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Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Nov 26

The Snope reply brief is in. This concludes the briefing for the cert petition (aside from any amicus briefs coming in support of the state).

Let's take a look at what they argued in response to Maryland's opposition.

A strong opening here, basically telling the Court that if they don't put a stop to this, it will have only itself to blame when the abuse continues. I would only add that the reason the lower courts have all gone the same way is because the more pro-gun circuits never see such cases, being generally made up of more pro-gun states.

Agreed. "Percolation" is valuable only if you assume good faith. And we have no reason to in this context.

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Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Nov 13

Let's take a look at Maryland's opposition brief to the cert petition in Snope v. Brown, the case we are all hoping the Supreme Court decides to take so it can settle the "assault weapon" issue (and hopefully some other issues).

Props to the Maryland attorneys for getting this done despite having to type through the tears of Kamala's loss.

They always focus on this language from Heller, but ignore four things:

1. It was dicta inserted mainly to keep Justice Kennedy on board.

2. It was clearly referring to machine guns, not semiautomatic rifles.

3. Heller's author and Bruen's author dissented in Friedman from the denial of cert, and were very clear that semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 may not be banned.

4. SCOTUS GVR'd this very case after Bruen. If they thought this was a settled question, no reason to do that (and it's why I'll be very mad if they deny cert now!)

If SCOTUS dodges, this may be why. But it would be a very bad excuse to do so.

No "percolation" is likely to happen in any pro-2A circuits, because the states within those circuits do not pass bans on firearms. So only hostile circuits like the 4th, 7th, 9th, etc. will hear these cases. Not the progun 5th, 11th, or 8th. |

And while SCOTUS lets them "percolate", the anti-2A courts will continue to bastardize Bruen beyond recognition, just as they did Heller.

Read 20 tweets

Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Nov 8

A thread on our final judgment from Judge McGlynn in our case of FFL-IL v. Pritzker. We represented Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, Guns Save Life, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Piasa Armory, and individual plaintiffs in this challenge to the euphemistically named "Protect Illinois Communities Act" (an "assault weapon" and magazine ban).

The "Rorschach test of America's gun debate." I like that.

I am going to skip through the background section as I am sure everyone following this case is well aware.

Tl;Dr - challenge to Illinois's "assault weapon" ban, magazine capacity limit, and registration requirement.

Read 45 tweets

Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Oct 8

Note that California law classifies ALL Glocks as "unsafe handguns" because they do not have a compliant chamber load indicator, lack a magazine disconnect mechanism, and until our lawsuit caused California to repeal the requirement, of course lacked microstamping.

The only reason we can still buy Gen 3s is because they are grandfathered in, but they are still "unsafe handguns". We can't buy more modern Glocks new in gun stores (just secondhand from exempt cops, or from those who moved here with them from other states).

She supported the Unsafe Handgun Act and expanded it such that microstamping began to be enforced in 2013. So why does she own an "unsafe handgun"?

If a Glock is "safe" enough for Kamala Harris, she should call for the repeal of the handgun roster so Californians can buy more modern Glocks.

The lives of millions of regular people aren't worth less than hers.

Thanks to our lawsuit on behalf of CRPA and others in Boland v. Bonta, new semiauto pistol models have been able to enter the California roster for the first time in a decade after microstamping enforcement stopped.

But the guns added are still just a small fraction of the whole market, as it's not possible (or sometimes not financially feasible) to redesign guns to have the unwanted magazine disconnects and chamber load indicators.

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Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Sep 3

This 1890 congressional debate on a bill banning the carrying of weapons in Washington DC is interesting in how much it repeats so many things we are still arguing about to this day.

First, the text of the bill:

Congressman Blount knew how this could be abused, even with the apparent allowance for open carry.

Congressman Grout (from Vermont), in response, seems annoyed Blount (from Georgia) is even debating this.

Grout quickly reveals the impetus for the bill, this was yet another example of gun control racism.

And apparently, "minors" was code for "black minors."

Read 17 tweets

Kostas Moros

@MorosKostas

Aug 26

No, it absolutely isn't "just wrong". Let's just give one simple example: the fact that the Second Amendment covers an individual right.

The big names denied or obfuscated this for decades. Given that, even as an obviously biased lawyer, I expected that when I dug into 18th and 19th century commentary on the Second Amendment I'd find lots to support their view.

I found almost nothing of the sort. My thread on Second Amendment commentary pre-1900 is now over 60 entries long, each supporting the individual right to varying degrees, and each linked to the full source in Google Books for anyone who wants to confirm the context. I would only find out after I did this research that @davekopel did this same project several decades ago, and had already cited many of the sources I found again. I'm not sure why the debate didn't end then.

@2aHistory continued this work after I moved on from it, and he has found dozens more. We decided to find that many in order to preemptively rebut the claim that we were "cherry picking". We sure found a lot of "cherries"!

The mainstream historians, by contrast, had generally gone along with the lie that the individual right is something gun rights activists made up in the 1970s. Not one of them seriously deals with the overwhelming pre-1900 commentary confirming the individual right, which includes everyone from delegates of the constitutional convention, other contemporaries of the founders, Senators, Congressmen, abolitionists, early civil rights activists, famous legal scholars, and even President Grant.

Modern academics simply do not have a better understanding of the Second Amendment's scope and purpose than, well, everyone of any note who commented on the matter pre-1900. Period. If they suggest otherwise, they are engaging in activism, not history.

To be sure, there can be plenty of historical debate on the degree of gun control allowed. That is where the pre-1900 commentary is a bit more split and thus debatable. While everyone generally agreed there was an individual right to own and carry arms, and common rifles and handguns were included in that, that is where the agreement generally ends and the evidence gets more murky.

But the major historians never gave any apology for how wrong they were on the individual right. When they do engage with the pre-1900 commentary, it is to cite just a couple examples, claim they are "outliers", and move on. More often, they don't even seem to know it exists. None of them that I've seen honestly acknowledge the sheer weight of authority on this point. They continue to accuse the Supreme Court of "law office history" claiming they are taking history "out of context", but they never seriously explain why.

For example, when President Grant complained to Congress that the KKK was trying to deny newly freed former slaves their right to bear arms, what context support anything other than an individual right? Was President Grant concerned that black men would not be able to fight for the state militia of Alabama, Mississippi, or other former confederate states? Of course not. The only way the statement makes any sense is if their is an individual right whose existence was so obvious it wasn't even worth commenting on, except insofar as it was being denied to freedmen.

These prominent academics are also nauseatingly elitist. They all praise and cite each other, even when they are plainly wrong. @serow_man already pointed out how at least one of them (and probably more) praised Michael Bellesiles, who was proven to be a fraud. (And they continue to disparage Clayton Cramer in their expert reports, who was the one who proved their buddy Bellesiles was a fraud).

Their efforts to mislead continue to this day. They tell judges with a straight face that historical bowie knife carry restrictions are like modern bans on common rifles, knowing full well that the actually analogous weapons of the era (winchester rifles, colt revolvers) were never meaningfully regulated, and certainly not banned. They pretend concealed carry restrictions were the same as full carry bans, and we have to spend hours of work calling them out on it. On and on it goes.

The mainstream prominent historians have been getting their clocks cleaned because they are either engaging in groupthink at best, or outright lying at worst. They don't deserve to be taken seriously until they stop carrying water for the gun control movement. They are using credentialism to hide gun control activism. There is nothing wrong with activism, I'm an activist. But I don't hide it. They shouldn't either.

https://x.com/MorosKostas/status/1827873669164769460

https://x.com/MorosKostas/status/1827873669164769460

And if we're wrong, why doesn't a similar amount of commentary exist pre-1900 denying any individual right?

Why was the first federal gun law not adopted until the NFA in the 1930s, if the Second Amendment had nothing to do with an individual right?

Why did not one state ban repeating rifles and revolvers, which greatly proliferated during and after the civil war?

You have to make a completely ridiculous amount of assumptions for them to be correct that there is no individual right.

And if they can't get the most basic question about the Second Amendment correct, why should anyone treat them as an authority on anything else in this field?

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