The Geek notes that the city attorney that defended the handgun ban in San Fran position was:

We’re disappointed that the court has denied the right of voters to enact a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on handgun possession,

I don’t think an outright ban (Mr. and Mr. San Francisco, turn them in) is a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on handgun possession.

Update: What, no comment on the Mr. and Mr. San Francisco thing? Must be slipping with the gay jokes. I bet if I’d said Mrs. and Mrs., you’d have liked that. Everyone seems to like the lesbian stuff. Well, except Bob Corker.

Publicola says it’s bad ju-ju:

I’ll get to the point; it’s bullshit. All this will do is open up more records for inclusion in the NICS system. In other words they’re hoping that more folks will be disqualified because of Lautenberg, mental health records or possibly because they’re being investigated for “terrorism”.

The last part may leave you in the cold. Here’s where I get that from:

“…and (3) the Secretary of Homeland Security to make available to the Attorney General records relevant to a determination that a person is disqualified from possessing or receiving a firearm and information about a change in such person’s status for removal from NICS, where appropriate.”

I can only assume that this is an effort to grease the wheels of that “terrorism watch list’ being made at least a temporary disqualification. Why else would the department of Homeland Security be involved?

He has more. Not sure about his assessment but it is possibly a particularly slippery slope.

I step away from the blog for a bit and the supreme court pounds away some more.

Bloomberg.com:

Prosecutors can use evidence seized by police during a home search even though officers violated the Constitution by failing to knock or announce their presence before entering, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The justices, voting 5-4 in a Michigan case, today put new limits on the so-called exclusionary rule, which in some circumstances bars prosecutors from using the product of an illegal search. The majority said the exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to violations of the “knock and announce” requirement for home searches.

Basically, evidence can be used against you if the police screw up by not knocking. This goes against the exclusionary rule which stated that evidence obtained unconstitutionally was invalid and could not be used. In other words, no-knock warrants will soon be standard operating procedure.

We have police who cannot legally be held to account for violating the provisions of the constitution. And we now will no longer exclude evidence obtained via violation of the constitution. So, in such a case, your recourse is non-existent.

Fuckers.

As to the details:

In the Michigan case, prosecutors opted not to argue that the entry into Hudson’s home was constitutional, instead contending that the exclusionary rule shouldn’t apply to knock- and-announce violations. The state, backed by the Bush administration, argued that those types of police errors don’t enable officers to seize additional evidence.

Scalia agreed, saying the connection between the manner in which police enter a home and the evidence they discover is too weak to warrant application of the exclusionary rule. He said the knock-and-announce rule doesn’t protect “one’s interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence described in a warrant.”

That’s not an error. It is intentional.

In comments, Justin says:

I think you’re mistaken on that point, Mr. Uncle. A search at GunBroker just netted me 61 auctions selling armor piercing ammo in .223, .308, 30-06, 7.62×54R, and .50BMG.

AP ammo is only illegal for handgun ammunition.

I should have been more clear. Armor piercing ammo, as a legal construct, is different from what is actually armor piercing. Justin is correct that AP ammo for handguns is illegal but that means rounds designed to penetrate vests, whereas real AP ammo is designed to penetrate armor such as that on a vehicles. Most rifle rounds penetrate vests anyway since vests are designed to stop handgun ammo.

Sorry for the confusion.