Category: Crap For Brains

The Trace goes ‘toxic’ over lead rounds

It must be a difficult time to be an anti-gun activist working at the Trace—the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire. After all, things are certainly not going their way.

The National Firearms Act has been gutted. You can buy suppressors with ease, and America’s favorite rifle will likely become legal in all 50 states thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. The changes are even more impressive at the lower levels. We’re seeing pro-gun triumphs almost every single week.

Finding any anti-gun story has got to be a daily concern for the kids at the Trace. They can’t report the facts because they’re not real reporters. So, instead of reporting that President Donald J. Trump—the most pro-gun President since Teddy Rooselvelt—is restoring our Second Amendment rights on a regular basis, what can the Trace possibly tell its readers?

Lead—specifically, lead is bad. In fact, it’s dangerous.

That’s the best the Trace kids could come up with.

According to a story in the Oct. 21st edition of The Bulletin, which the Trace publishes, “Six million children in the U.S. live in homes with people who use firearms with lead-based ammunition but don’t engage in post-shooting hygiene. That leaves the kids vulnerable to lead exposure.”

So, if you go shooting and don’t wash up, your kids are at risk, the Trace claims. Evidently, they know who’s washing up and who’s not.

This super-worrisome story was written by Fairriona Magee, who describes herself as the public health reporter for the Trace. She joined the Trace right after college. It’s her first paid gig. She also volunteers at a local food bank.

How does Magee prove her point that lead imperils every single shooter? She finds an expert, of course, who cites the “risk.”

“These findings just provide a suggestion that this is a bigger risk than I think people realize,” Christian Hoover, the study’s lead author and public health researcher at Harvard University, told me. “Hopefully, they’re willing to consider some of the suggestions that we make in the study, like changing your clothes after shooting, not bringing things into the home with you, and treating this activity when you’re using lead-based ammunition as though it were toxic.”

Unfortunately for her readers, Hoover, whom Magee described as a “public health researcher at Harvard University,” uses another title on his LinkedIn: Co-Investigator, Firearm Exposure Research Team at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

I’m sure Harvard’s Firearm Exposure Research Team fully respects our Second Amendment rights, right?

Magee’s bulletin is short, thankfully. For anyone with even a modicum of firearm knowledge, it’s so bad it’s almost funny.

Magee never mentions that shooting outdoors lowers your risk of lead exposure dramatically, or that Americans have been shooting lead bullets downrange since before there was a United States of America.

Instead, she touted her company line — guns are super dangerous. If you own one, you’re at risk.

Magee wrote that she found the lead story while reading “gun violence” studies, which she does on a daily basis.

That type of shoddy research is also expected from the kids at the Trace.

From her quoted statements, she wants to make it less dangerous for her gangs.

Minnesota: Somali Democrat Mayor Pushes Gun Ban as Fix for Somali Gang Crime

St. Louis Park Mayor Nadia Mohamed (D), the first Somali-American elected mayor in Minnesota, suggests the solution to Somali gang gun violence is to ban firearms.

A clip of Mohamed expressing her support for a gun ban has made the rounds on social media.

Bearing Arms quoted part of her comments wherein she dismissed criticism of the Somali gangs as “rhetoric” that is “irresponsible” and turned to gun control as a solution:

A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime. But what the rhetoric you are pushing, at best is irresponsible, at worst is dangerous. So you may be wondering, hey Mayor, how can we solve for this then? How can we have conversations that are effective, that can actually get something done? And the answer is easy.

Ban guns.

On October 4, 2026, Breitbart News pointed to reports indicating alleged Somali gang-related gunfire broke out at Eden Prairie High School in a Minneapolis suburb Friday around 9:00 p.m.

A news release from the Eden Prairie Police Department said two Somali males were injured during the shooting, one of whom was 17 and the second of whom was 18. The injuries they sustained were not life-threatening.

Anti-Gun Orgs Urge Clergy to Use Red Flag Laws to Grab Their Congregants’ Guns.

It’s often been said that gun control is really about people control. Understanding this, the megalomania that anti-gun advocates exhibit in their never-ending pursuit to control others displays a zealotry often associated with religious fundamentalism. It should come as little surprise, then, that gun control orgs are now trying to enlist clergy in their fight against natural rights, by encouraging religious leaders to promote and utilize red flag gun confiscation orders.

In September, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions published a tract titled “Extreme Risk Protection Orders: A Clergy Resource Guide” (extreme risk protection orders are the gun control advocates’ preferred term for red flag gun confiscation orders). The document was authored alongside groups including Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, Faith Leaders for Ending Gun Violence, and Jewish Women International.

Another author was the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, which the document described as “the public policy information and advocacy office for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).” The “progressive” PCUSA currently hosts the guide on its website. Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, who has put his version of religion at the forefront of his campaign, trained at a PCUSA seminary.

Astute gun rights supporters will know that the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health bears the name of billionaire gun control financier Michael Bloomberg. For his part, Bloomberg appears to believe he can dictate terms to the divine.

In a 2014 interview with the New York Times announcing the creation and financing of anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety, Bloomberg expressed confidence that his efforts to direct the lives of other people would earn him his eternal reward. The piece noted,

Pointing to his work on gun safety, obesity and smoking cessation, [Bloomberg] said with a grin: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

⇑ [what utter hubris. I think he’s going to be surprised.] ⇑

The guide seeks to inject gun control directly into the clergy-congregant relationship. The document encourages faith leaders to leverage the trust their congregants place in them, noting, “faith leaders are often trusted confidants. You may be among the first to hear when someone is experiencing crisis…”

Of course, the danger that a pastor may work to have the government strip a person of a fundamental right based on a private conversation will prompt some congregants to forego potentially beneficial pastoral services entirely.

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San Diego County Sues Filament Maker Over Its 2A Ties

There’s nothing illegal about selling plastic filament for 3D printers, even if some customers use that filament to manufacture firearms. But according to officials in San Diego County, there’s something legally actionable about a filament maker embracing the Second Amendment community and touting its products to people who print their own guns.

On Monday, San Diego County, aided by Giffords Law Center, filed suit against Polymaker LLC, accusing the company of violating California’s Unfair Competition and False Advertising laws by allegedly promoting it’s products to the 3D-printed firearms community. The county isn’t claiming that Polymaker sells guns, unfinished frames or receivers, or even a product that’s uniquely suited for making firearms. Instead, much of its case rests on what Polymaker has said and done while selling a lawful, general-purpose product.

According to the county’s complaint, Polymaker developed firearm-themed products, sponsored and worked with gun-printing influencers, offered technical advice about using its filament for firearm applications, and cultivated relationships with the broader 3D gun community. San Diego contends those activities helped facilitate violations of California’s restrictive laws governing privately manufactured firearms.

While this lawsuit implicates the Second Amendment, it raises substantial First Amendment questions as well. From the complaint:

To be clear, 3D printing filament is not inherently illicit and has many lawful, productive purposes, and this lawsuit does not seek to ban the sale of filament in California.

Rather, the People bring this lawsuit to hold Polymaker liable for its strategic business choice to design and market its filaments in order to profit from the illegal manufacture of 3D printed ghost guns in California.

These actions violate California law and reflect a conspicuous disregard for the public safety interests of Californians that those laws are designed to protect.

San Diego isn’t taking aim at what Polymaker sells. It’s suing over how the company talks about its products, who it talks to, and what those customers might legally do with them in much of the rest of the country, where California’s idiotic laws are not in place.

Nowhere in the complaint does San Diego allege that Polymaker is designing or marketing it’s filaments with California specifically in mind. Instead, the county heavily relies on California’s ridiculously broad definition of a “firearm precursor part,” which includes “any forging, casting, printing, extrusion, machined body or similar article . . . that is marketed or sold to the public to become or be used as the frame or receiver of a functional firearm once completed, assembled or converted.”

In support of its lawsuit, San Diego County points to the California DOJ’s designation of the Ghost Gunner “AR-00,” which is nothing more than a solid block of aluminum, as a “firearm precursor part” simply because it’s marketed as something that can eventually become a firearm frame or receiver.

While that might buttress San Diego County’s argument, it’s also a perfect illustration of just how expansive and open-ended California’s law is. Under San Diego’s theory, a company that produces a general-purpose product can be held liable for promoting one particular use because California prohibits that activity, even when the marketing isn’t specifically directed at Californians.

Punishing commercial speech directed at a nationwide audience because that speech promotes conduct that’s illegal in one state, even when the same conduct is perfectly lawful elsewhere, seems like a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment to me.

If California can turn a spool of plastic into a regulated “firearm precursor part” based largely on how it’s marketed, then this case isn’t just about what Polymaker sells. What the company says about its products, and even who it associates with and employs, are also fundamental parts of the county’s litigation, and you don’t have to be a Second Amendment supporter or a 3D-printing aficionado to be extremely concerned about where this theory can lead.

Flock’s Gunfire Alerts Raise a New Fourth Amendment Question
Gun owners should be paying attention to how police use gunfire microphones in conjunction with license plate cameras.

Flock Safety, the main supplier of the recently controversial roadside cameras that scan passing cars, offers more than automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The company also sells a surveillance bundle of sorts called the “Safe City” subscription. Billed as Flock’s “Most Complete Solution,” the “Safe City” subscription includes the much-discussed ALPRs, along with a live video camera—and a gunfire microphone. Bundling these together risks turning lawful gun owners into criminal suspects based only on proximity.

It is hard to find reliable information about the number of active gunfire microphones in the United States. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance documents nearly 250 gunshot-detection deployments and purchase plans nationwide, although that includes programs that have since ended. Cities also have deployed firearm detection systems that rely on AI to detect visible firearms on video or combine acoustic and dual-sensor infrared cameras to detect gunshots.

Flock is just one of many suppliers in the global gunshot detection market, which has an estimated total value of $1.5 billion. But the company’s marketing material raises concerns about the technology’s capabilities, which go beyond simply detecting gunfire. In Flock’s own words, a confirmed gunshot “can surface the vehicles seen entering or leaving the area around the time of the sound, using nearby Flock license plate reader cameras.” That statement deserves scrutiny, since it describes a mechanism for turning suspected gunfire into a list of nearby vehicles.

Innocent gun owners could end up on such lists. Suppose a bang recorded by one of these microphones gets classified as gunfire (which it may not actually be, given the possibility of a false positive from a similar noise). That “confirmed event” can trigger an ALPR inquiry that sweeps in drivers who had nothing to do with the noise. In a country where more than 20 million people have carry permits and 29 states do not require them, some of those drivers will be lawfully armed. The proximity of those innocent drivers could be mistaken for evidence that they fired the shot.

This possibility raises two legal concerns for lawful gun owners. First, what justifies stopping a person on one of these lists? Second, is querying the database a search under the Fourth Amendment? Recent cases provide some answers.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen protects lawful public carry. In the 2024 case United States v. Daniels, which involved the detention of an unarmed man who did not match a 911 caller’s description of armed men, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit noted that no crime was reported. Citing Bruen, the court said it “cannot look with suspicion on citizens presumably exercising their Second Amendment rights in a lawful way.”

Last May in Commonwealth v. Foster, by contrast, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a stop where police responded within seconds to late-night alerts from a gunfire microphone, found only two people, and observed conduct the court considered evasive. An investigative stop requires reasonable suspicion based on specific facts connecting someone to suspected criminal activity. The risk here is that an alert combined with a plate match could be treated as sufficient for reasonable suspicion even though it only establishes proximity.

A recent case from New Jersey illustrates that risk. Last March, in State v. Carrillo, a state appeals court ordered suppression of evidence (an unlawfully possessed handgun) discovered in a minivan after a traffic stop. The police searched the minivan after obtaining a warrant. But the court held that a gunshot alert and an ALPR hit did not adequately connect the minivan to a shooting the day before. Prosecutors conceded that video supposedly showing muzzle flashes from the minivan at the time of the gunfire actually showed none.

When police look for evidence inside a car, that obviously counts as a search. But is that also true when they query an ALPR database?

Last March in United States v. Porter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that using a 10-camera ALPR network to locate a known vehicle was not a search. Three months later in Chatrie v. United States, by contrast, the Supreme Court held that obtaining Google’s phone location records to identify people near a crime scene was a search. Roadside camera observations differ from detailed phone location data. But an alert-triggered ALPR query seems closer to the situation in Chatrie.

Defenders of gunshot microphones will say that gunfire on city streets is usually illegal and that responding quickly saves lives and reduces violence. But a federally funded evaluation of the gunfire detector ShotSpotter in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri found that the microphones, while associated with faster responses and more recovered firearms, did not result in fewer shootings or better clearance rates.

With state legislatures slow to act, city governments have to make their own decisions about how to balance safety with privacy. Short of enacting a total ban on every part of the Flock bundle, city councils should adopt four rules to preserve their constituents’ rights.

First, except in exigent circumstances, police should be required to obtain a warrant, including time and distance limits, before running an alert-triggered ALPR query. Second, no city should link gun detection alerts to ALPR data without first holding a public hearing and a vote. Third, every query should be logged for auditing, and information about uninvolved vehicles should be deleted when it is no longer needed as evidence. Fourth, a stop or search based solely on “alert plus proximity” should not be allowed.

Every city using gunshot detection has a contract renewal or replacement decision coming. Those decisions should include publicly disclosed rules about how the system can be used with ALPRs. Because these technologies can be bundled, these questions matter regardless of which vendor a city chooses. Whether a city is expanding an existing network or considering a replacement, the limits on surveillance should be settled before the next contract is signed.

NH School District Admits Unconstitutional Search of Student’s Vehicle

Because a New Hampshire teen legally owned a pistol and sometimes kept it in the glove compartment of his truck…, school officials conducted a warrantless search of the vehicle without his consent last year. They have acknowledged it was an unconstitutional search in a court agreement.

School officials in New Hampshire have acknowledged they conducted an unconstitutional search of a student’s vehicle in 2025, because he legally owned a handgun—which was not in the vehicle, nor was it ever brought to the grounds of Hillsboro-Deering High School—in full compliance with federal and state laws.

According to the Second Amendment Foundation, which filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last October on behalf of plaintiff Jack Harrington, the search was conducted “solely on the basis of school officials learning that Harrington lawfully owned a firearm in his personal life.”

The case is known as Harrington v. Crawford. The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire.

According to a stipulated declaratory judgment, “A search of a student’s person, property, or vehicle based solely on the exercise of a constitutional or legal right, including the fundamental right to keep and bears arms guaranteed under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (U.S. CONST. amend. II), which encompasses and includes the right to carry, store, or transport a handgun a vehicle or in the glove box of a vehicle, would constitute an unconstitutional and illegal search in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

This search occurred after Harrington apparently mentioned his gun ownership to another student while riding in a bus enroute to a game.

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‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ – attributed to Albert Einstein

Group That Pushed Mexico Into Lawsuit Against Gun Makers at It Again

Mexico’s ill-fated lawsuit against the gun industry was a case of knowing what was inevitable. There was no world where the Supreme Court, especially this one, would allow a lawsuit to proceed against the industry despite the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. I didn’t expect the 9-0 decision, but it was clear-cut.

Well, the “brains” behind that — I use that term very, very loosely here — are at it again.

This time, it seems they’re trying to goad Canada into filing a lawsuit as well, one just as doomed as Mexico’s was.

A new report from Global Action on Gun Violence lays the groundwork for a greater understanding of the cross-border gun trafficking crisis, the harm this phenomenon causes, and recommendations for decreasing this trafficking pipeline.

Jonathan Lowy, founder and president of Global Action on Gun Violence  (GAGV) asserts, “The U.S. gun violence epidemic is causing a regional and global pandemic.  This data confirms that overwhelming majorities of crime guns in Canada and the Caribbean flow directly from U.S. gun shops, as a result of reckless gun industry practices enabled by weak U.S. laws.  GAGV is committed to stopping this crime gun pipeline at the most effective point — the gun industry source.

Gun trafficking is one of the world’s greatest threats to public safety, and the United States is the most prolific source of gun trafficking. Guns are brought illicitly from weak gun law states to stronger gun law states and from the U.S. to other nations with far more stringent gun laws.  The result fuels death rates in the United States that are 20 times higher than in comparable countries, contributes to nations in the Americas having the highest death rates in the world, and enables organized crime, gun trafficking, human trafficking, and a host of other public health, human rights and other societal harms.

Now, Canada has a problem compared to its usually low crime rate, and this despite a plethora of gun control laws on the books, but I fail to see how this is our fault.

After all, it’s already illegal to traffic guns outside of the United States without appropriate approval, and so whoever is trafficking guns is breaking the laws of both nations.

But we already see some…interesting use of numbers here.

One of the supposed key findings of the report said, “84.6% of crime guns in Canada are from the U.S.”

Interesting, sure, but it’s also kind of BS. Cam wrote about this back in June, and most of the so-called crime guns weren’t from the United States. While it’s possible that there’s been some new data, I think it’s also worth noting that this claim is supposedly based on ATF tracing data. However, wouldn’t the Canadian authorities check their own databases first? Why outsource tracing to the U.S. when you’ve got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that should, ostensibly, be able to at least trace guns domestically? Then, if they’re not in domestic databases, ask the ATF for help.

That didn’t make it in Lowy’s so-called report.

What did, though? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Recommendations

  • Legal and policy reforms, at the federal and state level, can make a difference, as can litigation brought in and outside of the U.S. against negligent gun industry companies who facilitate gun trafficking.

  • Policies and industry reforms to reduce the supply of crime guns at the source. Federal reforms should include universal background checks, buyer licensing or individualized vetting, stronger scrutiny of bulk and repeat sales, better dealer oversight, mandatory tracing, and repeal of legal barriers that shield the gun industry from accountability.

  • Similar reforms at the state level should prioritize Ohio because of its outsized role. Strategic litigation, as well as enhanced cross-border enforcement on firearms trafficking into Canada.

That’s right, everything on that list is part of the anti-gun wishlist. Conveniently.

Lowy knows that an entire country suing the gun industry would likely bankrupt it, even if the industry ultimately won. That’s the point. It’s a case of the process being the punishment. He likely knows good and well that these companies have done nothing wrong. If nothing else, the questions asked by the Supreme Court should have made it clear that the manufacturers don’t know who the bad actors are, and they sell to distributors anyway, at least in most gun transactions.

It’s not about facts, though. It’s about completely disrupting the Second Amendment. That’s the goal, and it really has nothing to do with violence in other countries.

BS. Science fiction isn’t reality

A New Form Of Life
By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, AI is alive.

We are in the process of creating a second form of life. The emergence of this new form of life is an inevitable result of the fundamental laws of the universe — forces similar to those that brought about humans’ own existence. This new form of life is gradually taking shape in the world’s data centers.

It does not breathe, reproduce through cells or adhere to the chemistry that governs every organism on Earth. However, it is composed of the same fundamental ingredients: matter, energy and information all organized in ways that allow it to persist, adapt and act. What is being developed is more than another generation of machines. It is the early emergence of a new form of life.

There is nothing artificial about systems built from real atoms, powered by real electricity, running in real machines. The systems reproduce, vary, adapt, undergo selection and gather energy from their environment. By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, that is life.

What Is Life?

Once molecules capable of copying themselves appear, they do. Copies that are slightly better at replicating themselves accumulate at the expense of those that are slightly worse. Variants that fit a local environment outcompete variants that do not. If an environment changes, a population changes with it. Across long stretches of time, this process generates organisms of astonishing complexity.

A living system reproduces, creates variants, selects from among those variants and uses energy from its environment to do so. Reproduction, variation, selection and energy define life. This definition does not require carbon, cells, a heartbeat, a nervous system or pain.

Consider a virus. If a chemist synthesizes the genome of a virus from ordinary chemicals, the result is a strand of nucleic acid that on its own does nothing. Many people, looking at that strand, will say: That is not alive. But put the strand into a cell and it will direct the cell’s machinery to make copies of itself. Those copies make further copies. Errors accumulate, variants appear and survivors persist. Influenza and the coronavirus do this. By my earlier four-property definition, these viruses are life.

Every living thing needs context. Humans depend on the atmosphere, adequate temperatures, a food chain and the planet’s protective magnetic field. Remove that context and humans die as surely as viruses without cells. With life, a substrate can change but dependence on it does not.

The common objection to calling machine intelligence a form of life is: How can something dependent on human-built hardware and electricity be alive? But all life depends on its context or envelope! Viruses need cells, humans need Earth and machine intelligence needs data centers and supporting infrastructure. Depending on a particular environment does not disqualify something from being considered alive. It is a consistent condition.

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Wheelchair-bound man is evicted from his apartment for shooting at robber

A St. Louis resident who uses a wheelchair faces immediate eviction following a lobby shooting that police classified as an act of self-defense against an armed intruder.

Recently, Torrey Holliday received notice that he was being kicked out of public housing in St. Louis after shooting at the would-be robber.

The St. Louis Housing Authority terminated the lease under its Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, which permits the agency to end the agreement for conduct threatening resident or staff safety. While police and prosecutors treat Torrey Holliday as a robbery victim, who acted in self-defense, housing management cited front lobby surveillance footage showing him firing his gun and putting others at risk.

“I woke up the next morning, they not even trying to ask me, ‘Am I alright? What happened? Is it OK?’ Nothing,” Holliday told FOX 2. “All they hit me with was a big (expletive) package saying, ‘You got to be out.’”

As reported by the St. Louis Housing Authority, federal privacy regulations limit public discussion of individual tenancies, but administrative lease enforcement remains separate from criminal investigations.

Bullet holes remain visible in the apartment lobby where Holliday retreated from the suspect.

“Good thing I did have my weapon on me or else I wouldn’t be here to talk about none of this,” Torrey Holliday told FOX 2.

He stated that management enforcement ignored the lack of building security.

“I had the gun because the building, they not protecting (us),” he said. “They don’t got the guards downstairs.”

He also maintained that while staff knew he carried a firearm, lobby signage only prohibited smoking and loitering.

Neighbors argued that the enforcement ignored situational context.

“He did break the gun policy,” Marvin McGee told the local station. “But still, look at his condition. Somebody messed with him. He didn’t mess with nobody.”

Keisha Holliday, his mother, said that her son faced punishment for protecting himself.

“You can see him kind of reeling away from the guy, you understand what I’m saying?” Keisha Holliday told FOX 2. “But he just kept coming at him. So, of course, what I want my son to do to always defend himself.”

The Independent has contacted the St. Louis Housing Authority for comment.

Third Circuit Upholds Machine Gun Ban, Creates Bruen Loophole for Gun Registration

The Third Circuit ruled that machine guns are protected “Arms,” then upheld the federal ban anyway. Its treatment of suppressor registration may be even more dangerous for gun owners.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed the federal government two victories Monday, upholding Joseph Paul Berger’s convictions for possessing machine guns and unregistered suppressors.

The machine gun ruling in United States v. Berger is bad enough. The court acknowledged that machine guns fall within the Second Amendment’s plain text, only to uphold the federal ban by declaring them unsuitable for lawful civilian use.

The court’s suppressor analysis could reach much further. A two-judge majority held that registration requirements judges consider “minimal” do not infringe the Second Amendment at all. Under that reasoning, the government can escape the historical test required by N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen merely by convincing a court that its registration scheme is not burdensome enough to count.

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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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