Most people who come to Boomershoot do so with the idea of practicing their long-range shooting with an accurate rifle.  A few, however, think that iron sights and volume of fire are the way to go.

From what the owner of that little beauty told me, it was converted to semi-auto and they didn't really have much chance of actually hitting anything at boomershoot ranges -- but it was fun to play with.  They had hopes of hitting the larger targets at the 380 line mainly by luck, but anything longer than that turned the whole thing into a very expensive way to move snow and dirt around.

I forgot to check back after the event to see if they managed to hit any boomers with it.

My shooting position at Boomershoot.  I was travelling fairly light, so I was basically limited to throwing down a tarp and two mats, with minimal sandbags.  I was able to borrow sandbags from other people there and next time will definitely bring more (mind you, I might acquire the filling material locally).  Others who were there put a lot more effort into preparing their spaces.

It's not immediately obvious but most of the actual targets are in the left of this picture, with the furthest out starting about the center line.  The picture was taken before adjusting the shooting position to more closely match the target area.  Note how the mats are set up perpendicular to the berm when they should be pointed substantially left.

At the top left of the picture you can see a patch of snow.  That's about 500-600 yards away and provided a good range marker for the two days of the PRC.  It was mostly gone before the actual event and the targets in the snowfield itself pretty much got rid of any remaining snow.

The device on the tripod is a spotting scope, sort of like a telescope but optimized for a wide field of view.  It's easier to see a bullet impact through a spotting scope than a riflescope, though a good riflescope can definitely be used.  My spotter and I traded off between the two.  One definite advantage to the spotting scope is that you can get your head out from behind your rifle; after three days of shooting pretty much all day, I was definitely having trouble remaining in the right position to see and spot through my riflescope.  It's one good reason to make sure your shooting position is as comfortable as possible -- at least if you'll be stuck there for three days. 

Now that I'm back at home I figure I can write up a more complete report...

Day 2 of the clinic had mostly the same people as day 1; a few more field fire shooters, but only two more people for the training portion.  Those two were basically taken through the day 1 course, while the people who had been there on the first day got a brief refresher and some additional thoughts from the new instructors -- mostly on spotter-shooter dialog.  The instruction was not as useful as on the first day, but we got to shooting at targets faster, giving more of a chance to apply what we learned the first day.

On a personal level, I spent a significant portion of the morning figuring out what exactly was up with my rifle's windage zero.  As it turns out, several different factors were causing problems.  On the first day, Eugene had spent some time shooting my rifle to establish a zero; he was able to get a pretty good zero for 380, which he wrote down as R18.  Since my rifle scope is a Nightforce Benchrest model, it has a total of 40 MOA windage adjustment available.  I had zeroed the rifle at 100 yards the day before leaving with something like an R6; Eugene was counting MOA right of the scope center rather than from 0.  Between all the different adjustments I ended up with a zero at about R33, which shot fine, except I didn't have more than about 1 MOA left to adjust for wind from the right. 

Once the confusion got sorted out, we took a long look at the rifle barrel versus the scope alignment, and there is a noticable off-angle.  That rifle is going back to the gunsmith who mounted the scope, and from there, either new rings, new bases, or a new rifle from Savage... because something in those three things has the scope mount way off.  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the way the rifle performed during the event, but it's too far off center to settle for.  Especially with the limited number of clicks the benchrest scopes allow for.  What might be tolerable in one of the NXS scopes (which have 80 MOA adjustment range) won't fly for a benchrest scope.

After the rifle issues were sorted out, I was able to settle down to shooting targets in earnest.  My spotter and I were having a bit of an off day, which I attribute mainly to being worn out from the frantic pace of preparations, travel, instruction, and shooting the first day of the clinic.  Nonetheless we were able to settle in and shoot fairly well, reaching steel targets out to 500 and 600 yards consistently. 

Our boomers at the end of the day took longer to hit than the day before and we ended up taking only two of three each; the others we bounced around a bit with edge hits but couldn't get anything solid enough to detonate.  Not bad for two relative novices to long-distance shooting... but not what we had hoped for, either.  Being tired out does make a difference, and it's more than just going to bed early can take care of. 

Of course, the man behind Boomershoot is a blogger.  I also met Phil of Random Nuclear Strikes who has an after-action report posted along with some pictures of Boomershoot rifles.  Mine are in there; I'm planning a more detailed post with closeups later for those interested.  He was sharing a tent with Dave, whose blog name I did not catch, and David.  Much possible ground for confusion there!  UPDATE: Looks like Ry Jones was there too, but I didn't make the connection at the time.

Yesterday was the first day of the precision rifle clinic at Boomershoot. it was a very effective instructional experience - more details to follow. I was hitting targets out to 600 yards on a rifle I had only touched for the first time on Tuesday. bear with the sparse reporting until I return; the cell phone is a pita for typing long missives.

UPDATE: A little more thorough update now that I'm home.  The first day of the Precision Rifle Clinic was a mix.  The instruction was everything I had hoped for; Eugene (the lead instructor) covered all the basic information about long-range shooting that I knew existed but had no practical knowledge of.  He also touched on several things that I had not been aware of, some that are obvious in retrospect... and some not.  To summarize the topics covered from memory:

• Safety rules
  
• Pre-action equipment checks (just in case)
  
• reading and correcting for windage, plus several rules of thumb to do so quickly when necessary.
  
• adjusting for distance to the target
• dialog between the shooter and spotter
• estimating distances using your scope reticle
• ballistic behavior of various cartridges
  

It was all great information to have and filled in the gaps in my own knowledge nicely.  Even so, the biggest lesson I took home from the first day wasn't on that list: I was reminded of how important shooter position can be.  I had not shot prone for quite some time (all the local ranges I know of have benches), and the berm I was shooting from is substantially right from the target line.  I had set up my mat square on to the line of the berm rather than square to the targets I would be shooting at.  That mistake resulted in quite a bit of not-quite-comfortable shooting all morning.   Reacquiring targets at range was taking forever even with the scope dialed back to 22x.

Once I got the setup corrected, with the mats realigned and the sandbags I was using to support the stock of my rifle adjusted to keep my rifle naturally pointed at the target I was shooting at, results were a lot better.  I was able to produce solid hits from the 380 yard target line. 

Oh, yes, and I should talk about the conditions.

When I arrived, it was cold.  Very cold.  Below freezing cold.  By the time the instruction started it was snowing heavily, although the snow itself wasn't sticking.  The wind was blowing at about 15 mph across the line of fire, but it wasn't a steady wind; there were gusts from 10 to 20 mph.  The only good thing about the weather was that with the snow falling we had an easy way to gauge where the wind was blowing our shots.

There was a lot of windage correction going on during the morning shoot, which covered up a bit of a technical problem I was having with my rifle and scope.  Specifically I was needing to crank on a lot more wind than others were seeing.  This didn't really become obvious until the wind and snow died down a little in the afternoon, giving me the chance to see more of the rifle's performance.   Eugene shot the rifle for a bit to verify my windage zero and ended up cranking it almost all the way over to the right.  This produced good results but left me little room for adjustments.

With the right zero on the rifle I was able to start reaching out to the 500 and 600 yard targets successfully.  My spotter and I were learning to talk each other onto those targets, but the most effective spotting came from the instructors; it seemed like they almost always had someone behind us to help spot. 

For those who haven't tried, spotting is hard to do well at range; you need to be able to see very subtle visual cues to determine where each shot went, up to and including "trace" -- which is almost literally seeing the bullet in the air.  (Actually, it's seeing the air that the bullet's flight disturbed -- the supersonic shock wave).  Pairing an inexperienced shooter and spotter together can make it very hard on both of them, so we got a lot of help to get things sorted out.

I end the day by shooting at three Boomers, two small and one large, and got all three of them.  The first two took only two or three shots, the last one a little longer than that.  Bear in mind these are 4" square targets at 380 yards -- not trivial to shoot well.  I was very surprised and pleased at being able to handle them.  The much reduced wind and lack of snow in the afternoon helped a lot, too.  My spotter was able to take her boomers with about the same number of shots, except her last, which she bounced around 5 or 6 times without getting a detonation.  

Two Savage 12F/TR rifles, .308	$2400
Two Nightforce benchrest scopes	$2600
1000 rounds .308 Match	$1300
Plane tickets to Idaho	$600
Hotel room in Orofino, Idaho	$300
Rental SUV	$400
Two days of expert instruction	$140
Boomershoot entry fees	$200
Shooting explosive targets from 600 yards away	Priceless!

The American Hunters and Shooters Association, a false-flag operation run by gun banners to give political cover to candidates who want to ban guns but don't quite have the political courage to say so, has decided to endorse Obama.

Obama has never seen a gun control measure he did not like... before running for president.  Now, he's praying no one looks into his slim and scarce voting record.  And that they forget about him insulting gun owners by claiming their "bitterness" leads them to "cling" to their guns.

Gun owners have long memories.

Hat tip to The War on Guns for the story.

The larger cities in Texas have been going a little bit nuts with the whole toll road concept for a while now.  From the outside of the system, at least in Austin, it looks as if there was a decision made to build new roads only if those new roads could be paid for with a toll road system.  Those toll systems involve setting up an account with some agency of at least pseudo-governmental nature; you pay money into the account, they send you a toll tag, and then when you drive through one of the new automated toll booths their cameras take a picture of the car, scan the picture for the toll tag, read the id, and then charge the amount of the toll to your account.

Simple, right?

Sure -- but the privacy implications are horrifying.

Realize that this system creates a detailed database of where everyone using a toll road goes -- in some cases down to which exit from the toll road is taken.  This information is in the hands of a government agency and can be easily queried.  Worse, it's stored for everyone who uses the roads, and the queries happen over all past data.  So rather than deciding someone is a "person of interest" and putting a full-time team on following them, the government can simply query the database to see who has been where. 

I decided that was enough to prevent me from signing up and getting into the system.  But, of course, it gets worse.  Houston has now decided to take things to the next step:

Harris County Toll Road Authority cameras are now on the lookout for more than just those drivers who blow through EZ Tag lanes without paying. County authorities promise new, upgraded cameras can help catch murderers and other violent criminals.

The cameras have the capability to search their databases and issue alerts to county dispatchers when a wanted criminal crosses their lenses.

Right now, it's just scanning license plates.  It won't be long before someone gets the idea to put facial recognition systems into the database, too -- then link in imagery from red light cameras, surveilance cameras, and so on. 

The problem is not the idea of catching criminals.  The problem is that the data is collected on everyone. 

It seems the Supreme Court has decided to take another case relating to gun rights.  It's an interesting choice.  The underlying question is whether someone convicted of a misdemeanor battery charge -- basically punching someone -- is allowed to possess firearms. 

This normally wouldn't be a bar to gun ownership, since it's a misdemeanor; federal law bars gun possession for those convicted of felonies.  However, there's another section of the law, termed the Lautenberg amendment, which bars gun possession for those convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors.  Although the law under which the defendent was convicted was not specific to  domestic violence, the victim was his then-wife.

Later, the police arrested him in a domestic-violence incident and found that he had firearms, which triggered the charge for firearms possession as a prohibited person.

The question thus is, does the nature of the relationship make the conviction a domestic violence crime, or does the law have to be specifically written to include the domestic-violence criteria?  The West Virginia court seems to have arrived at a different answer than other courts, hence the appeal to the Supreme Court (by the Justice Department). 

In light of Heller, I have got to believe that the DoJ specifically picked this case to appeal in an effort to ensure that they have a "favorable" case before the Supreme Court before gun-rights advocates have the chance to take another bite at the Emerson apple.  (Emerson was a 5th-circuit domestic violence case that famously found for an individual 2nd Amendment right but nonetheless upheld the domestic-violence statute as "minimally" passing due-process muster).

What attributes of the domestic violence case make it good for the anti-gun side?  Well, let's see.  It's a federal law, so they can avoid the incorporation question and any interference from state Constitutions.  They got lucky in getting a result here that creates a circuit split with an unfavorable plaintiff. 

If I had to guess, I'd say that the four votes necessary to grant cert in this case came from the "liberal wing" of the court, seeking to follow the Heller ruling with another case that will limit any damage Heller does to gun control laws. 

This is not the case we want leading the charge after Heller.

The only bright spot is that the question presented to the Supreme Court doesn't address the 2nd Amendment directly, but I rather suspect it will be addressed in the opinion nonetheless.

... and he basically explains why he took the positions he did before the court, even if they were bound to disappoint some.  It's good reading to understand the thought process behind the arguments (especially if you have a gripe about things said or not said) and is still short enough to be a quick read.

National security is a tough business.  How do we preserve our ability to fight our nation's enemies and disrupt their planned attacks while also preserving the rights and freedoms that we hold dear?  It's a tough balancing act.  One piece of wisdom from our founding fathers, though, is the concept of checks and balances; the idea that different branches of government should oversee each other, rather than each policing itself.  The results of the Patriot Act, enacted shortly after 9-11, demonstrate why this is a good idea.

First, you have to understand the normal procedure for obtaining a search warrant, which is generally required before going into someone's home to collect evidence, obtaining records of their business dealings from third parties, or placing a wiretap on their telephone line.  The police normally do some investigation first, in ways that do not require intrusion on someone's rights, in order to get some idea who they can reasonably suspect committed the crime.  If they don't get enough for a conviction from this, they try to figure out what evidence might exist that they don't have, and where they can find it. 

They fill out a form indicating where they want to search, including their supporting evidence, witness statements, and what they expect to find and seize in the search, then submit that form to a judge.  The judge looks over their information and makes sure that they have enough evidence to meet "probable cause"; if they do, he signs the warrant and the police go collect the evidence. 

In practice, judges rarely say no, but the simple act of preparing their evidence for review by a mostly-independent third party means that it doesn't get done casually; and the defendent in any resulting case will have a record of what the police thought they had at the time of the search and can challenge the warrant if it does not meet the probable cause standard.

The Patriot Act changed the rules, at least for terrorism investigations.  The FBI are now allowed to write a "National Security Letter" when requesting business records.  The letter does not go before a judge.  It imposes a gag rule upon the recipient, preventing them from informing anyone of the request (which also has the practical effect of preventing them from obtaining legal assistance).  It can request virtually any information, up to and including a list of which library books you have read or websites you have visited.  There is no requirement to list the evidence used to generate the letter, making the request difficult to challenge in court later. 

The basic idea is to treat terrorists like spies -- both are agents of foreign powers rather than individuals.

Now, we're learning that the FBI has systematically abused that process:

In his first report on NSLs, released in March 2007, Inspector General Glenn Fine inspected a few hundred NSLs issued by the FBI between 2003 and 2005 and found dozens that had been issued "improperly." Given that a total of 143,000 NSLs were issued during that period, the results suggested that hundreds, and probably thousands, of improper NSLs were issued from 2003 to 2005.

That's a lot of terrorists.  But are they really all terrorists?

For example, in last year's report, the inspector general recommended that the FBI implement a system to tag information derived from national security letters so they could be distinguished from data gathered using ordinary investigative activities. That would assist FBI agents in ensuring that information ostensibly obtained for anti-terrorism or counter-espionage purposes is not used for ordinary criminal investigations. But an FBI working group concluded that such tagging would be burdensome and would provide few privacy benefits. Last week's report disagreed, urging the FBI to "give additional consideration" to the issue.

This is important: the FBI can issue broad NSLs to obtain vast amounts of information, which they DO NOT TAG in any way to indicate the legal process they used to collect it.  They can then use that information to prosecute ordinary people for ordinary crimes -- violating their Constitutional rights.

These results suggest that procedural reforms within the FBI will never be sufficient to ensure that the law is followed. FBI personnel will inevitably be biased in favor of their fellow FBI officials. The creation of the FBI's Office of Integrity and Compliance is especially ironic because the federal government already has an "integrity and compliance" unit. It's called the judicial branch. Rather than trying to create a separate system of checks and balances within the FBI, the feds should take advantage of the system of checks and balances we already have. Administrative reforms are no substitute for genuine judicial oversight. Regardless of the number of layers of review, the sophistication of the FBI's tracking system, or the amount of time its personnel spend in training, there will always be a temptation to cut corners unless the issuance of NSLs is subject to scrutiny from outside the FBI hierarchy.

We need those checks and balances back in place, especially when the FBI is trying to cover up their mistakes.  No one can be trusted to police themselves when the consequence is the loss of privacy rights for everyone.  The incentive structure is simply wrong.

I seem to remember we had a revolution over this kind of bullshit.  I'd quote the disturbing bits, but the whole article is disturbing.  Thank god I don't live there.  Used to be, someone who taunted and abused someone else for no real reason until the abuse provoked a violent response was called a bully.  Now, it seems Seattle calls them ACT officers.

I do believe Bob Ricker's target market for his little false-flag operation "American Hunters and Shooters Association" consists of those gun owners who think they are the "elite" of society and feel that the "little people" below them either shouldn't have guns or, at worst, should be heavily restricted to make sure they can only have the guns they can handle safely.  Anyone who thinks of the average gun owner as an ignorant idiot prone to shooting his foot or his kid on a regular basis is probably already a member.

It's not the "educated, sophisticated, and straight-thinking" demographic, despite his protests.  It's the "arrogant prick" demographic.

Alan Gura has responded to some of his critics on subguns.com, who were concerned about having machine guns thrown under the bus to save the individual right for other firearms. 

Thanks for your support.

The solution to 922(o) will have to be political in the end. The fact is, outside the gun community, the concept of privately owned machine guns is intolerable to American society and 100% of all federal judges. If I had suggested in any way -- including, by being evasive and indirect and fudging the answer -- that machine guns are the next case and this is the path to dumping 922(o) -- I'd have instantly lost all 9 justices. Even Scalia.  There wasn't any question of that, at all, going in, and it was confirmed in unmistakable fashion when I stood there a few feet from the justices and heard and saw how they related to machine guns. It was not just my opinion,
but one uniformly held by ALL the attorneys with whom we bounced ideas off, some of them exceedingly bright people. Ditto for the people who wanted me to declare an absolute right, like I'm there to waive some sort of GOA bumper sticker. That's a good way to lose, too, and look like a moron in the process.

I didn't make the last 219 years of constitutional law and I am not responsible for the way that people out there -- and on the court-- feel about machine guns. Some people in our gun rights community have very.... interesting.... ways of looking at the constitution and the federal courts.

I don't need to pass judgment on it other than to say, it's not the reality in which we practice law. When we started this over five years ago, the collective rights theory was the controlling law in 47 out of 50 states.
Hopefully, on next year's MBE, aspiring lawyers will have to bubble in the individual rights answer to pass the test. I know you and many others out there can appreciate that difference and I thank you for it, even if we can't get EVERYTHING that EVERYONE wants. Honestly some people just want to stay angry. I'm glad you're not among them.

You want to change 922(o)? Take a new person shooting. Work for "climate change."

Thanks,
Alan

Very good points.  I would just add to that, we have to have an individual right to possess basic firearms, period, before we can address the question of whether we have an individual right to possess scary firearms.

... of the gun industry advertising to criminals.  The only source I know of for this persistent anti-gun meme is the ad run by a manufacturer advertising his gun's "fingerprint-proof" coating.  In actuality, the coating prevented the residue of skin oils from rusting the finish of the gun if you forget to clean the gun after handling it.  In anti-gun mythology, of course, it was the perfect murder weapon.  In terms of actual evidence, I believe I've seen the ad, but don't have a copy of it.

If pressed they would probably also cite ads for "concealable firearms"; never mind that concealed carry is legal, with appropriate licensing, in nearly all states.

Another similar myth is the idea that gun manufacturers deliberately flood the market with guns "just outside" of gun control areas to facilitate gun smuggling and artificially lower the price of guns.  The real answer is obvious: when stores order guns to sell and have their FFL in proper order, manufacturers provide them with guns to sell.

But since when has a lack of evidence for anything stopped the other side?

UPDATE: Oh, and I forget two other classic examples. 

Gun bigots are often fond of pointing to "plastic guns that won't show up on metal detectors" which obviously MUST be intended for criminal use.  Nevermind that they don't exist.  (Glocks, which pioneered the polymer-frame handgun, have more than enough metal parts to show up on metal detectors).  I suppose if someone wanted to build a plastic handgun that doesn't show up on metal detectors, and could manage to produce one strong enough to do so safely, they would be marketing to criminals, since I believe laws have been passing banning this thing that doesn't exist.  But don't quote me on that, I don't recall any details.

The other favorite target is "armor piercing ammunition".  Insofar as it exists, and doesn't mean simply "using more gun than the armor was designed to stop", I believe ammunition that makes any claim to piercing armor is marketed to military and law enforcement rather than criminals.  I have no idea whether any of it works when fired from a handgun rather than a rifle. 

Can you imagine Heller v DC as a gay rights case?  Yes, you can.  But not special rights.  The same rights everyone else has.

... because they feel he was conceding too much.  Lots of people have that viewpoint.  I'm not as concerned about it as most, because we have to keep in mind the question that's being ruled on in the case.  This is a case about an absolute ban on functional firearms.  The only goal in this case is to get the Supreme Court to strike down DC's gun laws, and in doing so, say that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right which ordinary citizens can invoke against complete bans on functional firearms or certain classes of firearms. 

That's a very, very, very big step for the court to take.  Remember how difficult it has been to get any court to admit to a 2nd Amendment right in any situation at all.  If we push for too much here, we might lose the whole thing.

Our strategy is simple:

1. Force the Supreme Court to admit that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right from a complete ban on firearms under Federal law.
2. Force the Supreme Court, in another case, that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right from a complete ban on firearms under state law (a doctrine known as incorporation).
3. Force state or federal courts to overthrow irrational bans (assault weapon bans).
   
4. Force state or federal courts to overthrow "may-issue" licensing systems for gun possession.
5. Force state or federal courts to overthrow "no-issue" concealed-carry states (the right to bear arms), even if they choose to have a licensing system.
6. Only then do we consider trying to overturn the 1986 machine gun "ban" (on new manufacture), because machine guns are scary and we need the precedents lined up to make the conclusion inevitable.  Even at this stage we leave the NFA licensing system in place.
7. Once we have a substantial period of time without serious "machine gun crime", we can consider turning the NFA system into "shall issue".

Basically, what we need to do here is establish that licensing and regulation are acceptable, but complete bans or licensing systems that effectively create complete bans are not.  If we push for too much, the justices will balk and uphold DC's law for fear of the consequences of their precedent, and we'll be far worse off.

The best outcome for our side is actually not a "strict scrutiny" ruling that would immediately overturn everything we object to.    Such a ruling would cause all kinds of chaos and disruption.  We need to take it one step at a time and demonstrate to everyone that the world does not end at each step.

That said, some of the questions directed at Gura could have been handled better -- from a comfortable armchair with all the time in the world and no pressure.  As far as I'm concerned he did a great job, better by far than I could have done.

There's a two-part series (Part 1, Part 2) on the Olofson case (in which an AR-15 rifle malfunctioned and the ATF charged and convicted him for transferring a machinegun).  This is exactly the sort of case that demonstrates that the BATFE (as a whole, if not every individual agent) is treating every gun owner like a criminal... rather than as someone exercising a protected constitutional right.  The legal gun owning community is subject to persecution (not to mention prosecution) from a government agency whose unwritten laws are throwing honest citizens into prison for years.

In Minsk, police stopped drivers on a major highway (video) and used them, with the drivers still in the cars, as a roadblock to stop a drunk driver.  In Washington, a man suspected of drunken driving was held down kicking and screaming to draw a blood sample, then forcibly catheterized to obtain a urine sample.  

... and you saw it on TriggerFinger!

It being, in this case, Joe's posting of email from Alan Korwin, who was at the Heller argument and has a lengthy analysis of it, once of the most coherent I've seen so far on short notice.

There's a lengthy analysis of the Heller arguments over at Leibowitz's Cantlcle.

David Hardy was at the court during the argument, and has his notes in PDF form.  No real insights since transcripts and audio are available, but I'm feeling completist.

Arguments:

• Delinger
• Clement
• Gura
• Delinger
  

Commentaries:

• Lott and Bane
• Shepherd and Bane

Plus the official transcript is out.

Lott's commentary is predictable -- he's disappointed that there wasn't very much emphasis on statistical and empirical arguments.  The problem with this is that statistics are hard to get right, especially for non-experts, and the arguments aren't conclusively on either side.  We can convincingly make the case that gun control doesn't reduce crime, but we can't yet prove (though we can provide some evidence) that pro-gun policies do reduce crime.

Shepherd's commentary was insightful, but too long to summarize.  There's one particularly good moment when he's talking about an interview he witnessed between a local reporter and Heller (the plaintiff).  The reporter saw the DC Mayor, Adrian Fenty, walking out of the court building and asked a quick followup like "But hasn't the mayor done a lot to reduce crime in the city?"  Heller's response was to point out that the mayor was walking out of the Supreme Court building surrounded by 8 bodyguards, his own private army.... and yet Heller, who is allowed to carry a handgun to defend the lives of politicians like Fenty (Heller is a security guard for some government body), is not allowed to keep a handgun in his own home to protect himself.

I thought that was a very well done comment when I heard it on the CSPAN feed, but knowing what was actually in the scene visually makes it that much more powerful.

I hope he's right.  Listening to the arguments, I won't say he's wrong.  I think the DC handgun ban will lose big, and yes, there might even be some room for challenging the machine gun ban -- but that's another case.

There's just this really anxiety-producing proposition on what would we have if we relaxed these laws," said D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, a Democrat. "We'd have to evaluate the court's decision, then look at what revisions in our own statutes would allow us to have the maximum restrictions on guns in the District."

Not unexpected, but it's sad that any politician who argues for maximum restrictions on a Constitutional right can get elected.