. The NY Times manages a bit of fairness and balance:

Denounced by His Party as a Nazi, Arthur Jones Wins Illinois G.O.P. Congressional Primary

Say what?

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier described as a Nazi by the Illinois Republican Party, won the Republican primary on Tuesday in the state’s Third Congressional District, a heavily Democratic district that includes part of Chicago and its suburbs, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Jones, 70, unsuccessfully sought the nomination five times before, and his victory on Tuesday was a foregone conclusion after the Republican Party failed to draft another candidate to enter the race against him.

The Times coverage is decent but overlooks a lot. The short version is this: the incumbent, Dan Lipinski, is a pro-life anti-ObamaCare Blue Dog Democrat who was locked in a near-death struggle with a progressive challenger. The Nazi, Jones, had been kept off the ballot in cycles past by the invocation of technicalities. So the plan was to DQ Jones and let Republican crossover voters in the primary keep Lipinski alive. Since Lipinski won, barely, that part of the plan succeeded.

In 2016, for example, the Republican Party also failed to run a conventional candidate. Jones was the only one to submit signatures but the party managed to disqualify him to keep him off the primary ballot. They had the same plan for 2018 but Jones outmaneuvered them with a last-minute filing:

How did this happen? Jones, a perennial candidate, snookered the GOP.

Nobody else ran as a Republican in the primary because politics is a results-oriented business and the chance of a Republican winning are slim. The boundaries were drawn by Democrats to elect a Democrat. Rep. Dan Lipinski, the incumbent, will face Marie Newman in the Democratic primary, and one of those two will win on Nov. 6. There are other Democratic strongholds in the Chicago area featuring a lone Republican. It can be a Maytag repairman-like assignment.

...

Jones, who campaigned for the same seat in the 2016 primary, was removed from the ballot that year after the Illinois Republican Party found paperwork errors and filed a successful objection to his candidacy with the state Board of Elections. The GOP tried to do the same this election cycle, but Jones had cleaned up his paperwork. He also appears to have kept a low profile, collecting signatures to meet eligibility requirements by going door-to-door and then waiting until the Dec. 4, 2017, deadline to file. If only others had noticed.

And beyond that, Republicans were backing Blue Dog Democrat Dan Lipinski against a progressive opponent.

If [challenger] Newman decides to run in 2020, she’d be the favorite in the race. This cycle, an actual neo-Nazi ran unopposed in the GOP primary in the 3rd District. Because the state has an open-primary system, Republican voters in the district could have chosen to vote in the Democratic primary and back Lipinski. (The irony of a Bernie Sanders-backed candidate losing thanks to crossover votes in an open primary was not lost on Twitter.)

Sophia Olazaba, a field manager for the Newman campaign, said she doesn’t doubt that some Republican voters crossed over. “Even when we were canvassing, a lot of homes have had both Jeanne Ives and Dan Lipinski signs, so those people could have crossed over,” she said, referring to the GOP gubernatorial candidate whose entire campaign was premised on her opposition to legal abortion.

Another volunteer, Sabrina Ithal, also from the 3rd district, mentioned that the open primary format could have actually worked in their favor: “I converted quite a few Republicans who voted Democrat for the first time in 30-40 years today.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes legal abortion, made re-electing Lipinski a major priority, dumping big money into the race and working the ground to get out the anti-abortion vote on his behalf.

So the Republicans had a strategy - leave their primary line open, disqualify Jones if he showed up (a timeless Illinois ploy familiar to Obama fans and foes) and hope their voters kept Lipinski afloat. And it could have worked, just as Virginia could have advanced in the NCAA tournament.

But Jones stayed under the radar while gathering signatures, didn't flaunt his views, and filed on the last day. Ooops! From The Atlantic:

And just as the Illinois Republicans failed to find a challenger for Jones, another safeguard of the political system seems to have broken down, as well: The state’s ballot-access guidelines, which Mooney told me are intended to “limit the fringe element from cluttering up the ballot,” required Jones to get the signatures of 603 registered voters. I spoke with multiple people who signed Jones’s petition, and they were shocked to learn they had supported the candidacy of a former Nazi. “I probably just signed it because he asked me to,” said 63-year-old Linda Florczak-Wieser of LaGrange when I called her on Wednesday. Another voter from nearby Worth said she didn’t even recall signing the petition in the first place. And when I asked 93-year-old Alice Brunell how she felt about Jones’s views, the Bridgeview resident replied incredulously, “I didn’t know that!”

The peril and promise of these ballot access rules is that ordinary registered voters are empowered - the party bosses cannot unilaterally dismiss reform minded, "rage against the machine" candidates like in the good old days. On the other hand, sometimes shit happens.

It's easy to be an ex-post genius, but suppose the Republicans had run their own candidate but, because their energy and money was with Lipinski, the Nazi won anyway? Really bad.

Or suppose the Republicans opposed the Nazi, put some effort into it, and managed to see both Lipinski and the Nazi lose. Will that be helpful this November? 

The local Republicans had a plan that could have worked perfectly but didn't. That doesn't mean the alternative plans didn't also have paths to poor results.

Apparently Republicans will muster a write-in sacrificial lamb for the November vote. And Krugman, Oliver and the other progressive entertainers will have their fun.

MORE: Dan McLaughlin of NRO has lots more.

"A Very Capable School Resource Officer"

There are not good school shootings but this one in Maryland could have been worse, but for the intervention of the armed school resource officer:

(CNN)The school shooting was over in seconds. But it could have dragged on longer and proven deadlier were it not for the rapid response of a school resource officer.

When a 17-year-old gunman walked into Maryland's Great Mills High School on Tuesday, the swift action of the school's sole resource officer, Blaine Gaskill, was instrumental in bringing the incident to a quick end.

Gaskill's response was hailed as an example of exactly what a resource officer is supposed to do in such a circumstance, particularly when contrasted to the actions of the security officer in last month's shooting in Parkland, Florida. (In the incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, the armed school resource deputy waited outside the school building as the shooter gunned down students inside.)

...

As soon as the gunfire began, Gaskill rushed to the scene. He fired a round at the shooter, who also fired a round at the same time, Cameron said.

It's not yet clear whether the shooter, Austin Wyatt Rollins, was felled by the officer's bullet or killed himself.

"DFC [Deputy First Class] Gaskill fired at the shooter ... almost simultaneously as the shooter fired," Cameron said. "This is something we train, practice and in reality, hope would never come to fruition. This is our worst nightmare."

Gov. Larry Hogan called Gaskill "a very capable school resource officer who also happened to be a SWAT team member." "This is a tough guy who apparently closed in very quickly and took the right kind of action," he said. "And while I think it's still tragic, he may have saved other people's lives."

I think Gaskill will be making a trip to the White House.

Tech Panic

I need to figure out how to log on to my long-dormant Facebook account so I can delete it. Or Make America Great Again. Either way.

"Lacking Candor"

It's good to be a high-ranking FBI official, even if forced to resign.

Blue Eats Blue, California Style

OK, this is pretty funny, if you like weedy political arcana. Out in California they have open primaries where the top two finishers end up on the November ballot. In a number of House districts there are so many Democrats hoping to lead The Resistance this fall that a number of primaries are shaping up as two Republicans versus ten or so Democrats.

For those with a modest flair for math (i.e., not a lot of Blue consultants) this creates a real possibility that in swing districts the two Republicans will split around 50 percent of the vote and ten Dems will split the remainder. The two candidates with the most votes will be Republicans, which will make it hard for the Dems to win the seat in November. Ooops!

Once again, the left hand doesn't know what the far left hand is doing.

"Clinton Cash" Follow Up

Peter Schweitzer, the author of "Clinton Cash", has a new book coming. Since everyone else is aiming for Trump, he is following the lonely trail of the Obama Administration. Believe it or not, Joe Biden and John Kerry seemed to be helping their kids enrich themselves.

On To Pennsylvania!

OK, ouch. The Dem declares victory, the Republicans want a recount in a district Trump won handily.

OTOH, the Dem candidate, an ex-Marine who is only modestly left of center, is hardly the type Dems are likely to run nationwide. Or, if the Dems do elect a bunch of Reagan Democrats to the House next fall, the opportunities for bipartisan cooperation might go up. MAYBE! More likely, those swing-seat Dems will be a minority within their own caucus and will be expected to walk the plank in pursuit of the latest far-left brain waves.

But that won't be crossed until next fall. Sufficient unto the day is the bitterness therein, IIRC.

The Desolation Of Smug, or, You'll Need A Bigger Basket For All Those Deplorables

Our former Secretary of State continues her Loser's Tour in India, where she takes a moment to denounce half of American voters as racist, misogynistic losers:

"I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product... So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, 'Make America Great Again,' was looking backwards. You know: 'You didn't like black people getting rights, you don't like women, you know, getting jobs, you don't want to, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are, whatever your problem is, I'm going to solve it.'

 

How can we miss her if she won't go away?

 

I especially like that she delivers these mini-tirades and then falls down drunk. Too much wine with her whine.

Power Us Up!

A proton battery based on carbon rather than lithium will, if scaleable, be a real breakthrough for cheaper storage of electricity and management of a wind and solar oriented grid.

Why I am reading about this happening in Australia rather than 'Merica? I don't know but the Science Daily article on this topic has an interesting detail:

RMIT's research on the proton battery has been partly funded by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group and the US Office of Naval Research Global.

Well, OK then. I still want thorium reactors.

 

Out Of This World

Elon Musk will be testing his Mars-bound spacecraft next year?

Saturday!

Saturday and away we go.

Go Ahead. Make My Day.

And the Survey Says...

By 74-24 Democrats L-U-V a ban on semi-automatic rifles!

From a recent Quinnipiac poll:

AllahP notices that the youngsters are less progressive on this than their elders, which is counter to the normal flow in these things. My two cents - video games! Urban kids who have never held a real weapon probably have a better sense of guns than past generations of urbanites.

As to the politics, my guess is that if the Democrats pushed hard for a ban on all semiautomatic rifles they would get even more votes in their urban enclaves, for a net pickup of roughly zero House seats, while getting buried across New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and anywhere else non-urban Democrats are lurking.

But they should test it and see!

Our Peace And Prosperity President

A surprise bit of hopeful news on North Korea followed by a good jobs report leaves Trump well positioned for a relaxing weekend. 

Of course he still has a few hours left to hop on Twitter and harsh his own mellow, but so far, so good.

YEAH, YEAH: OK, the Morning Joke team get off a good one here:

The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” slammed President Trump over his potential meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with host Mika Brzezinski saying Trump “can’t even make a deal with a porn star.”

I just want to know what Dennis Rodman will be wearing when he accepts his Nobel Peace Prize.

CONTEXT: CNN tries to capture the mood:

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's stunning decision to meet Kim Jong Un sets up the prospect of the most mind-boggling diplomatic summit in modern history.

Trump, a reality star turned convention busting President, has dubbed Kim "Little Rocket Man" and threatened to rain fire and fury over North Korea, raising fears of a devastating war across the world's last Cold War frontier.

 

Kim, a portly 30-something whose state media recently blasted Trump as a "lunatic mean old trickster and human reject" presides over a prison state, purges his foes and has vowed to obliterate the US in a nuclear cloud.

 

The meeting, announced by a South Korean delegation at the White House on Thursday night, would, if it goes ahead, mark an unmatched moment of history in the 70-year standoff between the US and the isolated state.

Traditional Snow Day (and Night!) Open Thread

Tomorrow, the snow-thrower!

As The World Turns

Fear! Is the trade war about to heat up? Gary Cohn resigns as Trump's economic adviser, sending Dow futures down 400 points.

Yet, Hope! Little flickers of something good with North Korea:

North Korea Signals Willingness to ‘Denuclearize,’ South Says

Well, if we have to choose just one war I'll choose Trade. "Neither of the above" is still my preference.

 

On To The House!

The Florida Senate passed a package of gun violence measures Monday. Now it is on the the Florida House and eventually, the Governor's desk.

However, the clock may run out since this regular legislative session ends on Friday.

Mumbling Truth To Power

The Oscars managed to be unreflective, dull and (by no coincidence) unwatched. I guess the audience for an orgy of Hollywood self-congratulation isn't what it used to be.

Gun Violence Restraining Order Idea Advances Through Florida Senate

The Florida Senate moved forward with a package of gun safety measures which included a "risk protection order" process. 

In the current text of the bill the relevant section starts at line 753. The statute is 790.401 "The Risk Protection Order Act". Court orders and due process look similar to the generic version described by David French. 

On February 16 — two days after the Parkland massacre — I wrote about the GVRO in  National Review Online [link]. I described the GVRO as a local-court order that allows law enforcement to temporarily remove guns from a potential shooter’s home. It is usually sought by a person in a close relationship with the potential shooter. A well-crafted GVRO law should contain the following elements:

1) It should limit those who have standing to seek the order to close relatives, those living with the respondent, and perhaps also school principals or employers. 

2) It should require petitioners to come forward with clear and convincing evidence that the respondent is a significant danger to himself or others.

3) It should grant the respondent an opportunity to contest the claims against him.

4) In the event of an emergency, ex parte order, a full hearing should be scheduled quickly — ideally within 72 hours.

5) The order should lapse after a defined period of time (30 days would be acceptable) unless petitioners can produce clear and convincing evidence of continued need.

Saturday Morning

Let's get this weekend thing started.

Cherry Picked Data In The Gun Debate

"Rampage Nation" by Louis Klarevas is one of the few 'studies' finding statistical support for an assault weapons ban. Naturally it got good press. But per a skeptic, a key finding is, well, not robust:

Until Klarevas came along, virtually all researchers had concluded that it was impossible to discern what, if any, positive effect the ban's prohibition of rifles with "military-style features" had on crime or mass shooting incidents. This is why many gun-control advocacy groups, including Sandy Hook Promise, do not include a ban on their list of legislative priorities. The last ban was politically costly for Democrats and, as a ProPublica investigationreported in 2014, gun control experts said there was no evidence it saved lives.

"Rampage Nation" has energized proponents of a new ban by making the spectacular claim that, contrary to the consensus, the original was responsible for a remarkable 37% decline in mass shooting fatalities.

But there's a serious flaw in Klarevas' result: There are few actual "assault weapons" of any type in his dataset, either pre- or post-ban. Klarevas and his allies are taking an apparent drop in fatalities from what are mostly handgun shootings (again, pre-ban as well as post) and attributing this lowered body count to the 1994 legislation.

I say "apparent" drop in fatalities because, as Klarevas admits in a footnote, if you use the most widely accepted threshold for categorizing a shooting as a "mass shooting" — four fatalities, as opposed to Klarevas' higher threshold of six — the 1994 to 2004 drop in fatalities disappears entirely. Had Klarevas chosen a "mass shooting" threshold of five fatalities instead of six, then the dramatic pause he notes in mass shootings between 1994 to 1999 would disappear too.

I have yet to Kindle up and track down that footnote but that is a big deal if true.

In any case, Klarevas claims somewhat plausibly that his result is driven by a ban on large capacity magazines, not bayonet mounts, grenade launchers, or other cosmetic features of the "assault weapon" definition.

Let me note that the recent Parkland shooter reportedly used ten-round magazines. On the other hand, his gun jammed. I thought ejecting the magazine and replacing it were normal steps in clearing a jam. Could the reloading process also lead to a jam?

Be Still My Heart

Wow, Glenn made me a star! The topic is Gun Violence Restraining Orders, with lots more detail at "BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME", below. This is from a Rush Limbaugh transcript:

Panic in Trumpville Over Gun Meeting

Mar 1, 2018

...

At one point, Mr. Trump suggested that law enforcement authorities should have the power to seize guns from mentally ill people or others who could present a danger without first going to court. ‘I like taking the guns early,’ he said, adding, ‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.'” Well, that is what did it. That comment caused an eruption out there, and not just among Trumpists.

I mean, there are some Never Trumpers who hate Trump, but they in no way… Their hatred of Trump still doesn’t mean they want the Constitution to be trampled. I mean, there’s a lot of people who got concerned. “What? (sputtering) ‘[G]o through due process second’?” So I found something today from Glenn Reynolds. Glenn Reynolds’ Web page is called Instapundit, and I occasionally traverse the hills and dales there, and I found a tweet by somebody named Tom Maguire. I don’t know who Tom Maguire is and I didn’t have time to Google “Tom Maguire.”

He’s probably somebody famous or he wouldn’t be posted here, but I don’t know who he is. No insult intended. Just full disclosure. He tweeted about this, and Tom Maguire at the Instapundit website said, “On Trump’s no ‘due process’ quote: [In my humble opinion] he misunderstood/misstated gun violence restraining order. Procedure is court order, confiscation, hearing to end or extend order.” Now, Trump said (paraphrased), “Screw that! Go get the gun and then we’ll have the court order and the hearing. We’ll do that later.”

What Tom Maguire thinks, according to his tweet, is that Trump conflated hearing to end or extend order with due process. So when Trump said take the guns first, go through due process second, Maguire’s tweet said that Trump didn’t mean due process, that he was confusing due process with the hearing to end or extend the order in the established procedure. So let me try to explain this. It’s tough to follow this when it’s words in a certain order and you can’t see them.

But that’s why I’m here, as a paramount communicator. The procedure now for getting a gun violence restraining order, if that’s what you want to do, you have to go to court and get an order, like the FBI went to the FISA court to spy on Trump. They had the dossier. You gotta go to court and get permission. You have to get a court order, a restraining order against a perp, and then you go get the gun. You go confiscate the gun. Then after you do that, there is a hearing in court to extend or end the court order allowing confiscation.

What Mr. Maguire believes is when Trump said, “Let’s take the guns first and go through due process second,” what he meant was that Trump was just conflating this hearing with due process, that Trump said, “Let’s go grab the gun and then go to court and argue it out.” It’s… (sigh) Well, it’s an attempt to explain it. But it relies on the belief that Trump doesn’t know the difference between a hearing and a court order and due process. What the critics are trying to say here is, “Trump, what are you…? Trump doesn’t care! Trump is an autocrat. Trump is a dictator.

Hmm, Rush didn't have time to Google "Tom Maguire"? Let me just say I was Number One once upon a time, having supplanted a dead Irish socialist, but now I see a dead IRA leader has the top spot. But maybe Rush has put me on the comeback trail!

Meanwhile, I'm still holding our for a re-tweet from the Real Donald Trump. Aim high!

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME: For background on Gun Violence Restraining Orders this WaPo piece is a good start. David French of National Review wrote a widely cited piece that picked up a tweet from Sen. Rubio.

The Little Marco That Could is introducing a package of reforms to our gun laws that will include Federal GVRO legislation. One might think that these court orders are handled at the state level, so what is the Federal role? If Sen. Rubio's bill mirrors the House proposal from last year, it will provide Federal grants to states that adopt legislation in line with the Federal standards.

But before you jump on board, do note the objections from Jacob Sullum of Reason. I was not persuaded - he offers hypothetical concerns, but we have a history to work with since Connecticut first passed their law in 1999 (OK, ask me about Newtown, amirite?). Other states such as California enacted legislation much more recently. If the parade of horribles envisioned by Mr. Sullum has been unfolding, we should be able to find out; if not, the hypothetical problems have not developed, yet anyway. Mr. French had his own response here.

I should add that the big impact in Connecticut, per a recent Duke study, has been to allow relatives to disarm elderly depressed, possibly suicidal gun owners. That does not speak to school shootings and it certainly opens a whole new can of worms around euthanasia and any suicide rights of the old and ailing, but it strikes me as a net positive. 

 

Send Lawyers Guns and Money

To predictable cheers and jeers, Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart announce they won't be selling guns to anyone under age 21. Fortunately they remained silent on baking cakes, but... isn't that age discrimination and is it legal?

It's complicated. The flailing NY Times gets a Definitely Maybe Not from UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. From the bottom of the article:

A NY State Division of Human Rights website offers three examples of prohibited are discrimination: employment hiring/firing. a failure to rent or a failure to lend to youngsters. Bring it on. If an age discrimination/civil rights case about guns gets tried in New York, there won't be enough popcorn in the world.

MORE: Eugene Volokh tackled this yesterday, with a similar answer - Federal law is no bar but many states may have protection for young gun buyers:

[3.] But about a third of all states ban discrimination based on age in places of public accommodation, and some of those statutes may well ban refusal to sell guns to 18-to-20-year-olds. These laws vary from state to state, so I can't speak to all of them; but the one I checked -- Connecticut (the alphabetically first on the list) -- does indeed seem to ban discrimination against 18-to-20-year-olds in retail sales, with no exception for guns.

[4.] Likewise, some cities and counties have similar ordinances (even if their states don't); two I found, for instance, are Madison, Wisconsin and Broward County, Florida. (I looked them up just because I remembered from other research that they have broad antidiscrimination ordinances.) Seattle, on the other hand, bans age discrimination, but apparently only against people 21 and above, again without regard to whether the store sells guns or anything else.