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It is a good day for Liberty.

We have eight months until the election.

I watched a movie called “Unfinished Business” regarding the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II.  Three Japanese Americans refused the offer of incarceration and were tried for the crime of defying the removal order.  The three were Gorden Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasul.  Mr. Korematsu took his case to the Supreme Court, and every law student reads the decision which deferred to the judgment of the government.  We now know that this decision was based on false representations of Japanese-American disloyalty.  When the proof finally came out, the three had to have their convictions expunged.  They would have great difficulty expunging a conviction today; there is no statutory expungement authority any longer.  The case is significant because in 1942 the Japanese-Americans were presumed disloyal.  Today gun owners are presumed violent.  Internment camps are not proposed, but a variety of other punishments are in play.  For example, Disneyland will fire any employee for simple possession of a gun locked in his or her car in the employee parking lot.  It will not, however, fire an employee charged with possession of child pornography.  It is nice to see the presumption of innocence respected, however it is only extended to a person accused of a crime, not persons who have not even been accused. 

The anti-gun attitude violates the ancient right of presumption of innocence.  It is therefore evil.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre writes that 700,000 names are on the terrorist “no-fly” list and wonders if there could possibly be 700,000 terrorists in the United States.  This figure does not count the persons with the same or similar name.  It is easy to get on the list, impossible to get off; and there are constant demands to prevent these arbitrarily labeled person from buying guns.  If this demand becomes practice we can expect the list to expand to include 80 million gun owners.

I am representing a man who was expelled from a trucking school because he kept a gun in his car.  The car was never on the school grounds, and there is no claim that he ever threatened anyone.  The administration was told he had one, and he was gone.  This interfered with his prospects for employment.  The basis for the suit is interference with his contract for employment with a trucking company.  We cannot sue simply because he was kicked out, it is quite legal to discriminate against gun owners.

Another gun owner consulted me after being fired.  The excuse was that he had a gun on business premises.  The property in question was a motel room rented by the company while he was doing a job away from home base. 

I see that Spaniards in San Bartolome de Pinares honor San Anton, patron saint of animals by riding horses through bonfires.  People have a marvelous ability to convince themselves of the necessity of doing nearly anything.  I have no doubt about the rider’s belief that the best of all possible actions was to sit in the saddle while his horse does the firewalk.  However, I would expect the horse to have more sense.

Most presidential candidates claim to be Second Amendment supporters so strongly that it appears as if they are running for president of the NRA.  It is as if we do not know that some of them are lying about their record.  They insult us.

I saw my first Hillary for President commercial.  I survived the event, it remains to be seen if the country shall.  It occurs to me that I can look forward to nine months of this; it takes the shine off of the big screen TVs.

Shortly thereafter I saw my first Obama for President commercial.  Takes the shine off of TV entirely.

It strikes me that the Obama and Clinton commercials look like Ronald Reagan commercials.  I fear that is all they learned from the man.

A Virginia state senator looked around the state house and observed that they must be considering a gun bill because “the cast of Deliverance is here”.  Insults of this kind have been less public since we have shown our political strength, but they have not disappeared.

President Sheila has finally promised not to declare martial law.  This usually means that martial law will be declared in a week.  She claims, however, that she was never in the military and therefore cannot declare martial law, but she could declare Parelli law, which has to do with training horses.   I warned you about those saddles.

I saw a “48 Hours” edition which recounts a woman who shot her husband.  There was evidence of self-defense, but, she cleaned the entire house and put her husband in a tub “to take to the police” before she called the police.  She failed to fulfill the detective’s expectations for exhibiting trauma.  She was convicted.  What one does in the aftermath of a shooting can be more important to the legal consequences than the gunfight itself.  In rape cases the jury is always warned not to expect the victim to have acted in a certain way, but people involved in gunfights are supposed to display stereotyped reactions, and judges refuse to allow experts in the variety of reactions to trauma.  It requires someone to explain the facts of the matter to the jury; and I do parties too.

The Kirkwood City Hall killings teach us several things.  The killer surprised a police officer, even if he did not have a gun already, this gave him a gun.  The killer shot the obviously armed persons first.  Other persons in the room had time to throw chairs.  If they had time to throw chairs, they had time to draw and shoot.  Any type of resistance helps.

A New York City man entered a psychiatrist’s office and hacked her to death.  Another psychiatrist tried to intervene but was stabbed.  We are often told that training in interpersonal relationship will eliminate violence.  Here two mental health professionals were unable to convince a man not to stab them over and over again.  A high school dropout with a handgun and minimal training could have eliminated this violence on the spot.

Following the Kirkwood murders, ABC contacted me for information on Missouri gun laws.  It is good that they come to us for such information.

Along the same lines, the Missouri Bar association invited me to submit a podcast on weapons law to the Missouri Bar web site.  I had heard of podcasts and I knew that they were significantly different from pod people, but that is all.  They made it sound like a really neat things, so I agreed.  I was interviewed for about twenty minutes and it and a number of other interviews on other legal subjects can be found on www.MoBar.org.  One clicks on a space called “podcast” and a great deal is available.  I mentioned the WMSA “Stay Out of Jail” card and gave our web site.  We are fortunate that people come to us for such information.

I recently taught handgun shooting to a young man who had never shot before, and another who had not shot in years.  I found that the laser sight helped them enormously with trigger control as well as sight alignment. 

A woman who helped a murderer escape from prison says that she wondered, “When is somebody going to step in and stop this?”  I would point out that she was closest.  Some people expect the government to save them from their own stupidity.  Such a powerful government is likely to commit its own stupidity.

There is a certain hysteria because an ex-convict in Oklahoma was found in possession of a “.50 rifle”.  The rifle in question was a muzzleloader, but that is not mentioned in the general hysteria.  The governor of New York promises to restrict these antique replicas, not because they are involved in crime, but because they bring us pleasure.

Whenever I have occasion to spend the night in Columbia Missouri I stay with my sister, who runs a little bed and breakfast.  It is a very little bed and breakfast (I am her sole customer).  Her solitary customer may account for the eccentric practices of her hotel.  There are no mints on the pillows, and on my door she hangs a sign which reads “Already deeply disturbed”.

The Russians have a gun in their survival kit on the international space station.  The usual suspects are hysterical over the possibility of someone running amuck.  Of course, if an astronaut wanted to kill everyone flipping a switch might do it the job just as well, and someone with a gun might be able to stop it.  It is a remote possibility, but it is not as if they can call 911.

Briefs have been filed in District of Columbia vs Heller, the Second Amendment case in the Supreme Court.  The Missouri Sport Shooting Association and 39 other state associations joined in an amicus brief.  This is a technical term for a “friend of the court” brief.  There is also an amicus brief which has been signed by the attorney general of Missouri and 30 other attorney generals.  I am still reading the mass of briefs submitted on our side, much less the opposition ravings.  Their theory boils down to a claim that the Second Amendment is an absolute Constitutional right to join the National Guard.  One hopes that the Supremes will make the right decision.  We need to swarm the letters to the editor columns and talk radio programs in support of the individual right to own guns.  Writing the Supremes does no good, and may hurt us.  They do pay attention to the election returns and may be affected by polls.  It is a little thing, but we do what we can.

I have submitted some research to some of the lawyers doing briefs for our side in the Heller case.  I don’t know how helpful this was, but I felt like I had to do something.

Jasper County Missouri has passed a county ordinance restricting “cabarets”.  They mean juice bars where nude dancing is legal under state law.  One of the restrictions is that no one is allowed to carry weapons in such a place, and patrons can be searched without probable cause.  It also prevents employment of anyone who is HIV positive, which is probably a violation of the Americans With Disability Act.  The statute is illegal because it is more restrictive than state law and violation the Fourth Amendment.  Jasper County does not seem to care. 

A veteran union organizer was interviewed in 1985 for American Heritage Magazine.  He had gone through the often brutal organizing efforts of the 1930’s Depression.  He was asked why men risked their jobs and lives when neither could be replaced.  He said that it was for dignity.  “Dignity was the great thing that came out of union organization.  When you think of it, wages in the auto industry were not bad, and nobody had benefits of any kind.  So you didn’t realize what you were missing.  But what you gained from the union was the right to talk back.”  When we began WMSA politicians avoided us, refused to hear us out, and did not respond.  Newspapers published cartoons portraying us as Neanderthal psychopaths.  This was considered normal.  Today politicians contact us, and even the newspaper has muted its insults.  This is the result of many years of hard work by many people.  Some devoted all their time to the cause, some devoted a few hours here and there working a table at the gun show, folding newsletters or passing out literature.  People did what they could, no matter how small and it added up.  Keeping our dignity is the current concern.

The city of Berkley California has passed resolutions against a Marine recruiting office in the city, and has aided and encouraged protesters at the office.  The Marines shall continue to defend Berkley; it is what they do.

The Brady Center has issued a press release, which has been printed as a news item in at least one newspaper.  It purports to rate the firearm laws of the different states.  Missouri got four points out of a possible one hundred.  We can congratulate the activists of our state for failing the Brady test.  The release claims that “in most states, there are few or no laws to prevent gun violence,” and “This is true at the federal level as well.”  This is a lie.  I call it a lie because they purport to have researched the topic and the most casual reader will find a great many laws governing firearms use and ownership.  This is what we are facing.

We shall overcome.

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