Ares Armor on AR-15s and “LCMs” Ruling

Our friends over at Ares Armor have released the following letter to U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake in response to her recent ruling essentially stating that certain firearms including specific semi-automatic rifles are not protected by the 2nd Amendment and that civilians could be prevented from ownership. You probably have seen this matter hitting the news feeds over the past 48 hours. We have already seen the various angles on how easy it would be to pick her ruling apart. Dimitri is pretty thorough in this brief analysis pointing to facts and precedence rather than leaps of logic.

Lycurgan, Inc. Ares Armor
208 N Freeman St
Oceanside, CA 92054
TO: Catherine C. Blake
FROM: Dimitrios Karras, CEO Ares Armor
SUBJ: Ruling that AR15 rifles and “LCMs” are not protected by the Second Amendment.
DATE: August 12, 2014
Ma’am,

I have read your entire 47 page opinion in reference to Civil No. CCB-13-2841 and wish to write to you regarding some of the obvious mistakes you have made. I took note that you were nominated by President Bill Clinton. Your bias on this issue is more than apparent. It would have been the honorable thing to remove yourself from this issue entirely due to your bias.

For the purpose of simplicity, I am going to grant you the satisfaction of referring to the weapons in question as “Assault Weapons” merely because that is what you refer to them as. I would like to make note at the very beginning of this correspondence that this particular term is used mainly by the liberal media as a fear mongering tactic and is not the proper nomenclature of the firearm.

Your conclusion states the following:

“The Act substantially serves the government’s interest in protecting public safety, and it does so without significantly burdening what the Supreme Court has now explained is the core Second Amendment right of “law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Accordingly, the law is constitutional and will be upheld.”

This statement is based on a series of illogical missteps that could only be achieved with intent. These obvious errors shed light on the fact that your decision was made prior to this case and is nothing more than word-smithing in an attempt to force the law to be amiable to your liberal views.

On page 14 you correctly state the following:

“In District of Columbia v. Heller (Heller I), the Supreme Court found that the Second
Amendment codified a pre-existing, individual right to keep and bear arms and that its core protection was the right of “law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” 554 U.S. 570, 592, 635 (2008).”

“…it only protects those that are “‘in common use at the time,'”18 and “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”19 Id. at 625, 627”

Your conclusion is broken into two parts, Part one is “In common use at the time” and Part two is “possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”

Part One. In common use at the time

You state the following on page 23:

“Upon review of all the parties’ evidence, the court seriously doubts that the banned
assault long guns are commonly possessed…”
“…Even accepting that there are 8.2 million assault weapons in the civilian gun stock, as the plaintiffs claim, assault weapons represent no more than 3% of the current civilian gun stock”

This is a prime example of how numbers can be skewed based on author bias. You grant that there could be 8.2 Million assault weapons in civilian possession but then attempt to trivialize that number based on the relation to other firearms. 3% sounds like a much smaller number than 8.2 Million so it clearly suits your intended purpose.

Part Two. Possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes

You state the following on page 24:

“the plaintiffs proffer no evidence beyond their desire to possess assault weapons for self-defense in the home that they are in fact commonly used, or possessed, for that purpose”

In this argument you are attempting to limit “lawful purpose” to “self-defense in the home” which is ludicrous at best. Your conclusion that there is no “lawful purpose”due to the lack of historicallyrecorded home defense uses in your state, begs the reader to wonder if you fully understand the English language in its most basic of forms.

Purpose: the reason why something is done or used: the aim or intention of something
“purpose.”Merriam-Webster.com. 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purpose (12 August 2014).

Throughout your opinion you look at extraordinarily biased research from organizations that have a clear agenda of restricting others rights and you conclude based on this skewed information that rarely are “Assault Weapons” used for “Lawful Purpose” because there are few examples of “Assault Weapons” being used in defense of one’s home. However, you fail to realize or just purposely ignore the fact that a PURPOSE does not need to be recorded in an event. If a person owns an “Assault Weapon” with the AIM OR INTENTION of defending their home with it, this is a lawful purpose.

As a matter of fact so long as the owner’s AIM OR INTENTION is not unlawful, then his AIM OR INTENTION is Lawful. Our laws do not let us know what we CAN do but only what we CANNOT.

Therefore, if a citizen owns an “Assault Weapon” and his AIM OR INTENTION of ownership does not break any law then he in fact
possesses that weapon for LAWFUL PURPOSE.

With these obvious facts in mind, and based on YOUR opinion paper it is fairly obvious at least 8.2 MILLION ASSAULT WEAPONS ARE OWNED BY LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS FOR LAWFUL PURPOSES.

Now let’s take a look at “LCMs” as you refer to them.

On page 17 you state:

“across the nation, LCMs represent seventy-five million, or forty-six percent, of all magazines in U.S. consumer possession between 1990 and 2012. (Curcuruto Decl., Ex. A, ¶ 6; see also Koper Decl., Ex. B, at 1 (stating that gun industry sources estimated that, as of 1995, there were 25 million LCMs available in the United States, and that an additional 4.7 million LCMs were imported into the country from 1995 to 2000). Marylanders owned about 725,000 of those LCMs during that time.”

So, there are somewhere between
30 and 75 MILLION “LCMs” which are
lawfully possessed in this Country.

Then on page 23 and 24 where you made your remarks regarding how “Assault Weapons” represent a low percentage of total firearms owned, you fail to even mention LCM’s. The reason for this is obvious. You could not even come close to applying the same skewed numbers to LCM’s as they represent a total of 47% of all Magazines in the United States.

How you find yourself in good moral conscience enough to sleep at night is perplexing.

So the test of the Second Amendment as YOU have stated, is that the item must be IN COMMON USE (75 MILLION LCMS IN THIS COUNTRY) and that it must be TYPICALLY POSSESSED BY LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS FOR LAWFUL PURPOSE (75 MILLION LCM’S ARE POSSESSED WITH LAWFUL PURPOSE). How you ruled that they are not in common use or lawfully possessed is… an impressive abuse of the language.

I must congratulate you on your clever crafting of the English language. I was very impressed at how far things could be stretched, twisted and blown completely out of context. To your credit, you are a fantastic word-smith. It is unfortunate that you are using your ability to bully people into your belief structure. I wish you the best and I will enjoy a good chuckle when your ruling is overturned.

Sincerely,

Dimitrios Karras, CEO Ares Armor

Source: http://blog.predatorbdu.com/2014/08/ares-armor-on-ar-15s-and-lcms-ruling.html