Category: Courts

First Circuit Rules in Favor of Massachusetts Assault Weapons and Magazine Ban

A federal appeals court determined Massachusetts’ ban on certain semi-automatic firearms and magazines aligns with historical firearm regulation and doesn’t violate the Second Amendment.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel, confirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction against Massachusetts’ law prohibiting the sale of so-called “assault weapons” such as the AR-15 and magazines that hold over ten rounds. The court found that its previous decision upholding a similar Rhode Island magazine ban also applied to Massachusetts’ restrictions on firearms.

Judge Gary Katzmann wrote in Capen v. Campbell, “A straightforward application of our prior holding in Ocean State Tactical supports the Commonwealth’s demonstration that the Massachusetts Ban’s AR-15 restriction ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’” He added, “This means that Appellants have failed to demonstrate at this stage that the Ban is unconstitutional in all its applications.”

This decision follows a pattern of appellate courts upholding state-level bans on certain firearms and magazines since the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling in 2022.

The Bruen decision changed the landscape for Second Amendment legal challenges by now requiring firearm regulations to abide by the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.” This new framework has opened new avenues for gun owners to challenge AWBs and magazine bans in solid blue states. That said, the courts have still placed obstacles for gun owners seeking to roll back unconstitutional gun control measures. 

Shortly after the Bruen ruling, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Superior, Colorado’s ordinance prohibiting AR-15s and magazines over 10 rounds. The court rejected the town’s argument that such weapons are “dangerous and unusual,” calling attention to their widespread lawful use and the lack of historical precedent for the implementation of such bans at the local level. Judge Moore alluded to Bruen’s emphasis on text and tradition, writing that the town’s public safety justification did not trump constitutional rights. While the TRO was limited to 14 days, the case marked the beginning of an early wave of judicial skepticism toward municipal AWBs through the use of the Bruen framework.

With respect to Oregon, Arnold v. Kotek, an Oregon state court permanently enjoined Measure 114, a 2024 ballot initiative that led to the ban of magazines holding over 10 rounds and the imposition of a permit-to-purchase system. Judge Robert Raschio ruled the law violated the Oregon Constitution’s right to bear arms, finding that high-capacity magazines have a valid use in the context of modern self-defense and that the state failed to demonstrate a historical tradition for such restrictions.

Though the Oregon Court of Appeals later reversed this decision, the case underscores how Bruen’s logic has continued to influence state-level challenges.

In Illinois’ case, in Barnett v. Raoul, U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn ruled last November that Illinois’ statewide ban on assault weapons and magazines holding over 10–15 rounds violated the Second Amendment. The court determined that AR-15-style rifles and similar firearms are commonly owned and used by citizens for legal purposes, including self-defense, and thus fall under Second Amendment protection.

Judge McGlynn stressed that the state failed to identify historical analogues for banning weapons widely used by law-abiding citizens, as dictated by Bruen. However, the decision was stayed for 30 days pending appeal, but the 7th Circuit later allowed the ban to remain in place temporarily while the appeals process goes on. 

Going back to Massachusetts, the state can continue enforcing its firearms and magazine restrictions. The plaintiffs may either appeal the decision or return to district court to argue the case on its merits. The legislation being challenged is the 2024 Act Modernizing Firearms Laws (Chapter 135/H.4885), which Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed last July.  The legislation replaced “assault weapon” with “assault-style firearm” and broadened definitions to include firearms with interchangeable parts or receivers compatible with prohibited models. Additionally, the bill mandated serialization and registration of all firearms, including privately manufactured “ghost guns,” within strict timelines, while also reinforcing the 10-round limit for detachable magazines and introducing new penalties for non-compliance.

With this decision in the books, Massachusetts maintains some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, pending any further appeals. While the post-Bruen era offers new opportunities for gun owners to resist gun grabs in blue states through litigation, these legal battles will be protracted and costly in nature. Restoring gun rights in the most hostile jurisdictions toward the right to self-defense will be no walk in the park.

hawaii firearms coalition

The U.S. Government Just Asked the Supreme Court to Strike Down Hawaii’s Gun-Carry Law

Here’s what you need to know:
In a high-profile Second Amendment case (Wolford v. Lopez), the U.S. Department of Justice filed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to review—and reverse—the Ninth Circuit’s decision that upheld Hawaii’s controversial concealed carry restriction.

What’s the law?
Hawaii makes it a crime (punishable by up to 1 year in jail) for a licensed gun owner to carry a firearm on any private property open to the public (like gas stations, stores, or restaurants) unless the property owner gives express permission, such as posting a sign.

Why is the DOJ opposing it?
According to the DOJ’s brief:
•The law inverts centuries of legal tradition, where people could carry arms unless told otherwise.
•It functionally bans public carry—turning everyday errands into legal minefields for gun owners.
•It targets gun rights, not protects property rights—especially since it exempts police, government employees, and others.
•It conflicts with NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), where the Supreme Court ruled states cannot impose burdens on the public’s right to carry without clear historical justification.
What’s at stake?
This case could shape the future of the Second Amendment. Since Bruen, 5 states (including CA, NY, and NJ) have passed similar laws—impacting over 75 million Americans. There’s also now a conflict between federal appeals courts, making Supreme Court review more likely.

Bottom line:
The DOJ—under the TRUMP administration—is siding with gun rights advocates here, warning that Hawaii’s law “effectively nullifies” the right to carry firearms for self-defense.

Kansas Supreme Court affirms product liability immunity of gun maker, seller in civil suit

Case centers on wounding of ESU football player in mishandling of Beretta

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court agreed Friday with a district court decision tossing a lawsuit filed by a former Emporia State University football player shot by a teammate who mistakenly believed that disassembling his newly purchased handgun required pulling the trigger.

In 2018, Andre Lewis bought a Beretta APX 9mm handgun at Bass Pro Outdoor World in Olathe. While idling his Dodge Charger at a downtown Emporia stoplight several months later, Lewis decided to show his front-seat passenger, Marquise Johnson, that he knew how to take the gun apart. Court records show Lewis was convinced the gun wouldn’t fire with the magazine removed and that the trigger had to be pulled before disassembly the weapon.

Lewis was wrong on both counts, and the bullet that had been in the chamber struck Johnson in his left leg. The wound resulted in amputation of the limb below the knee.

Johnson’s attorneys filed a product liability lawsuit against gun manufacturer Beretta and retailer Bass Pro Shops. The suit alleged Bass Pro sold and Beretta manufactured a defective and unreasonably dangerous handgun.

“Unintentional shootings like Marquise Johnson’s are preventable,” said plaintiff’s attorney Jonathan Lowy. “Like any other product, guns can and should be made as safe as possible to make injuries less likely.”

The District Court in Lyons County granted summary judgment in favor of the firearm maker and seller based on a reading of the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The PLCAA forbids lawsuits against manufacturers or sellers when a person criminally or unlawfully misused a firearm. This federal immunity designed to shield the gun industry wouldn’t hold if the gun was used as intended or in a reasonable way.

The case attracted an amicus brief from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund that argued the immunity law applied only if the “volitional act, apart from the discharge, constitutes a criminal offense.”

In a split decision, the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed the district court and determined the federal statute didn’t offer immunity to defendants in this case because Lewis didn’t intend to discharge the gun.

In an appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court, however, the firearm manufacturer and dealer argued the Court of Appeals came to the wrong conclusion about application of the federal law and that liability immunity existed because Lewis deliberately pulled the trigger. The state Supreme court found that argument persuasive.

“We hold that firearm sellers’ interpretation is a better reasoned and more accurately reflects Congress’ intent as reflected in the text of the PLCAA,” said Supreme Court Justice K.J. Wall.

Wall, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, said factual disputes about whether Lewis’ actions made him culpable for a criminal offense would typically be resolved by a jury. However, the justice said, it was a violation of state law for Lewis to discharge the gun on a public road.

“Under the unique facts of this case,” Walls wrote, “any dispute about Lewis’ mental state cannot save Johnson’s lawsuit from the PLCAA’s immunity provision.”

He said the Court of Appeals erred by reversing District Court Judge Merlin Wheeler’s decision to grant summary judgement against Johnson.

The court record indicated Lewis purchased the Beretta after reviewing Bass Pro Shop’s “10 commandments of safe gun handling,” which included a rule about keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Apparently, Lewis reviewed the rules before signing a form to acknowledge he had read them.

The Beretta was accompanied by a user manual that explained the gun could fire even after a magazine had been removed. In addition, the booklet stated the gun’s striker-deactivation button allowed users to disassemble the gun without pulling the trigger.

The Beretta APX had a warning stamped on the gun frame that was on point in the case: “FIRES WITHOUT MAGAZINE.”

BLUF
In rebuttal, Francisco effectively summarized the core of the case: The PLCAA is “not just about protecting the manufacturers, the distributors and the retailers, but it’s about protecting the right of every American to exercise their right under the Second Amendment to possess and bear firearms. That right is meaningless if there are no manufacturers, retailers and distributors that provide them in the first place.”

What Supreme Court Justices Had to Say About Mexico’s Attempt to Demolish Our Second Amendment

Mexico has extinguished its constitutional arms right and now seeks to extinguish America’s,” stated the NRA’s amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. The oral argument took place on March 4, and the Court’s decision is expected by the end of June. Based on the Justices’ questions during oral argument, there is reason for cautious optimism that the Court will enforce the federal statute that prohibits abusive lawsuits designed to destroy American firearms businesses.

The roots of the current Mexico case go back to 1998, when the gun-ban group Handgun Control, Inc., orchestrated meritless lawsuits by big-city mayors to attempt to bankrupt American firearms companies through the sheer cost of litigation. Handgun Control, Inc., later changed its name twice, and now calls itself Brady United.

In response, two-thirds of the states enacted legislation to forbid such abusive suits. Then in 2005, a bipartisan Congress passed and President George W. Bush (R) signed a federal statute called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to stop the frivolous suits. Given the new law, most judges promptly dismissed the abusive suits.

Yet two decades later, the Mexican government is in American courts attempting to accomplish what the previous lawsuits did not, namely bankrupting the American firearms industry—and thereby making the exercise of Second Amendment rights impossible.

The allegations in the Mexico case are updated versions of the same bogus allegations from the earlier suits: American firearms businesses that obey all of the many laws about firearms commerce should be held financially liable for criminal gun misuse. Mexico wants $10 billion from American firearms businesses, plus court-ordered, drastic restrictions on the firearms industry.

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U.S. First Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules Assault Weapon Ban Constitutional

The United States First Circuit Court of Appeals, on April 17, held that Massachusetts law banning the sale, transfer, or possession of an assault weapon is not unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, sending a clear message to Americans that the Boston-based kangaroo court is either illiterate, corrupt, or just unforgivably stupid.

I’ll be honest here, my ability to suffer foolishness kindly on this matter has permanently expired, so if you aren’t a fan of name-calling and my propensity for the abrasive truth, then this one may not be for you.

Massachusetts resident, Joseph Capen, brought the case, announcing his plan to purchase items restricted by the infringement for the lawful purpose of self-defense, but a three blind mice panel of subversive activist judges who wouldn’t know a natural right from ringworm performed just the right amount of mental gymnastics necessary to return with a ruling so heavily steeped in treason that I’m offended by their citizenship status alone, much less their seat on a bench.

Comrade Judge Gary Katzmann, whom I definitely wouldn’t let babysit my children, wrote for the three-traitor panel that the “court” needed to consider whether the law was “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which would make it allowable under the Second Amendment.

To be fair, Katzmann and his cronies would have found it consistent with a bowl of cereal if doing so properly served his anti-American agenda, and that is about as plausible as the panel’s holding that the ban on AR-15s, the most common sporting rifle in America, does not unduly burden civilian self-defense.

The court was so disingenuous in its ruling that it claimed Capen and additional appellants failed to show any instance in which these models had ever been used for self-defense, an asinine finding that any search engine could refute in seconds with days and weeks of reading material.

Katzmann embarrassingly attempted to correlate a longstanding tradition of regulation with the outright banning of “specific weapons once it became clear that they posed a unique danger to public safety, including mass deaths and violent crime unrelated to self-defense.” However, no such longstanding tradition exists, with the mental gymnastics here contributing mostly to a sad perversion of the Bruen decision, for which the Supreme Court is likely to tuck tail and expose its lack of spine.

In fact, even machine guns are not banned outright. But Katzmann and his ilk of treasonous judicial activists never burden themselves with obstacles like honesty, integrity, or their oath to America and the Constitution. Why let any of that get in the way of the internal insurrectionist agenda?

Katzmann and his merry band of idiots also claimed the ruling was not inconsistent with Heller, noting that the Second Amendment right was not unlimited and did not pertain to weapons “designed for military use.”

While this take is genuinely not unique by any standard, it has also been debunked since, well, the beginning, as the Second Amendment clearly states in plain English, “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.” A “well-regulated militia,” by definition, refers to a body of citizens trained and equipped to serve in a military capacity, ensuring the security of a free state, the Founding principle behind the Second Amendment.

Here’s a note to Katzmann and all the activist judicial traitors out there. If I can disprove you that easily, your children should be embarrassed by your legacy. There is very little I find more disgraceful than the absolute irreverence for your oath and obligation to the American people while you work to weaken the United States of America and poison our founding values from the inside.

Throughout history, many theories have been propounded as to the black robes worn by judges. Some say they provide a symbol of the authority and power conferred by the state, while others suggest they foster uniformity and promote the concept that justice remains blind. Judges like Katzmann and his First Circuit cohorts, however, bring modern clarity to the garb, as it seems the real symbolism behind the black robe is the death and mourning of our Constitution.

Alito’s right to warn: Court’s knee-jerk habit of slapping Trump will cost it dearly.

“A number of judges have seemingly adopted a constitutional meta-principle: what a past President did, President Trump may not undo.”

So wrote Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Adrian Vermeule on Friday after a district-court judge issued yet another lawless nationwide injunction meant to handcuff Trump and halt his agenda.

It’s a criticism the Supreme Court, and particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, must take to heart.

One of the hallmarks of Roberts’ term has been an overweening desire to guard the judicial branch’s “legitimacy.”

But Roberts seems oblivious to the fact that the biggest threat to the courts’ legitimacy comes from the courts themselves — and his desire to preserve the judiciary’s standing with a small circle of Washington and academic insiders.

We saw that as far back as 2012, when Roberts switched sides in the case against Obamacare at the last minute, for fear that striking down that unprecedented bill would upset the DC applecart and harm the court’s legitimacy.

Instead, it was a self-inflicted wound. Nobody respects a trimmer.

Roberts’ Obamacare decision wasn’t rooted in the Constitution, but an attempt to have it both ways, giving the Democrats enough of a victory to keep them from declaring war.

And we’ve seen that sort of thing repeatedly in the years since.

Roberts seems less concerned with preserving the court’s legitimacy in the eyes of America’s citizens, and more with the views of the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, plus some Ivy League law professors whose schools’ decaying reputations should give him pause.

But now the flurry of lower-court interference is reaching crisis proportions, says Harvard’s Vermeule and others.

The prime issue, among others, is the illegal — and yes, it was contrary to the statutes on the books — Biden administration policy to admit millions of unvetted migrants into the country, and to allow them to stay here.

The “rule of law” didn’t matter then, because the crowd to which Roberts defers was in favor of open borders and its massive influx of a low-wage, government-dependent underclass.

Biden’s border policy has never been popular with the public, but the public isn’t Roberts’ concern: When he worries about legitimacy, he’s really thinking peer opinion — the “Mean Girls” judiciary.

“People Who Bypassed Legal Process in Migrating to USA Demand Legal Process before Being Kicked Out,” as The Babylon Bee parody site put it.

This came to a head early Saturday as Roberts and six colleagues stepped in to temporarily uphold a lower-court opinion interfering with Trump’s deportations.

The Supremes acted one-sidedly and with untoward swiftness to block the president — in accordance, it seems, with Vermeule’s dictum.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Justice Samuel Alito said, in a blazing dissent:

“Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation.”

The court may make much of the “rule of law,” Alito noted — but “both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.”

The court’s irregular behavior here brings that into serious question.

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Fight with Soldiers, Not Lawyers.

When a group of German saboteurs were caught in New York and Florida in June 1942, planning to blow up hydroelectric plants and other loci of American industrial power but ratted out by two of their fellows in Operation Pastorius, President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew exactly what he was not going to do. “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis,” he told his Attorney General, Francis Biddle. “I won’t hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?” Biddle understood: this was war. There would be no civilian “due process.” They would get what was coming to them.

The men had buried their German uniforms on the beaches, and were wearing civilian clothes and carrying a lot of greenbacks when apprehended. Since they had not actually done anything, under civilian law, smart lawyers could get them off with just a couple of years in prison for violating immigration laws, spitting on the sidewalk, and picking their feet in Poughkeepsie. Further, there was a Supreme Court precedent from the Civil War era to deal with, Ex Parte Milligan (1866), in which a Confederate sympathizer and propagandist in Indiana had had his conspiracy conviction by a military tribunal overturned on the grounds that federal courts were still operating at the time of his arrest, and that’s where he should have been tried.

From Roosevelt’s point of view, however, habeas was a luxury the country couldn’t afford; Lincoln had felt the same way during his time as commander-in-chief. Pearl Harbor was, after all, only six months in the rear-view mirror and while the Battle of Midway had just sent the Japanese carrier fleet to the bottom, the Brits had gone tits up at Dunkirk in May 1940 and the Soviets were continuing to reel from Operation Barbarossa, which launched in June 1941. Shortly after the capture of the Germans, FDR issued Executive Proclamation 2561, which created a military tribunal to try their cases. They were thus charged not under civil law but American laws of war dating back to 1775 — the ones that allowed combatants to summarily execute spies and saboteurs. (During the Revolution, both the American  Nathan Hale and the British Major John André were hanged as spies.)

Instead, the operatives were given a military tribunal, convicted, and six of the eight (all had lived in the U.S. and two were American citizens) were sent to the electric chair in August; the two informers were given life or extended sentences in exchange for divulging the plot. Because in those days the Supreme Court actually did read the election returns, Roosevelt’s solution had been pre-emptively sanctioned by the Court in Ex Parte Quirin (July 1942):

In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Harlan Fisk Stone, the Court concluded that the conspirators, as spies without uniform whose purpose was sabotage, violated the law of war and were therefore unlawful enemy combatants. Noting that Congress had, under the Articles of War, authorized trial by military commission for unlawful enemy combatants, the Court therefore determined that the President had not exceeded his power. Furthermore, the Court asserted that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments “did not enlarge the right to jury trial” beyond those cases where it was understood by the framers to have been appropriate.

What a difference fourscore and three years make. Although the Islamic ummah declared war on the United States of America in 1998, and although President Trump has designated Mexican and South American narco gangs such as Tren de Aragua as terrorists under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an appalling number of American lawyers — including some ostensibly on the right — appear not to have gotten the message, and have dragged him into federal court over and over again over the phantom issue of alien “rights.” Most recently, the Supreme Court under the wretched John Roberts, ignored its own precious precedents and issued a midnight order temporarily blocking Trump from deporting criminal aliens slated for deportation until further notice while “due process” continues duly.

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Worth v. Jacobson: FPC 2A Challenge to MN Carry Ban on 18-20 Year Old Adults

Summary: Federal Second Amendment constitutional challenge to Minnesota’s ban on the right to bear arms as to young adults.

Plaintiffs: Kristin Worth, Austin Dye, Axel Anderson, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition

Defendants: Minnesota Commissioner of Public Safety Bob Jacobson, Mille Lacs County Sheriff Don Lorge, Douglas County Sheriff Troy Wolbersen, and Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry

Litigation Counsel: Blair Nelson, David Thompson, Peter Patterson, and William Bergstrom

Docket: D. MN case no. 0:21-cv-01348, Eighth Circuit case no. 23-2248, Supreme Court case no. 24-782 | CourtListener Docket

Key Events & Filings:

Supreme Court
2025-4-21: Petition DENIED.
2025-3-26: DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 4/17/2025.
2025-3-24: Reply Brief for the Petitioner
2025-3-10: Brief in Response
2025-1-17: Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

The Supreme Court has denied Minnesota’s cert petition in our lawsuit challenging the state’s age-based carry ban, which means our win will stay in place:

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Kostas Moros:
At this point, the weirdest result would be a denial/dissent. Why did it take 11+ relists? Why hold OST in its interlocutory posture just for a dissent in Snope? Doesnt mean it wont happen though.

First Circuit Upholds Massachusetts ‘Assault Weapon,’ Magazine Bans

he Bay State’s ban on the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines does not run afoul of the Second Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

A three-judge panel for the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction against Massachusetts’ ban on the sale of “assault weapons,” such as the popular AR-15, and ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. It determined that the logic of a prior ruling upholding Rhode Island’s ban on certain magazines applied to the weapons banned by Massachusetts law.

“A straightforward application of our prior holding in Ocean State Tactical supports the Commonwealth’s demonstration that the Massachusetts Ban’s AR-15 restriction ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’” Judge Gary Katzmann wrote in Capen v. Campbell. “This means that Appellants have failed to demonstrate at this stage that the Ban is unconstitutional in all its applications.”

The ruling extends the unbeaten streak for states defending hardware bans at the federal appellate level ever since the Supreme Court handed down its New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decision in 2022. It will undoubtedly add to the growing sense of frustration among gun-rights advocates who believe Supreme Court precedent forecloses sales bans on common semi-automatic firearms and the magazines that come standard with them.

The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), the plaintiff in this case, did not respond to a request for comment. The group sued over Massachusetts’ bans in 2022, shortly after the High Court handed down the Bruen decision. They were first upheld by US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in December 2023 after Saylor ruled that the banned items fit within the country’s historical tradition of regulating “dangerous and unusual” weapons.

Between that ruling and Thursday’s update on appeal, the First Circuit issued a separate opinion upholding Rhode Island’s nearly identical ban on ammunition magazines in March of 2024.

“The justification for the law is a public safety concern comparable to the concerns justifying the historical regulation of gunpowder storage and of weapons like sawed-off shotguns, Bowie knives, M-16s and the like,” Judge William Kayatta wrote in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island. “The analogical ‘how’ and ‘why’ inquiry that Bruen calls for therefore strongly points in the direction of finding that Rhode Island’s LCM ban does not violate the Second Amendment.”

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Lawsuits Inbound After Colorado Governor Signs Semi-Auto Ban

After the Colorado legislature amended SB 3 to better align with Gov. Jared Polis’s point of view, there was little doubt that the gun ban bill would be signed into law once it reached his desk, and on Thursday afternoon, Polis put pen to paper and enshrined the bill into law.

The original version of the semi-auto ban was pretty simple: gas-operated semi-automatic long guns capable of accepting a detachable magazine would be prohibited for sale and manufacture in the state of Colorado, and though residents who possessed one before the law could take effect could keep theirs, it would be a criminal offense for anyone else to acquire or keep on in their home.

Polis’s wanted to see a major change to the bill; allowing AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles to stay on store shelves and giving Colorado residents the ability to purchase and possess them going forward, but only if they undergo additional training and receive a Second Amendment permission slip from their local sheriff.

Polis said the measure would help push Colorado toward its goal of becoming one of the top 10 safest states. He also advocated for the legislators to look at creating scholarship opportunities for the training, which would be run through Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and permits would be maintained by county sheriff’s offices. He said the current goal is to ensure CPW’s firearm training costs are under $200.

He also advocated for legislators to find a way to ensure prior firearm training and experience, such as peace officer or military training, to allow that training to qualify the citizens for purchase.

Colorado’s violent crime rate has soared since 2012, when the state enacted its first real gun control measures, including a ban on “high capacity” magazines. Polis is deluding himself if he believes that SB 3 is going to make the state a safer place. Any criminal who wants to obtain a firearm for illicit or evil purposes can either steal one, go through the state-mandated training and be approved for purchase, or simply head out of state and buy a rifle or shotgun there.

It will be lawful residents who feel the brunt of SB 3s impact, with Polis essentially admitting that the permit-to-purchase process will add hundreds of dollars to the price of a modern sporting rifle. Firearm retailers will feel the pinch as well, since many Coloradans who want to purchase one of these guns will likely head to FFLs across the border in states like Wyoming and Kansas to do so.

Immediately following the signing on Thursday afternoon, the Colorado State Shooting Association, which is the official state association of the National Rifle Association, said it would be filing a lawsuit against the new law.

“This legislation, which imposes unprecedented restrictions on the purchase of semi-automatic firearms through a burdensome permit-to-purchase scheme, represents a direct assault on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Coloradans,” CSSA said in a release.

The group has contended that the measure will create a “de facto gun registry” that is maintained by state or local authorities. CSSA also noted that it had presented a petition with over 40,000 signatures urging Polis to veto the bill.

The NRA also vocalized its opposition to the bill.

“Behind closed doors, Governor Polis cowardly signed into law the most anti-gun, anti-freedom bill in Colorado’s history. Instead of respecting the individual liberties of gun owners and hunters in his state, he bent the knee to the radical gun control element of his party,” the NRA said in a release. “In Jared’s Colorado, you need a ‘Polis Permission Slip’ to exercise your constitutional rights. If this proposal was popular with his citizens, it would not need to be enacted in secret.”

The preparation for the inevitable lawsuits has already begun, but don’t be surprised if nothing is filed immediately. The law won’t take effect until August 1, 2026, and any litigation filed now might be dismissed because the issue isn’t ripe for court review.

That extended deadline also gives Coloradans more than a year to continue to purchase the most commonly sold and popular rifles in the country, and in the short term, Polis’s ban is likely to lead to a spike in sales for the rifles and shotguns he and gun control activists want to restrict.

For, in principle, there is no difference between a law prohibiting the wearing of concealed arms, and a law forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the former be unconstitutional, the latter must be so likewise. But it should not be forgotten, that it is not only a part of the right that is secured by the constitution; it is the right entire and complete, as it existed at the adoption of the constitution; and if any portion of that right be impaired, immaterial how small the part may be, and immaterial the order of time at which it be done, it is equally forbidden by the constitution.
[Bliss vs. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. (2 Litt.) 90, at 92, and 93, 13 Am. Dec. 251 (1822)]

Supreme Court Should Resolve Proximate Cause in S&W v. Mexico

Illinois court shows need to lay the issue to rest.

As I posted here, the March 4 oral argument in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos appeared to go well for S&W and not well for Mexico.  Mexico’s lawsuit seeks to hold America’s federally-licensed firearm industry responsible for the cartel violence that plagues Mexico.  The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) prohibits lawsuits against the gun industry for crimes committed by third parties.

PLCAA does allow an action in which [1] a manufacturer or seller “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and [2] the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.”  It was suggested in oral argument that Mexico’s aiding and abetting theory did not meet element [1], rendering it unnecessary to resolve [2].  Yet leaving the latter, the proximate-cause issue, in limbo will result in continuing legal uncertainty and ongoing attacks on the industry facilitated by courts that are allowing the most extreme theories of proximate cause in which remoteness is disregarded.

The latest example is the denial by Judge Jorge L. Ortiz of the motion to dismiss in Kelly Roberts v. Smith and Wesson Brands, Circuit Court 19th Judicial District, Lake County, Ill. (April 1, 2025).  In 2022, Robert Crimo III murdered seven people and injured dozens more with an S&W rifle in Highland Park, Illinois.  He has pleaded guilty and faces life in prison.  His father pleaded guilty to reckless conduct for helping his son obtain the rifle while knowing of his mental health issues.

The lawsuit against manufacturer S&W, the distributor, and the retailer that sold the rifle is exactly the kind of case PLCAA was enacted to prevent.  The Roberts plaintiffs alleged that S&W advertisements intentionally promote militaristic misuse of firearms, especially among young people.  (Of course they don’t.)  S&W responded that “the claimed harm is the aggregate result of numerous intervening (including criminal) acts by third parties not under Smith & Wesson’s control,” and that “Plaintiffs fail to allege, as they must, that they even saw the Smith & Wesson advertisements they complain of, let alone that they were deceived by them.”

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Just to make it clear, ever since 1570 when the Regent of Scotland, James Stewart Earl of Moray, was assassinated by a man using a rifle, those in political power have been scared to death of the idea that the mere lowly peasantry could possess the very thing to simply take care of a government they saw as not ruling in their best interest, and one decide to do just that.

This Supreme Court Is Woefully Weak On The Second Amendment

When firearms are involved, originalism is ignored and basic principles of statutory interpretation are overlooked.

The Supreme Court just issued a decision allowing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to rewrite the nation’s gun laws. It appears that the seven justices have contracted a bad case of “Gun Derangement Syndrome,” or GDS — a serious infection that afflicts many on the federal bench.

The symptoms are this: when firearms are involved, the judicial rulebook goes out the window. Originalism is ignored, basic principles of statutory interpretation overlooked, and new rules of law invented. What’s left is nothing that passes for reasoned decision-making; it’s the implementation of judges’ personal policy predilections.

Until recently, the Supreme Court seemed immune to this illness. After nearly all federal circuits mused that the Second Amendment did not so much as protect an individual right to bear arms, District of Columbia v. Heller set the record straight. And after lower courts devised “judge-empowering interest-balancing tests” to circumvent Heller, The New York State Bar Association v. Bruen course-corrected.

But recently, cracks have begun to show. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in United States v. Rahimi, for example, arguably waters down Bruen’s rigorous requirement that governments must justify firearms laws with historical analogues — directing courts merely to follow the “principles that underpin the Nation’s regulatory tradition,” whatever that means. So wishy-washy was the Rahimi opinion that Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a concurrence to remind everyone that Bruen is still good law.

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 Would The Violent Left Try to Influence the Supreme Court if it Takes the Maryland ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Case?

I haven’t wanted to be so grim and say it out loud, but the results of this survey raises another separate reason I’ve been hoping Snope, the Maryland “assault weapons” ban case the Supreme Court is thinking about taking, is a per curiam decision despite the long odds of that happening.

If SCOTUS grants cert, I deeply fear unhinged anti-gunners will commit mass shootings to try and sway the Court in the months between a grant and a ruling.

This isn’t a farfetched fear. We’ve already had at least two high profile mass shooters say in their manifestos they were motivated in part by wanting to advance gun control.

In an environment where some of the left seems to be embracing political violence, committing terrible crimes to influence a Court ruling wouldn’t be all that surprising. Better to decide Snope instantly on a per curiam and deny them that motivation. And it should be decided per curiam anyway, given Heller should have settled any hardware issues as to commonly used arms.

While Judge Kozinski had a personally problematic career on the bench, he was a pro-RKBA jurist, holding his own alongside Justice Thomas in his jurisprudence. It may be hoped that some of this judicial view has rubbed off onto the Secretary

Judge Kozinski’s dissent in Silveira v. Lockyer:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths.

When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases–or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text.

But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as spring-boards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us.

As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny.

If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms.

Indeed, to conclude otherwise, they had to ignore binding precedent. United States v. Miller (1939) did not hold that the defendants lacked standing to raise a Second Amendment defense, even though the government argued the collective rights theory in its brief.

The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller’s weapon–a sawed-off shotgun–was reasonably susceptible to militia use. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale.

If Miller’s claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller’s test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

The majority falls prey to the delusion–popular in some circles–that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll.

But the simple truth–born of experience–is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks’ homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process. In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence.

As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist. See Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857) (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went”). A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history–Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few–were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations.

Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here.

If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed–where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel’s mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:

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 sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion–the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text–refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say.

The panel’s labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it–and is just as likely to succeed.