"Wyoming Scores 'Win' In Landmark Gun Rights Case Against Trump Administration". . . well not so much. .. but maybe its headed that way.

News broke yesterday about a decision in which the State of Wyoming took place regarding silencers and short barreled rifles and shotguns, all things controlled under the National Firearms Act.

A local news story:

Wyoming Scores 'Win' In Landmark Gun Rights Case Against Trump Administration

As always, with such things, we like to go to the source, as the press so rarely gets these stories correct.  This one is definitely being misreported in some news organs.

The Court did not strike the statutory provisions down, as it was urged to do, and as some parts of the press are reporting it did.  In fact it denied declaratory relief.  Rather, what it did, was to find that the basis for the NFA, which was passed as a taxation bill, fails once no tax is applicable.

That makes perfect sense.

What doesn't is that the Court didn't take the next logical step, which would have been just to strike those portions of the NFA down.  Rather, it simply enjoined the NFA from being enforced as to those provisions on the specific plaintiffs in the suit.

Eh?

That result is frankly rather weird, and not sustainable.  This will be appealed, I think, to the Federal Court of Appeals.  Having said that, the Trump Administration, in spite of supposedly being "pro gun", was fully defending the law and it might make a strategic decision not to appeal.  If it doesn't, this ruling is so narrow that it effectively is a nullity.

Here's the court's entire decision.

On the items in question, I'd like to see the NFA struck down.  Without the taxation element of it, it really fails to make any sense.  

The big question, of course, is automatic weapons, which are also addressed by the NFA. They are not addressed by this decision, and the taxation aspect of the system still applies to them.  Some argue that the NFA violates the 2nd Amendment by restricting them, but I frankly do not think it does as I'm not certain, if analyzed in the 18th Century prospective of the 2nd Amendment, that they would be considered "arms".  Rather, I think they'd likely be regarded as "ordinance", as they're actually more akin to cannon, in context, than small arms, in context.

At 6,000-year-old crossing, Gov. Gordon OKs Wyoming’s first-ever designated pronghorn migration route Some Green River Basin pronghorn migrate more than 200 miles. Now, Wyoming has designated the landscapes they move through in an effort to protect the route.

 

At 6,000-year-old crossing, Gov. Gordon OKs Wyoming’s first-ever designated pronghorn migration route

Some Green River Basin pronghorn migrate more than 200 miles. Now, Wyoming has designated the landscapes they move through in an effort to protect the route.

Endangered Species Act protections for pygmy rabbits? Groups sue Trump administration over missed deadlines.

 

Endangered Species Act protections for pygmy rabbits? Groups sue Trump administration over missed deadlines.

Wyoming Game & Fish bars rifles for Spring Turkey.

Ah crap.

The Wyoming Game and Fish is barring the use of rifles for Spring Turkey Season.

Every turkey I've ever taken has been in the spring seasons.  In the fall I'm hunting something else.  At least in the fall, you are limited to Tom's.

This poses a problem with a shotgun, as you have to be really close.  I don't call turkeys in, as I'm too impatient to do that.  I basically stalk them.  I'm not the only one, but it's fairly rare.

If you stalk them, you are probably going to use a rifle.  You might get close to them, I have, but chances are you are going to be shooting form some distance.  A scoped rifle is the best option for that.

Every single turkey I've killed was with a rifle.  I tired to take turkeys with a shotgun once, and it was an utter failure.  Usually I've shot them with scoped .223s, but not always. I've shot them with iron sights as well.

Well, I guess no more, or I have to added to the list of things to go for in the fall.

Citing Wyoming corner-crossing case, hunters sue Montana for public land access

Citing Wyoming corner-crossing case, hunters sue Montana for public land access

While not obvious at first blush, this risk creating a situation in which this issue goes to the United States Supreme Court which right now is rather far to the right.

 

why it is difficult to reimport WWII American guns back into the USA today

‘In a trial, I think he’d get off’: Sublette County reacts to Cody Roberts’ felony animal cruelty plea deal

 

‘In a trial, I think he’d get off’: Sublette County reacts to Cody Roberts’ felony animal cruelty plea deal

Lex Anteinternet: The Trump Administration decides the Second Amendment ain't that much.

Lex Anteinternet: The Trump Administration decides the Second Amendm...: One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years. The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pag...

The Trump Administration decides the Second Amendment ain't that much.

One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years.

The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pages of the American Rifleman, who fawned over Trump, will be decrying a GOP embrace of gun control.  Fans of radicals who proclaim themselves to be for democracy and freedom while ranting about others as enemies should here to study history.  

Gun control came in to the USSR with the Communists, after they'd secured power at the barrel of a gun.  It was the Irish Republicans who brought gun control into Ireland, after the republic had been won with guns.  People like to claim the Nazis brought gun control to Germany (they didn't), but those who like to yell that should recall that Hitler was elected into office as part of a populist movement that promised to fix the economy and which hated "others", so to speak.

As soon as Trump sees the populace as the enemy to his safety, he'll act to preserve himself.  It's not, after all, as if he's been competing at Camp Perry and he doesn't need anyone's vote in four years.  If he acts, what are those who supported him on this issue going to do, join the Democrats?

Yeoman, January 6, 2025.

Alex Pretti, who was shot down by the Border Patrol, with Border Patrol shooting ten rounds.¹

I'm seeing one of my predictions about the Second Trump Administration coming true.

Everyone should have seen it.

Of the many people I know who voted for Donald Trump, there were three groups of what I'd call "single issue" voters who voted for him on the solid belief that he shared their views on one single issue, and that overrode everything else. There are: 1) opponents of abortion² , 2) opponents of gun control, 3) opponents of wars overseas ("forever wars").³

Trumps betrayed you, if you are in one of these categories, on all three.

The betrayal on gun control is simply epic.

A few days ago the Border Patrol gunned down Alex Pretti.  They actually shot ten shots.  People will defend the Border Patrol on this, but it's indefensible.  He was carrying a handgun legally, and it had been removed from him before he was killed.⁴

For decades the NRA insisted that Americans, and indeed everyone everywhere, had an absolute right to carry a firearm anywhere and campaigned for the right to carry, concealed and unconcealed, everywhere.⁵   Pretti had availed himself of that right.  He was going absolutely nothing illegal at the time he was gunned down.

The Administration's reaction has been to make every left wing gun control argument you've ever heard.

I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.

Kash Patel.  Well, Kash, don't come to Wyoming then.  There aren't any, and I mean any, largescale demonstrations were people aren't carrying, concealed and unconcealed. Shoot, I saw a guy with a M1 Garand and fixed bayonet a couple of years ago.

Patel tried to claim that Pretti was breaking the law by carrying a sidearm at a protest, apparently ignoring that this guy became a hero for something like that:

Minneapolis police officials, at any rate, quickly disabused that notion, noting in the press and on Face the Nation that this simply isn't true.  Pretti wasn't breaking the law.

That same comment was made House Majority Leader Steve Scalise who was flat out confronted by Margaret Brennan on the same topic on Face the Nation.  Scalise stumpbed all over himself and said he was for the Second Amendment had had sponsored a concealed carry law down in Louisiana, but that if you are carrying a gun while breaking the law it's a felony, and Pretti was breaking the law.

Pretti wasn't breaking the law, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what the former Republican Party, now the Fascist Party, thinks of the 1st Amendment as well as the 2nd.

The ever nervous Scott Bessent had to appear on Meet the Press.

KARL: He was an ICU use who worked for the VA and there's no evidence he brandished the gun whatsoever

BESSENT: But he brought a gun

KARL: I mean, we do have a Second Amendment

BESSENT: I've been to a protest -- guess what? I didn't bring a gun. I brought a billboard

The always nervous Scott Bessent.⁶   

Bessent has been to a protest?  Was it a super megabucks soybean protest? 

Same thing here.  Now bringing a gun to a protest marks you for death.

Kristi Noem, whose thugs committed the killing, really went after Pretti, calling him a domestic terrorist.  That is now the official line for any of these protestors, they're terrorists.  Neom sated:

I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.

Noem falsely accused Pretti of brandishing the weapon.

Stephen Miller called Pretti "an assassin" and accused him of trying to murder Federal agents.  

J. D. Vance repeated that lie, and Gregory Bovino more or less did.  Only Trump, who was initially claimed to have said something falsely, apparently hasn't.

Ironically, it was the press and the police that were defending Second Amendment rights to carry the past couple of days. You shouldn't bring a gun to a protest.  Pretti's handgun, which is a fairly typical 9mm SIG, was a "military weapon" (it is, but just about any semi automatic handgun could be), he had "multiple magazines".

And finally, we have the Dear Leader himself:

I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.

Donald Trump.⁷ 

Basically, the Administration's position is that if you are carrying a handgun, the Federal Government can gun you down.

All things right out of the left wing gun control handbook.

The very thing, I"d note, that the NRA warned us about, in regard to the Federal Government, with the irony being it comes right from the man they backed.

Not that any of this should be a surprise.  I've never felt for a moment that Trump had any actually affinity for firearms or was a member of "gun culture".⁸    He's a salesman, and he sold gun owners a line of bull.

Now they know better.  But it will be too late.

The things is, however, the accomplishments on the Second Amendment have been made. They can be taken away.  Therefore, a real "fool me once" thing is at play here.  A lot of gun owners are going to keep backing Trump as they'll refuse to think on this.  

And that's why support for Trump will prove to be too late.  W.E.B. Dubois declared that "only a fool never changes his mind".  How many gun owners will choose to be fools?

Footnotes:

1. The large number of shots suggest that the Border Patrol falls into the keep shooting category of policing, which many large city police do as well.  

I'm not a fan of magazine capacity laws, but I"m at the point where I don't think most policemen of any type should carry a firearm at all, and that when they do, it's time to go back to .38 revolvers.  They're simply less likely to kill people if they are med in that fashion

2.  A lot of people who find this to be a deep moral issue, and I do see it that way, voted for Trump on the false belief that they had no other choice.  There were other choices.

Now Trump is urging his supporters to soften their opposition to abortion. Mitch McConnel gets credit for the conservative judiciary that Trump put in place, which issued the Dodds decision, but there would be no real strong reason to feel that Trump cares much about the issue himself.

Trump's own sexual history is immoral, and usually multiple partners indicates a casual attitude towards abortion.  There's nothing to indicate that any of Trump's tarts had one, but he has shifted his position, and its still shifting, over the years.  

3.  Trump really likes to brand himself as a peace president but there are no wars that the US was involved in when he took office that we are now out of, the only real lingering one being the war in Syria.  He's started a new conflict in Venezuela, conducted a largescale mixed result raid in Iran, and appears to about to hit Iran again.

4.  Pretti's parents said that they knew he had a permit, but didn't know him to actually carry.  I'm in the same category.

My reaction is probably a lot like a lot of people in Pretty's category.  I'm going to start carrying.  

5. A spokesman from the NRA initially defended the shooting, slightly, and then the organization, waking up to the fact that it's about to be dumped by its members (it's already in financial trouble) backtracked and came out supporting carrying, but in a very muted fashion.

6.  Bessent is another figure who doesn't square with what MAGA claims its view of the world is.  He's an open homosexual in a homosexual union, something that MAGAs declare as abhorrent and which they repeatedly sneered at Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for.  It's been interesting that Buttigieg and Jean-Pierre were condemned for the very same thing that Bessent does at home, the point being that like a lot of members of fascist movements, MAGA adherents will suspend all of their supposedly deeply held beliefs to follow the leader.

7. The two magazine thing is a real left wing talking point.  

Use of the terms "very powerful" and "bullets" in place of cartridges almost always demonstrates firearms ignorance.  9mm pistols are not "very powerful". Quite the contrary. That's why some police forces simply blaze away with them, and why soldiers are taught to shoot an opponent more than once.  The 9mm should be a good police round for that very reason as its unlikely to kill anyone with a single shot.

8.  I'll have to get into gun culture, which I use as a positive expression, not a negative one, elsewhere, but I've never trusted anyone in the Second Amendment movement who wasn't an active member of a shooting sport, if even only a collector.  While Eric Trump is a hunter, Donald Trump's only outside interest seems to be the incredibly boring sport of golf.  If you can shoot, you wouldn't send much time on the golf course.

Wayne LaPierre, the former head of the NRA, struck me that way also, but I don't really know much about him.  Chuck Gray in Wyoming strikes me that way also, although I could of course be wrong.

 

Court to hear oral argument on law banning guns on private property

Rep. Bill Allemand arrested for drinking and driving

Rep. Bill Allemand arrested for drinking and driving: Wyoming Freedom Caucus member allegedly admitted that ‘he drinks while driving for anxiety,’ Johnson County Sheriff’s Office report says.

I suppose its an example of Schadenfreude, but Allemand is a an enemy of sportsmen and public lands, as well as being a central figure in an effort to kill a proposed industrial project north of Natrona County's Bar Nunn.

He's notably a Wyomingite, albeit one who spent most of his working life in Kansas, whose positions on things match the Freedom Caucus's, anti public lands, anti nuclear for some reason and pro whatever goofball thing the Freedom Caucus is for.  In his first run for office he was downright nasty to his opponent, and frankly the residents of his House district are not to be admired for voting for him in that election.

During the last legislature he sponsored a bill to really jack up the penalties for trespassing while hunting.  On that, it's notable that he's from a large ranching family in northern Natrona County, although he's not a rancher himself.

The drinks "for anxiety" comment suggests that he probably should be pitied, however, and that he might have some sort of a problem.  

Anyhow, if he goes, and he might have been on the way out due to his role in torpedoing the project north of Bar Nunn anyhow, it may be a good thing for public lands users and sportsmen, depending upon who replaces him.

Natrona County Rep. Allemand charged with DUI in Johnson County

Wyoming House Rep. Bill Allemand Charged With DUI, Says He Will Dispute It

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G...: China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins. The Chinese Civil War w...

Linked over from Lex Anteinternet, which also discussed the Chinese Civil War.

Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, Game Wardens Killed.

China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins.

The Chinese Civil War was the topic of a political cartoon as well.

The murdered Game Wardens were Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson who were killed by ardent Nazi sympathizer and German immigrant Johann Malten.   The same Game Wardens had arrested Malten for game violations when investigating, interestingly enough, claims that Malten had been involved in espionage and was relaying weather reports on shortwave, something that was illegal during the war when there was a blackout on weather reporting as the information was useful to submarines.  Upon visiting Malten's cabin in the Sierra Madres they found he had committed numerous game violations.

On this occasion they were stopping by to see if Malten had continued to ignore the law.  They were shot down out of hand when they arrived.

Malten burned his cabin down and it was officially reported that he'd died within it, although the evidence of that is very poor.  There were reported sightings of him for years thereafter.

And a selection of 1945 cartoons.

I knew about this story because former Wyoming Game Warden David Bragonier wrote about it in his book about Wyoming Game Wardens, Wild Journey: On the Trail With a Wyoming Game Warden in Yellowstone Country.  It's a good book, and I recommend it.

Bragonier discusses this event, although I clearly don't remember everything I read in his account.  That's probably not too surprising as I read the book in 1999.  What I recall but didn't see in the accounts on the murder you can find here is that the investigation was associated not only with the killer's German nationality and his strong Nazi sympathies, but also with shortwave radio transmissions that could not be pinned down.  

There's a bunch of interesting things that could, and if a person had time, should be explored here as the story raises all sorts of undeveloped oddities.

One of them is that Lakanen and Simpson are two out of the three Wyoming Game Wardens who were murdered by immigrants (to the extent I know why the various ones who lost their lives in the line of duty did).  I'm not saying that immigrants murder game wardens, but this is an interesting fact.  The other one is John Buxton, who was murdered by a youthful Austrian immigrant in 1919.  In that instance he had taken a .30-30 Savage rifle from a 17 year old who drew a revolver and killed him.  The reasons that Buxton was checking the boys is unclear.  Stories frequently claim they were hunting out of season, but that seems incorrect.  They were certainly overarmed for rabbits, however, with a .30-30 being way too large for that pursuit.  Buxton might have been checking them as their activities seems suspicious, which frankly they do, or because there was a state law at the time that prohibited aliens from carrying firearms.

The killers handgun, we might note, was concealed.

I only note this as its odd.  Hunting is common in Germany and Austria, and indeed there's a strong hunting culture there, but it's highly regulated.  As a result, poaching is fairly common as well, even though its highly criminal.  Indeed, one of the SS's units during World War Two, the Dirlewanger Brigade, was originally made up of convicted poachers, although it moved on to other criminals over time.

Anyhow, I wonder if these people were just hugely out of sink with any culture at all.

In the earlier murder, it's been noted that the young men had been in run-ins apparently with Italian immigrants in the same location. Austro Hungaria and Italy had been on opposite sides of World War One.  Again, I'm not saying that caused the murder, but I do wonder if they conceived of themselves as being very much on the outside of things.

Another interesting thing, although having nothing to do with the focus on this page, is the lingering Nazi sympathies in some quarters amongst German immigrants who chose to continue to live in the country.  That carried on, quietly, well after the war, even after the news of the Holocaust became known.

Odd.

If Malten was actually a spy, that may explain the killing in and of itself.

Another thing this story oddly brings up is the extent to which trapping remained economically viable.

Trapping was pretty common in Wyoming up into the 1970s, when there was a fur market price collapse.  I had, well still have, traps, although I haven't set them for decades.  In the 1970s high school kids like myself supplemented our incomes by trapping or hunting coyotes for their furs.  The market was so lucrative at the time that there were people who flew in from out of state and hunted coyotes near Miracle Miles, something we didn't appreciate very much as we didn't have those sorts of resources available to us.  The Federal Government was also big into predator control at the time which we also didn't appreciate much for the same reason.

Furs are, fwiw, an actual renewable resource fabric, one of the few.

Fur coats were a big deal for women at this time and would, again, be throughout the 1950s.  They were not nearly as much of a luxury item as people like to remember.  My mother had a heavy mink coat that she brought down from Montreal that she wore on really cold days.  As a kid I loved it when she brought it out, due to the feel of the soft minks.  

It was, in spite of Donald Trump and the Sweet Home Alabama crowe dof the GOP may believe, colder then.

I've never looked into it but I suspect that synthetic fabrics had as much to do with the decline in furs as anything else.  That started during World War Two and is well evidenced by the Air Force's switch from sheepskin flight altitude flight jackets to synthetic ones.  That trend continue into the 1950s and I suspect it just generally caught up with fur coats by the 1980s.  Indeed, the association of fur with luxury somewhat increased in that time, with it generally being the case that things are regarded as luxurious not only for their scarcity, but because they really aren't needed.

More on fur clothing some other time.

I guess the final thing I'll note is how dangerous of job being a game warden is.  A lot of the crimes you investigate are, by default, armed crimes.  

Given that, it's amazing to look back and realize that when I was a kid wardens didn't carry sidearms.  They weren't allowed to.  I recall when that changed and many did not take up what was then the option to carry them.  Now they're required to.

Indeed, I was recently stopped by a warden and frankly he wasn't very nice.  That's a new trend as well.  I don't like it.  But not only was he not nice, he was extremely intimidating carrying a government issued handgun on a government issued gunbelt and wearing a government issued flak jacket.  

I've really hated the militarization of the policy and this is all part of it. Everytime I see a policeman anymore, including a game warden, they're dressed like they're going into Hue in 1968.  All policemen of every type are civilians.  They're simply deputized civilians.  They shouldn't look like an occupying army.  And if the treat people rudely, and many do, and are standing their armed treating you like you are a detained Vietnamese villager, it's scary.

A little of that comes across, I'd note, in Bragonier's book, in spite of my recommendation of it.  It's a good book, but he displayed an element of contempt for the public he served in it.

David Bragonier must be, I'd suspect, gone to his reward by now  His biography indicates that he was born in Iowa in 1937 and moved to Wyoming after graduating high school.  He became a game warden over twenty years later, in 1958, something that would be extremely difficult to do now due to the education requirements.  He briefly worked for the Forest Service before that.

A man becoming a Game Warden at 39, which he did, would be really unusual now.  Probably impossible.

I actually have twice tried to plow that field myself, rejecting it once as I just go engaged.  I would have been about 30 at the time.  It'd be completely impossible for me to become a Game Warden now as I not have a wildlife management degree.  I suppose that requiring that specific degree is a good thing, but I do miss the days when a lot of Game Wardens were basically from ranching families.  Even when I was that age, many of them fit that category.  My cohort was probably about the last one that would meet that description.

I went on, of course, to a successful career in the law, and I was already a lawyer, of course at age 30, and had been for a few years.  I took one fork in the road.  You aren't supposed to look back.  Luke tells us, in a different context, that "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God".  I'll confess I've looked back a lot.

Having said all of that, I spoke the same warden (turns out he's very green) as I found a poached elk about two weeks later.  I had to guide him in, by phone, to the location.  He was very nice on that occasion, and that's how things should be.

Supreme Court to confer on whether to hear Wyoming corner-crossing appeal

Supreme Court to confer on whether to hear Wyoming corner-crossing appeal: Court sets Oct. 17 date for conference as Elk Mountain Ranch owner urges justices to take on “a 150-year conflict touching on the core of property law.”

Supreme Court shouldn’t take up Wyoming corner-crossing appeal, hunters say

Supreme Court shouldn’t take up Wyoming corner-crossing appeal, hunters say: Elk Mountain Ranch owner’s petition for review of his failed trespassing suit is “procedurally deficient and doctrinally unfounded,” attorneys in public-access case contend.

Top 10 Violations

Bear attacks on Hokkaido have become such a problem, due to a surging population that the town of Naiehas been trying to hire hunters for 10,300 yen ($64; £50) a day to patrol the streets, lay traps and kill the animals if necessary..

 

Japan has two species of bears, the Asian Black Bear and the Ussuri Brown Bear, the latter of which is in the grizzly bear family.

FWIW, if you look this up, you'll find photographs of the Japanese bear hunters using bolt action rifles. There's a weird belief that there are no privately held firearms in Japan which is simply untrue.  You can buy firearms in Japan.  There's a process to it, but you can do it. 

The process is:

1. Join a hunting or shooting club. 
2. Take a firearm class and pass a written exam.
3. Get a doctor’s note saying you are mentally fit and do not have a history of drug abuse. 
4. Apply for a permit to take firing training. 
5. Describe in a police interview why you need a gun. 
6. Pass a review of your criminal history, gun possession record, employment, involvement with organized crime groups, personal debt and relationships with friends, family and neighbors.
7. Apply for a gunpowder permit.
8. Take a one-day training class and pass a firing test.
9. Obtain a certificate from a gun dealer describing the gun you want.
10.  Buy a gun safe and an ammunition locker that meet safety regulations.
11. Allow police to inspect your gun
12. Pass an additional background review.

Yes, that's a lot compared to the US, but some of it should seem familiar.  While is different, in Wyoming, where obtaining a firearms is easy, if you want to go hunting, you must take a hunter's safety course.  Once you do that, you can get hunting licenses, but to purchase a firearm you must still have the background check done in one fashion or another.

Anyhow, yes you can buy a firearm in Japan.  In spite of this, you are going to continue to see the "there are no guns" in Japan comments.

Ranchers, landowners, conservatives urge Supreme Court to hear Wyoming corner-crossing case

Ranchers, landowners, conservatives urge Supreme Court to hear Wyoming corner-crossing case: Three livestock groups, a Montana property association and a conservative group ask justices to consider the case, which pits property rights against public access.

Attorney who backed Trump on Jan. 6 now urging Supreme Court to hear corner-crossing case

Attorney who backed Trump on Jan. 6 now urging Supreme Court to hear corner-crossing case: John Eastman says high court should hear matter “because it affects so much private property.”

Stock growers will join corner-crossing pleadings in Supreme Court

Stock growers will join corner-crossing pleadings in Supreme Court: Hunters ask for another 30 days to respond to Eshelman's petition for high court review.

Boycott

  

Cpt. Charles Boycott was an agent for remote land owners in Ireland who was regarded as particularly severe.  During the Irish Land War the Land League  introduced the boycott, directing it first at Cpt. Boycott. They refused him everything, even conversations.  The concept was introduced by Irish politician Charles Parnell, noting:

When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him at the shop-counter, you must shun him in the fair and at the marketplace, and even in the house of worship... you must shun him your detestation of the crime he has committed... if the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there will be no man ... [who would dare] to transgress your unwritten code of laws.

Charles Stewart Parnell, at Ennis meeting, 19 September 1880.

Maybe it's time to take a page from the Land League.

This comes up in the context of a Reddit post on Fred Eshelman's Iron Bar Ranch, his toy ranch in Carbon County about which he's zealously pursuing litigation in trying to keep people form corner crossing.  So far, he's losing, having had the local Federal District Court first, and then the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals endorse corner crossing as legal.  As we've noted here:

Eshelman is a pharmacist by training who has done very well, economically, in that field. So well that North Carolina's school of pharmacy, which he donates to, has named that school after him.  His bio appears on their site:

Fred Eshelman, PharmD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fred Eshelman is the founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC, an investment company primarily interested in private health-care companies. Previously he founded and served as CEO and executive chairman of Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPDI, NASDAQ) prior to the sale of the company to private equity interests.

After PPD he served as the founding chairman and largest shareholder of Furiex Pharmaceuticals (FURX, NASDAQ), a company which licensed and rapidly developed new medicines. Furiex was sold to Forest Labs/Actavis in July, 2014.

His career has also included positions as senior vice president (development) and board member of the former Glaxo, Inc., as well as various management positions with Beecham Laboratories and Boehringer Mannheim Pharmaceuticals.

Eshelman has served on the executive committee of the Medical Foundation of North Carolina, was on the board of trustees for UNC-W and in 2011 was appointed by the NC General Assembly to serve on the Board of Governors for the state’s multicampus university system as well as the NC Biotechnology Center. In addition, he chairs the board of visitors for the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the top pharmacy programs in the United States. In May 2008 the School was named for Eshelman in recognition of his many contributions to the school and the profession.

Eshelman has received many awards including the Davie and Distinguished Service Awards from UNC and Outstanding Alumnus from both the UNC and University of Cincinnati schools of pharmacy, as well as the N.C. Entrepreneur Hall of Fame Award. He earned a B.S. in pharmacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  received his Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Cincinnati, and completed a residency at Cincinnati General Hospital. He is a graduate of the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Indeed, the fact that Eshelman is very wealthy apparently was referenced by one of his employees in the initial confrontation with the Missouri hunters, which isn't a very wise thing to do as it looks bad.  Indeed, it looks bad right away, and then again in court.

So, Iron Bar Holdings is Fred Eshelman, very wealthy pharmaceutical personality.

The Reddit post, which was linked into an out of state news article, provoked a series of responses on how locals shouldn't accommodate Iron Bar economically, the posters apparently being unaware that he's a wealthy out of state landowner that doesn't, for example, hit the feed store in Rawlins.

But I wonder if they were on to something?

Iron Bar is employing locals, and those locals are serving to oppress Wyomingites.  There's no real reason to accommodate them. They probably do go to the feed store in Rawlins, probably stop by Bi-Rite in that city, and probably go into town there, or maybe Saratoga, from time to time.

Why accommodate them?

They're serving the interest of a carpetbagger and have chosen their lot. There's no reason to sell them fishing tackle or gasoline, or take their order at the restaurant.  

Beyond that, as I've noted before, in his lawsuit Eshelman is making use of local lawyers.  His big guns are, of course, out of staters, but he still needs some local ones.  Originally that person was Greg Weisz, who now works for the AG's office in the state. Megan Overmann Goetz took over when Weisz left.  Maybe she had to, as when a lawyer goes into the state's service, he leaves the work behind.  Both of them are of the firm Pence and MacMillan in Laramie.

I don't know anything about Weisz, but a state website disturbingly places him in the Water and Natural Resources branch of the AG's office, noting:

Gregory Weisz

Greg joined the Water and Natural Resources Division in January 2024 after almost thirty years in private practice. While in private practice, he focused on real estate transactions and litigation, easement law, water law, general civil litigation, agricultural law, and natural resources. At the Attorney General's office, he represents many Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality agencies including the Land Quality Division, Industrial Siting Division, Solid and Hazardous Waste Division, Storage Tank department, Abandoned Mine Lands Division, and DEQ itself with general legal issues. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in Natural Resources Management and a law degree from the University of Wyoming. His prior work experience included private forestry consulting, oil & gas exploration, water treatment, ranch labor, and forest products manufacturing.

Lawyers very strongly believe that the justice system is great, and that by serving client's, they're serving truth, justice, apple pie, and motherhood.  That allows them to stand themselves.  And to some extent, it's true, particularly in the criminal justice system.  The entire system depends on the accused getting representation, which is in everyone's best interest.

But that's not true of Plaintiff's cases.  Plaintiff's lawyers make a big deal of how they serve the little man, but much of it is a crock.  And in something like this, Weisz was serving the interest of a wealthy carpetbagger.  Maybe he believes in the cause, but that doesn't mean that people have to accommodate him, then or now.  Now there are questions that Wyomingites in particular and public lands users in general have a right to demand of Weisz, most particularly does he believe in  Eshelman's cause.  If he does, do we want him in the state's law firm, the AG's office?

Beyond that, for the Wyoming lawyers actively representing Eshelman, why accommodate them. They can be comforted by chocking down their service to a bad cause by liberal doses of cash.  Locals don't have to accommodate them, however.  Laramie and Cheyenne are not far from Colorado, they can buy their groceries there.

I know that if I was shopping for somebody to provide legal services, I'd shop elsewhere if I found my law firm was representing somebody trying to screw public land access for locals.

But it doesn't stop there.  All three of Wyoming's "representatives" in Congress voted against what Wyomingites overwhelmingly believe. That ought to be enough to vote them out of office.  But people don't need to wait until then.  All three are still showing up, I bet, at Boy Scout, sportsmen's and other events.  Quit inviting them. And if they do show up, do what Hageman did at the State Bar Convention last year, walk out on her if she speaks as she did to a speaker.

Is this extreme?  It is.  But these efforts never cease.

When being an employee of Fred Eshelman means you have to drive to Ft. Collins in order to buy a loaf of bread, it won't be worth it.  When Escheman can't get a plumber or electrician to come to his house, or anyone to doctor his cattle, or give him a ride from the airport, it won't be worth it for him. When lawyers have decide if that one case is worth not getting anymore, I know what decision they'll make. When John Barrasso quits getting invitations to speak, he'll know what to do.

There are limits, of course, to all of this.  You can't hurt people or property. If somebody needs medical service, they should get it.  If somebody is stuck in a blizzard and you come upon the, they should get the ride.  But you don't have to serve them at the restaurant or agree to fix their pickup truck.

Or, so it seems to me.  It would at least seem worth debating.

Boycott.

Renaming the Endangered Species Act.

That's what this bill of Hageman's and Lummis' actually proposes to do.

Lummis, Hageman Introduce Bill Targeting Endless Endangered Species Listings