Trouble in the 98-Double-Ought-3

 My friendly neighborhood gun store, Federal Way Discount Guns, is in the news for defying  Washingtons ban on standard capacity magazines. 

Federal Way Discount Guns faces lawsuit for illegally selling high-capacity gun magazines

On the store’s Instagram account, the company wrote on Dec. 7: “We are in the crosshairs of the WA AG. We will fight this until the end and are going to need your support in doing so. Business will continue as usual. We are committed to serving the people of this state and nation, NOT the state.”

King County judge orders Federal Way Discount Guns to stop high-capacity magazine sales

I love this bit:

The Federal Way gun store also houses an indoor shooting range, which is used by the Federal Way Police Department for training. Department officials told the Mirror in Dec. 2022 that the department will continue to train at the site.

“The fact that the indoor range is within the city limits enhances our operational readiness by keeping officers in the city and available for calls for service, while greatly reducing the travel expenses incurred for firearms training outside the city,” said Cmdr. Kurt Schwan of Federal Way Police. “We utilize the facilities throughout the year for department-wide training, one on one training with an instructor, and individual firearms practice.”

If you watched Top Shot you saw Commandeer Schwan on, IIRC, Season 3. 

Another local store, WGS in Tacoma, got similar charges, but blamed  a new employee and settled. So I wont be visiting them any time soon...

When Joe Waldron, who used to do the GOAL Posts that I used to transcribe here, was asked about legal challenges to some gun control laws, he used to ask in reply "Are you volunteering to be the test case?" The point being that sometimes you need someone with standing to make the legal challenge. 

Now, a legal challenge has already been filed, and put on hold pending the results of similar cases on the least coast. (Trial date set for Washington’s ban on high-capacity gun magazine sales.)

And now we have a name and a face to attach to the case.

At the amateur radio club's meeting last month I asked a fellow member, whom I know frequents the weekly matches there, if there was a Mo Defense Fund yet. 

There is now:

Federal Way Discount Guns was previously featured in the following posts:

• One Step Back, Two Steps Forward?
• Another Step Forward
• "Urban Defensive Tactics" class, 12/14/14

FCC Reminder

 

Amateur & Personal Radio Users Reminded Not to Use Radios in Crimes

• Full Title: Warning: Amateur and Personal Radio Services Licensees and Operators May Not Use Radio Equipment to Commit or Facilitate Criminal Acts
• Document Type(s): Public Notice
• Bureau(s): Enforcement

Description:
The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued today an advisory to remind licensees and operators in the Amateur and Personal Radio Services that they may not use radio equipment to commit or facilitate crimes.

• DA/FCC #: DA-21-73

The ARRL has posted the full text here. 

To clarify: The Personal Radio Service includes the cheap blister-pack FRS radios you can buy on the end cap at Wally World, the slightly more expensive and maybe slightly higher quality GMRS radios you have to actually look for. FRS radios require no license, GMRS radios do, but its a blanket; you, as owner, buy a license and it covers all the units you own, and whoever you allow to use one.

The Amateur Radio Service is, well, amateur radio operators. You have to take a test to get the license. As such, any licensed ham KNOWS you can't use any of these devices in the commission of a crime. 

So why now? Well, one might suggest that this is too little to late.

For about 10 years now you have been able to buy extremely cheap, Chicom made, handheld radios on Amazon. And when I say "extremely cheap", I mean that they cost a little more than that blister-pack pair of FRS radios. 

Also, while they transmit on the frequency you program in, they signal is very "dirty", with what are technically referred to as "spurious transmissions" or "spatter." In fact, bench testing indicates that most of these Chicom units, sometimes called "Kaodungs"as a mocking form of the names of many of these. (They're Chinese. They come from the same factories, made by the same slave labor, sold with different brand names. Or aliases, take your pick)

They are also problematic because they come off the boat able to transmit on many bands which it is illegal to transmit on in the USA without the appropriate licensing. And I am not talking about amateur bands, either. No, I'm talking about bands that are reserved for commercial or government or public safety use. Bands that you can get severe fines or jail time for transmitting on. 

Now, for decades it has been generally accepted that amateur radio operators will acquire radios that operate on any mode or frequency range and modify them to operate where they have operating privileges. And it is not illegal to own a radio you don't have the license to transmit on, as long as... you don't transmit.

And it is legal to use any communications means at hand if life safety is at risk. (Although there's a story about a ham who called for help on a public safety frequency, and got the help and arrested for "interfering with public safety" or some-such, so use with caution.)

ARRL has tested these "Kaodung" units, and like I said above, they have very messy, very bad signals. In fact, they probably do not meet Federal standards for use. Uncle Sam has been trying to stop the influx, to no avail. 

Sometime in the last few months I heard that antifa was using these things to coordinate their mostly peaceful protests. 

I almost titled this post "Too little, too late."

(See also my post "Hammy Stuff" from October 2018.)

Did NOT see this one coming!

DHS Says Firearms Retailers, Manufacturers ARE ‘Essential Businesses’: BREAKING NEWS

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Under the Trump Administration's guidance, the Department of Homeland Security has declared firearms manufacturers and retailers “essential businesses,” possibly driving a spike through the heart of various state and local “emergency powers” declarations that had classified gun stores to be “non-essential” during the current Coronavirus panic, and had ordered them closed.

The reference to gun shops is found in a document released Saturday titled “Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce,” in the section dealing with “Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and Other First Responders.”

The document released by DHS simply says that “Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges” are considered essential.

Article quoted from Ammoland.com, emphasis in original.

Hammy Stuff

Procrastination -- it's been a month since I posted, and I haven't even been out of town! -- results in multiple posts, some of them short, being consolidated.

Part of the procrastination is due to disgust with The National Scene, ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Part of it is laziness and inertia, part waiting to see what will happen...

Anyway. The 98-Double-Ought-3 Amateur Radio Club celebrated its 20th Anniversary yesterday. Yay, us!🎆🎉 Yes, there was cake and ice cream. 🎂🍨

Now, there are bigger and older clubs out there; Western Washington is pretty "radio-active", so to speak. The Radio Club of Tacoma is over a hundred years old, and the club "radio shack" -- yes, hams really do use that term -- is an actual house that the club purchased 50 or 60 years ago. Which is pretty cool, and yes, there is a certain amount of envy there. But. It isn't our club, and it doesn't really serve our needs.

Speaking of which...

Short read of the day: The Gresham’s Law of Law

Recently started receiving the daily digest from Law & Liberty, maintained by the Liberty Fund, same folks who do the Online Library of Liberty.

Here's an example of why:

 The Gresham's Law of Law - Law & Liberty

by Mike Rappaport

In economics, Gresham’s Law is the law that say “bad money drives out good money.” In law, there is a similar law – deviant or problematic lawmaking drives out orthodox or legitimate lawmaking. This occurs in both constitutional law and administrative law.

Let’s start with constitutional law. The law of the Constitution is supposed to be established through the constitutional enactment process and the constitutional amendment process. Yet, it is well known that the Supreme Court does not always follow this legitimate method of constitutional law making, and instead changes or updates the Constitution through judicial lawmaking.

It is sometimes thought that these two types of lawmaking can coexist, but it has become increasingly clear that this is not the case. Since the New Deal, and especially as the Court has engaged in more judicial updating, the constitutional amendment process has atrophied. The main reason is that a constitutional amendment can only pass if it is supported by a consensus of the country. And developing a consensus may take a long time and may require compromise.

And then there's administrative law. Just as Constitutional Amendments don't happen due to Supreme Court rulings, Congress leaves most rule-making up to unaccountable bureaucrats.

Go read the whole thing, like I said, it's short.

Free To Choose...

Friedman would be laughing his ass off, or taking up arms, one or the other...

How does removing a requirement to purchase a thing, "or else", deprive people who WANT to purchase the thing, of the thing?
Doesn't matter whether you replace "thing" with "widget", "candy bar", or "health insurance", people who WANT TO can still purchase it.

— Drang (@DWDrang) November 19, 2017

I mean, I get that progressives are too invested in their ideology to even acknowledge the question.*

And socialists of all stripes would probably say that asking the question is racist, classist, sexist, and a dozen other "ists" I can't even think of right now.

But the fact remains that no one has proposed banning health insurance, nor even  repealing the law that makes it a crime to refuse someone emergency care because they can't afford to pay for it.

They're just proposing that the government cease forcing people to spend money on something they don't want.

Remember, ultimately, any government requirement is backed up by someone with a gun.

BTW, if Obamacare was so great,

• Why does anyone have to be forced to buy it?
• Why do I know so many people with serious medical conditions and no health care?

* Ignoring the obvious question, how many of them are smart enough to even recognize the logical fallacy?

And so it begins...

A White House.gov petition to Repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934.

h/t Dr. Mike Brown

Also: Repeal the 1986 Hughes amendment | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government

Upcoming Law of Self Defense Seminars

Andrew Branca sent an email today in which he posted the following scheduled Law of Self Defense Seminars:

Upcoming Law of Self Defense Seminars

As I've mentioned, I am preparing a major re-location from Massachusetts to Colorado within the next couple of months, and have blocked out most of the summer to allow for our move.  The pace really picks up again late summer and into the fall. As usual, all seminars are state-specific, with some covering just the state in which they are being held while others also cover adjoining states.

August 7:  Raleigh NC
August 13: OR & WA:  Portland OR
August 20: TN & KY: Nashville TN
September 10: Talladega AL
October 1: PA & NJ:  Philadelphia PA
October 15: Arizona NM
October 16: TX & NM: El Paso TX

We'll have plenty more seminars scheduled all over the country. Just click here to learn about seminars coming in YOUR state!

 As I said back in February of this year,

...I will wrap it up by saying that the experience was well worth the money, and it is highly recommended; if you cannot attend the appropriate session for your state, and are at all concerned about the legal aspects of self-defense, then you should at least read Andrew's book, and see about bringing him to your neck of the woods.

Defense Authorization bill was signed Wednesday

I can't help thinking it's a trap.

S. 1356, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 (Opens a .pdf, all 584 pages of it.)

Military.com reports that they have finally passed a "blended" retirement program. When I was getting ready to retire, it was being reported that the Pentagon was resisting calls to include the Uniformed Services in the government's IRA program, because it would lead to reductions in retirement pay. OTOH, this looks like it will result in some sort of payout for those who leave with less than 20 years. You get a lot of time-servers after about the 12 year mark, not sayin' I would have left earlier if I had the prospect of getting paid, but...

It also includes "language designed to stop Obama from closing the detention facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Plus:

Allowing personal firearms on stateside bases — Lawmakers are requiring Defense Secretary Ash Carter to develop a plan by the end of this year that would allow stateside base commanders to decide whether to allow their service members to carry personal firearms on duty, or in areas where that is currently restricted by the military. Any such plan would not supercede local laws.

Per the NRA-ILA (which incorrectly refers to the bill as the Defense Appropriations Bill"*) also

...clarifies an exception in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that pertains to ammunition. Although TSCA clearly exempts “cartridges” and “shells” from the Act’s jurisdiction, radical environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) have for years been trying to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate lead projectiles under the Act. ...

Section 315 of the NDAA makes explicit the clear intent of the exception, which was to conclusively remove ammunition from the scope of the TSCA. Thus, the exception now includes not just shells and cartridges but “components of shot shells and cartridges.”

 Finally, Section 1087. The NRA again:

Rounding out the list of pro-gun provisions is section 1087, which restores authorization to the Secretary of Defense to transfer to the Civilian Marksmanship Program surplus M1911 and M1911A1 .45 ACP pistols for sale to the public. The component of the CMP that dispenses the pistols would be required to obtain a federal firearms license and abide by all requirements of the Gun Control Act pertaining to licensed sales and transfers. Currently, the military has some 100,000 such pistols that it no longer needs and that are being stored as taxpayer expense. These historically-significant firearms can now be transferred to law-abiding owners at a net gain to the government’s heavily-indebted balance sheet.

 I'll take two, please.

***

*From the Military.Com article: "The legislation is only half the annual budget process for Congress. Lawmakers still need to pass a defense appropriations bill for fiscal 2016 to start new programs and acquisition plans. Congressional leaders are hopeful that can be done before Dec. 11, when a short-term budget extension expires."

It's The Law!

Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. 

I made an effort to read Conquest's  The Great Terror: A Reassessment and Reflections on a Ravaged Century, and they were a bit too... dense, I guess, would be the word. The first needed a much deeper knowledge of Soviet history than I have; I kept struggling to remember which commie was which...

Everyone has heard Parkinson's Law:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

How many have head Parkinson's own corollary, Parkinson's law of triviality:

The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

And, of course, speaking of Parkinsons's law and bureaucracy, we cannot forget Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

UPDATE: This was NOT a post I was expecting a lot of traffic for.  (Well, a lot of hits for this blog...) I just put these here so I could find them when I wanted them, kinda like "Sharing to save" on Facespace.
The question now: Is it a "Wolfe-alanche", or a "Claire-alanche"?