Armed Defense is Simple, Hard, and Necessary

We go along and then something happens to us that changes our perspective. I was talking to a young man not long after I wrote about armed defense. Each of the ordinary stories I covered included an advanced self-defense skill. The young man said he wanted to make his family safer. We talked about it for a minute. I think that is where emotion raised its head, where truth and fantasy parted company. Let me state the obvious. Protecting your family takes work. Knowing what to do is the first layer of defense. Armed defense is also a skill that takes practice.

We often think that we can buy skill. I’ve felt that way myself. It is true that some firearms will fit your hands better than others. That said, is the problem that your hands are not doing what you want them to do, or is the problem that your brain doesn’t know what your hands and feet should be doing? Hardware won’t replace study and practice. Sometimes we have to climb over our ego and admit we have some homework to do. Let me give you a window into armed defense by looking at the examples from my recent podcast.

In the first story, male and female intruders entered an apartment and attacked the occupants. This happened on a Sunday morning. What could be more ordinary.

On a Sunday morning, it is easy to imagine that our children would be home and that they would open the door if someone knocked and shouted. When you read through this story, there were also children in the apartment but they didn’t open the door.

Right there is our first dose of reality. We need a safety plan at home. We have to talk with our family about what all of us will do. We have to talk with our roommates or frequent guests. We also have to walk through that plan. The walk-through does several essential things. It changes words into habits. It also uncovers the errors that seemed good at first but didn’t work well in practice.

Who is going to call 911? Who is armed or going to be armed, and where will they be positioned to defend the rest of the occupants? It sounds simple, but I’m sure your third attempt will be vastly better than your first rehearsal. It is easier to learn in the daylight than to discover problems at night when a stranger is hitting you.

Staying with this first story, a female roommate shot the attackers while they were hitting the male roommate who opened the door. Shooting at moving targets is beyond what we learned in basic marksmanship. In this case, the attackers and the victim were both moving. Speed, distance, and motion work together to determine how accurate we will be with our shots. Even though a gun works at a distance, we might have to get closer so we are sure to shoot the attackers and not shoot our roommate. Do you know what you can do and how much time you need?

Your safety plan should also include calling your lawyer and getting help as you fill out the final police report. That also includes your roommates knowing what to say, and what not say, to the police. That information is only lightly covered in most concealed carry classes.

In the second story, the defender had to move out of the way to avoid being shot. The defender then had to present his concealed firearm on the move. He had to shoot at his attackers who were likely moving as well. Firearms instructors teach classes where the students move and shoot. Some competition includes moving targets and multiple attackers. Have you practiced moving from one target to another? Have you practiced shooting while most of your body was hidden behind a wall or a car?

In the third story, the defender was being robbed at work. The robber tried to push the victim into a back bathroom. That is horribly dangerous for the victim, and he decided to fight. The defender had to turn so that the attacker couldn’t reach the defender’s gun. The defender then had to create enough distance between himself and his attacker so he could rotate his firearm and point it at his attacker. That means the defenders support arm was in front of his muzzle and between him and the the bad guy. You want to see how that works before you have to perform it on your own. At first, you want to practice with an instructor making sure you’re safe.

In the fourth and last story, an elderly woman was trying to stop a strange dog from biting her dog. In that case, it is best practice to grab your attacker and hold on tight so you both move together. That keeps you from shooting your dog or shooting yourself as the attacker moves.

I said that armed defense was both simple and hard. The contrast is complex and easy. Fortunately, we can decompose a new lesson into small incremental steps so that each new skill is relatively straightforward. The hard part is admitting we won’t suddenly become John Wick when we hear glass break at night.

Many of us have taken some form of firearms class. Please review those skills so they remain available when you need them.

 

What is “trapped in amber”?An originalist explanation

Anyone watching the Supreme Court this past term may have remarked on the frequency with which the justices talk about fossilized tree resin. Consider:

  • The court in Trump v. Cook: “We see no reason, however, why our central bank ought to be ‘trapped in amber’ any more than any other aspect of our constitutional scheme.”
  • The court in Watson v. Republican National Committee: “Statutes do not ‘tra[p] in amber’ every contemporary practice on the same subject matter.”
  • Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Cisco Systems v. Doe I: “There also is no indication that Congress intended to ‘tra[p]’ the [Alien Tort Statute] ‘in amber.’”
  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Wolford v. Lopez: “Such a narrow search results in a ‘law trapped in amber.’”
  • Sotomayor in Trump v. Slaughter: “When, exactly is our law ‘trapped in amber,’ and when is it not?”
  • Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Trump v. Barbara: “This Court’s constitutional precedents do not treat the 1791 or 1868 exceptions as a closed set ‘trapped in amber.’”
  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett at oral argument in United States v. Hemani: “I agree with you that you don’t need to have just alcohol because that’s all there was at the founding and that would be trapped in amber.”

The expression has become increasingly popular in the lower courts, too. Earlier this week, law professor Richard Re traced the history of the metaphor and its rapid spread over the past two years.

As Re correctly recognizes, though early uses of the phrase evoked a living Constitution – one whose meaning evolves over time – each of the references collected above traces back to a line in the Supreme Court’s originalist decision in United States v. Rahimi, in which the court upheld a federal law that disarms those under a domestic violence restraining order. There, the court used the phrase to clarify that its Second Amendment precedents “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” The court continued:

[T]he reach of the Second Amendment is not limited only to those arms that were in existence at the founding. Rather, it “extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not [yet] in existence.” By that same logic, the Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791. Holding otherwise would be as mistaken as applying the protections of the right only to muskets and sabers.

At the time, professor Josh Blackman predicted that the “amber” line would become “the most quoted sentence” in the opinion, and a way for judges to escape the original meaning of the law. I’ll leave the citation counts to more empirically inclined court-watchers, but the evidence Re collects vindicates Blackman’s prediction to this extent: the metaphor has become a flashpoint in the contest over what it means to do originalism.

Properly understood, originalism indeed holds that law is fixed – “trapped in amber,” if you will. But the circumstances to which it applies are not. The problem with the amber metaphor is that courts increasingly use it without distinguishing law from its application.

Continue reading “”

Legal Experts Weigh in on SCOTUS ‘Assault Weapon’ Cases

The Supreme Court will finally hear not just one case about bans on so-called assault weapons, but two. They’ve basically combined two different cases, particularly after the lower courts got pretty damn stupid in their own rulings.

And that’s good news for us.

Or is it?

So far, pretty much everyone expects the Court to rule against these bans, even anti-gun attorneys, but let’s understand exactly why.

The Bruen ruling established a two-step test lower courts are to use when assessing restrictions on firearm possession. The majority said courts must first assess whether the regulated conduct is covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text, and if so, determine if that regulation is consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Turning to Viramontes and Grant, Williams observed how the 2nd and 7th Courts of Appeals effectively failed to properly adopt Bruen‘s two-step framework when considering the challenges to the respective laws.

In Viramontes, Williams noted that the 7th Circuit “essentially stops the argument at step one” by analogizing AR-15s to “automatic weapons” like M-16s, which it found are “presumptively not covered by the Second Amendment” under existing SCOTUS precedent. Meanwhile, in Grant, he said that the 2nd Circuit focused more on the second step by accepting Connecticut’s “historical analogues” regarding bans on “certain types of knives” and “machine guns,” and started “to slip closer and closer” to a framework rejected by the Supreme Court in Bruen.

The attorneys also considered the possibility that the Supreme Court may address the lawfulness of restrictions on gun-magazine size in its decision. The sole question agreed to by the justices is whether the Second and 14th Amendments “guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”

Williams opined that “it’s entirely possible you could see these connected in this decision” because “it’s really kind of hard to separate the magazine out from the firearm to the extent that an AR-15 comes with a standard magazine; it’s generally a 30-round magazine.” He furthermore noted these guns’ wide use among the American public.

Proctor is a bit more doubtful about the magazine aspect here, but admits it could happen. That would be fantastic news, too, because the magazine restrictions are particularly stupid and have even fewer historic analogs than weapons restrictions.

In Viramontes, the court there basically just decided that because AR-15s look like M-16s and fire the same round, they might as well be the same gun, which was particularly grotesque considering the Bruen decision. There was no grounds for such a statement, particularly since the legal definition of a machine gun is something the AR-15 does not meet.

Meanwhile, the court in Grant used bans against things like Bowie knives to justify the ban, as well as the whole machine gun thing, which makes no sense, really, because Bowie knives are available on Amazon right now and aren’t firearms. We’ve already talked about the machine gun thing.

See, what happened in both of these cases is that the judges rationalized their decisions. They didn’t do what the law demanded; they twisted things until they made it seem like the law called for what the judges wanted to do from the start. That’s not how a legal system is supposed to work. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you introduce humans into a system.

Luckily, the consensus is, in fact, that the Supreme Court will address this when they hear these cases. I sincerely hope that the magazine thing is addressed, too, even though I’m doubtful it will be.

What we really need here is for the Supreme Court to not just end these bans on so-called assault weapons, but to frame it in such a way that there’s no hope for lawmakers to try and find an end-around, because we all know that’s what they’re going to do.

“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” –
– Thomas Jefferson, (Letter to Henry Lee , August 10, 1824)

TX: Judge Takes Sledgehammer To National Firearms Act

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Firearms Act (NFA) no longer applies to suppressors and other items whose taxes were reduced to $0 in July 2025.

United States District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, granted a motion for summary judgement from attorneys representing the Silencer Shop Foundation Wednesday. In the 66-page opinion, Hendrix said that because taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and other items had been reduced to $0 by legislation signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025, the registration and paperwork imposed by the NFA exceeded Congress’ authority under the taxation power.

“In 2025, Congress eliminated the NFA’s transfer and making taxes for four categories of firearms: short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, and a final, defined group of miscellaneous firearms,” Hendrix wrote. “Because today’s NFA does not generate any revenue from untaxed firearms, its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power. And there is no sign in the NFA’s text, structure, or statutory history that Congress invoked any other power in crafting the NFA provisions at issue. Thus, the regulatory provisions must be enjoined as unconstitutional because they exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.”

After the Senate parliamentarian struck language that removed those items from NFA’s purview, Congress reduced the taxes to $0.

Continue reading “”

Gun Control Doesn’t Stop Mass Shootings, It Helps Mass Killers

We’re probably going to spill a lot of digital ink talking about the shooting in Twin Falls, ID. That’s to be expected following a high-profile shooting that claims people’s lives. This time, though, while we mourn the loss of life, we’re also able to celebrate the fact that it wasn’t worse.

Good guys with guns stop massacres, often before they can become a “mass shooting” by various definitions.

Still, in the wake of these massacres, anti-gunners routinely demand gun control. Yet, as Victor Joecks notes at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, gun control hurts the good guys, not the killers.

It’s possible to stop mass shooters, but not if the gun grabbers get their way….

After a 2021 shooting at the Boise Towne Square mall, Salinas started training with a firearm in earnest. He provides full-time care for his brother, who’s in a wheelchair. Salinas believed a gunman would look for “soft targets” — such as a man in a wheelchair and his caregiver.

He refused to be one and ended up saving numerous lives.

Think about what would have happened if gun-control advocates had been able to enact new restrictions after the 2021 Boise shooting. They would have made it harder for Salinas to obtain the weapon he used to stop this mass shooting. That’s because new gun laws have the greatest effect on the least dangerous people. People are alive today because Idaho has firearm freedom.

Don’t expect a national debate on these trade-offs. The propaganda press has a predictable rubric for how much coverage mass shootings receive. If the villain or narrative can be tied to conservatives, it’ll be a major story. If the villain is connected to the left, it’ll be a story about guns. If the shooting is inconvenient to gun grabbers, it’ll disappear. And if it involves gangs, it won’t even make the national news. Another example of inverse journalism.

It’s not intentional, but mass shooters have no stronger allies than gun-control advocates.

And let’s understand just what that last sentence really means.

One of the most popular talking points among anti-gunners is that modern sporting rifles are the most popular choice for would-be mass killers. On Tuesday, though, Cam wrote about an FBI report looking at active shooters. That report noted that 53 percent of shooters used a handgun. Rifles were only used in a third of the attacks.

So, it would seem that handguns are still the preferred weapon for these people, despite what anti-gunners would have you believe. Assault weapon bans wouldn’t help.

Meanwhile, these same people want to make it as difficult as possible for people like Jordan Salinas to carry a firearm. They wanted the vampire rule in place, which would probably have forced Salinas to either ignore the law or disarm, had it been in place in Idaho. Especially since it’s unlikely an In-and-Out place is going to announce guns are welcome.

They oppose the Bruen decision, which, among other things, killed “may issue” permitting. They’d prefer to see someone like Salinas have to prove a need to carry a firearm, and the seemingly unlikely chance that a massacre was going to take place in front of him would probably have been unpersuasive to many.

Honestly, the list could go on. I could probably write an entire book about all the gun control propositions that would have protected actual mass killers if anti-gunners got their way.

Luckily, they haven’t.

It’s up to us to make sure they never do.