The Right to Fight Back: Colorado Supreme Court Rules Private Employers Can’t Fire Workers for Self-Defense

The Brief:

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that private employers cannot terminate at-will employees for exercising their right to self-defense against imminent bodily harm. This decision, arising from a convenience store incident, establishes that corporate policies cannot override an individual’s fundamental legal privilege to protect their own life while working.

This ruling creates a specific public policy exception to at-will employment. While businesses can still enforce protocols against escalating non-violent thefts, they are prohibited from firing workers for lawful and necessary self-defense. This shifts the legal balance between corporate liability policies and individual safety rights.

DENVER, CO — A legal battlefield that has spent six years winding through the federal and state court systems has culminated in a massive paradigm shift for worker safety and the Second Amendment community.

Writing for the 5-2 majority, State Supreme Court Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter dismantled the long-standing corporate assumption that at-will employment agreements allow businesses to force complete submission from employees facing violent workplace crimes.

“The employment relationship should not be used to strip workers of the ordinary legal privileges every person possesses,” Berkenkotter declared in the historic June 15 opinion. “The right to self-defense has never been cabined by role or location… Rather, the right follows the employee from home to work and back and everywhere in between.”

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Breaking: SCOTUS Says Prosecution of Gun Owner for Marijuana Use ‘Inconsistent’ With Second Amendment

The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Hemani was the first opinion released on Thursday morning, and the Court essentially delivered a unanimous victory for Ali Danial Hemani, who was charged with possessing a firearm as an unlawful user of drugs.

The majority opinion, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, found that the government failed to justify Section 922(g)(3) as it applies to Mr. Hemani, with the DOJ’s case suffering several major defects.

The government construes §922(g)(3) to automatically ban an individual from possessing a gun from the moment he becomes an unlawful user of any controlled substance and remains in effect until he ceases being one, regardless of what controlled substance an individual uses, in what amounts, whether his drug use has ever made him a danger to himself or others, why he keeps a gun, or how safely he does so.

The government analogizes its construction of §922(g)(3) to what it calls “habitual drunkard” laws, which it submits enjoy deep roots in the country’s history and are “relevantly similar” to the regulation it wishes to enforce.

These habitual drunkard laws fall into three general categories: vagrancy laws that allowed habitual drunkards to be confined in workhouses or jailed; civil-commitment statutes that allowed courts to appoint guardians for habitual drunkards or authorized their commitment to asylums; and surety laws under which judicial officers could compel habitual drunkards to post surety bonds to ensure their good behavior.

The government’s analogy fails on every metric it invites the Court to consider. Taken cumulatively, these problems prove fatal to the government’s prosecution of Mr. Hemani.

Gorsuch and the other justices concluded that the habitual drunkard laws are not analogous to the modern prohibition on gun possession by unlawful drug users, for several reasons; “drunkards” are not the same as every kind of drug user, the civil commitment and vagrancy laws were generally designed to protect drunkards from themselves and not the public from drunkards, and “the way habitual drunkard statutes worked in the past differs significantly from how §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision works today.”

There are reasons to doubt that the government has established §922(g)(3) even serves the purpose the government claims, of disarming categorically violent and unusually dangerous persons.

Section 922(g)(3)’s reliance on the Controlled Substances Act—a statute adopted to protect “the health and general welfare of the American people,” 21 U. S. C. §801(2), and under which drugs can be added to schedules for reasons having little or nothing to do with their potential to induce violence—makes it far from obvious that 18 U. S. C.§922(g)(3) confines its reach to those who are categorically and unusually dangerous.

Additionally, the government’s own regulatory actions undercut its position: the Department of Justice has directed federal prosecutors to curtail enforcement efforts against marijuana users, most States have legalized marijuana use to some degree, and the government recently moved some marijuana products from Schedule I to Schedule III, 91 Fed. Reg. 22714.

Affording the government “broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun” would risk allowing it to “quickly swallow” the Second Amendment.

Gorsuch notes, however, that today’s decision is a narrow one, and that it does not address efforts “to ban addicts or those presently intoxicated from possessing a firearm,” and “other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms.

Section 922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies is also left untouched by today’s opinion, as is the question about whether the government could bring a prosecution under §922(g)(3) “accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant’s drug use renders him a danger to himself or others, or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous.”

Still, the decision isn’t so narrow as to only apply to Ali Hemani. As Gorsuch writes, marijuana use has become far more common than it was just a few decades ago, in part because the federal government has moved to stop prosecuting individuals for personal amounts of cannabis and more than half the country has legalized its use for medical or recreational purposes.

“Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them;it helped fuel them,” writes Gorsuch. “All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”

The government maintains that it may automatically strip Mr. Hemani of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm because he uses marijuana a few times a week.

More than that, because he possessed a gun despite this prohibition, the government insists it may imprison him for up to 15 years and disarm him for life.

According to the government, none of this turns on how much marijuana Mr.Hemani uses or what effect it has on him. It makes no difference either if he keeps a firearm only in his home for self defense, never misuses a gun while intoxicated, and never poses a danger to himself or others as a result of his marijuana use.

The only thing the government must show, it says, is that an individual like Mr. Hemani regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance.

To square that expansive theory with the Second Amendment, the government invites us to draw an analogy between its present regulation and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards.

Those laws, the government contends, demonstrate a tradition of firearm regulation consistent with its effort to disarm any regular user of any controlled substance without any further showing.

But the government’s analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider: The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways.

And faced with all these shortcomings in the government’s submission, we cannot say it has carried its conceded burden of showing its prosecution of Mr. Hemani complies with the Second Amendment. The judgment of the Fifth Circuit is affirmed.

Today’s decision doesn’t render Section 922(g(3) moot, but it does mean that individuals cannot lose their Second Amendment rights solely because they regularly use marijuana; a decision that will have an impact on millions of Americans, including those who have previously had to choose between possessing a medical marijuana card and possessing a firearm.

I’m not particularly shocked by the decision, but I am surprised that every justice agrees, even if a couple of them wrote separate concurrences instead of joining the majority opinion. I figured Alito and Roberts might not go along with the majority based on their questions during oral arguments, but Roberts joined the majority opinion and Alito wrote a concurrence in which he was joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

We’ll have more on those concurrences later today, but for now gun owners can celebrate a significant win for the right to keep and bear arms. We still have one more Second Amendment case waiting in the wings in Wolford v. Lopez, and that decision could be released as early as next Tuesday.

Gun Stores Slap Lawsuit On Jared Polis Over Warrantless Transaction Searches

An alliance of firearms dealers and Second Amendment advocates sued Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis over a law authorizing warrantless searches of gun sales records.

Polis signed HB26-1126, which allows any “peace officer” to inspect the sales records of any gun store without a warrant at any time and for any reason, on June 2. The lawsuit filed by the Colorado Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), the Colorado Federal Firearms Licensees Association (CFFLA) on behalf of three federal firearms licensees (FFL) challenges the warrantless inspection provisions of the bill on Fourth Amendment grounds.

“The statute provides no notice of regularity, empowers an overbroad class of inspectors with no nexus to firearms regulation, imposes no temporal or frequency limitations, and places no restrictions on the manner of inspections,” the complaint says regarding the law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027.

“The contrast with the federal firearms-inspection framework could not be starker,” the complaint continues. “Under 18 U.S.C. § 923(g), compliance inspections of federally licensed firearms dealers may be conducted only by the U.S. Attorney General’s designated agents (in practice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), only during business hours, and no more than once in any 12-month period, absent meeting narrow statutory exceptions.”

CSSA, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, announced their lawsuit at a Friday event, noting the bill says gun dealers who do not cooperate face a misdemeanor charge.

“Criminals do not follow gun laws. They never have and never will,” CSSA Director of Operations Daniel Fenelson, who described himself as a “school shooting survivor,” said. “They steal firearms, obtain them on the black market and use other illegal means to obtain these weapons.”

“Not a single piece of gun control legislation passed through and by Bloomberg shill Tom Sullivan here in State Senate District 27 ever protected any Coloradans,” Fenelson continued.

Colorado is already being sued by the Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice over its ban on standard-capacity magazines holding more than 15 rounds. The DOJ also is challenging a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms imposed by the city of Denver.

Polis did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

Machine Guns and Bootleggers | Rightly Decided

The litigators from TPPF’s Center for the American Future begin by breaking down a major Fifth Circuit victory that struck down an 1869 federal ban on home distilling of spirits. They analyze the McNutt and Hobby Distillers Association v. U.S. Department of Justice case, dissecting standing doctrine, the limits of the taxing power, and the Necessary and Proper Clause’s role in preserving federalism.

They also highlight their litigation targeting the Hughes Amendment’s ban on post-1986 machine guns (Temple Gun Club v. Blanche), and the FinCEN case (Corley v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury) involving Treasury rules on residential real estate transfers.

SAF Backing Former Virginia AG’s Challenge to State’s New ‘Assault Firearms’ Ban.

The Second Amendment Foundation has agreed to help support former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in a challenge to the state’s newly passed “assault weapons” ban.

In May, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law a ban on so-called “assault firearms” declaring that “…any person who imports, sells, manufactures, purchases, or transfers an assault firearm is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.” The law further defines an “assault firearm” as a semiautomatic rifle chambered in any caliber besides .22 rimfire or one that contains a litany of common features. The law also bans magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition and goes into effect on July 1.

“Unlike other lawsuits filed challenging this ‘assault weapons’ ban, this case is unique in that plaintiffs are arguing they have the right to buy the banned arms to preserve their ability to function as the militia that is preserved under the Virginia constitution’s Militia Clause,” Cuccinelli said. “Most other cases are making Heller-like arguments, and we feel this case is a good vehicle to ensure this unconstitutional ban is looked at by the court from every angle.”

Virginia’s Militia Clause treats the militia as including any able-bodied person within a specified age range who is not already part of an organized militia. The newly passed assault weapons ban runs afoul of the Militia Clause because it prevents members of the militia from acquiring the arms necessary for their militia service.

“While SAF is already a named plaintiff in our own federal Second Amendment challenge McDonald v. Katz, we felt it important to support this unique lawsuit,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “When it comes to vindicating the rights of our members, we will pursue every viable legal option. We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to support this state court challenge with Mr. Cuccinelli and think it complements our ongoing federal challenge very nicely.”

As noted in the compliant, “The General Assembly cannot…prohibit the body of the people from acquiring the very weapons with which they must be prepared to serve as that militia.” Joining SAF in Curtis v. Katz are Bob’s Gun Store, Mike Wood, Dustin Curtis and Daniel Hinkson. Cuccinelli is the attorney of record for the lawsuit. “We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – Virginia lawmakers outright lied to their constituency when they said these new laws aren’t bans,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As we’ve seen in the news lately, numerous county prosecutors across Virginia have publicly stated they will not enforce this new ‘assault weapons’ ban. When the people who enforce the laws are refusing do so it should be a wakeup call for lawmakers that they passed an unconstitutional law.”

An Imperfect Defense was Good Enough

A clerk worked at a convenience store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. An armed robber entered the store and threatened the clerk. The clerk defended himself. That description is true, but the reality was more complicated. Working at a convenience store is a dangerous job. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies call these stores “stop-and-robs” for a reason. Most of us visit a convenience store for gas or a snack every week. Perhaps we can make the job, and our visit, a little less dangerous after we study the incomplete news reports.

What the defender saw– The store clerk saw a man walk into the store carrying a machete. The intruder waved the machete around and threatened the clerk. The news reports don’t mention if there were other customers or employees in the store. The attacker walked behind the counter. The clerk left the store. The attacker pursued the clerk and followed him outside. The clerk retreated to his car where he grabbed his firearm. The attacker and the clerk re-entered the store. The attacker again threatened the clerk and the clerk shot him.

What the defender did– The clerk recognized the threat. Make no mistake that a machete is a lethal threat. The victim created distance between himself and the attacker. The defender retrieved a firearm as a tool of self-defense. The defender recognized an immediate, lethal, and unavoidable threat. That justified the use of lethal force.

The defender stayed at the scene after the attack. He called 911 and asked for both medical help and help from the police. He also secured the surveillance video and showed it to the police.

What we know now– The 61-year-old attacker was a convicted felon. He had an additional history of drug possession. He stopped attacking the clerk when he received a non-life-threatening gunshot to the hip. Police reports said the attacker would be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon when he was released from the hospital.

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Winchester Ammo Parent Olin Corporation to Merge with Huntsman Corp.

Olin Corporation, the parent of Winchester Ammunition and Huntsman Corporation, has entered into a definitive agreement to combine the companies in an all-stock merger of equals to “create a leading North American chemicals company. “ 

The transaction is expected to generate significant value for shareholders of both companies, with more than $400 million in total identified cost synergies and integration benefits. 

The combined organization will be renamed OlinHuntsman Corporation following the close of the transaction and would have had 2025 revenue of approximately $12.5 billion on a combined company basis. 

Olin’s ammunition business, Winchester, will continue to operate as a key business within the combined company, “growing its brand and deepening its long-term relationships with sporting goods, law enforcement and military customers.” 

Upon closing of the transaction, Olin’s President and CEO, Ken Lane, will serve as CEO of OlinHuntsman. Current chairman, president and CEO of Huntsman, Peter Huntsman, will serve as a non-executive chairman of OlinHuntsman’s Board of Directors. Current Huntsman EVP and CFO Phil Lister will serve as CFO of the combined company. 

OlinHuntsman’s Board of Directors will consist of 10 members, with equal representation from Olin and Huntsman, including Peter Huntsman and Ken Lane. 

Wesley Hunt  ImageIt’s amazing how quickly the gatekeepers of culture decide what’s acceptable.

In June, every logo becomes a rainbow. Every stadium, every jersey, every broadcast gets a political message.

But put a Bible verse on your cap? Suddenly that’s “controversial.”

Put an American slogan front and center? Suddenly that’s “divisive.”

The NFL had no problem painting political movements in the end zone. Major League Baseball has no problem turning every June into a month-long corporate activism campaign.

Yet the moment someone wants to celebrate faith, patriotism, or traditional values, we’re told those things don’t belong in sports.

Funny how the people preaching inclusion always seem to have a very specific list of viewpoints they’re willing to include.

If rainbow logos belong in sports, then so do Bible verses.

If political messages belong in sports, then so do messages celebrating faith, family, and country.

The double standard isn’t subtle anymore. EVERYONE sees it.

Image

What a graphic example for “Carry Spare Ammo, People!”

Massachusetts Gun Laws Interfered With Armed Citizen’s Response to Mass Shooting

If Massachusetts gun laws worked as advertised, a convicted felon never would have been able to get his hands on a banned firearm and open fire on motorists driving down Cambridge’s busy Memorial Drive last month.

As we all saw, those laws failed to stop a prohibited person from accessing a prohibited firearm. They did, however, impede the armed citizen who helped put an end to the shooting alongside a Massachusetts state trooper.

How many times have we heard anti-gunners proclaim that “nobody needs 20 rounds to shoot a deer” or some such nonsense?

The reality is that when faced with a threat to human life, we need as many rounds as it takes to neutralize that threat. In Massachusetts, though, you get ten rounds per magazine at best.

Tyler Brown, the man accused of the shooting spree on Memorial Drive, allegedly fired about 60 rounds from the BCI Defense Model FF-15 he illegally possessed. The armed citizen who helped stop that shooting spree had just eight rounds for his Glock handgun.

“The witness is an experienced firearm ower with a license to carry, as he is an ex-Marine and used to be a firearm instructor,” the criminal complaint says.

The civilian said he saw a man with a long rifle, which he believeed looked like an AK-47, on foot in front of his vehicle. The civilian had a Glock 9mm pistol in a safe in the backseat of his vehicle, and retrieved it while covering himself. The former Marine said he fired all eight rounds from his gun and then moved to a tree for cover, telling other people to get back. he said he heard sirens, so he put his gun on the ground away from him.

The civilian said he heard two different calibers of gunfire going off, which he believed to be coming from a trooper and the suspect. He heard the shooter yelling something, but did not remember what is was, and he said the shooter eventually fell to the ground. Troopers rendered medical aid, and Brown was taken to Beth Israel Hospital.

As Swearer noted in a follow-up post on X, “once again the lesson is that while most incidents of armed self-defense don’t (strictly speaking) *require* the victim to fire more than 10 rounds, when the outliers occur, they are precisely the types of armed confrontations in which more than 10 rounds can make all the difference between life or death.”

Anti-gun activists can argue all they want that the “average” defensive gun use requires less than ten rounds, but they can’t guarantee that any of us will ever face an “average” situation where we need to use our firearm to protect ourselves or others. Most of us won’t ever pull the trigger of one of our guns in self-defense, but some of us will find ourselves in a situation where ten rounds simply isn’t enough.

That was the case in Cambridge, Massachusetts last month. Thankfully, the state trooper (who is exempt from the state’s ban on “large capacity” magazines) was able to return fire as well, and the two individuals shooting back at the assailant were able to stop his random attack. We can’t count on a cop rushing in to save the day, though… and in Massachusetts you can’t count on having a magazine large enough to help you survive an encounter with a violent predator who ignored the state’s restrictive gun laws and armed himself anyway.

“Stupid, Stupid, Stupid”: Justice Department Memo Further Tarnishes Record of Merrick Garland

Internal emails were uncovered recently that cast a new, negative light on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s record in targeting parents over school board controversies. The communications show that various Justice officials raised alarms over the effort pushed by Democratic allies and the National Association for School Boards. Career officials condemned the Biden Administration proposal by objecting that “If they do this, they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.”

As parents organized against COVID and woke policies being implemented by school boards, Democratic allies and the National Association for School Boards called upon the Biden Administration to crack down. Garland agreed and implemented a plan detailed in an October 2021 memo to treat these parents as engaged in potential “domestic terrorism.”

There was public outrage, but Garland defended the action, declaring “The obligation of the Justice Department is to protect the American people against violence and threats of violence and that particularly includes public officials.”

As the outcry grew, the Biden Administration was forced into a retreat and an apology:

“On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter. There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance. We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.”

We now know that rank-and-file officials opposed the effort, but decided to go forward anyway. The Justice Department in October 2021 issued a memo to coordinate a response to what it described as an “increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools” by parents.

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