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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   13289 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Not much. The court filings mostly has the plaintiffs argue it as vagueness, and the state punting on that question as only relevant for as-applied challenges. If you know much about how milling works it's kinda incoherent -- not just in alloyed makeup, but also heat treatment and method of manufacture -- but I don't think anyone involved really did, or would care if they had.

In the oral arguments there was one aside, but it was heavily focused on metaphors and contradictory:

JUSTICE ALITO: I'm going to show you. Here's a -- here's a blank pad, and here's a pen, all right? Is this a grocery list?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: I don't think that that's a grocery list, but the reason for that is because there are a lot of things you could use those products for to create something other than a grocery list.

JUSTICE ALITO: All right. [crosstalk] If I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions, is that a western omelet?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: No, because, again, those items have well-known other uses to become something other than an omelet. The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat, and they have no other conceivable use. And I think the further evidence comes from the fact that Respondents themselves agree that a disassembled gun qualifies as a weapon. So this is on page 37 of the VanDerStok brief.

JUSTICE ALITO: Okay. So that's helpful. So your definition is a group of components that can readily be converted into something and have no other use. They must have no other use in order to constitute that thing?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: In the circumstance

JUSTICE ALITO: In that situation, they already constitute that thing?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: I think that you can recognize that something is a weapon even if it's non-functional if it is clear from objective evidence of --

JUSTICE ALITO: No, I think that certainly is true from the face of the statute because it has to be -- it's sufficient if it's capable of being converted into -- into something that can expel a projectile. All right. Thank you.

JUSTICE BARRETT: General Prelogar, I just want to follow up on Justice Alito's question about the omelet. Would your answer change if you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit, and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?

GENERAL PRELOGAR: Yes. And I think that that presses on the -- the more apt analogy here, which is that we are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon in the absence of this kind of evidence that that is their intended purpose and function. But, if you bought, you know, from Trader Joe's some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet and maybe included whatever you would need to start the fire in order to cook the omelet and had all of that objective indication that that's what's being marketed and sold, we would recognize that for what it is. And it -- it doesn't stretch plain English to say, I bought omelets at the store, if you bought all of the ingredients that were intended and designed to make them, especially under statutory language that refers to something like breakfast foods or things that can be readily converted to make breakfast.

I think the logic would not include raw bauxite ore, in the same way that the hypothetical did not turn to raw wood pulp or a laying hen, but I'd not want to bet on it. Given the incoherence -- something counts if it has "no other use", except if it's marketed the right way it could have other uses -- I don't think anyone's seriously drawn lines for the question of how far they're willing to take the rule.

Thanks for link. Based on that last quote, I definitely wouldn't want to buy a "0% receiver". I'd even be a bit worried about buying a small piece of 6061 aluminum bar stock from a (normal) metal supplier. Raw ore is probably outside the letter of the law, but I know how much I trust the courts with that.

I think it's safe to say that an empty field is not a gun. Until you start digging.

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