OA47: Is This The Gun Control Case That Could Overrule DC v. Heller?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode number 47. I'm one of your hosts, Thomas Smith. That is your other host, Andrew Torrez. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:01:26 Andrew: I'm great, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:27 Thomas: Doing fine. I am excited for today's show. We've got a lot of current events that we're going to be talking about. A lot of questions, relevant questions we've been asked. I always love when we're able to, and I say we, when Andrew is able to give us the hard facts about current events in the news. So, with that said, I suppose we should get to our first listener question.

0:01:50 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:01:58 Thomas: So, lots of people asked about this topic, but Alice Ashton asked a specific question, and this is about Milo Yiannopoulos, who I will be have, well, okay, we delay this recording a little bit, who I will have talked about last week on my show, but this is a particular question that I have not talked about, because I leave it to the legal experts. People are saying Milo's speech about child rape is free speech. I think if it's true, it makes him an accessory after the fact. So that's interesting. What are the laws around that? I hadn't thought about that particular question. So what do you think, Andrew?

0:02:36 Andrew: Let me answer this in a couple of ways. Number one, you should definitely listen to Serious Inquiries Only if you are interested in Milo Yiannopoulos, uh, and uh, go download that podcast. Yeah.

0:02:46 Thomas: That is not a sentence that I thought anyone would ever say. If you're interested in Milo Yiannopoulos, listen. No. It's what I was hoping would be and should be the final show that has anything to do with Milo Yiannopoulos So anyway, the last show go on, they

0:02:51 Andrew: Um, Gosh, yeah, Let's hope. Let's hope so, right. But no, I, I picked the question because, uh, it, I think, um, sort of bumps up against the limits of, uh, you know, kind of where I'm willing to go, uh, on Milo. Um, look, I think Milo is a troll, uh, my, uh, hope, as is yours, is that, uh, he has now, uh, because of this, um, tape of him, you joking about and defending pedophilia has, uh, come about and, uh, has been circulated, he's been deplatformed from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference. I don't know. Something.

0:03:36 Thomas: Didn't invite us, so we don't know, yeah.

0:03:38 Andrew: Yeah, it's I think it's conference. But yeah, I keep waiting for my invitation, but somehow it gets lost in the mail. And his book deal has ostensibly been canceled. So, you know, maybe this is the end of Milo.

0:03:53 Thomas: And Well, you missed it, he resigned from Breitbart, yeah.

0:03:56 Andrew: Oh, gosh. Well, Well, once you're free of our nation's premier source of, yeah, Pravda

0:04:01 Thomas: Official Press, yeah, Well, The Presidential, you know, official news source, yeah,

0:04:07 Andrew: Of the United States. Something people on our side, by our side—I mean, you know, typically we are left of center will often argue that Milo uses freedom of speech as a shield and, you know, uses it to get away with bullying people. And I think this, so I'm sensitive to that, but this is an area in the formulation of the question that I think goes too far. What does it mean to be an accessory after the fact? It means that you've got to have met the following four criteria. Right. Somebody has committed a felony. Right. That's one. Number two, after that felony was committed. Number three, you, with knowledge that a felony was submitted. Number four, acted with intent to help that person avoid arrest or punishment and excusing the felony of somebody else.

0:05:00 Andrew: Particularly the felony ostensibly committed upon you yourself, as in the case of the Milo tape, doesn't fit those criteria. And I think with good reason, right? Right. Like, look, I want, I mean, I find it a reprehensible idea. But, you know, this is not very far from the controversy that sort of swept through the secular community a couple of years ago when Richard Dawkins had a really ill-advised tweet about, you know, sort of, I think what he called "mild pedophilia" of like, you know, boy, when you know when I was in school, you know, teachers would pat us on our bottoms all the Time.

And, you know, it, it, those are dumb things to say. They are patently incorrect as a matter of the law. They're gross as a manner of public policy. But I, I want people to be free to say them. And to be honest, I think maybe I'm alone on this, but Milo expressing an opinion on pedophilia is the closest I've seen to him actually expressing an opinion that is worthy of debate, right, like it's, it's wrong, but at least you can argue with it, right, as opposed to his

0:05:31 Thomas: Yeah, A Weird, weird preacher Touched Him. Yeah. I thought

0:06:09 Andrew: Typical

0:06:09 Thomas: You were going to say it's the, it's the most informed he's been on a topic thus far. Actually, I think it is.

0:06:10 Andrew: Spiel Yeah, Well, I Think That's also the case But Seriously, Right, like, I mean, his shtick is, you know, to wear pearls and literally to wear curls and go on Bill Maher and crack jokes, and you know, that, that's it, it's why I said when I was on, uh, the Biskeptical Podcast with Trav and Morgan, I said, you know, that there's no problem with a public university deplatforming Milo. Like, this is not somebody who has anything interesting to say and has contributed to sort of public debate in any way. You know, as long as what you're saying is the criteria we're using to exclude this guy is it's not informative, rather than it's hate speech, I think you're on fine grounds on that. Again, don't take legal advice from a podcast. But yeah.

0:06:17 Thomas: Yeah, interesting. Well, separate topic, but let me ask about this one, which is the, the accessory after the fact thing. What about the fact that He kept the name secret? Like, he wouldn't give up who the person was who did it. I assume that falls under the same category, but I just want to make sure to address it because it sort of, yeah.

0:07:02 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah,

0:07:16 Thomas: Go ahead.

0:07:15 Andrew: So, yeah, Yeah, that's a good question. That is the argument that's being made, that fits prong number four, which is with the intent to help the person avoid arrest or punishment. And as you know, this this is kind of a continuing theme on the show. Whenever you have an intent crime, it's really, really hard to show the subjective intent of somebody. And I think, you it would be incredibly difficult to show that not disclosing the name was designed to help that person evade punishment as opposed to shame, guilt, right? You know, all sorts of things that kind of go into that complex of factors. And I can't imagine—I mean, we would not want to establish the precedent that says victims of child abuse can be gone after and prosecuted for being an accessory after the fact for failing to disclose the names of their assaulters, right? Like, no matter how tempting, you know, sort of the Milo case is here. So, yeah.

0:07:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Take Milo and his stupid face off of it and put another victim who's, you know, not maybe more sympathetic of a character, and and it would be an awful situation to be punishing them for like not giving up a name on TV or not, you know, so yeah. I totally see the point you're making there, right? Well, that covers it pretty, simple, simple answer, so no, not an accessory after the fact. But yeah, the most informed Milo's ever been about topic, so.

0:08:29 Andrew: Yeah. Right. Yeah, I

0:08:53 Thomas: All right, for today's main topic, really interesting case, that I believe is like hot off the presses for us. It'll be a few days old by the time you're hearing this, but still, always love when Andrew can respond to something immediately. But this is interesting because we've talked way back when, remember this, that Andrew, remember when times were better and we both had visions of sugar plum fairies and Hillary being a president and like maybe getting a good Supreme Court nominee that didn't believe that the Constitution was magical and that the wizards who wrote it were always infallible and the exact wording that they used and how they wrote it and stuff like that. Remember that?

0:09:33 Andrew: I do.

0:09:35 Thomas: Okay, I just wanted to, that's, I had no point. I just want to say, remember that, that is all. No, the point is, I remember when we talked about Heller and the fact that DC versus Heller and way back when, actually, was this on my show that we talked this initially? I guess it was, huh? It did show up as episodes on opening arguments, but we talked about this way back when originally on my show. And you explained why you think that DC versus Heller was pretty activist. And I believe later on, we talking about some hope that you had for the future. If given, you know, given a liberal judge appointed, maybe reversing this. Well, it looks like there was a decision, as I said, just a few days ago that maybe has the potential to overturn D.C.

0:09:35 Andrew: Boy, those, those were great times.

0:10:22 Thomas: Versus Heller. So why don't you take us through that and get us up to date on that issue?

0:10:28 Andrew: So this case is Colby versus Hogan. It is a Fourth Circuit opinion, and right, it is an en banc decision of that court. So before all of the judges of the Fourth Circuit, and in this case, uh, the Fourth Circuit holds consistent with Heller that, uh, Maryland's ban on semiautomatic weapons, uh, is not only constitutional, uh, but is consistent with the Second Amendment, uh, and they, and they've specifically crafted the opinion in in ways that I think are really, really illustrative of what courts do when you have bad precedent, but you're not going to overrule it, right? So as a preliminary matter, right, the Fourth Circuit can't overrule a Supreme Court opinion.

0:11:15 Andrew: They are required to issue their opinion consistent with stare decisis, consistent with existing case law, and they've got to fit Heller sort of into that framework. Right. And this case will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. I think it is likely the Supreme court will take it. And so it is, in my view, it really provides kind of the framework of where the future of the court will go on guns. And the question there is really going to be what happens with Anthony Kennedy, right? And also, you know, if anything unfortunate happens to any of our existing judges who are currently serving on the Supreme Court, because obviously another appointee, right, if something horrible were to happen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that would upset the calculus.

0:12:09 Thomas: Do we always talk about her? Why can't something horrible happen to one of the horrible justices? Wouldn't that be nice? Does it have to be her?

0:12:12 Andrew: Ridiculous. That would Be Nice. It Does

0:12:16 Thomas: Ash.

0:12:16 Andrew: Not it does not have to be here, um, The situation that we have right now is we have, uh, the liberal four justices on the Supreme Court are, have signaled that they are ready to, uh, dissented in Heller, right? They, they Disagree with it, uh, they are certainly ready to confine Heller. Uh, and, um, you have three judges on the court, uh, who are very, very pro Heller, uh. And as we discussed in both, uh, back on your show, and uh, and in our, uh, Second Amendment Master Class episodes, uh, and you have Anthony Kennedy, who, uh, voted with the majority in Heller but has since, um, displayed a little bit of independent thinking and some questioning on how far the Heller decision goes and whether we really want to rewrite 200 years of history order to kind of put this sort of originalist view practice that essentially makes it impossible to restrict firearms by category.

0:12:18 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:13:16 Andrew: So with all of that in mind, I've given you a lot of analysis of why I think the decision is important. Let me tell you what it concerns. Assault weapons or their copies, regardless of which company produced and manufactured that assault weapon. So and we've talked about this whenever you come up with a list of firearms before. This is kind of a novel approach to there's like 40 or 50. In fact, I can I can add it up. It is 45 specific weapons that are listed on this. Some of these are weapons that you're familiar with from school shootings. Right. The Colt AR-15, the AR-100 type semi-auto, the AK-47, Ruger Mini-14 stock model .223 caliber, the Sig Sauer .550 or .551, the Street Sweeper assault type shotgun.

0:14:12 Andrew: So the law bans these 45 specific types of weapons, plus their copies, regardless of their manufacturer, sort of in an effort to kind of straddle the line of giving a specific list, but also somebody cloning the AK-47 and calling it the AK 48. so immediately, a coalition of interest groups, sporting goods stores, and other interested personnel appealed, filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that that Maryland statute outlawing was those unconstitutional. And they brought it in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland before Judge Blake, whom I know very, very well and has a reputation for being both politically neutral and extreme intelligence and competence. I would say she is one of the most respected judges on the bench. She wrote an opinion affirming constitutionality. That opinion was appealed to the Fourth Circuit. Now, the Fourth circuit, we've we've talked about this before. Maryland is a is a liberal state, but the Fourth District is comprised of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

0:15:37 Andrew: And it is not a liberal circuit court of appeal. In fact, on criminal issues, right? It is widely considered to be the most conservative court in the country. Yeah, I actually litigated back in my big firm days a case involving a search warrant, and our contention was that the search warrant was overly broad because it was so vague in its form that it didn't identify with specificity the places to be searched and the things to be seized. Uh, pretty good argument. Uh, and, and I lost. So, um, you know, that, that the four, and I wasn't overly surprised, right? Like, you know, I'd advised the client, uh, you know, we're going before a, uh, a circuit that is, uh, that is pretty conservative and, uh, and particularly conservative on what they consider to be, you know, law and order type stuff.

0:15:51 Thomas: No.

0:16:38 Andrew: So, so that's, that's the background, right. This isn't the Ninth Circuit. This isn't just one wacky liberal judge. This is an appeal to the Fourth Circuit that the Fourth Circuit upheld. Again, upheld the Maryland law. So what you can do when you lose in the Fourth circuit is you can immediately appeal to to the Supreme Court, right? File a petition for writ of certiorari. Or you can file a motion for reconsideration for an en banc hearing before the entire Fourth Circuit, right. And we have talked about en banc cases in the past. And essentially, those tend to be granted when you have a case of first impression that, you know, the judges say, oh, okay, like, we get it. This is this is going to be pretty significant law. And and we think that it's important to to get every judge on the circuit involved in this. And that's and that's what they did here. Well, because again, we only got as far in the proceedings as the for a stay, right? They were briefing the merits.

0:17:31 Thomas: They Haven't Done that for the Trump immigration ban though, which Which seems Curious to me.

0:17:44 Thomas: Okay. But I thought they were On that Part now.

0:17:47 Andrew: They were briefing the merits, but right, but if Trump withdraws the executive order, and I don't know the exact legal status, right, he's announced that he's going to withdraw the executive I don't know that he has formally done it. Once he formally withdraws the executive order, then that case is arguably mooted. Right. And so it would start all over again. But yeah,

0:17:48 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Right.

0:18:06 Thomas: Okay, but Is that, but let me just ask, because it's kind of relevant to en banc in general, is that the kind of case, assuming it was moving forward, or do you believe that they would have done that one on bonk?

0:18:17 Andrew: I certainly believe that if that were requested, the Ninth Circuit would agree to sit on. And the Ninth Circuit is kind of weird because it covers Hawaii as well. And so when they sit on bunk, they don't actually—it's the only circuit that doesn't—where all the judges don't sit when you sit on bonk. But more of them do, right?

0:18:37 Thomas: Okay. Some of them are off Bonk. Is that what you're saying?

0:18:39 Andrew: Right, exactly. But the government would probably not want to do that because they are trying to expedite review as quickly as possible, right. So, you know, yeah, so there's a delay question that goes along with it, and I'm going to read this. This is from page nine of the Fourth Circuit's decision on bank decision affirming the constitutionality of Maryland's assault weapons ban. As explained below, we are satisfied to affirm the district court's judgment, in large part adopting the opinion's cogent reasoning as to why the FSA, that's the bill below, contravenes neither the Second Amendment nor the 14th. We diverge from the district court on one notable point. We conclude, contrary to the now vacated decision of our prior panel, that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are, underline, not protected by the Second Amendment. That is, we are convinced that the banned assault weapons and large capacity magazines are among those arms that are, quote, like M-16 rifles, quote weapons that are most useful in military service,

0:18:48 Thomas: Okay. I see. All

0:19:46 Andrew: Which the Heller court singled out as being beyond the Second Amendment's reach. Then there's a citation. "Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to weapons of war that the Heeller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage. Nevertheless, we also find it prudent to rule that even if somehow banned assault weapons and large capacity magazines are somehow entitled to Second Amendment protection, that the district court properly subjected the FSA to intermediate scrutiny and correctly upheld it as constitutional under that standard of review." View. So you and I have read enough Supreme Court and circuit court opinions to know that that's pretty extraordinary language, right?

0:20:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:24 Andrew: In there, what the Fourth Circuit is saying is, yep, we vacated our prior decision. That vacated means erased it, made it null and void. We met en banc, all of the judges got together. There is a dissent, four judges dissented, which, which we can talk about if we have time, we have done so in order explicitly to rule in this case that the types of weapons and ammunition that are a part of Maryland's assault weapons ban are not covered by the Second Amendment. And we want to make that very clear in bold, underlying language, right? So kind of amazing. So let's start off with citation to Heller,

0:20:32 Thomas: Right.

0:21:05 Thomas: I was gonna ask the because I was taking this to mean at first, like, like, oh, we're saying Heller is kind of BS, and that's what we're kind of getting at by this decision. But then it cites Heller and says, well, it's because actually these are military weapons, which are outlined in Heller as something the Second Amendment doesn't necessarily protect. So which is it, or is it both? Did Are they using Heller just to say that this this specific type of weapon is okay to ban because of its military application? Or are they kind of trying to do both? Which it sounds like in past answers, when I've asked questions like this, it sounds Like you kind of can do both. Sometimes you can both say like, this decision was wrong, but then this component of it was fine.

0:21:52 Thomas: And go with that. Or are they because it sounds like if they're if they're using Heller in that way, that would be different than saying, yes, yes, it's always okay to ban weapons by their type. Does that make sense?

0:22:07 Andrew: Perfect sense. You've really hit on, in my view, what makes this such an important decision, right.? So first, remember, this is the fourth The Fourth Circuit is bound to apply the law as set forth by the Supreme Court. So they can say, and believe me, I know some of the judges on the Fourth Circuit, and I know at least one whom, if you pulled that person in private and said, what do you think of the Heller decision, would offer an opinion kind of similar to mine. But it doesn't matter because Heller is law of the land and Heller's interpretation of the Second Amendment is law of the Land until the Supreme Court revisits that. So you have to apply the Heller. You can't just say we don't find Heller persuasive, so we're not going to do it. Right.

0:22:20 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Hmm. Right.

0:22:56 Andrew: So what you have to do is you have to distinguish and limit the holding of Heller, and so what makes this in my view such a potentially meaningful decision is that it provides the framework for saying to the Supreme Court, hey, if you want to back away from what it looks like we're headed for in the aftermath of Heller, right, which is to say there is an absolute Second Amendment individual right to own firearms and any effort to restrict that right is going going to be unconstitutional because Scalia and some of his buddies seems to have thought so. Here's the way in which you can do it. So let's turn to that citation from Heller. This is this is Section three from the Heller decision after laying forth the individual rights theory of Second Amendment gun ownership.

0:23:47 Andrew: The Scalia, writing for the court, then says, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th century, cases, commentators, in courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever for whatever purpose." And then there are some examples on, you know, prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons. "You know, although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the carrying of firearms in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings, by felons and the mentally ill, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." And then there's a little bit more discussion of the Miller case.

0:24:32 Andrew: And then this is the paragraph that the Fourth Circuit is citing. It says this: "It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service, M-16 rifles and the like, may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause.

But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.

Indeed, it may be true that that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern day bombers and tanks. But" the fact that "modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause, that is the well-regulated militia part, and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of that right." So that paragraph says, in of the Second Amendment is that it reads out the introductory clause. Right. Like if we're just saying people have a right to have firearms, then what does a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state mean? Right. What does that introduction mean? So what Scalia was trying to do here is say, oh, look, we're not reading by massively changing the law governing the Second Amendment in Heller and holding for the first time that this governs an individual right to keep and bear arms.

0:25:18 Thomas: Hmm. And

0:26:09 Andrew: We're not really radically changing the law and we're not reading the introductory clause out of existence because the Second Amendment still clearly only protects weapons from the home that you would take with you to militia, does not protect you with weapons that would be issued in the army that you might take home. Right, and that's what that little aside, and it's just an m dash right, of M16 rifles and the like, right.

He was sort of making this sarcastic comment of, well, look, obviously this doesn't cover M16s, it doesn't cover cover bombers and tanks, right. And this is, you know, one of the things people have said about Scalia in an effort to humanize him, is you no, boy, he was really funny, right. And they're saying similar things about Neil Gorsuch, right, right, Yeah, yeah, they're they're great friends.

Um, one of the harms of being fun and Gorsich, by the way, writes very much like Scalia, right, he is kind of sarcastic and kind of funny, and you know, I I I have some sympathy with that, I've I've written a fair amount of sarcostic legal stuff in my career, um, I'm I'm sure that that will not surprise anybody, but but one of the harms of writing sarcastic stuff, uh, your Supreme Court opinions, is that the Fourth Circuit can do what they did here, right?

Which is dig through, you've got this little caveat, and you're like, look, now we're not saying, you know, obviously the Second Amendment doesn't cover military weapons. Um, and so they pulled out that phrase and literally they quote that, uh, interjectory clause, M 16 rifles and the like," at least four times in the opinion itself.

0:26:55 Thomas: He and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, such great friends.

0:27:45 Andrew: Right, they and they essentially then say that under the analysis that was taken by the legislature in banning these certain kinds of weapons and ammunition, that they found no difference between, or minimal difference between, the assault weapons and military weapons. And so once the legislature made that determination, if these are weapons of war, then Heller tells us that weapons of war, M16 rifles and the like, are not covered by the Second Amendment. And so there's no grounds that we can just throw it out.

We don't even have to analyze it to look at whether these weapons, whether you have a Second Amendment right to those weapons, because even the most expansive Supreme Court case on your right to keep and bear arms says you don't have a right to keeps and bear military weapons. Happens. So really, really clever, it's right? Why This is going To be heard by the Supreme Court, right. But it provides the blueprint to say, we've talked about this before, right, it is very rare for the Supreme Court to say you know, to do a Brown versus Board of Education and say, you know what, we look back Plus he versus Ferguson. We got that wrong and we just have to overrule it. And this is how we're going to do that.

And, you know, you would sort of ask me the question, is the Supreme Court likely to go back and overrule Heller? And I said, no, I don't think that—I overruling prior cases is something that is reserved for cases like Brown or cases like Gideon v. Wainwright, which announced that you had an affirmative right to counsel you were an indigent charge with a criminal offense, right?

0:29:30 Andrew: They're very, very rare in our nation's history if you follow the standard model of jurisprudence that we've outlined. Line. Um, but distinguishing cases, right? Saying, yeah, you know what, like there's some exuberant language in Heller, and Heller is still good law, and you do still have an individual right to keep and bear arms, but you have an intellectual right to bear personal household arms and not an individual right to keep and bear weapons of war. Uh, if, if that were to be adopted by the Supreme Court as, as the test under the Second Amendment, um, that would be consistent with with past precedent, it would it would retain Heller as a valid and viable case going forward, but it would narrowly confine Heller. Right. Instead of saying, as a signal to other states and to state legislatures and to and to plaintiffs, of no, no, pretty much all.

0:30:19 Andrew: Because what what Heller says and in its aftermath is the signal it sent is, boy, when you try and ban weapons that that the Supreme Court's going to going to strike that down. And what decision does is provide a framework to say to restore the right of states to not just restrictions like the kind that were listed in Heller on the mentally ill buying firearms or things like that, but to actually outright ban categories of weapons. So here's some of the fact finding that is reported in this opinion. This begins at page 19. "The difference between fully automatic and semi-automatic versions of these firearms is slight, that is, the automatic firing of all the ammunition in a" "large capacity 30 round magazine takes about two seconds, whereas a semi-auto rifle can fire the same magazine in as little as five seconds," quoting from the record below. Remember that an appellate court is not going to issue findings of fact, they are confined to the the findings of the district court below unless less clearly erroneous. So they are reiterating things that were introduced in evidence below and found by the district court.

"Moreover, soldiers and police officers are often advised to choose and use semi-automatic fire because it is more accurate and lethal than automatic fire in many combat and law enforcement situations. The AR-15, semi-auto AK-47, and other assault weapons banned by the FSA have a number of features designed to achieve their principal purpose, quote, killing or disabling the enemy on the battlefield."

0:31:56 Andrew: "For example, some of the banned assault weapons incorporate flash suppressors, which are designed to help conceal a shooter's position by dispersing muzzle flash. Others possess barrel shrouds, which enable spray firing by cooling the barrel and providing the shooter a convenient grip. Additional military features include folding and telescoping stocks, pistol grips, grenade launchers, grenade lunchers, uh, night sights, and the ability to accept bayonets and large capacity magazines," uh, Yeah, Several manufacturers of the band assault weapons, in advertising them to the civilian market, tout their products' battlefield prowess. Colt's Manufacturing Company boasts that its AR-15 rifles are manufactured, quote, "based on the same military standards and specifications as the United States issue Colt M16 rifle and M4 carbine." Um, and you know, I won't go through, but that advertiser.

0:32:23 Thomas: Bayonets. Well, Did they cite the case that Runaway Jury? When did they cite that as a key thing, the state also, the this, the testimony from the CEO of one of the gun manufacturers, anyway, tie into Law'd Awful Movies. Check that out. Yeah.

0:32:51 Andrew: Yeah, that's Lawed Awful Movies number three, where we looked at a parody gun control case and made a lot of fun of it.

0:33:05 Thomas: Where What You Do Is You Get the CEO, the gun company, on the stand, and then they get all flustered and they go, "You're like, oh, guns, God damn it." And then you win the case. That's essentially how it goes. So go check that out. Anyway, yeah. So it's like that, right? Just roughly speaking the same.

0:33:16 Andrew: Yeah, uh Right. Oh. Oh, you know, I, I wonder, I I strongly suspect that the uh ad copyist at Colt who decided, who decided to say our, our weapon for the home is built just like the M16 when there's a Supreme Court decision going, well, obviously you can't have an M16, uh, you probably, probably regrets that one. That's a tough one to get around. Then So ultimately, Fourth Circuit concludes, like their fully automatic counterparts, the banned assault weapons are, quote, firearms designed for the battlefield, for the soldier to be able to shoot a large number of rounds across a battlefield at a high rate of speed. And so because of that, the Second Amendment does not apply. Now, the second half of the decision also says, if you assume that the Second Amendment does apply, then under Heller, that requires an intermediate level of scrutiny.

And I want to explain that a little bit. So in the law when you have an equal protection violation—and you You will recall that introduction of the case that I read said that they addressed both the Second Amendment and the 14th Amendment charges. Right. So the Second Amendments says that this act is violates the Constitution because you have an individual right to keep and bear arms.

0:33:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:33 Andrew: They say, no, Second Amendment doesn't apply to military style weapons, and even if it does, the standard is duplicative of the equal protection argument, which I'm about to give now. When you make an equal protection violation argument, right, equal protection says all similarly situated individuals are to be treated similarly. And unless an individual is as a member of a protected class, the standard that you use in value, or unless a protected right is at issue, the standard that você usa em aplicar a cláusula de proteção igual é algo chamado de base racional, e você tem visto isso, que houve uma argumentação de base rational na ordem executiva de Trump, certo? Nós vemos isso virando de vez em vez.

0:35:19 Andrew: Time again, um, the rational basis test is sometimes called the fogged mirror test, right? If you insert a mirror under the nose of the legislature who, who passed it, does, does it fog up, are they breathing, um, and and if they are, uh, and as long as the legislature is not stupid enough to write into the intent of their bill, you, as we gave for example in the City of Hialeah case, "we hate those crazy Santeria people and we want to ban chicken sacrifice," like, as long as they don't write their discriminatory intent into the law, then their findings are likely to almost always pass a rational basis. So again, applying the Trump EO standard, people asked, did Trump's summary finding that withholding Muslims from the seven nations that constituted the Muslim ban executive order, did that really pass a rational basis?

0:36:10 Andrew: And I was out there saying, yeah, no, that's probably going to pass rational basis because we just defer to the findings. And in that case, the findings of the president in issuing an executive order, you know, there's a fogged mirror. What turned out to raise the potential argument there was the fact that the president went on record saying, "Hey, Giuliani, tell me how to keep the Muslims out of this country." Um, and so, you know, wound up, um, contravening that standard and really illustrating, uh, you know, discriminatory intent in a way that you don't typically find. Um, that's a little bit of a rabbit trail.

So if you don't have a protected class, uh, the standard is rational basis and And rational basis means, unless you have evidence that the, the legislature has done something horribly wrong or has discriminatory intent, it's going to pass. The flip side of rational basis is called strict scrutiny. And so if you aren't a member, a member, or a core protected class, and strict scrutiny applies, the exact opposite is the case, right? Like, so rational basis means the law is almost always upheld. Strict scrutiny means the, the law is almost always struck down. In the middle is intermediate scrutiny.

So again, going back to the decision, strict scrutiny is the most demanding test known to constitutional law. The less onerous standard of intermediate scrutiny requires the government to show that the challenge law is reasonably adapted to a substantial governmental interest, okay. And so here, as you might imagine, cases can go both ways, and you know, sort of without uh delving uh further into the court's analysis, because it's got some arcane legal stuff there, they essentially say,

0:37:48 Andrew: If the Second Amendment applies, then intermediate scrutiny applies, which is the same standard for the equal protection violation, and the Maryland gun ban passes that level of intermediate scrutiny. So again, I think that this is significant in that they are confining their construction of Heller in the Fourth Circuit says Heller employs an intermediate scrutiny test, whereas a number of other sort of core constitutional rights invoke strict scrutiny. You really have those two ways in which this decision, being issued by a subordinate court, nevertheless confines Heller going forward and says it exempts by its terms military So you have to conduct an analysis of, is this a weapon for use in the home or for use in a military?

0:38:41 Andrew: And number two, it says, and if the weapon is a home weapon, then intermediate scrutiny applies, that the burden of the government is not to show—for strict scrutiny, you have to show that your law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. And there's tons of cases that say, you know, it your law might be good, but it's not the least restrictive means. Right. And so and this law would not pass. Maryland's assault weapons ban would not passed a strict scrutiny inquiry. Right? Like because the means are to prevent violence. Right, and I do not think you could show that the least restrictive way to prevent violence is to ban, you know, all of these categories of weapon like it. That's just.

0:39:29 Thomas: Weird question, though. I don't even know how you would answer that.

0:39:29 Andrew: Yeah. Well, It is because, you know, think about it when you have and we talked about this, for example, in the abortion cases like one of the things that the Supreme Court has to do when you're talking about two rights that come into conflict is give you a handbook of how do you determine which one of these, ways out, right? Like what, what, what choice do you make? And, you know, so strict scrutiny is a way of saying we put the thumb very heavily on the scale for this individual right. And when anything comes into conflict with it, it's got to be of equal importance in the constitutional sense before we're willing to deviate from that. Does that make sense? And so this, yeah, yeah.

0:40:08 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, so I think I get it. I think it's very cleverly, as you said, trying to navigate a path of how do we still, we're still restricted by current law, current precedent. We can't just say DC versus Heller is nonsense, not allowed to do that. But we can try to, I guess, just because of the specific wording of Heller, we can try to find a way to make a little narrow path so that Heller becomes less relevant and it opens up the door to, once again, banning guns by class of gun. Gun and as long as, and again, let me know at the end here if I misunderstood anything, but as long the class of gun is military, it sounds like you'll be totally fine if this were to go all the way through, obviously, to the Supreme Court, right? If it's a class of guns that might be for home use, it's not going to face the uphill battle of strict scrutiny but it could still be uh struck down using I guess intermediate scrutiny, is that right?

0:40:47 Andrew: Or yeah, that is exactly right. And Um, so I, I would add, I Would add just a couple of things to that. Right. So number one, one of the things we've talked about that, you know, is it's probably a dead letter, uh, for at least two years. But I could see being revived in the future is efforts to restrict high capacity magazines, right, which were included in this Maryland ban. And you now have a binding Fourth Circuit decision. So in these states that are covered by the Fourth Circuit, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, your legislature could ban high capacity magazines, probably not too likely in most of those states other than Maryland, where it already has. But but the other implication is that if you are in any of the other states, right, the Fourth Circuit's opinions are not binding on federal courts in those states, but they are persuasive. Right. And so I could certainly envision that if any other state in the union were to ban high capacity magazines, for example, then it would be reasonable for the courts reviewing that decision.

0:41:16 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah,

0:42:34 Andrew: So say, you know, California follows suit. They ban high capacity magazines. The Ninth Circuit would almost certainly cite with approval this case. Right. So, you Know, so it's not just that we're waiting to see what the Supreme Court says, right? Like the, the Supreme court could deny cert. I don't think that's likely to happen. Right? This is, it's a hot button issue. It's perfectly teed up. And there are at least four justices, I think that would, that would be eager to, to, to review this from a Supreme Court perspective. But until that happens, until this case is overruled, it absolutely remains persuasive authority in other jurisdictions, even though it's not binding. I do, I also want to, I'm sensitive, when we did our vouchers episode, episode, called into task for failing to discuss kind of the political policy arguments in connection with it.

0:43:34 Andrew: And so I did want to kind of briefly mention that there is some academic literature that kind of questions the efficacy of banning categories of weapons. Are longitudinal studies that are, I think, best described as sort of indeterminate, right? Some yes, some no in terms of whether they actually reduce crime. Would point out, though, that all of those academic studies, the extent that that they that they test the question, they demonstrate that the most efficacious methods of gun control are federal registrations of firearms. And so to the extent that you are thinking of using that as a political argument to the contrary of, well, gun bans don't work. Here's what the literature says. That argument with respect to that. But the counterargument is that the methods that that literature tends to show do work are far more politically intrusive and are, you know, sort of effectively off the table.

0:43:55 Thomas: Hold,

0:44:43 Andrew: Right. If you Like went to the NRA and said, hey, we're going to give up on banning categories of weapons. We're not going to ban AR-15s anymore, but we are going to have a nationwide handgun registry. Then, you know, you would be laughed out of the room, right?

0:44:55 Thomas: I, I thought, maybe I don't understand, I thought all guns were registered. What is this, a different kind of registry?

0:45:00 Andrew: No, there is no central database and registry for for firearms in this country. Right.

0:45:04 Thomas: Oh, it's just not centralized?

0:45:05 Andrew: Yeah, there is. And, you know, law enforcement can, my understanding, we're outside my area of expertise. So please correct me if I'm wrong, our listeners. Uh, my understanding is that uh law enforcement can back search the serial number for a registered sale, uh, if that sale was so registered, and find out the individual. But, like, my understanding is also that, uh, you know, because of the gun show loophole and things like that, that, um, you know, that those that level of tracking is almost always meaningless, that, you know, uh, it is uh, so far down line in terms of being able to track guns by serial number. Uh, and there is, there's absolutely no, you know, sort of searchable public database. Um. So

0:45:06 Thomas: Okay, sure. Okay, okay, okay, so interesting. I also, I didn't think about the magazine portion because I was thinking in terms of, oh, ban this gun if it's military, you know, more of a military use. Again, as people likely can tell, I'm not a gun guy. I don't know shit about guns. Sorry if I don't speak about guns that accurately. But I didn't think about the fact that, oh, this type of magazine, you could also say this, someone could argue this is, like, a military application. And so therefore, it's okay to ban it, consistent with DC versus Heller, according to this, to this thing. So interesting. So I guess quickly, then where does that leave us? What's the next step? You think this is that is the next step, Supreme Court?

0:46:22 Andrew: Yeah.

0:46:32 Andrew: The lawyers for the petitioners are, as we are speaking, preparing their petition for cert. And they will get it. At least, remember, a cert petition only requires four justices. And I think the combination of both the most conservative and the most liberal wings of the court, I think, are interested in hearing this case for the reasons that we set out in this episode. Right. Like, this is a high stakes case. And, you know, it's again, this is illustrative of, you know, some of the things we said, right. This, the future of this decision and the political outcomes that stem from it are going to, are probably going to be determined by the vote of Neil Gorsuch. So, you know, that's there you go.

0:47:19 Thomas: Man, so we're screwed. Okay, that's our show. Yeah, all

0:47:22 Andrew: And I would like to have I mean, let me say it. I have talked, I'm trying to bring on a firearms enthusiast, a sort of self-proclaimed Second Amendment guy onto the show. And I'd like to kind of walk through some of those issues because neither you nor I are experts in that. We don't own guns. And so I'd like to pose some of these questions and some of these distinctions and see where we wind up and if we can't find any sort of agreement with respect to that. So stay tuned. Hopefully we can make that happen.

0:47:24 Thomas: Right, well, Thanks for taking us through that, we'll keep an eye on it. Next step, Supreme Court, sounds like, and I don't hold too much hope, but we'll see. Onward to the rest of the show. All right, we've got another listener question for you. Patron Derek Timp asks, is there any rule that would keep a priest or bishop or cardinal from running for political office if they meet all the other requirements? Now, that's an interesting topic. I've never thought about that. I would guess that they mostly just don't because, you know, they're are already running the world. But yeah, I've never thought like, is there an actual rule that they can't? Interesting. My guess is going to be no with a couple of caveats, but that's my guess. Go ahead.

0:48:09 Clip: The law breaking down

0:48:51 Andrew: I mean, I'm curious what you think those caveats are, because I was going to answer this with a good old nope. The reason I picked the question is because I think there is a significant amount of confusion, even on people sort of on our side, about what separation of church and state means. And so there is absolutely nothing that prevents you from being a religious person, serving in a religious capacity, and at the same time, providing you meet the other requirements, running for office. And in fact, Gordon Klingenschmitt was in the Colorado state legislature while actively serving as a pastor. So we have examples of this actually happening.

0:49:32 Thomas: My caveat was going to Bee the bleed together of political activities with, like, your church activities. Like, can you use church resources? And depending on the, I guess, the tax exempt status, which is something we talked about the other week, uh, that was going to be the only thing I'd say, like, you could run into. I'm guessing some legal difficulty there, and that might be the kind of difficulty where, if you're actually running for office, maybe they would actually enforce some of those things. But who knows. Makes

0:49:33 Andrew: Mm hmm.

0:49:59 Andrew: Yeah. And and and that's exactly right. But I would point out I think this question was inspired by our Johnson Act discussion. But. But I would point out that the remedy, if you have, you know, if, say, Rick Warren runs for office and is elected to the Senate, right, and then he uses his platform of his megachurch to deliver a political lecture every week, then the remedy would be, under the Johnson Act, would be to strip his church of its tax-exempt status, but not to kick him out of the Senate. Right.

0:50:35 Thomas: Sense.

0:50:36 Andrew: So, You know, that's that's the issue there. And it kind of illustrates the larger principle that I wanted to make, which was, you know, separation of church and state does not mean religious people don't get to participate in public life. It does not mean that you can't vote for or against a bill on religious grounds. It doesn't mean that a senator can't say, I am voting to make abortion illegal because I have a religious belief that life begins at conception, right? Like, we, one of the things that's sort of a hallmark of our political system is, you know, we think you have freedom of conscience and freedom of thought, and the right right to vote for legislation or vote for people for political office is, know, as far as anything is in our system, right, about as absolute as possible, right?

0:50:36 Thomas: What?

0:51:27 Andrew: The only thing we can't do is you can't run for office and say, if you vote for me, I will give you $20, right. But outside of of that, prohibitions under the First Amendment of respecting an establishment of religion do not extend to religiously motivated movements. And again, we've picked on some conservative ones that we disagree with. There is no denying that a key aspect of many of the Civil Rights Act, much of the the civil rights movement in the 1960s was being led in inner city churches. And a lot of the arguments were sort of explicitly religious about integration and about civil rights in this country.

0:52:15 Andrew: So I think we're a little bit untethered from history if we want to view all religious political activity as necessarily conservative and necessarily on that side of the spectrum. It's, you know, it's on both sides of the spectrum, and it's perfectly legitimate so long as you're complying with the law, and so long as, you know, you don't have a situation. We've talked about the tests under the Lemon test before, right? You know, it's not hard to envision that careening off the rails, but so so long as it remains your personal religious identity, you have that right. And I wouldn't want to see that taken away from anybody.

0:52:54 Thomas: About if you start promising, like, rewards in heaven for votes. I mean, I guess that's still legal. Hold

0:53:00 Andrew: About the extent to which the vote-buying statutes, like, push the boundaries of that, right? So it's clearly illegal for me to stand up on the podium and say, I will give each of you $20 if you vote for me. It's clearly legal for me to stand up on the podium and say, OK, there are a million people in this state. If I'm elected, I will repeal the sales tax and refund it to you on your tax returns. And you will each get $20 on your taxes. Return back as a check from the government if I'm elected. And like there's zero practical difference between those two statements, right?

Like they're both saying, vote for me and I'll give you 20 bucks. Arguably, the second one's worse, right, because here's the first one, at least it's coming out of my pocket, right. The second one, I'm not even going to spend my own money. I'm going to take public funds and bribe my way into office on the basis of that. But, you know, but you've got to draw that line and we err on the side of political speech. So it is really it has to be as narrow as the I would like to exchange money in return for your vote. Very well.

I would Like to receive money in exchange for giving you my vote. Right. Outside of that, there's not a whole lot of not a lot of prohibitions. Um, in terms of a little bit of the rabbit trail that that goes down, it's part of why I thought our discussion on the emoluments clause was, uh, was so useful because, um, in order to prove bribery, right, you have to show not only, uh. That you've given money to that political person, but quid pro quo.

0:53:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:36 Andrew: You have to show that they've done something in return. And so if somebody has been bought and paid for by an extreme political group for a long period of time, then you just say, oh, look, I always vote against abortion legislation. So the fact that this particular group gave me a million And then I went out and voted for it, voted against it is like that fails the Supreme Court's bribery test, even though it's pretty clear. Right. Like, you know, it all you're doing is pushing back the locusts.

0:55:04 Thomas: So the lesson is bribers get in there early.

0:55:08 Andrew: Yeah. Get in on the ground floor.

0:55:08 Thomas: Bribe early and often. And then

0:55:11 Andrew: Can I can I can I just this is another good time to repeat, please do not take legal advice from a podcast. I'm not encouraging.

0:55:12 Thomas: Okay. You can take bribery advice from me, though. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, if you're going to bribe. So I'm not saying you should.

0:55:27 Andrew: Thanks.

0:55:27 Thomas: Anyway, I'm gonna get a stern talking to later. Later.

0:55:28 Andrew: Yeah. Probably.

0:55:32 Thomas: All right, well, does that do it for that question?

0:55:32 Andrew: It Does I?

0:55:35 Thomas: All right. Well, I stand by my no with a few caveats. Like, no, sure, nope. But there's some ways you can run afoul of the law there if you do certain things. So, you know, that's what I had in mind. So bar question.

0:55:47 Andrew: Agree with that.

0:55:48 Thomas: Let's not do a bar question 100% for today's bar question, or this week, I guess it would be Friday. Let's not do one this week. I got it already. Well, Fridays will be a formality. I'm just kidding. I'm just trying to get out of the fact that I have not answered a bar question correct in a while. We're going to find out if that changes in a minute, but first we've got to thank our new patrons who went over to patreon.com/law. We need to thank out new patrons, and they are, oh wow, this is a good start. Good start. Uh, I'm gonna pronounce this differently, how about that. Uh, Penisaurus Dix, Andrew Lindsey, uh, Technomancy is the subtle art of capturing and taming demons, these pledges are getting ridiculous, but hey, they pledged money, we gotta say it. El Presiodente, Eccentric Millionaire the Donald J. Trump, wow, they really are getting a lot of air time, that they just pledged, uh, Jonathan Solis, MoarPye, and that is not spelled like "more pie," it's spelled M-O-A-R-P-Y-E, Soma Kondo, JeanJeannie, uh, Christian Okon, Brad Danielson, and John W. Want to take the rest? Okay.

0:56:34 Andrew: Yeah.

0:57:05 Andrew: And thank you to, uh, Brandon Smith with a pledge edit upwards, we really appreciate that, uh, thank you, too, Actiontoast, uh, we called him out on Twitter, thanks for supporting. To Shane Phillips, to AdiposeRex, to Manav S., to Mike, and to Cai Macdougall. Thank you all so much for your generous contributions.

0:57:25 Thomas: A quick note to our fine new patrons and to prospective, uh, new patrons. We will be doing, as we always do when we get a little sponsor, as you might've heard last Friday, we do a bonus Q&A, and that'll be a quick little one, two, three question thing, depending on how long the questions are, for our patrons, because patrons hear the show ad-free. So what we do is we do a separate little episode that's just some listener questions. We talk about the sponsor just in case the patrons want to become acquainted with it. And so that's cool. That's another benefit of going to patreon.com/law. More listener questions answered. All

0:58:05 Andrew: Yep.

0:58:05 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:58:11 Thomas: Here's a host question. Answered? Did I get the last bar exam question? Let's find out.

0:58:17 Andrew: Yeah. So question number 12. This was about a witness to a murder in the park. And the defense attorney wants to ask the witness about her habit of feeding the pigeons and knows that the witness was cited, violated, illegally feeding the pigeons on several occasions, right? So defense counsel tries to ask the question, "You have a long time habit of feeding these pigeons, don't you? You have, in fact, been ticketed several times for feeding the pigeons, haven't you, and yet you persisted in it, didn't you." Will the trial court allow the witness to be questioned on these matters? And we had, just as a brief reminder, A, Thomas's answer, no, because the question has no probative value regarding the credibility of the witness or the guilt of the defendant. B, no because a witness can never be asked about personal prior bad acts. C, yes, because the statement indicates that the witness's attention was always focused on feeding the pigeons. Or, D, which is it?

0:59:13 Thomas: It's that one. I am quitting law if it is answer C. I am done with law. I, I can't hack it as, as a lawyer.

0:59:21 Andrew: Is Not answer C, and D, because feeding the pigeons in the park and persisting in it after after being ticketed may show an antisocial trait of the witness. Thomas, as you correctly figured out, this is one of the softball questions that are real bar questions. Your answer, A, is correct. It's the only one that remotely makes any sense. There wasn't even a good attractive distractor in there. Witnesses can be asked about personal prior bad acts, right? Like if you are somebody who has historically been convicted of crimes of lying in court. If you've been three times convicted for perjury and you're on the stand giving,

0:59:21 Thomas: Okay. Oh, thank God.

0:59:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

1:00:06 Andrew: You know, yeah, exactly. But this is a classic example. And the question obviously is a little bit goofy, is designed because this is the situation as a trial lawyer. You see this all the time when a witness on the other side has done something bad, right? They have a conviction, a criminal conviction on their record. Boy, do you want to get that out, right, like you want the jury to say, I don't believe that guy, like that guy was arrested, right. That guy served time. And part of what our federal rules of evidence do, what the law does in general is try and balance that out. Right. You get out the relevant information, but we exclude things where, you know, it's clearly that there's... there's nothing relevant to be gained here. It is you're only trying to poison the the the well of the jury against that witness.

1:00:06 Thomas: That sounds more relevant. I

1:00:56 Andrew: But with the pigeon question. So good job. Congratulations on getting that one right. And and let's keep moving in the right direction.

1:01:03 Thomas: Don't think I gained any ground on the listeners because I will be amazed if anyone got that wrong. We're going to find out, you know, who the winner is. I hope it's somebody who picked answer or C like we should just go if anybody did that better be the winner now

1:01:16 Andrew: Yeah, this week's winner is Matthew Tai, that is at Matthew Tai, T-I-E, on Twitter, who said, "I dreamed Fonzie said A, so I'm going with A." As we've discussed, most people got this right, even when I put out a call for dissenters. There were a couple of good dissents. Um, our old pal, uh, Diddling Quokka put a very lengthy analysis of, uh, why he didn't think A, B, and C were correct. Um, he's wrong, but, uh, but it was really, uh, it was good stuff. But in the end, uh, the winner is Matthew Tie.

1:01:52 Thomas: Well, that wraps it up for today. That wraps it for today show. On that note, I am, what, seven for 12, I believe.

1:01:57 Andrew: Seven for 12.

1:01:59 Thomas: All right. Okay. You know, it's kind of something with somewhere around 60%, I think, something like that. I mean, it's close-ish. So, we can get back on track. Just more of those freebies would be good. I'd appreciate that. But we'll have to find out on Friday the next question of the bar exam. As well as just an absolute abundance of legal questions being answered on Friday's episode. So we will see you then. Thanks, Andrew.

1:02:14 Andrew: Yeah thank you all

1:02:34 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments with Andrew and Thomas. If you love the show and want to support future episodes, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/law. If you can't support us financially, it'd be a big help if you could leave us a five star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever podcast delivery vehicle you use. And be sure to tell all your friends about us. For questions, suggestions, and complaints, email us at openarguments@gmail.com. The show notes and links are on our website at www.openargs.com. Be sure to like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. Until next time. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC. All rights reserved.