Today (October 25) is St. Crispin’s Day. On this day in 1415, the English Army had its greatest victory at the Battle of Agincourt in today’s Azincourt, France. This battle is memorialized in Shakespeare’s Henry V where the titular character gives a stirring speech known as the “St. Crispin’s Day Speech” where the phrase “band of brothers” originated. I’d like to think that it has something to do with us having a right to keep and bear arms and a Second Amendment in our time.

​The battle took place as part of the Hundred Years’ War, one of the many battles between the English and the French over the French throne. The English army was headed back to England when the French cut them off from the Channel thus requiring King Henry and his men to fight their way out. Historical accounts vary, but the English were at approximately half-strength and wildly outnumbered. The French correctly assumed the battle would be a slaughter, but guessed wrong on who the victor would be.
 
The English arrayed themselves in one line of mostly archers on the wings to funnel the French into the infantry into the center. The French had full forces of archers, infantry, and cavalry. The cavalry charged the English lines intending to break the battle lines for the French infantry to then exploit the chaos. But what happened marked the rise of projectile weapons and distance warfare.
 
The English longbow was a fearsome weapon. It was tall, strong and its arrow was capable of penetrating armor, whereas more conventional short bows and crossbows couldn’t, or struggled, to do this. Longbows could shot hundreds of yards relatively accurately. They were “wonder weapons.” Volleys of arrows could fill the sky and cover vast sections of troops, a lot like blackpowder musket volley fire and the machine gun “beaten zone” concepts. English troops could kill at a distance with impunity, reducing their enemy before they got close.
 
That’s exactly what happened at Agincourt. Longbowmen picked off the French cavalry charge, which was never able to regroup for second attack. The English lines held. As the French infantry marched on in increasing disarray, the archers continued to shoot, winnowing down the forces as they struggled to cross a muddy field. By the time the French arrived at the English lines for hand-to-hand combat, they had been diminished considerably.
 
The day lead to victory for the English and has become an immortal part of our culture, thanks in part to William Shakespeare. But more so, this victory and others before it in the war, lead to a reverence for the longbow, even as tactics changed to blunt its effectiveness in battle and gunpowder became common.
 
Now at this time, English armies were typically raised from volunteers and militias. The citizen-soldier concept is an old one. Englishmen kept their weapons at home and were often obligated to do so. Longbow practice was required. In fact, ownership of firearms and shooting with them was restricted in favor of the longbow into the reign of Henry VIII specifically to keep that skill alive. Despite what anti-gunners might claim about English firearm laws in the 16th and 17th century, those laws were not intended to deprive the average, Protestant Englishman of firearms.
 
With the demonstration at Agincourt of what long-distance projectile fire could do, firearms were now a viable concept. Technology just had to catch up, and it did. Firearms required less skill than longbows (thus the English drive to preserve archery skill), while giving much of the same advantage. As firearms became common and finally supplanted longbows, English militia men began keeping firearms at home, supplanting their bows and hand-to-hand weapons. By the time of the American colonies, it was de rigeur that the colonists would have firearms at home. The English tradition of armed individuals for combat was hundreds of years old by the time of the Revolution.
 
In England, one didn’t have the same need for a firearm as American colonists and frontiersman did. England was a relatively peaceful place. The wolves and other wild beasts had been extirpated ages ago. While English and Scots warred amongst themselves in particular, there was no hostile, native population like our Indians that attacked farmers. Self-defense against thugs was done by hand with knives or clubs as useful pistols didn’t really exist.
 
What made firearms common and necessary for survival in America didn’t exist in England. Rather, aside from isolated sport, Englishmen had weapons to practice and maintain their skill at the art of war. Firearm ownership was born in the idea that every man was capable of being a soldier and should practice that skill.
 
So while there are many reasons how and why the right to keep and bear arms and the militia system came to be established in our Anglo-American tradition, it’s nice to think that this day, so well celebrated by the Bard, is responsible for our Second Amendment. 

Watch the video. Kenneth Branagh is absolutely spectacular and it's one of the most rousing speeches you'll ever hear.

The Humboldt County Commission recently passed a Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution in response to a grassroots effort. In the wake of a contentious meeting Sept. 30 with Sheriff Mike Allen, the sheriff is facing a recall effort organized by Dawn Principe, the owner of Sage Hill Arms of Winnemucca. 

During the hearing on red flag laws, the response from county law enforcement was mixed. It was clear that the officials were not exactly pleased with anti-gun money and Las Vegas Democrats putting them in this position. However, what appears to have gone unsaid is that for liability reasons, law enforcement has to use this tool in extreme circumstances.

What was left out of the discussions is the mention of probable cause. Probable cause is the standard for the issuance of search warrant under the Fourth Amendment and if a red flag order can be substantiated on probable cause, it is likely constitutional. Such cause would be things like specific threats or plans. Why an ordinary search warrant and existing conspiracy laws couldn't be used is a matter of agenda. Red flag laws are a concerted effort by hoplopaths to lower the bar to confiscate guns.

While Humboldt County will probably not start seizing anyone and everyone's guns for the slightest pretext, the possibilities of these laws are frightening. Also, it was unfortunate to see the county officials pointing fingers at the legislature and court system. DDA Kevin Pasquale said “we’re not the ones who get to decide if a law is unconstitutional. A judge has to decide it’s unconstitutional.” 

While that's true, courts frequently abuse the constitution. Judicial review was created by the US Supreme Court in its decision Marbury v. Madison. Judicial review of laws is not in the Constitution so courts, for good or bad, are not the final arbiter of what is and isn't constitutional. Sadly, we've let them have that power. Yet this cop-outs sound remarkably like Nazi's on trial in Weimar Germany who said "I was just following orders." 

If Sheriff Allen wants to abide by his moral standard to protect people, he damn well better be right that the person who loses their guns is a dangerous psycho. This problem could be solved by relying on probable cause that the person is about to commit a crime (conspiracy) or by scheduling an emergency court hearing where the person can defend himself. Personally, I think the moral standard is more of an excuse against liability if the sheriff doesn't take the guns and the anti-gun media jumps on him.

The Thousand Oaks, CA, Borderline killer was contacted by deputies and never met the criteria for being a threat to himself or others. The same was for the USCB/Isla Vista, CA, killer, the killer at Virginia Tech, and many others. Red flag laws are at best a liability and comfort blanket for the "do something crowd" and at worst a way to harass gun owners.

No sheriff or government official should be denying people their due process rights nor confiscating property without probable cause. 

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a form of technology where a computer can recognize letters in a photo or document and convert it to searchable text. You may be familiar with this from scanned books or searchable Adobe PDF scanned documents. 

Google and Facebook have applied this technology to photographs posted online to allow someone to search for a serial number to find a photo of a gun posted on line. The Firearm Blog broke the story.

Stop posting photos of your gun & serial number online immediately. I don't need to go into details on how this can and will eventually be misused. The days of blurring the serial number so some idiot won't try and report your gun as his "stolen" gun are a minor thing in the rearview mirror now.

Speaking of OCR, David Codrea of The War on Guns blog recently posted a link to an ATF newsletter that talks about electronic storing of Form 4473s. Codrea writes: "That electronic 4473 storage variance looks like all it's waiting for is a Democrat majority to reverse the FOPA database appropriations prohibition..."

Federal law currently prohibits an electronic gun registry. To trace a gun now, the ATF must manually go through paper records, tracking a gun from maker, to dealer, to first buyer, and so on. This is a laborious process that often requires identifying the store where the bad guy bought the gun (or searching dozens of stores).

It is a matter of time before dealers are required to keep electronic databases instead of boxes of Form 4473s and a matter of time before the massive ATF file center in West Virginia filled with 4473s and other records is digitized. Then, based on original purchase records, we will have a nearly-full firearm registry. All it will take to expose an old private sale is the seller to give up your name from his Bill of Sale.

Read the articles and keep your data as safe as possible.

A librarian in Pahrump wants to institute a gun ban.

After facing overwhelming opposition from citizens, the Nye County Library District is begging people to come in and "express their fears" as our source in Pahrump has put it. The specific wording of paragraph 2 is a call for people to state they are opposed to defensive handgun carry around children.

This special message is nothing but a blatant attempt by the library to get parents to "gang up" on the right to bear arms. Apparently, manipulating the rules and behaving like general scumbags is not confined to the Las Vegas libraries. Plenty of citizens will come to express their views, but unless Bloomberg trucks in Las Vegas moms, the opinions won't be in support of the gun ban.

This is all because one 18 year old woman openly carries at storytime with her young siblings and refused to backdown because the librarian was uncomfortable. If a plurality of the public opposes the ban, then in a democratic society without good cause (and gun-free zones are bad ideas almost everywhere outside of prisons) the library trustees cannot pass a regulation because one hoplophobe employee things guns in the kid's are are incongruous. 

Criminals target places like gun-free zones with children because they are soft targets, undefended by police or security. This isn't about someone being unsafe or irresponsible. It's because a scared, liberal librarian doesn't want a legally armed woman in the library. 
If Nevada didn't unconstitutionally prohibit most 18-20 year olds from carrying concealed, a compromise could be made. 

Note that no argument has been made that guns pose a danger. An employee just doesn't like the optics of having them around children. The trustees likely know if they push a total gun ban the citizens of Nye County won't have it.

The county commission should de-establish the library district and make it a subordinate department of the county directly, thus eliminating the ability of the trustees to apply the LVCCLD doctrine.

​A few weeks ago, Summerlin was facing robberies by a man who forced women to take off their clothes and pose for pictures. He then tried to blackmail them via Snapchat. He's been caught and is facing charges including sexual assault for fondling his victims. 

What we're learning now is that the second victim, a female pizza delivery driver, pulled a gun from her glove compartment, causing the man to flee. 

Gun save lives and stop crimes. 

Humboldt County Commission passed an ordinance Oct. 7 affirming support for the Second Amendment.

CNN dropped a bomb that AR-15 regulations to allow for lower receivers to require background checks for purchases may be deeply flawed. Their article title is self-explanatory of the predicament: “He sold illegal AR-15s. Feds agreed to let him go free to avoid hurting gun control efforts.” If you have not read the CNN article, do so before continuing.
 
In short, because the government determined the lower receiver to be the firearm, but the actual regulation does not seem to apply, the government was unwilling to test their theory in court and potentially get unfavorable (to prosecutors) case law. So to enable prosecutions against stupid people with bad lawyers and to keep plea bargains rolling in, the government didn’t press its case.
 
I speculate that this article came forward when it did, shortly after California passed into a law banning purchase of “firearm precursor parts” like barrels and 80% frames without background checks (effective in 2024) to draw attention to the issue. I doubt that CNN would break a story like this without being part of a plot to move public and legislative opinion to creating new legislation. This is huge potential boon to gun owners and damning to gun control and the ATF, so it would be in the interest of leftist, anti-gun media to sit on the story.
 
The regulation (not a statute) in question is: 27 CFR § 479.11(a):

The argument in the case that the definition is not met by the AR-15 is that the lower receiver houses the hammer, while the upper houses the bolt and is threaded to accept the barrel. The jury is out on what exactly the firing mechanism is. Because both halves are required to complete the firearm, the ATF determined a long time ago that the lower receiver should be regulated as the firearm. Something had to be deemed “the receiver” in the (then) unconventional Stoner-Sullivan space rifle to regulate it.
 
This doesn’t just apply to the AR-15 only. In many H&K firearms and the FAL series, portions of what we’d term the upper receiver are deemed the firearm.
 
Congress has ignored the issue and ATF has danced around it because it would hinder government prosecutions if the status quo changed. Many convictions could be reversed if this line was pursued. This is not in the government’s or ATF’s interest. Of course, Congress or courts could simply affirm the status quo. A devil’s advocate examination of the regulation could be used to support the status quo definition.
 
“That part of the firearm” must house either the hammer, bolt, or firing mechanism. It is also “usually” threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel. Only one item being required to be housed in the receiver and “usually” means “commonly or ordinarily”; not always. So because the lower receiver houses the hammer, it is a receiver because the regulation, using the operative word “or” does not require the hammer, bolt, and breechblock to be in the same “part of the firearm” which does not always have to be threaded for the barrel.
 
This sounds more like the upper receiver than the lower receiver, although I doubt one could say that the AR-15 has a breechblock and “that part which holds the bolt” is actually the bolt carrier, not the upper receiver (but that’s a little semantic for simpletons like judges and legislators). “Firing mechanism” is even more confusing because what does this mean: the firing pin, the trigger group, or what? The recent case of Safety Harbor’s .50 cal upper receiver conversion  being classed as firearm seems to make more sense in this light.
 
The AR-15 receivers has to be mated together to unambiguously meet the regulatory definition, which is what helped people avoid charges by separating the gun or the process. These regulations date from a time when firearms were generally understood in the context of bolt-action rifles and shotguns where the receiver did all this.
 
The way forward is fraught with potential unintended consequences. A positive such consequence is that anyone charged with a violation regarding a lower receiver (perhaps a federal charge for transferring it across state lines without an FFL involved). Of course, this is rolling the dice that the prosecutors would be too scared of precedence to pursue the case.
 
Best case scenario is legislation or case law clarifies that the lower receiver is the firearm and everything stays the same. However, there is the great danger that any action going forward other than this results in serious blowback to the gun community.

1. Upper and lower receivers could be classed as firearms.
   1. This could be used to say that semi-auto pistol slides are now upper receivers as they are the bolt and breechblock.
   2. Both slides and uppers would be required to be transferred through FFLs, greatly increasing the difficulty of pistol and rifle builds.
2. The ATF uses the regulatory process to change its regulation to change the definition to allow for lowers, or uppers, or whatever to be deemed a receiver.
   1. The regulatory process will be hotly contested like the bump fire stock ban issue with unpredictable results and highly publicizing the issue.
   2. Any regulatory changes could be tied up in the process or litigation for a long time, while lower receivers are being sold and transferred minus an FFL without impunity.
3. A court decision may establish precedence that lower receivers are not firearms and then it’s off to the races buying and building AR-15s without an FFL being involved.
   1. This would inevitably spur urgent legislation at the state and federal level to get around this “deficiency” while producing a run on AR lowers like no one has seen.
4. Congress and state legislatures could create new definitions or regulations as a fix that would be overly broad.
   1. As California recently banned “precursor parts” like barrels and 80% frames, Congress could do the same. No more barrels or common parts being shipped to one’s home.
   2. Both receivers could be required to be serialized and required to become a “matching set” so no more mix and matching lower to uppers. Using a receiver that does not match its other half would be illegal.
   3. As in some countries, all major components, like barrels, receivers, frames, fire control housings, etc. would have to be serialized. This would increase initial manufacturing costs and if you could swap out parts would confuse dumb cops.

 
I doubt we’ll get rid of background checks any time soon. Having to go to a physical location to obtain firearms merely so leftists can feel good that I’m not a known “bad guy” is very inconvenient. It will be more so if I have to do that for barrels and uppers. A 21st century solution would be an online Form 4473 that the buyer fills out, the computer instantly interfaces with NICS, and the package cannot be delivered except on signature of the actual buyer, confirmed with ID.
 
This solution would be no more problematic that today’s current scene. All the Brady checks do is scare felons from trying to buy from gun stores, which they can do, with varying levels of success and little chance of successful prosecution if they fail a background check. Guns are still stolen from homes, from stores, are bought out of some dude’s trunk on the black market, and straw purchases by friends, relatives, and girlfriends all happen with regularity. In fact, all banning private sales would do to reduce crime is perhaps allow the seller of those black market guns to be prosecuted at the expense of innocent gun transfers.  
 
Ultimately, as ugly as it is that Roh was perhaps unwittingly help bad guys get guns, all of gun control is a failure at preventing crime. The retroactive punishment being caught is only a deterrent and a poor one at that. All laws can do is make obtaining a gun a little harder for criminals which exponentially negatively impacts the law abiding. We have to understand that criminals will be armed and will commit crimes regardless of the law. For many, that’s a difficult thing to believe so they rely on the magical thinking of gun control.
 
The action that the average gun owner needs to take is clear; get your guns now, especially ones you want off-the-books. Whether all semi-automatics are banned, regulated to death, or if legislation requires upper receivers to go through an FFL remains to be seen. It is clear that new restrictions are coming in the future and in a form that will make these easy days of cheap receivers shipped from Palmetto State Armory to your dealer or door will disappear. So get those receivers now, complete and 80%. 

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A poster on a local gun form brought this to our attention. The Nye County Library District is proposing to ban firearms in a section of the library.
 
First, the proposed ban would apply to the children’s story room; not the entire library. According the original poster, he spoke with the library manager “Susan” who stated she was uncomfortable with guns in that part of the library. Around children that fear is understandable, though unwarranted.
 
Someone should really reach out to these people and take them shooting to better understand
guns and carrying them. It is unique to have a hoplophobe openly state it is a matter of comfort and not using the lie of “common sense gun safety.”
 
Perception and not safety is being argued here, at least per the original poster, and mere perception and preference of the library staff will not pass serious constitutional muster.
 
They can do this despite state preemption of firearm laws because in Flores v. LVCCLD the Supreme Court, using tortured logic, decided that the Legislature really didn’t mean to exclude all sub-municipal districts because the legislators didn’t specifically name anything other than counties, cities, and towns. Read more here.
 
Unless the library is posted per NRS 202.3673, concealed carry is permitted in the library. This regulation would only serve to penalize open carriers and those carrying concealed poorly. It would not of course stop a mass murderer (which admittedly isn’t the point).
 
The trustees have confused NRS 202.265 which applies only to schools and licensed child care facilities, though they may have been influenced by the library open carry revenge bills (which did not pass) that would have added libraries to the above section. Or they think we are as stupid as they are.
 
If this regulation does pass, Pahrump residents should use their political power to get the manager fired and for the board of supervisors to replace the trustees. I doubt Nye County deputies would arrest for a violation and the sheriff should refuse to enforce it. Nye County claims to be a Second Amendment sanctuary, but will the rubber meet the road?
 
The meeting is being held at 10 AM, Monday Oct. 14 at the Pahrump Community Library.

In the Facebook group, an open carrier mentioned he encountered an oft-heard rumor about carrying in a bank.

Yes, banks are federally chartered and regulated, but in a financial sense. There are no gun prohibitions regarding your local bank or credit union. Let's recap:

• No federal laws or regulations
• No state laws or regulations

Furthermore, there are no federal laws regarding carrying in police station and courthouses. The federal law things in banks is a rumor, spread by misconception by people who don't know better.

In Nevada and most states, carrying a gun in  bank is only the crime of trespassing if you are asked to leave and you don't. Only in Montana is concealed carry illegal in bank (open carry is not) in the Inter-mountain West.