BREAKING LEGAL NEWS: To count as being loaded, a gun must actually be, you know, loaded. “[I]n this country, ownership and use of standard pistols and revolvers is not only widespread and generally accepted as lawful, but also implicates constitutional rights.”

This kind of thing is consistent with the analysis in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece — for many years, firearms law treated gun ownership as almost a deviant activity, to be engaged in at one’s peril. Now that it’s clearly normal behavior that implicates constitutional rights, stick-it-to-the-defendant sophistry seems to be on the wane, though obviously not among the prosecutors in this New Hampshire case. I hope they feel some pressure from their constituents; perhaps someone might mail them a copy of Second Amendment Penumbras. . . .