From Gene Hoffman, talking about the New York nunchucks case brought by some idiot who represented himself.
This case is bad news and the pro-se appelant is going to keep going. He’s completely screwed up the 2nd Circuit. However, it is very unlikely to hurt Nordyke. I also agree … that this likely widens the circuit split meaning that the odds of Nordyke or Chicago going to SCOTUS is higher.
The cost is that New York is hosed. This is why you hear us repeat again and again that one shouldn’t bring 2A cases without using one of the right lawyers…
–Gene Hoffman, Chair of the Calguns Foundation, in this post
The case, which really shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Second Amendment at all, has unfortunately now been taken up by Kirkland and Ellis. If we’re lucky, the Supreme Court will ignore the appeal in favor of a more well-crafted case like Nordyke. Middle ground would be if the Court considered both this piece of dreck and Nordyke to resolve the split between the circuits. Worst case, of course, is that this case gets heard all by its lonesome first and we get a really nasty 5-4 decision that starts with nunchaku and lists a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t protected under the 2nd. Which would give us toothless incorporation.
Thanks a lot, Maloney, you jerk.
…and nunchakus aren’t even a decent weapon for a martial artist.
Their history is along the same line as the Tonfa, or well-winch crank handle which became the Monadnock PR-24 side-handle police baton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonfa
In ancient times, the feudal lords in Japan and China decided that they wanted the hoi palloi disarmed, so they wrote regulations banning long staffs which had the arc-mass-moment to do serious damage when swung.
The nunchaku is a long staff broken in the middle and joined by a chain. The Tonfa is a short staff which is as effective as a long staff in causing injury because it uses the multiplier of a second arc-within-an-arc to vastly increase the speed of the end of the staff.
Both the nunchaku and the tonfa are impressive weapons when wielded by a highly trained martial artist, but are spectacularly unimpressive when wielded by the average untrained Joe.
Most police departments have gone away from the PR-24 because of the level of practice required to remain proficient in it’s use, and have gone back to a straight (but collapsible) baton as a striking weapon.
My personal preference is the old “Bumper Morgan” straight hardwood baton. I still practice my moves with it, moves that are really the same as any baton user would use, even quarterstaff people.
BTW, the use of either the nunchaku or the tonfa would never be supportable in the context of the Second, because of the simple fact that the Founders could not have known about them or considered them as military weapons.
This bonehead is going to get his ass handed to him in court, not only because he is a pro-se bonehead, but because of historical context. Heller established historical context as a standard for any incorporation of the Second, and I don’t see that going away here.