Heller Bleg
My google fu is weak.
What specific firearm did Dick Heller try to register in the beginning?
People make reference to 5-4 on a .38 revolver but that was his duty weapon. And, IIRC, the order was to allow registration of his weapon. So, what did he try to register? Some say his 45 and others say a Beretta 92. But I cannot find a cite in any court docs that state what he tried to register.
Update: SM‘s google-fu is mighty:
he applied for a permit for his high standard buntline .22 revolver
Link.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:19 am
The article I read only says he owns a .45 semi-auto and a .22 revolver. Until he actually brings one or the other into DC, he can’t “try” to register either.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
he applied for a permit and was denied it hence why there was a case to begin with. the order says register his handgun, iirc. So, what was the original he tried to register?
July 17th, 2008 at 11:26 am
oh, gotcha. i’m not sure that was ever made known… although it clearly must have been either his .22 or his .45
July 17th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Hold on, I’ll find it. It was probably here, but no longer Archive.org only has this page, not every PDF.
Anyone else with leads? post ’em.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Oh, the page was renamed.
Here’s Heller’s pleading (PDF)
Exhibit A is at the first link and should include his actual application that was denied, but it’s not scanned in. Still looking.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
it’s likely that because his original application has personal info on it, his lawyers never published his application on their website
July 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
nope, he applied for a permit for his high standard buntline .22 revolver
July 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
xplodey view?
photos? (last two featured, scroll down)
July 17th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
OK, Standard Mischief wins the google-fu contest for the week.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
A .22 Revolver for home defence???
Why would he do that if he had a .45 Semi-auto???
July 17th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
i’m sure it was so that he could have a weapon that complied with every DC law but the ban.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Standard Mischief: no, the last one is definitely a DA, it or a very slight variation is what my father used to teach us how to shoot a pistol.
A variation of the first revolver in the photos is probably it, look at the trigger. No way is that a DA trigger, no room to pull it back to cock the hammer.
My GoogleFu wasn’t up to finding a “High Standard Buntline”, but it could be so old it might not be on-line in a searchable way. I just talked to my father about the above mentioned HS DA: he bought it 50 years ago, but he couldn’t remember if there was a HS SA available at the time (he wouldn’t have been interested in one).
SayUncle: exactly: a large frame (not tiny like the gun GHW Bush waived around in NH) .22LR single-shot is about as innocuous as you can get and still plausibly argue it’s useful for self-defense. Heller the case was very careful to keep things as narrow as possible, which we can see was a good idea.
And now we have a two front war, incorporation around the nation, and at the same time pushing the officially sanctioned boundaries on what’s acceptable thanks to D.C. attitude.
Yes, they’re citing a law by the Congress from 1932 (probably inspired by the Bonus Army, wouldn’t do to have angry citizens show up with Thompsons or BARs)) and I’m sure it’s controlling in D.C., but their interpretation of it is highly questionable.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Oops: a large frame … .22LR Single *Action*, of course.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Oh, it gets better than that;
Newsham said if anyone shows up to register a semi-automatic pistol that fits the city’s definition of a machine gun, police will confiscate the illegal gun but will not immediately arrest the owner. He said police reserve the right to investigate and eventually charge such an owner with violating the machine-gun ban.
Von Breichenruchardt called the semi-automatic handgun ban “foolishness” and said it almost certainly will be challenged in court. “The Supreme Court has given its ruling,” he said. “Mr. Fenty and the city council are not above the constitution of the United States. They have to follow the law, the same as all of us.”
from WA Post.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Even better:
From The Washington Post article on today’s festivities (which say Mr. Heller was denied because he didn’t show up with his gun):
AH HA!
More mischief. We’ve learned from a previous study that the above will result in a lot of false positives, and it’s a subjective “expert witness” judgement. More opportunities to throw innocent civilians in jail, for serious felonies.
I’ll bet at some point they’ll make an example of someone to discourage anyone from even trying, and this testing strikes me as something that will be hard to challenge under Heller.
Would the possibility of a Murder 1 charge and a six figure legal bill to win acquittal be enough to keep you from trying?
They are more clever than I thought.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Can the defendant go to jail if he does not allow ballistic testing?
If yes, then said evidence is not admissable.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I believe I got the Beretta meme from Parker v. DC, page 51: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf where Judge Silberman wrote, “178. However, the Court also observed that militiamen were expected to bring their private arms with them when called up
for service. Those weapons would be “of the kind in common use at the time.” Id. at 179. There can be no question that most handguns (those in common use) fit that description then and now. See Emerson, 270 F.3d at 227 n.22 (assuming that a Beretta pistol passed the Miller test).”
Still, I recall reading somewhere else that Heller wanted to register a Beretta 92, I’m still looking for it.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Ah, The Beretta reference goes back to Emerson, here’s the appellant’s brief in the DC circuit case:
http://www.gurapossessky.com/news/parker/documents/appellantsbrief.pdf
“To the extent such questions were raised in Emerson, the Fifth Circuit had
no difficulty disposing of them in a footnote. Concerned primarily with the
question of whether the Second Amendment conferred an individual or
“collective” right, the Miller analysis of the handgun in Emerson merited only the
following observation:
There is no contention here that the Beretta pistol possessed is a kind or
type of weapon that is neither “any part of the ordinary military equipment”
nor such “that its use could contribute to the common defense” within the
language of Miller (nor that it is otherwise within the kind or type of
weapon embraced in the government’s second Miller argument, e.g.,
“weapons which can have no legitimate use in the hands of private
individuals” so as to be categorically excluded from the scope of the Second
Amendment under Miller’s holding).
Emerson, 270 F.3d at 227 n.22.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
The larger issue, not just in DC, but across the land will ultimately be settled by force. I hope we are of stern enough stuff to apply the most of it, for as we have seen these people are never going to be bound by the law nor held accountable to it.
That doesn’t leave but two options. Surrender and slavery, or fight to victory or death.
Sorry, people. No matter what any court says these sociopathic sonsofbitches are going to do exactly what they want to do until they are physically stopped.
Harold’s comment is worthy of great deal of respect. It clarifies why only force will settle this. Because they will use force to disobey the law and the courts and punish anyone who resists them in even the mildest way or just asks them to obey the law. .
July 17th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
+1 SA…
July 17th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Buntline, in a firearms sense at least seems to be referring to a long barrel on a firearm. It’s also the name of the knot. Once I found the application, with that listed as the model type, it initially threw me off. But in the end, it was no real match to my flying dragon style of google-fu and I discovered it to be tangential to the main story. The pictures were to pique the interest of Uncle’s many readers, perhaps someone else has a piece of the story.
There is no match of “buntline” over at highstandard.com, at least in the parts that google is allowed to crawl.
A search of high standard buntline on gunbroker.com returned nothing, but searching for buntline itself turns up plenty to look at.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Oh yeah, almost forgot!
Say Uncle is now #4 for high standard buntline.
What did that take, a few hours?
He’s got that Google Juice!
July 17th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
OK, Mr. Gura was at the VCDL meeting, and mentioned this:
The ORIGINAL firearm for registration was the High Standard Buntline.
The more recent firearm for registration was a semi-automatic of unmentioned provenance or caliber.
No comment as to future litigation. 😉
July 17th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
“More recent” as of when? Today?
July 18th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Standard –
More recent as of this week I believe. Or, at least that seemed to be what Mr. Gura said – that the original, 2002, attempt to register was with the revolver, and the post-Decision attempt to register was with a semi-auto.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was the start of Heller II. 😉