Federal Judge Says Pennsylvania is Violating 2A Rights of Young Adults

While you have to be 21 years old to obtain a concealed carry license in Pennsylvania, adults under the age of 21 still have the ability to open carry at least on paper. But for several years that’s been an impossibility thanks to a quirk in state law that bars open carry during a state of emergency. Believe it or not, Pennsylvania has operated continuously under various declared states of emergencies since 2018, so the only option for those who want to carry a firearm is to acquire a concealed carry license; an impossibility for 18-,19-, and 20-year-olds.

The Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition, along with several young adults, challenged the status quo in federal court, and won their case at the district court level. The state of Pennsylvania appealed to the Third Circuit seeking a re-hearing, but the appellate court turned away their request last month. Now U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman, a Trump appointee, has enjoined the challenged statutes from being enforced.

In his order, Stickman not only informed the state that it can no longer prosecute young adults for openly carrying, even during a declared state of emergency, but local jurisdictions must begin accepting and processing concealed carry applications from adults under the age of 21; a resounding win for the 2A groups and gun owners throughout the state.

“Judge Stickman’s injunction has conferred the same Second Amendment rights upon 18-20-year-olds that those over 21 have had,” said Adam Kraut, SAF’s Executive Director. “Now 18-20-year-olds in Pennsylvania may apply for License to Carry Firearms and the state’s draconian transportation laws have been enjoined from enforcement. This is a victory for Second Amendment rights in PA.”

This victory comes on the heels of a decision last month by the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to deny a petition by the state for a rehearing in the case. The court had ruled that young adults could carry firearms openly during states of emergency, and now Judge Stickman has expanded that to include their ability to apply for carry licenses.

“This is a major win for gun rights in the Keystone State,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We’re encouraged the courts are finally looking at this issue in terms of the constitutional rights of young adults.”

Absolutely, and that goes for the Third Circuit too, not just Judge Stickman’s excellent decision in favor of the plaintiffs. I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised to see some of the decisions that have come out of the appellate court since Bruen. In addition to denying the state a rehearing in Lara v. Evanchik, the appeals court also ruled in Range v. Garland that Bryan Range should not have been permanently disqualified from possessing a firearm simply because he pled guilty to a crime punishable by more than a year in prison several decades ago.

The DOJ has appealed Range’s case to the Supreme Court, but it remains to be seen whether Pennsylvania AG Michelle Henry will ask the nine justices to overturn the edict Stickman issued today. It’s a stinker of an issue, given the lack of a national tradition preventing young adults from accessing their Second Amendment rights, and at this point, the gun control lobby may want to keep this case away from SCOTUS rather than risk a nationwide precedent allowing young adults in all 50 states to keep and bear arms.

We saw that same strategy deployed against the right to carry when Illinois’s ban was struck down by the Seventh Circuit in 2012. Instead of appealing to the Supreme Court, Illinois Democrats instead chose to craft a “shall issue” carry bill; not because they suddenly saw the light, but because anti-gun activists convinced them to take one for the team instead of giving the Court the opportunity to definitely state that we the people have the right to bear arms as well as keep them. It took a full decade for the Court to finally get ahold of a carry case, but in the 2022 Bruen decision gun control activists saw their worst fears confirmed when a 6-3 majority ruled New York’s “may issue” laws unconstitutional.

We’re now arguing over the scope of the right to carry, but the gun control groups still have a vested interest in stalling SCOTUS from hearing cases where the law in question is so clearly contrary to the “history, text, and tradition” test laid out in Bruen. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Henry quietly stop defending the under-21 carry ban, but sooner or later this issue will get to the High Court… and I’m confident that once again anti-gun activists are going to be bitterly disappointed by what the majority has to say.

Judge Cites Second Amendment While Dismissing Gun Charge Against Former School Superintendent

A former Kentucky school superintendent who was charged with possessing a firearm on public school property had his case thrown out by a judge this week, who said prosecutors hadn’t been able to show a national tradition of prohibiting firearms on all property owned by a school district.

John Gunn, the former school superintendent in McCreary County, had just resigned his position in February, 2023 when he went to the board of education office around 6 a.m. to gather his personal belongings from his office. Gunn was allegedly wearing a .45 caliber pistol when he showed up at the building, but he left because his access card had been deactivated and he couldn’t get inside. When he returned during normal business hours he no longer had his gun with him, but he was still arrested by a school resource officer when he tried once more to collect his things.

Gunn’s attorney, David S. Hoskins, argued that the law was an unconstitutional infringement on Gunn’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

Hoskins cited a 2022 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court set out a new standard for deciding the legality of gun restrictions, commonly called the Bruen case.

The high court said that gun laws must be assessed on whether they are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Hoskins argued there was no historical analogue regarding regulating carrying guns on school property — as opposed to schools themselves — and as a result Kentucky’s prohibition on carrying guns as it was applied to Gunn was unconstitutional.

The prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Ronnie Bowling, argued in response that the Supreme Court decision would still allow barring possession of guns in sensitive places such as schools.

Gunn’s act of carrying a gun at the school-board office “is not a traditional, historical recognized right” at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, Bowling said.

Bowling got it backward. Unless he could show a longstanding, national tradition of treating school administrative offices as “sensitive places”, Gunn presumably had the right to have his firearm with him that morning, and Judge Dan Ballou cited the Supreme Court’s “history, text, and tradition” test in dismissing the felony charge against the former superintendent.

Ballou ruled the prosecution had not shown “that the Nation’s historical tradition of regulating the possession of firearms extends to an individual carrying a firearm on property not utilized as a school, during a time when neither students nor school employees were present, and with no other alleged criminal acts being committed, regardless of the ownership of the property at issue.”

Honestly, this case never should have been filed to begin with. There were never any allegations that Gunn intended to do harm to anyone in the building. In fact, he went to the board of education building early in the morning so he could collect his things and be gone before anyone else had shown up for work. This was simply about possessing a firearm, and I can’t help but wonder if there was any underlying animosity from the school board that led to his arrest, when the easiest thing would have been to drop the matter once he’d cleared out his office.

Hopefully the Commonwealth Attorney will take the loss and let this be the end of Gunn’s ordeal instead of appealing Ballou’s ruling and continuing on with the prosecution. The judge made the right call in dismissing the case on Second Amendment grounds, and the interests of the public aren’t going to be served by trying to turn Gunn into a felon for merely possessing a gun outside of the school board’s building early one morning.

NY Judge: The Second Amendment Doesn’t Exist Here

There’s been a case in New York that I should have been following more closely. Dexter Taylor was a hobby gunsmith. He liked the nature of putting together guns from lawfully purchased parts.

However, the state of New York disapproved of this pastime. They arrested Taylor and, on Monday, he was convicted.

My friend Jeff Charles over at our sister site RedState has been covering this case pretty much from the jump, and in his story from Monday about the sentencing, there was something we had to talk about.

You see, the judge in the case has decided that a certain right of interest to Bearing Arms readers doesn’t actually exist in her state.

From the beginning of Taylor’s trial, it was evident that the court would be biased against the defendant, according to [Taylor’s attorney, Vinoo] Varghese, who explained that two judges presided over his case before the current official, Judge Abena Darkeh, took over.

The judge disrupted Varghese’s opening statement multiple times as he tried to set the stage for Taylor’s defense. Even further, she admonished the defense to refrain from mentioning the Second Amendment during the trial. Varghese told RedState:

She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’

Varghese said he had filed the appropriate paperwork to “preserve these arguments for appeal” but that the judge “rejected these arguments, and she went out of her way to limit me.”

The Second Amendment doesn’t exist there? Excuse the hell out of me?

“This is New York?”

This just smacks of “the Aloha spirit” nonsense where some parties seem to think that the Constitution doesn’t actually apply because they really, really don’t like it.

Is the judge in this case, Judge Abena Darkeh, suggesting that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply anywhere she doesn’t approve? What other rights don’t exist in New York under Judge Darkeh’s paradigm? Do defendants not have the right to representation? Is free speech non-existent?

Oh, one might make the case that I’m being ridiculous, but I don’t think I am. Not based on Darkeh’s other actions.

Varghese also tries to take a jury nullification approach. Jury nullification basically means you convince the jury that while a crime might have occurred, the law in question is the real problem. It’s rare, but it’s still a thing. Judges aren’t supposed to encourage it, but they’re not supposed to stop it.

Yet Judge Darkeh did just that. She reportedly warned jurors in such a way as to suggest they could face consequences if they didn’t vote to convict.

So, basically, it feels like Taylor got railroaded and that Darkeh doesn’t actually think people have rights unless she, personally, approves of them.

Yet that’s not how rights work. They exist even if they’re inconvenient. They exist even if you don’t approve of how they’re used.

Varghese says he tried to preserve Darkeh’s comments for appeal and was stymied. However, her comments should still be on the record somewhere. If not, her attitude should be clear from the transcripts.

But either way, Darkeh makes it clear that at least some jurists in New York really don’t think the Second Amendment applies in either their courtroom or the state as a whole.

It’s time they’re disabused of that notion by higher courts.

SCOTUS Grants Cert in SAF VanDerStok Frames, Receivers ‘Finale Rule’ Case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted certiorari in the case of the “Finale Rule” on frames, receivers and parts kits announced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in April 2022, and subsequently challenged by several entities including the Second Amendment Foundation.

The case is known as Garland v. VanDerStok. It has been described as a case about so-called “ghost guns” built without serial numbers, but the issue is far deeper. It is really about the ATF’s alleged violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and usurping the authority of Congress.

In a statement from SAF, Executive Director Adam Kraut hailed the announcement.

“We are delighted that the Court has agreed to hear our challenge to ATF’s frames and receivers Final Rule,” Kraut said. “ATF has continuously exceeded its constitutional authority and violated the separation of powers by creating law – a job reserved exclusively for Congress. It is time for the Supreme Court to remind ATF that it may not do so and affirm the judgment of the Fifth Circuit.”

SAF was joined in its intervenor complaint by Defense Distributed, a Texas-based firm. In their original complaint, they stated, “To comply with the Second Amendment,” the complaint alleged, “the promulgating agencies needed to jettison balancing tests and consider only whether their regulation is ‘consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’ Yet because that did not happen—itself a key APA violation—it is no surprise that the new Final Rule tramples true historical traditions.”

The Associated Press is reporting that arguments in the case “won’t take place before fall.” That could push a ruling back to possibly June of 2025.

According to SCOTUS Blog, “A federal district judge in Texas invalidated the rule and entered a national injunction against it. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court then stayed the order pending resolution of an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and any cert. petition; Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh voted to deny the stay.”

For more than a half-century, since passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, the ATF did not consider parts kits or unfinished frames and/or receivers to be firearms. But that changed 15 months into the Biden administration.

“This case typifies the Biden administration’s war on the Second Amendment,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “Clearly under Joe Biden, the ATF has unilaterally set itself up as the sole authority on firearms regulation, bypassing Congress and arbitrarily changing long-standing regulations to suit the administration’s anti-gun agenda.”

As noted by NBC News, after the high court granted the stay while the trial moved forward, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “mostly ruled for the challengers.”

“Because Congress has neither authorized the expansion of firearm regulation nor permitted the criminalization of previously lawful conduct, the proposed rule constitutes unlawful agency action, in direct contravention of the legislature’s will,” the Circuit Court ruled.

The Biden administration does not want to lose this case, which is not actually a Second Amendment case, but has considerable bearing on how far the government can go to regulate firearms without violating the right to keep and bear arms.

Today, my Dad, already ‘The Elder’ of the clan, as the oldest living, becomes the oldest ever lived, as he surpasses the age of his older brother who passed in February of 2021, a little less than 5 months before his centenary birthday.
Yes, Dad is “Ninety and Nine”, and in September will celebrate his 100th birthday, having proclaimed on more than one occasion that he plans on casting his vote in the 2024 federal election.

Nashville homeowner shoots burglar in self-defense
The burglar was shot after he allegedly broke the kitchen window and was trying to enter the home.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Police said a burglary suspect was shot in self-defense by the homeowner in the Trinity Hills area on Saturday morning.

Anton Cosby, 32, is accused of breaking into the home on Shreeve Lane just before 6 a.m. Saturday. The victim and his family woke up to the sound of banging on the front door and windows.

The homeowner retrieved his firearm and gave Cosby repeated commands to leave. He told Cosby he would fire his weapon, according to police. Cosby then allegedly broke the kitchen window and began to climb through when the homeowner shot him once in the arm.

Police said Cosby dropped his revolver near the kitchen sink and ran away. Officers say they found him nearby. When they attempted to render aid, Cosby became combative. He was transported to Skyline Medical Center for treatment of his non-critical gunshot wound.

According to police, the District Attorney’s office has determined the victim was acting in self-defense and is not expected to face charges for the shooting.

Cosby will be charged with aggravated burglary, felony vandalism, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm while intoxicated when he is released from the hospital.

VIRGINIA VETO SESSION HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR GOVERNORS WHO RESPECT THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Virginia’s General Assembly gathered in Richmond for the Reconvened Regular Session (or Veto Session). This is the one-day session when bills the governor either vetoed or sent back to the legislature with amendments can be taken back up. This veto session is more significant than usual for the firearm industry because Democrats, who currently control both the Senate and House of Delegates, passed dozens of antigun bills. They were on a mission to pass bills to strip away the Second Amendment rights of Virginians and punish the firearm industry. With much appreciation, Gov. Glenn Youngkin responded by vetoing all legislation that would have negatively impacted firearm and ammunition businesses.

Here’s a look at some of the defeated bills Democrats passed and were sent back to the General Assembly by Gov. Youngkin. The General Assembly was unable to override any of the governor’s vetoes.

SB 2 & HB 2 would ban the sale of many semiautomatic firearms classified as so-called “assault firearms.” The legislation would also ban standard capacity magazines, or those having a capacity of more than 10 rounds. NSSF’s recently-released research report conservatively estimates over 717 million such magazines produced since 1990, establishing beyond question they are commonly owned by law-abiding Americans.

SB 273 & HB 1195 would create an arbitrary and unconstitutional five-day waiting period for the purchase and transfer of firearms.

SB 327 would remove the right of young adults (18 to 20 years of age) to purchase certain semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. NSSF refers to this as an unconstitutional age-based gun ban.

SB 491 & HB 318 would create new civil liabilities for firearm industry members, specifically those engaged in the sale, manufacturing, distribution, importation or marketing of firearm-related products. These bills would also create a civil cause of action for the attorney general or local county or city attorney to enforce the provisions of the legislation. Such claims are preempted by the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).

HB 351 would prohibit the transfer of a firearm from a licensed dealer unless the transferee purchases a locking device for the firearm if they reside in the same household as a child or complete a certification statement that they do not reside in the same household as a child. This bill disregards the fact that free locking devices are included in the package with every firearm shipped from a manufacturer and federal law already requires licensed dealers have such devices available for sale and must provide one when transferring a handgun.

HB 585 would implement statewide zoning restrictions that ban home-based licensed dealers from operating within 1.5 miles of an elementary or middle school. This bill would put many licensed dealers out of business.

HB 1174 would expand the definition of “assault firearms” while also unconstitutionally banning the sale of many Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and those that would have been newly-designated as “assault firearm” to those under 21 years of age. The bill would have also codified into state law the minimum age to purchase a handgun as 21. That has come under scrutiny after a federal judge in Virginia ruled adults under 21 cannot be prohibited from purchasing a handgun.

To summarize, Democrats attempted to ban commonly-owned firearms and magazines, create new civil liabilities that would be weaponized against manufacturers and dealers, strip young adults of their rights, create unnecessary red tape to purchase a firearm and close responsible home-based businesses simply because they happen to be within an arbitrary distance of a school.

Democrats did not have the votes to override any of the governor’s industry-supported vetoes. NSSF thanks Gov. Youngkin and those legislators that stood up for the thousands of Virginians in the firearm industry and the millions of gun-owning Virginians it serves. NSSF will continue to actively engage here in Richmond. That doesn’t mean the work is done. Undoubtedly, many of these same bills, and some new ones, will be introduced next year.