Month: August 2024
Attorney’s with the State of California are meeting with some pushback over their recent testimony before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the state’s one-gun-a-month law.
On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Jerry T. Yen attempted to make his case in Nguyen v. Bonta, but some justices on the court seemed skeptical about his claims. In fact, in defending the law, Yen tried to make the case that it was intended to stop straw buyers, but at least one of the judges didn’t find that assertion credible.
“Do arms traffickers buy two at a time?,” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest. “It seems like no.”
According to Yen, the law is a regulation on when you can own a gun, not if you can do so. But that argument didn’t sit well with Judge Forrest, either.
“It would be absurd to think that a government could say you can only buy one book a month because we want to make sure that you really understand the books you read, or you could only attend one protest a month because, you know, there’s some societal drawbacks from having protests so we want to kind of space those out. People would say that’s absurd,” Forrest said during the proceeding.
Judge John Owens further tore into Yen’s reasoning on one-gun-a-month law by using the scenario of a liquor store owner who might be threatened by a gang both at his business and his home. If the owner wanted two guns but didn’t have any, he would have to buy one, then wait 30 days to buy another. And Owens believes in that case the law would keep him from defending himself under the Second Amendment.
The appeal before the 9th Circuit comes after a U.S. District court ruled the law to be unconstitutional earlier this year. Of course, California is only too happy to spend taxpayer money to continue defending the law.
As the National Rifle Association argued in a brief filed in the case in June: “This Court has twice held that the Second Amendment protects the right to acquire arms. This Court’s prior holdings are supported by Supreme Court precedent. First, the Supreme Court has determined that ‘keep Arms’ in the Amendment’s text means to ‘have weapons,’ and the plain meaning of ‘have’ encompasses the act of acquisition.
Second, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that certain rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees. In the Second Amendment context, four Justices have recognized—and none have disagreed—that firearms training is ‘a necessary concomitant’ of the right to keep and bear arms. As this Court, the Third Circuit, and many district courts have recognized, acquiring a firearm must be a necessary concomitant as well.”
The state is also trying to meet the second Bruen standard by arguing that there is historic precedence for limiting gun purchases to one every 30 days. But it’s likely that assertion will fall on deaf ears, too.
As the NRA also pointed out in its brief: “The State argues that a more nuanced analogical approach is required because historically firearms were too laborious to manufacture and too expensive to purchase for firearms to be available for bulk purchase.
In fact, firearms were ubiquitous in early America, and affordable enough for every militiaman and many women to be required to purchase one or several firearms. Indeed, newspaper advertisements regularly offered large quantities of firearms for sale.”
Further bolstering that point, the brief continued: “In any event, California does not merely prohibit ‘bulk’ purchases; it prohibits the purchase of even two firearms in one month. Americans commonly purchased multiple firearms in a single transaction in the colonial and founding eras—and no law ever forbade it.”
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A M2 HYDE SUBMACHINE GUN
Have you ever thought if Tommy Gun is the M1 submachine gun, why the Grease Gun is M3 and not M2? Well, because there was an M2 SMG which we are looking at here. Designed by George Hyde, this SMG was supposed to be a cheaper to manufacture, simpler and lighter-weight gun to replace the Thompson submachine gun. And in fact, it was quite a good design.
Although this SMG was actually adopted by the US military, it wasn’t manufactured in any significant quantities due to some issues with setting up the manufacturing process. Marlin was granted the contract to manufacture the gun but by the time they started delivering the M2 SMGs, the contract was canceled, because by that time, the same designer, George Hyde, has developed the “Grease Gun” which was a much cheaper to make SMG and was adopted as the M3 submachine gun.
Originally designed for aircraft use, this particular Italian Villar Perosa dual SMG was adapted for ground use. It consists of two separate submachine guns joined together. The spade grip has two thumb triggers which you can use to fire each of the SMGs separately or push them simultaneously to fire both.
Each of the guns is fed from its own top-mounted magazine and must be charged separately. The Villar Perosa is chambered in 9mm Glisenti which is dimensionally identical to the 9x19mm but it was loaded to weaker pressure levels.
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AYOOB’S LAW OF NECESSARY HYPOCRISY
In my decades on masthead staff at GUNS magazine, I’ve been privileged to work with many fine editors and, to my great and enduring relief, no bad ones. One of those editors was Jerry Lee, who went on to become an editor for Petersen Publishing and then (and now) editor of Gun Digest. He was in the second of those positions when he asked me to write an article that wound up titled, “Ayoob’s Laws.”
It began kinda like this: “Ayoob’s Law No. 1: Be able to predict where the attack will come, and have a proven counter-attack already in place and poised for launch. Ayoob’s Law No. 2: Anyone arrogant enough to name laws after himself is arrogant enough to number them arbitrarily.”
And, somewhere in there, was “Ayoob’s Law of Necessary Hypocrisy.”
Ayoob’s Law of Necessary Hypocrisy holds thus… We will tell you: Do not do this thing! It is incredibly (expletive deleted) stupid. However, we realize you might be in a situation where you say “You ain’t where I am and I have to do this!” Therefore, it is our responsibility to show you the least incredibly (expletive deleted) stupid way of doing this incredibly (expletive deleted) stupid thing.
Mas demonstrates a handcuffing technique. Not usually taught to civilians, but…
Example
I began training police in 1972 and law-abiding armed citizens in 1981. From the beginning of the latter endeavor, I taught private citizens the many reasons why they should never attempt to close in with a criminal suspect they were holding at gunpoint and attempt to disarm and handcuff him or tie him up. (Any experienced cop or corrections professional reading this knows the reasons why.) But, by the late 1980’s, in advanced classes I was teaching armed citizens one handcuffing technique.
Why? Two reasons. One was I had students who spent time in places so remote they had no communications that could reach the police, and had bought handcuffs for such purposes. The other was that I discovered the kind of people who would take my classes at Lethal Force Institute then, or Massad Ayoob Group now, were the kind of people who would come out of the crowd and help an embattled cop who was losing a fight on the street.
Micro .380’s like the Ruger LCP (above) aren’t ideal “man-stoppers,” but are
often the only compromise the armed citizen can make work. A J-frame revolver
like this S&W 340 M&P .357 Mag (below) has ample power, but requires training
commitment for hit potential and recoil control.
Applied to the Gun
How does the Law of Necessary Hypocrisy apply to defensive handguns? One example: I’m the guy who coined the phrase “friends don’t let friends carry mouse-guns,” and I personally don’t care to carry a .380; the best .38 Special and 9mm hollowpoints are my personal baseline minimum.
However, I work for myself and can dress how I like. The only environments in my life where I have to wear mandated clothing are part-time police work, where I’m expected to openly carry the department-issued .45, and court appearances, where most of my suits are tailored to hide a full-sized handgun that’s generally secured in a courthouse gun locker before I step into the courtroom anyway.
But I recognize a lot of people have more restrictive dress codes in “non-permissive environments,” and if someone has a choice of carrying a tiny Ruger LCP or equivalent .380 or nothing at all, I’d really rather they have that on their person than a .45 at home in the dresser when they’re attacked on the street.
The saying among those who study the history of gunfighting is absolutely true: “I’ve never met a gunfight survivor who wished he’d had a less powerful gun or less immediately-available ammunition.” That said, though, I don’t usually participate in Internet threads about “How much is enough?” There seems to be a meme on the gun-related Internet that says, “Those who carry more than I do are paranoid, and those who carry less than I do are pathetic ‘sheeple.’” I don’t buy that. As I write this I’m wearing a so-called “high capacity” 9mm pistol and spare magazine, and a backup J-frame S&W with 5 rounds of .38 +P and Speed Strip with 5 more. (It’s not hard with some thought, some ingenuity, and of course, habituation.) An adult lifetime of studying gunfights has taught me that with round count, “it is better to have and not need, than to need and not have.” Still, I recognize that my much younger self with the 5-shot Chief Special and no spare ammo was a heckuva lot safer than someone who had no gun at all, as that younger self learned on a dark and icy night by a dark and icy river in New England in 1971.
Which may be why my much older self is alive to discuss the matter in the year 2014.
Ayoob’s Law of Necessary Hypocrisy is one I invoke as little as possible. It should be taken in context with three other of Ayoob’s Laws.
1.) “Those who demand all or nothing generally end up with…nothing.”
2.) “Nothing is everything, but everything is something.” And, finally, a law someone invoked long before I did:
3.) “Something is better than nothing.”
By Massad Ayoob
Photos By Gail Pepin
* Back when this building hadn’t burn down! 
