Category: Crap For Brains

Imagine Thinking More Gun Control is the Answer to California’s Crime Problem.

Tragically, a murderer opened fire at a Fourth of July weekend block party in Compton, California earlier this month, killing 37-year-old Eric Washington and 19-year-old Meah Bordenave-Jenkins and wounding three others. The victims and their loved ones deserve justice. Police arrested one suspect, 54 year-old Antoine Jones, two weeks later and charged him with murder in Bordenave-Jenkins’ death. He deserves prosecution and punishment to the fullest extent of the law. The suspect in Washington’s death is still at large. 

California state Democratic Assemblymember Mike Gipson, however, quickly used this latest tragedy to call for…stronger state and federal gun control laws. He cited background checks, age restrictions and so-called “red flag” laws as “basics” that would reduce criminal violence.

The problem with Assemblyman Gipson’s demands, though, is that California already has all three. The state routes firearm transfers, including private-party transfers, through licensed firearm retailers. Law-abiding purchasers face a background check and mandatory 10-day waiting period. California generally prohibits firearm sales to anyone under 21 and has an expansive “gun violence restraining order” system.

Nothing publicly reported about the Compton attacks establishes that yet another restriction on lawful firearm purchases would have prevented them. Once again, California’s answer to criminals breaking the law is to suggest writing yet another law further burdening the Second Amendment rights of the people who aren’t breaking the laws in the first place.

Criminals Aren’t Waiting for Another Law

A person willing to wantonly fire into a crowd is not waiting for Sacramento to clarify the rules. Alleged murder, attempted murder, illegal firearm trafficking and criminal misuse are already serious crimes. Even in California.

New mandates on lawful firearm purchases only reach people who appear in person at a lawful firearm retailer, present identification, pay government fees, complete paperwork and submit to government background checks. They do not deter criminals who circumvent lawful commerce or unlawfully possess firearms despite being prohibited.

California should focus on prosecuting violent offenders, dismantling illegal trafficking networks and imposing meaningful consequences on those who illegally possess and misuse firearms. Instead, Sacramento wants to further burden lawful gun owners and firearm retailers while criminals remain unimpressed. After all, as NSSF has repeatedly pointed out, the overwhelming majority of criminals who commit their crimes using a firearm obtained that gun in an unlawful way. That includes theft, the black market or other illicit means.

Ban the Lawful Pistol, Ignore the Criminal Reality

One textbook example is Assembly Bill 1127, which took effect July 1. The law prohibits firearm retailers from selling certain popular semiautomatic pistols that California defines as “machinegun-convertible.” It targets pistols with a cruciform trigger bar that criminals can illegally alter by installing an already-illegal “machinegun conversion device,” or MCD.

As stated, those MCDs are already illegal. California law — not to mention federal law — already prohibits the import, manufacture, sale, possession and transportation of machineguns, with violations punishable as felonies. Installing the illegal device creates an illegal machinegun. NSSF reminds all lawful gun purchasers to stay on the “Right Side of Legal.”

California’s response was not limited to pursuing criminals who manufacture, traffic or install the MCDs. It banned retail sales of unaltered, commonly-owned pistols to law-abiding citizens. These firearms have been purchased, owned and relied on for years by numerous Californians, including law enforcement officers as well as law-abiding gun owners. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris admitted to owning this style of handgun.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued California the day AB 1127 took effect, challenging both the pistol prohibition and the state’s restrictive handgun roster, stating the law violated the Second Amendment.

“The Second Amendment is a sacred right belonging to all Americans, even those in California,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated in a press release. The lawsuit places California’s newest handgun restriction before a federal court, where it belongs.

Rights Buried in Ammunition Red Tape

California’s ammunition system follows the same model. Most buyers must undergo an eligibility check for every transaction. The standard background check costs $5 and depends on the buyer’s identifying information matching an entry in the state’s Automated Firearms System. A mismatch means rejection.

Those without a matching record may need an additional $19 basic check that can take several days. The California Department of Justice retains ammunition sales records and transfer information, and residents who buy ammunition outside of the state generally must route it through a licensed California vendor before taking possession.

California Waterfowl has documented hunters struggling with outdated addresses, mismatched records and delays. Some reportedly missed hunting seasons while attempting to correct state records. The system creates those obstacles for hunters, target shooters and lawful gun owners trying to comply, not criminals obtaining ammunition illegally.

Thankfully, the restrictions remain under constitutional challenge in Rhode v. Bonta. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in July of 2025 that the regime violated the Second Amendment. The court later granted an en banc rehearing and vacated that opinion. The full court heard arguments in March of 2026 and California continues enforcing the system while a decision is pending.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been caught in the web he helped create. A SIG SAUER pistol given to him by podcaster Shawn Ryan remained with a licensed firearm retailer months later. Taking possession would require California’s background checks, paperwork, Firearm Safety Certificate, waiting period and other conditions — a fitting demonstration of the barriers ordinary law-abiding Californians face.

The Second Amendment does not disappear before or after a criminal commits a terrible act. Nor does tragedy give lawmakers a blank check to further burden citizens who had nothing to do with the crime.

The Compton families deserve answers and accountability. They do not deserve to have their loss used to justify another restriction aimed at lawful firearm ownership, which will do nothing to make Californians safe.

The state should stop treating constitutional rights as a problem and start treating violent criminals as the problem. The DOJ’s lawsuit and the pending Rhode decision will test whether federal courts finally force California to recognize that distinction.

Talarico Pushes ‘Well Regulated’ Myth. Jonathan Turley Takes it to Woodshed

Back in my younger and more stupid days, I thought the whole “well regulated” thing in the Second Amendment might open it up to gun control. My government professor told me that plenty had tried, but to no avail. That’s a very good thing in my book, and as I got older, I understood why that was the case.

Democratic Senate Candidate James Talarico, however, never came to that understanding. He’s pushed that particular myth recently.

We haven’t had that discussion a thousand times since I asked that government professor about that in the last century.

Anyway, before I could see the comment and say anything, legal scholar Jonathan Turley got to it, and he took Talarico to the proverbial woodshed.

A virtual cottage industry has emerged among people finding James Talarico clips espousing everything from declaring his campaign meat-free to there being six genders to God being non-binary.

One recently uncovered video from a meet-and-greet, however, attracted my interest and deepened my concerns about Talarico. It shows Talarico explaining why sweeping gun control laws do not violate the Second Amendment. The reason, he declared, is that the Second Amendment expressly embraces gun controls by referring to the right as “well regulated.”

In the clip, Talarico mocks those opposing gun control measures and bans as not taking the time to actually read the Amendment:

“A lot of politicians like to talk about the Second Amendment. Very few have actually read the Second Amendment, because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself.”

What he omits is the word following “well regulated”: “militia.”

It is hardly a long read, so here is the language:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The term “well regulated” was not a reference to regulation in the contemporary sense. It was used to mean orderly or well-maintained. Militias were considered the backbone of the American military, particularly by those who feared a standing army. Some militias were less capable than others in the Revolutionary War. A well-regulated militia meant state militias that were combat-ready.

The individual right to possess guns was viewed as central to maintaining such militias. However, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a “well regulated militia” was not a limitation but a justification for the individual right.

And, interestingly enough, they never seem to counter “well regulated,” as it stands in their interpretation, against “shall not be infringed.” If “well regulated” means gun control, then it cannot co-exist with the idea that the right to keep and bear arms is uninfringeable. They’re contradictory statements, after all.

The problem I had all those many moons ago, and that Talarico has now, is that he and so many others have failed to read beyond the introductory clause. “It says ‘well regulated’ right there, durhur!”

That alone should raise big red flags for anyone, unless they’re just cherry-picking the phrases that they can twist to justify what they want.

You see, unlike Talarico’s claims suggest, we have read the Second Amendment. We read all of it, not just the parts that serve as a justification for something we know from the Founding Fathers’ own words that they never had any interest in.

Unfortunately, this won’t be the last time we end up having this conversation, either, because gun control advocates like Talarico won’t be dissuaded from spouting disproven nonsense if they think it’ll give them an edge in the polls.

No Other Constitutional Right Is Policed Like the Second Amendment

The Bill of Rights protects speech, religion, the press, assembly, due process, privacy, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Only one of those rights has an entire federal agency built around regulating, restricting, investigating, and prosecuting the tools necessary to exercise it.

The Second Amendment.

That agency is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
There is no federal Bureau of Speech.
No federal Bureau of Religion.
No federal Bureau of Press and Assembly.

No federal agency licenses newspapers before they publish, inspects churches for recordkeeping violations, registers printing presses, or forces Americans to pay a tax before exercising a First Amendment right.

But when it comes to the Second Amendment, Washington has built exactly that kind of bureaucracy.

Other Rights Are Abused by Bureaucrats. The Second Amendment Is Policed by Them.  

Federal agencies have abused power against other constitutional rights, too.

The FBI and DOJ have targeted speech, political activity, and religious Americans.

The NSA has raised Fourth Amendment concerns through surveillance.

DHS and TSA have expanded federal search power in the name of security.

The IRS has been accused of politically selective enforcement.

Those abuses are real.

But they are not the same as having an entire agency whose firearms mission is aimed directly at the people, businesses, products, paperwork, and transactions tied to one constitutional right.

The ATF does not merely investigate violent criminals who misuse firearms.

It regulates firearm dealers.
It inspects Federal Firearms Licensees.
It polices paperwork.
It interprets federal gun laws.
It issues rules affecting lawful gun owners.
It decides whether products used by peaceable Americans are legal today and criminal tomorrow.

Other agencies violate constitutional rights when they overreach, but the ATF’s firearms mission is overreach by design.

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Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down Trump’s order. A bare majority of five justices, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that the long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions,

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, citing congressional debate over the amendment, “We keep that promise today.”

A sixth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, disagreed about the constitutional ruling, but pointed to a federal law that he said broadly conveys birthright citizenship.

Why Black Codes Shouldn’t Be Viewed as Legal Precedent

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took an interesting position in her Wolford dissent. In it, she actually argued that measures enacted prior to the 14th Amendment, which were meant to disarm black Americans following the Civil War, should be viewed as constitutional, if for no other reason than they didn’t explicitly say they just applied to black people.

But the thing is, we all know what they were about.

Cam hit on that on Thursday shortly after the decision came down.

Over at The National Review, Dan McLaughlin also had thoughts about the inane commentary from Jackson.

Jackson writes this as if she is completely oblivious to both the cause-and-effect relationship between the Black Codes and the enactment of the 14th Amendment and the fact that states could violate the Second Amendment with impunity before 1868 because until then it only bound the federal government. (Of course, nearly all such states had their own state constitutional guarantees, but Jackson just blows past the distinction.)

The 14th Amendment problem with these laws is not just that they would be struck down as racially discriminatory; it’s that even race-neutral laws that aimed to restrict the rights of freed black Southerners were a big reason the Republican Congress went beyond banning race discrimination and included within Section 1 of the 14th Amendment much broader guarantees against states stripping their citizens of rights. In 1865, Louisiana could ban guns or speech without violating federal law; in 1868, it could not.

Also, the fact that the laws were discriminatory in intent, often discriminatory on their face, regionally particular, broke with how white men were regulated across the country, and flew in the face of prior practice, are certainly all reasons to consider them a poor representative of an established, nationwide tradition. (Jackson cites the opinions of Daniel Sickles, but Sickles’ views of gun rights were hardly consistent, given that he shot the U.S. attorney for D.C. to death in the street for sleeping with his wife.)

The race discrimination isn’t merely an embarrassing footnote; it’s in many cases a sign that laws were being imposed on the minority that the majority would not have tolerated and did not tolerate in states without large populations of newly freed slaves. In the case of the 1865 Louisiana law cited by Katyal, it should be noted that putting the burden of applying the law on the decision of a private actor (the property owner) was fairly clearly a way of ensuring that it could be applied in discriminatory fashion.

It would be a different story if these were widely adopted laws that were also used by racists for racist reasons. There are many such cases. But the Black Codes were such a prominent part of Hawaii’s argument here because there were so few other straws to grasp.

And let’s be real here, while Jackson seems to think that because they weren’t explicitly racist, and because they weren’t overturned at the time by the courts of the era, they’re somehow an acceptable analog that should be used.

However, the whole idea of historic analogs from Bruen wasn’t about looking for the laws that might have prompted the 14th Amendment–one of the two eras Bruen tells judges to look at for analogs–but that were considered constitutional afterward.

To my knowledge, there were no cases that expressly upheld the law prohibiting carrying a firearm on plantation property without permission following the ratification of the 14th Amendment.

McLaughlin quotes Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “But even if Hawaii is right that the how is analogous, it also must identify an analogous why. The Black Codes were enacted to subordinate newly freed slaves. Hawaii obviously does not contend that its law promotes an analogous interest. So it’s law, and the default rules in the Black Codes are not relevantly similar.” She also notes that most would be happy to know that their law isn’t considered racist, unlike the Black Codes.

The important distinction here is that the Black Codes, particularly this one, were purely about disarming black Americans. They were racist on the surface and were only about empowering racism. In that way, they were no different than poll taxes and land ownership requirements for voting registration. They were created explicitly to limit the rights of freed slaves who were, at this time, American citizens.

When the only measures you can find that justify your preferred policies are inherently racist, most of us would take a step back and wonder exactly what the hell we’re doing with ourselves. Hawaii, and anti-gunners as a group, have no such self-awareness. They simply push the idea that laws which were unconstitutional because of how they targeted particular people at the time, as if that shouldn’t matter.

I honestly don’t see how either Hawaii’s attorneys or these two justices were able to look at themselves in the mirror for believing such blatantly racist measures were totally fine precedents for curtailing the rights of others.

It’s like looking at Ted Bundy as a role model for how to talk to girls.

Key rule: Don’t let weirdos run your society.

“A possible referendum in Oregon on animal rights would end fishing, hunting, even pest control, just when Democrats are trying really hard not to be seen as ‘weirdos again.’”

I’m reading “Protect Every Animal From Cruelty? Not in 2026, Oregon Democrats Say” (NYT).

The measure, known for now as Initiative Petition 28… would give all animals the same protections from cruelty that Oregon grants dogs and cats…. Hunting, trapping and fishing would be outlawed, along with scientific research on animals, lethal pest control and conventional livestock production….
The fight is in some ways very Oregon, long a proving ground for ideas that initially seemed politically impossible only to enter the mainstream, such as medical aid in dying, universal vote-by-mail and legalizing the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms for therapy.

When people think of “animals” — as in “I love animals!” — they’re not thinking about cockroaches and mosquitoes.

ADDED: According to Ballotopedia, the initiative “Applies to mammals (including vermin), birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish.” So I think “lethal pest control” is meant to call to mind mice and rats, not the various troublesome insects. The NYT article says “all animals” and also, more than once, says “pest control.”

In the comments here, Tom T. said, “Then would come the court decisions defining pet ownership as cruelty and outlawing it.” That got me looking into the argument that pet-keeping is a form of cruelty to animals. Here’s an interesting Vox article from 3 years ago: “The case against pet ownership/Why we should aim for a world with fewer but happier pets.”
Excerpt:
We demand companionship with as little friction as possible, expecting our pets (especially dogs) to be docile and agreeable, and to adapt quickly to the human world, with its countless rules and norms that mean nothing to them. And then when they inevitably fail to do so at first, we deem their natural habits misbehavior in need of correction, or abandonment….

Just how uneven the relationship is between pets and their human owners was demonstrated during the pandemic when, lonely and stuck at home, one in five households adopted a new pet. As new pet owners returned to work, however, their newly lonely pets struggled with the sudden change, showing high rates of chewing, digging, barking, escaping, pacing, hiding, and indoor urination and defecation. Our pets might not be so bored if they just had some autonomy, but having a pet means regularly denying it….

Gary Francione and Anna Charlton, a firebrand animal rights couple who teach law at Rutgers University… have advocated for the abolition of pet ownership. “Domesticated animals are completely dependent on humans, who control every aspect of their lives,” they wrote in a provocative essay for Aeon in 2016. “Unlike human children, who will one day become autonomous, non-humans never will. That is the entire point of domestication — we want domesticated animals to depend on us. They remain perpetually in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything that is of relevance to them.”…

Well, from the responses by other Justices to her an Sotomayor’s dissents in other cases, it’s pretty clear both of them are stupid, agenda driven hacks who, like all other leftists, don’t like the idea of their political rivals having the means to make telling them “No” a real decisive statement.

Jackson’s Concurring Opinion in Hemani Case Makes Laughable Argument Against Bruen

The Supreme Court decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen is probably the most important ruling the Court has made on the Second Amendment in history. While Heller and McDonald are critical as well, the Bruen test is a simple, straightforward test that can and should be easily applied to gun control laws. Did something like that exist at the time of the nation’s founding? Was there something like it during the time of incorporation? No, then knock it off.

But while the Hemani decision was ultimately unanimous, Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring opinion, along with Justice Sonya Sotomayor, arguing that the Bruen decision needs to be revisited.

Along with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson is advising the court to review its 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Jackson and Sotomayor said the 2022 decision is “unworkable” and that the court may need to “retire the failed Bruen experiment.” That test, according to Jackson, is based on centuries-old evidence that may not be relevant to today’s legal questions.

“It imposes on judges the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of sifting through centuries-old evidence in order to answer ‘contested historical questions,’ and ‘applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems,’” Jackson said in her opinion, per Law & Crime.

“Given those challenges, it is unsurprising that Bruen’s test is vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence and reach divergent assessments of the same laws.”

I find it interesting that Jackson and Sotomayor seem to think that applying history to whether something would align with the Founding Fathers’ intentions is problematic for “contemporary problems.” Never mind that we still look at their intentions on, say, the Fourth Amendment as it relates to your cell phone data or what’s on your laptop. The historic norms were that your person and your property were largely off limits without a warrant. While frisking was one thing–the things in your pocket, for example–it was easy for the Court to decide that your cell phone was a different thing.

Why is it that guns are a different matter? Is it because the history doesn’t align with what these two justices really wanted?

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The Problem with California’s Proposed Training Requirement for Gun Purchases

The first bit of advice any new gun owner is likely to receive is that they should go out and seek training on how to handle their firearm safely. It’s not about tactical excellence or anything like that; it’s about making sure they don’t hurt themselves or someone else because they didn’t know what they were doing with the weapon in their hands. That’s avoidable, and we absolutely should continue to tell people to get proper training.

But, as with most things involving firearms, there’s a difference between good advice and the government deciding to mandate something.

There’s a bill under consideration in California that would mandate training prior to gun purchases.

Buying a gun in California could soon require more than passing a written test.

State lawmakers are advancing a bill, Senate Bill 948, that would require firearm buyers to complete a four-hour safety training course, including live-fire exercises at a shooting range.

California already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Before buying a firearm, gun owners must pass a written safety test to obtain a firearm safety certificate.

Luis Lopez, a new gun owner, said the proposed law would add another hurdle for people trying to legally purchase a firearm.

“There’s more fees. When you purchase ammo, every year it’s a little bit more, so I feel like they’re just making it a little bit more difficult,” Lopez said.

He said the four-hour training requirement feels unnecessary.

“Those four hours to take that is just a countermeasure, just to make it harder for people to own a gun,” Lopez said.

Supporters argue more training could help prevent accidents involving children and inexperienced gun owners. State Sen. Jesse Arreguin, who is spearheading the bill, said California has strong gun safety laws but does not currently require firearm training for buyers.

“We have some of the strongest firearm safety laws in California, but unlike other states, including Maryland and Hawaii, we don’t have any requirements on training,” Arreguin said.

It would also require gun owners moving into the state to undergo the training course, too.

Now, the original plan was an eight-hour course, which has now been reduced, but that’s not really germane in and of itself. No, what’s germane are the issues with any training mandate handed down by a governmental authority.

First, owning a firearm is a constitutionally protected right. In no other case is it considered acceptable to mandate training prior to people exercising a right protected in the Constitution. You don’t have to undergo training or testing to become a member of the press. The state does not get to mandate a particular training course in order to become a member of the clergy. You don’t have to take a class in California before you can register to vote or to hold a protest.

Nowhere else is a right limited to those who have completed a state-required course of instruction.

Plus, does anyone not see how this could be abused? Right now, the bill calls for a four-hour class. Originally, it required eight hours. That tells me that this is being discussed not as the amount of time needed to convey a particular set of information, but based on how much of an inconvenience they figure they can get away with.

Once the state has mandated training, it’s trivial to increase the length of time that training should take. Both four- and eight-hour classes are inconvenient enough, but it’s still something most people can manage. They might have to take a day off from work to attend the class, but there’s a way to make it work. No, you shouldn’t have to, but it’s still possible.

So then it becomes 16 hours, then 32 hours, then 40, then 80. Then they put a live fire qualification in, where you have to hit a particular score at a particular range, only to raise the score and move the range backward until you’re having to hit something stupidly high at a farther range than you’ll ever actually need, all so they can limit who can buy a gun.

They haven’t banned anything new, and your right to own a gun still exists in theory, but because it’s not realistic for you to meet the qualifications, it’s been essentially stripped in practice.

“But Hawaii and Maryland haven’t done that.”

No, they haven’t done it yet. They haven’t done it because they don’t think they could get away with it. The fact of the matter is that if there’s a training mandate on the books, and it’s acceptable to have it, then where would the line be drawn between an acceptable level of training and too much?

Plus, again, it’s not something we mandate for any other right protected by the Constitution, so why would it ever be acceptable here? Unless, of course, one wants to concede that the Second Amendment really is a second-class right.

Do that, though, and I’ll tell you to show your work that it was intended to be any such thing.

Echoes of Joe Biden: James Talarico Says Second Amendment ‘Not Absolute’

During an appearance on the Unity Over Division podcast, U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) echoed Joe Biden by saying the Second Amendment is “not absolute.”

Talarico said, “I believe in the Second Amendment just as much as I believe in the First. We have a right to bear arms to protect ourselves, our families. We have a right to own weapons for sport or for hunting. But like any freedom in the Bill of Rights, it’s not absolute.”

Breitbart News reported that on February 26, 2020, during a CNN Town Hall, Biden argued that the Second Amendment was not “absolute.”

He followed the Town Hall with a post to X in which he elaborated: “I taught constitutional law for a long time and here’s the deal: No amendment is absolute. There are limits.”

Talarico stressed what he believes are limits on other constitutionally protected rights as well. For example, he told Unity Over Division, “You have a freedom to assemble, to protest, but you need a permit.”

The First Amendment does not mention a need for a permit. Rather, the amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble …”

Democrats on Capitol Hill Introduce Ban on Suppressors

Signaling the agenda should polarity shift in Washington in the coming months and years, a group of House Dems has debuted legislation to outlaw suppressors.

Dubbed the Help Empower Americans to Respond, or HEAR, Act, the proposal would “ban the importation, sale, manufacturing, transfer, and possession of gun silencers or suppressors.”

Saying “Silencers are not tools of self-defense,” HEAR Act sponsor U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, argues such devices “have no legal application,” and her proposal is part of “a common sense approach to firearms legislation.”

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We are neither surprised, not amused.

Ninth Circuit Rules Suppressors Are Not Second Amendment Arms

The Ninth Circuit just handed gun control lawyers another gift, and it came from exactly the kind of case Second Amendment advocates should dread.

In United States v. João Ricardo DeBorba, the court upheld a stack of federal gun convictions against a man who was unlawfully in the United States, had claimed U.S. citizenship on firearm-related paperwork, was subject to domestic violence no-contact orders, and was caught with firearms, ammunition, and an unregistered suppressor.

Bad cases still make law, and this one may do real damage. The most dangerous part of the ruling is not simply that DeBorba lost. Given the facts, that outcome was hardly surprising. The problem is that the Ninth Circuit went out of its way to say that suppressors, also called silencers, are not “arms” protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.

The court treated suppressors as optional firearm accessories and said they are not covered because they are not necessary to the ordinary operation of a firearm. In other words, because a gun can technically fire without a suppressor, the court says a suppressor falls outside the Second Amendment.

A suppressor is not some decorative range toy. It protects hearing, reduces blast, improves communication, helps training, and makes shooting safer for the shooter and those nearby. Hunters use them. Instructors use them. Competitive shooters use them. Ordinary Americans use them. In much of the civilized world, suppressors are treated as basic safety equipment, not criminal contraband.

The Second Amendment does not protect only a stripped-down firearm in its most primitive form. It protects the right to keep and bear arms in a way that is useful, effective, and practical. Optics help a shooter hit what he is aiming at. Magazines feed the firearm. Lights help identify a threat. Suppressors help protect hearing and allow safer training and defensive use.

Constitutional attorney and AmmoLand contributor Mark W. Smith of The Four Boxes Diner hammered that point in his video breakdown of the decision. Smith argued that the court ignored the broader meaning of “arms” under Bruen, where an arm includes an instrument that facilitates armed self-defense. As Smith put it, the key is not whether an item is absolutely necessary, but whether it helps facilitate the protected right.

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Fearing Expanding Gun Rights, Anti-Gun Group Creates Absurd Concealed-Carry Policy

By Lee Williams

SAF Investigative Journalism Project

Times are good and possibly getting even better for those who value guns, gun rights and the Second Amendment.

The changes brought by President Donald Trump are simply stunning. In just one year we went from an ATF that targeted individual gun owners for imaginary crimes to one that’s focused on arresting real bad guys with illegal guns.

Constitutional Carry, known by the other side as permitless carry, is growing. Today, 29 states allow law-abiding adults to carry firearms without a state permit, and the number is expected to grow.

So, it’s understandable that those who want to restrict and subvert the Second Amendment are getting desperate. In fact, they’re willing to try almost anything to restrict access to firearms while President Trump is in office. It’s as if they never even heard of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Enter the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

These egg-headed goons want to roll back the clock to the late 1980s. Their just-released “Public Carry Permitting: Model Policy Guide” is pretty much what some states offered decades ago. It’s laughable—a trip back in time. Nowadays, it’s likely too restrictive for even the bluest of blue states.

Of course, the Center begins their report with lies—absolute deception—about guns, gun owners and gun rights.

By citing previous data from their own inaccurate reporting, they specifically target Constitutional Carry. It’s a hard sell, obviously, but they need to make a case for returning to the decades-old permitting system. They even support “may issue” rather than “shall issue” laws, which Bruen effectively killed.

Their allegations against Constitutional Carry are incredibly skewed and are not based on data or any hard facts.

“There are several hypotheses for the increase in violence associated with deregulation of public carry. Some scholars have argued that deregulation leads to increased carrying of guns in public places, meaning that interpersonal conflicts may be more likely to turn violent. One 2025 paper sought to examine what factors could be driving increases in violent crime and found that states that deregulated public carry saw large increases in gun theft and decreases in the rate of law enforcement clearance of violent crime,” the report claims.

Any attempt to subvert the Second Amendment needs a lot more than “several hypotheses” and scholarly arguments.

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Not surprisingly

  Tim Walz’s Daughter Just As Dumb As Dad on Gun Control

Gov. Tim Walz was in a position to become vice president. I think I speak for most of us when I say that I’m glad he’s still governor of Minnesota. It’s not because he’s been stellar at his job there, mind you, as the Minneapolis day care scandal, and Walz’s reaction to it, amply illustrates that he sucks at it. It’s because it means he and Kamala Harris aren’t in charge in Washington.

Both were terrible on gun issues, despite Walz trying to portray himself as a macho man who could out shoot any of us. In fact, when he tried to act big and bad, he just embarassed himself.

When it comes to guns, though, it seems the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

Hope Walz, the daughter of disgraced Minnesota governor and failed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, called for gun control this week in the aftermath of another attempted assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.

“Gun control doesn’t just save Democrats’ lives. It also saves Republican lives,” she said in a TikTok video posted this week, apparently attempting to position herself as a leftist taking moral high ground.

“You’d think we’d be at a point now where we could call for some common sense legislation, but I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said sarcastically. “Also here to say that political violence is never ok. Duh. That’s the difference between us and them. It’s never ok.”

Walz continued, “But there’s something we can do about it: common sense gun legislation.”

She ultimately called on her audience to “do something about that for everybody’s “For everybody’s sake, yeah. Yeah. Happy Tuesday,” she added. “Feeling a little anxious today, but we’re going to get through it.”

Notably, this is the same “anxious” Walz who described Trump’s previous crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital as nothing more than “bitch baby, wussy, scaredy cat behavior.”

Fascinating, ain’t it?

Look, I agree that political violence isn’t OK. I’ll point out, though, that the left hasn’t exactly been showing any belief in that position. How many have been upset that Thomas Crooks missed, or that this guy didn’t get a shot at the president? How many celebrated the assassinations of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk?

Yeah, don’t do the “That’s the difference between us and them” bit. It’s not going to fly.

But let’s talk about “common sense gun legislation” for a moment. We keep having people bring this up, including people with much higher profiles that Hope Walz, but have you noticed how absolutely no one gives us any real concrete suggestions that would have made a difference? Rep. Jamie Raskins suggested universal background checks, but with the would-be assassin getting his guns in California, he passed background checks. That’s ridiculous.

Beyond that, though, most people are just braying about how we need gun control, but no one seems to have anything real to propose. Maybe because they know that nothing they could propose would have done anything and they don’t want people like me to rip it apart for being moronic.

Look, I actually do get her being anxious. Her dad is still governor of a state that’s the center of a lot of strife. People on both sides are antsy and the idea of someone going after her father doesn’t seem so farfetched as it should be. I sincerely don’t want to see that, and I know good and well that she doesn’t, so I’m not going to mock her anxiety here.

But I’ll also repeat that this guy gun his weapons in the most gun-controlled state in the nation, a state that has laws that would never fly anywhere else in the United States, so let’s not pretend this is the result of too few gun control laws. It’s not. It’s the result of leftist talking points and inflamatory rhetoric radicalizing someone to try and rid the nation of a tyrant who is nothing of the sort.

UNBELIEVEABLE: CNN Using Assassination Attempt to Call for More Gun Control

SAF Investigative Journalism Project

ANALYSIS: Just minutes after the third attempt to kill President Donald J. Trump, in addition to senior members of his staff, CNN’s Idiot-in-Chief Brian Stelter was calling for more gun control.

“As CNN anchor Victor Blackwell put it when I joined him on air this morning, ‘The people in that room were confronted with what schoolchildren and moviegoers and congregants and people at grocery stores have been confronted with, and that is the threat of gun violence.’” Stelter wrote in an analysis piece titled: “An extraordinary moment for America’s media elite is all too ordinary in America.”

Ah, the poor media elite felt confronted. Really? The bad guy didn’t even enter their room. Many media elites never even heard any gunshots.

Stelter quoted another CNN hack, Jim Sciutto, whose comments you can probably already imagine.

“One thing we know is that there will be a lot of discussion afterwards about security measures. (A discussion about) rhetoric, perhaps, as well. There won’t be any substantive discussion about access to weapons, right? There just won’t,” Sciutto reportedly said.

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Elitist Chicago Doc: Average Citizens Don’t Need Armed Self-Defense Because the Poor ‘Don’t Benefit’ From Guns

Dr. Anthony Douglas, the smug University of Chicago trauma resident and arrogant mastermind behind Illinois’ Responsibility in Firearms Legislation (RIFL) Act, stepped up in a legislative hearing last week and belched up a heaping helping of elitist bile blended with a soupçon clinical detachment: “I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms,” he pronounced.

What the little people need, the good doctor says, is more “education and resources.” Translation: more tax dollars funneled to “non-profits” with little to no return on the taxpayers’ investment.

Besides, the physician and gun-control researcher claims it isn’t good guys or gals with guns who stop evil predators…all evidence to the contrary. As such, it really should be harder for the poors to get their hands on firearms to defend themselves and their families.

His solution, then, is pricing guns out of reach of law-abiding, responsible citizens who lack bodyguards, private security details, or live in gated enclaves. In Murder City, USA—Chicago—where gang thugs roam free, that’s not social policy, that’s sadistic malpractice.

Was this clown high? Does he have a full punchcard at the local dispensary? Because this delusional drivel sounds like it was baked in a dorm room cloud of weed.

Let’s drag his elitist fantasy out into the reality that is Chicago, the city that’s been mercilessly documented by Wirepoints.org through FOIA records from the Chicago Police Department itself.

High-priority 911 calls—Priority Level 1 and 2, the ones defined as “imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage”—are the exact emergencies Chicagoans face every day: shots fired, person shot, assault in progress, armed robbery, domestic battery. In 2019, before the progressive crime wave fully metastasized, 19% of those urgent calls had “no officers available” for immediate response.

By 2021, Wirepoints found that number had exploded to 52%—406,829 high-priority incidents in which dispatchers literally had zero cops to send. In 2022 it hit roughly 60%.

Through all of 2023, 56% of high-priority calls—437,000 of them—sat in backlog with no units available. Even in 2024, through mid-May, getting a response was still a coin-flip 50%: 127,000 out of 256,000 urgent calls in which nobody came.

That’s not “delayed,” that’s “we have no police available to send to you.”

Wirepoints documented thousands of “assaults in progress,” “batteries in progress,” “person with a gun,” and “shots fired” calls where callers were told to shelter in place while the city’s response system collapsed. In some districts, entire shifts passed with zero proactive patrol time because every available cop was already buried in backlogs that stretched 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes as long as four hours. Chicago’s own inspector general has long since confirmed the department can’t even log arrival times for huge chunks of emergency calls.

So Dr. Douglas’s prescription isn’t compassion, it’s pure, venomous elitist contempt. He (allegedly) stares at blood-soaked gurneys every shift, but still demands that we disarm the victims instead of the criminals—or fix the catastrophic policies that left over half of emergency calls with “no units available.” He wants to tax gun makers into oblivion so that self-defense becomes a rich man’s luxury that only hypocrites like him can afford.

Spare us the sanctimonious impacted fecal matter, Doctor. The poor in Chicago aren’t sipping lattes in faculty lounges debating “resources.” They’re barricading their doors and praying they make it to and from work safely and survive day to day while the failed system in which you have so much faith leaves them twisting in the wind.

They have and need the same constitutional right to armed self-defense that you take for granted from the comfort of your bubble. In the real Chicago, where cops aren’t available to show up half the time, that arrogance and contempt leaves innocent people to be victimized and slaughtered.

The Center Square has the full testimony. Read it and seethe . . .

A proposed bill gun owners say will price lower income buyers out of the market continues to get attention at the Illinois state capitol.

Opponents of House Bill 3320 estimate the Responsibility in Firearms Legislation, or RIFL Act could tack on thousands of dollars in taxes to one firearm purchase, and that would price lower income people out of exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Advocates for the bill, like Dr. Anthony Douglas, said there’d be minimal added cost.

“I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms,” Douglas said during a House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force subject matter hearing of the bill Wednesday. “I think more people benefit from access to education, access to resources.”

State Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Harrisburg, said that’s an elitist opinion and people of lesser means want to be able to protect themselves.

“The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States guarantees that to them,” Windhorst said. “And it’s really not our place to say, ‘well, we think you’re better off not having this thing,’ which is the tone of this committee.”