Category: Rights
Machine Guns and Bootleggers | Rightly Decided
The litigators from TPPF’s Center for the American Future begin by breaking down a major Fifth Circuit victory that struck down an 1869 federal ban on home distilling of spirits. They analyze the McNutt and Hobby Distillers Association v. U.S. Department of Justice case, dissecting standing doctrine, the limits of the taxing power, and the Necessary and Proper Clause’s role in preserving federalism.
They also highlight their litigation targeting the Hughes Amendment’s ban on post-1986 machine guns (Temple Gun Club v. Blanche), and the FinCEN case (Corley v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury) involving Treasury rules on residential real estate transfers.
Panic Setting In As Administration Moves to Bolster Americans’ Gun Rights Advance.
In the last 17 months, the Trump administration has delivered win after win for the nation’s most ardent gun-rights advocacy groups, chipping away at dozens of federal regulations. While many of these efforts target regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — the law enforcement agency within the Justice Department tasked with regulating the nation’s millions of firearms — the administration’s work stretches across the executive branch.
Supporters of tighter gun restrictions have pilloried the Trump administration, saying officials are acting recklessly and could endanger the public with a wholesale rollback of regulations. But gun rights advocates who portrayed the Biden administration as trampling on the Second Amendment have praised the current administration’s actions as a needed corrective.
Trump vowed on the campaign trail to be a pro-Second Amendment president and pledged that, under his leadership, “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.” He said he would roll back Biden-era ATF regulations and received the backing of the big gun rights groups.
Critics, however, have said that the Trump’s administration’s push to unwind gun regulations contradicts the president’s tough-on-crime political agenda. And, they say, the efforts could make it easier for potentially dangerous people to access firearms. …
[ATF general counsel Robert] Leider has been working on the regulations for more than a year. The plan had been to announce them July 4, 2025, at an Independence Day celebration, The Post previously reported.
But [Acting Attorney General Todd] Blanche has said the proposed changes took longer than expected to complete because lawyers had to scrupulously review them to ensure they passed legal muster. Justice Department officials expect them to face court challenges.
Because the Trump administration is making these changes through the regulatory process — and not by legislation passed in Congress and signed into law — the next administration could reinstate the scrapped rules. The goal, Justice Department officials said, is to ensure that the regulations do not run afoul of laws so that they can remain intact.
“We were very careful on how we did the rules,” Leider said. “Congress has decided that certain people cannot be trusted with firearms. ATF has to enforce those congressional judgments. It is not the agency’s job to amend Congress’s criteria in an effort to predict who will become violent.”
— Perry Stein in Inside the Trump administration’s rapid rollback of gun regulations
On Building Guns, Difficulty or Ease is Irrelevant, Only Our Rights Matter
There’s been a push this year, especially, to try and step in the way of people who want to use a 3D printer to make their own firearms. Some states have banned so-called ghost guns entirely, but others are also trying to tell printer manufacturers that they can’t sell their products in those states unless they include software in the printers that bars it from making certain shaped parts entirely.
And, there’s a problem with that. Being able to make your own firearm is something Americans have been able to do since well before the Boston Massacre. It’s something we continued to be able to do until very recently. It wasn’t until a politician stood up before the press, panicking because “ghost guns” were a thing, and we just couldn’t have that.
A recent story I came across that was looking at the state-level restrictions on printers, though, started off by really kind of highlighting what the issue really does seem to boil down to.
For decades, making an untraceable firearm required specialized tools, technical expertise and hours of work.
Today, it can start with a downloaded file and a consumer-grade 3D printer.
As advances in additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, make it easier to produce firearms at home, lawmakers in a growing number of states are pursuing new restrictions specifically for 3D-printed guns. That rapidly evolving category of weapons can be manufactured from digital blueprints and often lack serial numbers used by law enforcement to trace firearms.
The implication here is clear: these guns are way too easy to make for them to be permitted.
First, let’s understand something. Nearly a decade ago, I wrote about P.A. Luty and his wonderful little book that took fairly common tools and hardware store parts to build a submachine gun. It never required specialized tools or particular expertise. Hell, making an “untraceable” gun was as simple as scratching out the serial number, if we’re being honest.
Still, let’s also understand something else. At no point in time did the ease or difficulty in building a gun have any bearing at all on whether someone has the right to build a gun on their own.
As noted already, we had this right and the legal ability to exercise it for centuries. Many of the guns on Revolutionary War battlefields two and a half centuries ago were made in someone’s home workshop. They bought parts from gunsmiths, the ones they couldn’t replicate, then did much of the other work themselves to build rifles that were not just functional, but some are works of art.
While the skills to do so might not be as common today as they were then, it wasn’t considered some esoteric skillset, either. Many farmers and others in rural communities know how to work the wood, do some metalworking, and build themselves a functional gun with a few parts from the big city.
Over time, things get easier. At the time of the nation’s founding, farming was a small operation. Farms didn’t tend to have more cultivated land than the farmer and his family and/or farmhands could work. Weavers used small looms and made cloth by hand. Blacksmiths made tools and hardware like nails one piece at a time, taking up valuable time to produce products. Gunsmiths had to do much of the work for a single firearm one piece at a time, as well.
When the Industrial Revolution came about, it changed all of that. Suddenly, nails could be made in massive lots. Cloth could be woven by the mile. Farms saw mechanization that allowed a single farmer to handle much more acreage than he could have dreamed before. Things got easier.
The 3D printer has taken the concept of an individual being able to make his own firearm and, like the advancements of years gone by, made it easier for everyday people to take advantage of something that was always legal for them to do, and that is what really bothers the anti-gunners.
On the same token, though, that shouldn’t matter.
Do we suddenly decide that free speech is irrelevant now that we can easily communicate with millions with a few strokes on a keyboard? Does freedom of the press stop working because someone can create a blog or Substack at home in their underwear and become a journalist? Obviously not, and in that same spirit, the difficulty or ease of making a gun isn’t relevant, either.
And considering how few are used in crimes even today, that there’s no evidence that they increase crime, and that the Founding Fathers thought nothing at all negative about people making firearms for themselves, it’s well past time for these states to step the hell off and accept that our rights don’t stop existing just because they don’t like them.
At the end of the day, our rights are what they are. It’s up to states like California to learn to accept this as fact and move on.
Bruen’s Text-and-History Test Spreads Beyond the Second Amendment
“The U.S. Court of Appeals just took the Heller and Bruen playbook — founding-era text, founding era dictionaries, founding era silence — and ran it through a First Amendment case. Every yard they gained for the Establishment Clause is a yard also banked for the Second Amendment.”
– Professor Mark W. Smith, Four Boxes Diner
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has handed down an en banc decision in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, No. 25-50695 (5th Cir. Apr. 21, 2026), upholding a Texas law requiring public-school classrooms to display a poster of the Ten Commandments. The 9–8 majority, written by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, held that the Texas law does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. That alone is a big deal. But more importantly for Second Amendment supporters, the en banc court embraced the “text and history” methodology used by the Supreme Court in its Second Amendment decisions.
New Jersey’s Demand for Gun Store Sales Records is an Unconstitutional Attack on Gun Owner Privacy
The Attorney General of New Jersey has sent subpoenas to gun dealers in the state demanding production of customer records regarding sales of Glock pistols to New Jersey residents for the last ten years. The subpoenas are in connection to its lawsuit against Glock, Inc. under the state’s public nuisance law.
(NOTE: The claims in the state’s frivolous lawfare against Glock are not relevant to this particular article. But for context, the state is claiming the over 40-year-old design of the gun is too easy to illegally convert into a machine gun. Other states have filed similar lawsuits, and some like California have now banned the sale of Glocks, which are the most popular handguns in the country. These efforts are a way to coverup the failures of leadership in antigun states.) It is not immediately clear why New Jersey needs these records, given the state already maintains a de facto registry for handguns through its pistol permitting system. It could be that the Attorney General wants to make these records public, as under New Jersey law and in a small nod towards respecting privacy, firearm registration records are exempt from public disclosure under the state’s laws.
Regardless of the reasoning for the subpoenas, they are an unconstitutional attack on gun owner privacy. This article takes a brief look at this emerging issue in Second Amendment law to show why New Jersey’s actions are unconstitutional. It is adapted from prior amicus briefing the Second Amendment foundation has done on this issue.
Privacy in Firearms Ownership Has Always Been a Fundamental Component of the Second Amendment Right
Big Win in Pennsylvania on Fourth Amendment Violation
Without the Second Amendment, the rest are vulnerable. Even with it, rights are usurped all the time. A recent Fourth Amendment win pulls into focus just how fragile everything is.
It’s a slippery slope when rights start to get violated. Especially when it comes to our protections of having our persons and papers secured, right to not self-incriminate, and right to an attorney. It’s a simple formula to follow and remember when dealing with the authorities: “I want to invoke my Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights.” Or in other words: you can’t look/come in here, I’m telling you nothing, and I want my lawyer. But what happens when a governmental body creates a law that violates those protections from warrantless and suspicion-less searches?
Pennsylvania attorney Josh Prince with the Civil Rights Defense Firm, P.C. had a client in this very circumstance. According to a post on Prince’s website, “Bristol Borough enacted an ordinance permitting their enforcement officers/inspectors, on a biennial basis, to inspect – absent any form of warrant or any form of suspicion of wrongdoing – any building, and the apartments within, where the apartments are rented or leased out.”
When Prince’s client refused the Borough to gain entry to his property, “the Borough sent a letter to … (him), expecting him to capitulate, and threatening fines for non-compliance. …” The penalties that Prince’s client was facing included a fine up to $1,000.00 per day as well as potential incarceration.
“(Prince) attempted to amicably resolve the matter, by the Borough agreeing not to enforce the unconstitutional ordinance against his clients, the Borough’s attorney responded back that the only amicable resolution would be for Josh’s clients to comply with the Borough’s ordinances,” Prince’s post noted.
After filing for an emergency injunction in Katz, et al. v. Bristol Borough, et al., Katz was granted some of the relief he sought. Prince obtained “an emergency, ex-parte preliminary injunction, precluding enforcement of Bristol Borough’s warrantless and suspicion-less searches of his clients’ buildings and apartments” and a future hearing was scheduled for a permanent injunction.
One hiccup Prince noted about the proceedings was the bond that his client was required to post. It was said that the judge ordered a $5,000.00 bond to be posted. While it might be customary to ask for someone similarly situated to post bond, Prince said that usually would run from anywhere between $1.00 and $100.00 — not $5,000.00. He’s hopeful that the court will not hold onto the bond for long.
The fact that Prince was able to secure the injunction as swiftly as he did may point at how the court views the merits of the case. “Because emergency injunctions are issued ex-parte (i.e. without the other side being heard), they are virtually unheard of, except in dire circumstances, where a clear violation of the law or constitution will occur, absent immediate court action,” Prince’s post explains.
When it comes to constitutional rights and liberties, they’re all closely connected. What of the Second Amendment right if one is having their Fourth usurped? Once one thread begins to unravel or break, it won’t be long until all is lost. Kudos to Prince on this monumental win.
Virginia Illustrates Insidious Anti-Gun Threat
I’ve joked before that Virginia’s politics swing back and forth like an unlatched screen door in a hurricane. From red to blue to red to blue, all so fast it makes your head spin.
But last year’s elections opened the door for a lot of troubling things in Virginia, up to and including their redistricting plan that seeks to essentially wipe out Republican representation from the state, and with it, support for gun rights. Sure, there’s one district, but only because there was no way to gerrymander the state badly enough to make it solid blue.
However, Virginia reveals an insidious threat because the state is too purple to suddenly swing this far left.
Progressive groups are behind a wave of tougher restrictions on firearms, wielding a quiet power that Second Amendment proponents worry could unravel gun rights in friendly territory.
Earlier this month, Virginia lawmakers sent a spate of gun bills tightening firearms restrictions to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-VA) desk. It’s a development fueled by Moms Demand Action, and one that one of the country’s most prominent pro-gun rights organizations fears foreshadows things to come in other purple states.
“Virginia is a purple state, and so having this sweeping, massive gun control package in the state that’s got a lot of gun owners, to see that happen and happen so rapidly should really be alarming to everybody in this country,” National Rifle Association’s Director of Public Affairs, Justin Davis, told the Washington Examiner.
“It’s really just a blueprint of what’s to come in this country. This is a trial balloon for the midterm elections,” he said. “They’re seeing what they can pass in a purple state? What is the backlash from that? And how do people react?”…
Davis said many such state races can be “so easily” flipped with small “injections“ of cash. Due to progressive activism, every state is “ripe for flipping at any time,” he said.
“To think that the stuff they’re pushing here is happening in Virginia should wake up every single purple state in the country, any place that is, it was in the realm of what a ‘moderate state’ is that there’s a very well-trained, very concerted effort to get progressives elected positions,” Davis said. “There are people who literally look at these races, race by race, and say, ‘How do we make sure that we can flip this for a broader scale, to flip this state to pass these same leftist laws?’”
Groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety are specifically named for injecting a significant amount of cash into the race, and the truth of the matter is that these groups will run ads that feature policies other than gun control, usually pretty progressive ones.
So what happens is that for a few million dollars, they can push a candidate who might not appear all that bad in the grand scheme of things–remember, Spanberger tried to position herself as a moderate, and a lot of people listened–only to take office and start trying to run the table with things like gun control.
Virginia is a purple state, but the current agenda in Richmond looks like something you’d expect in California.
No, it doesn’t help that Virginia governors can only serve a single term at a time, thus meaning they never have to worry about re-election. That means they can trot out their agenda on day one, and other than the midterms, there’s nothing stopping them from going as far left or right as they’d like. In this case, it means trotting out the most ridiculous anti-gun agenda you’re ever going to see in any part of the South.
This is something we need to be on guard against and work to counter if we don’t want to see our rights destroyed at the state level.
What Are Automated License Plate Readers and Why Are People Worried? ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that automatically track specific cars, and there’s growing backlash against them.
- Automated License Plate Readers, known as LPRs, are a growing technology used in thousands of communities around the country, though backlash against them is growing.
- ALPRs are AI-powered cameras used to automatically track specific cars using identifiers like plate numbers, bumper stickers, roof racks, and more.
- Flock Safety, which is perhaps the most prominent player in the space, has been under considerable pressure over data-sharing concerns.
If you’ve noticed a growing number of little black traffic cameras in your area and wondered what the deal was, we’re here to explain what they are and why they’ve become so contentious. The cameras themselves are known as Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs. While there are several ALPR vendors, the most prominent by far is Flock Safety, which sells to more than 5000 law enforcement agencies and more than 1000 private companies, such as HOAs.
License plate readers themselves are nothing new; law enforcement agencies have used them for years, but the more recent emergence of AI-powered cameras is an escalation. That’s because, along with reading license plate numbers, Flock’s cameras record identifiers such as the make, model, and color of every car they see. The cameras can also use things such as a roof rack, bumper stickers, or prominent dents to identify unique vehicles.
While that incredible surveillance power may be enticing to some (namely, law enforcement agencies), pushback from communities concerned about a growing surveillance state is equally passionate. Flock Safety reports that its cameras are used in thousands of towns and cities, but in recent months, there has been significant pushback from communities concerned over privacy infringements and how the ALPRs are being used in connection with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests.
An NPR story from February detailed how easy it can be for data collected by Flock to be widely shared. Flock maintains that cities control their sharing settings. “Each Flock customer has sole authority over if, when, and with whom information is shared,” the company told NPR. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in reality, with leaders from several cities citing data sharing as a reason for reducing or ending partnerships with Flock.
According to a recent article in the Financial Times, 53 cities in 20 states have either deactivated Flock cameras or rejected bids to use them. The pushback from local authorities is rising, with 38 of those rejections occurring in the past six months.
Despite the pushback from communities, law enforcement agencies have defended Flock. According to the FT, one police department in Texas searched for data from more than 103,000 devices in Flock’s network as part of a homicide investigation. “We’ve been able to solve hundreds, if not thousands, of crimes that otherwise would remain unsolved if it wasn’t for the LPR technology,” a former police chief in Georgia told the outlet.
The FT article points out that privacy activists contest that claim, arguing that there is no independent research proving ALPRs can reduce crime.
California’s Anti-Gun AG Wants to Dictate Law to Rest of Nation
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is a piece of work. We thought Kamala Harris was bad in that role, but the truth is that Harris was always going to be held back by her inability to form actual sentences.
Bonta, though, can. Unfortunately, he uses those actual sentences to repeatedly attack the rights of law-abiding Americans.
His latest target, though, isn’t someone within his own state. He’s going after people who engage in perfectly legal activity elsewhere, all because some Californians break the law.
A lawsuit filed by Calif. Att. Gen. Rob Bonta and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu is targeting the Gatalog Foundation Inc. and CTRLPEW LLC.
California claims that Gatalog and CTRLPEW are providing prohibited persons with plans to make “ghost guns” (3D printed firearms without serial numbers).
Matthew Larosiere, who is an attorney in Florida and is loosely connected to hobby gunsmiths via Gatalog, is one of the people California is suing. He explains in this video interview that what they call “Gatalog” is just hobbyists who found each other on the internet. They are not selling guns. They are talking about and toying with concepts for guns digitally.
“If California can regulate access to the instructions,” said Larosiere. “Not just by California, but with this lawsuit, [then] what they’re saying is they want to regulate the entire internet worldwide. That would mean that you’d be cut off at the heels from making a gun at home. And I think most of us can agree that if you have a right to keep and bear something, it necessarily subsumes the right to acquire it.”
When asked about Gatalog, Larosiere explained that it is not a group “like the NRA. There’s no member that has a card; there’s no board of directors; there’s no nothing. It’s kind of just a group of hobbyists associating around an idea. And the idea is home gunsmithing.”
In other words, Bonta wants to shut down access to this information, not just for people in California, but throughout the nation. If we can’t share the information freely, then it might as well not exist from a lawful perspective.
But it should be remembered that files are just computer code, and computer code has long been ruled as a form of speech.
As I wrote about on Wednesday, we don’t stifle access to The Anarchist Cookbook or P.A. Luty’s book on making your own submachine gun with things you can get from Home Depot. Those books contain information every bit as deadly as what one might find in 3D printing files, if not more so, and yet, as books, you cannot lawfully ban them.
Bonta is taking it a step further, though, by attacking everyone who he can who shares this information via the internet.
He’s trying to use his authority as the attorney general of California to dictate to the rest of the nation what it can and cannot do with regard to 3D printing guns.
As it is, California has a long history of trying to dictate to the country what it should and shouldn’t do. They create standards that industries are obliged to follow, even if the rest of us want nothing to do with them, and we’ve accepted it because the companies are the ones making the decision to use those standards throughout the nation.
We don’t want it, but it’s easier for them.
This is different. This is them attacking our rights because they don’t want the American people to be able to do something they’ve already forbidden the small percentage of the population living there from doing.
If ever there were an example of statehood being a mistake…
SAF, FPC, NRA Jump Into Case In Which Court Ordered SIG To Divulge Customer Names
Two large gun-rights groups are siding with gunmaker Sig Sauer in a court case in which plaintiffs seek to force disclosure of gun owners’ identities without their consent.
On February 17, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and National Rifle Association (NRA) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in support of defendant SIG SAUER’s motion for reconsideration in the case Hall v. Sig Sauer, Inc.
At issue is the court ordering Sig to divulge the identities of some of its customers to the plaintiffs in the case as part of the discovery process. The brief seeks reconsideration of that order, which FPC and NRA deem inappropriate.
Florida… Where Non-Dangerous Felons Really Can Recover Their Gun Rights.
Christopher Morgan was convicted in Pennsylvania in 2007 after he was caught carrying a firearm without a state license. Fifteen years later, he was stopped by a Florida officer, whom he told of a pistol in the center console of his car. Morgan was charged in Florida with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He has no other criminal history.
Before his trial in Florida, Morgan’s defense team made a motion that the state firearm law, 790.23, is “unconstitutional both facially and as applied to him.” However, the trial court denied his motion. Morgan then pleaded no contest to the felon in possession Florida charges but appealed his conviction. He was sentenced to two days in jail and court costs.
Last week, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a response to Morgan’s appeal, which said that his conviction for possessing a firearm by a felon violates the Second Amendment.
AG Uthmeier actually agreed with Morgan’s legal team.
“On studied reflection, the Attorney General has concluded that the conviction does indeed infringe Morgan’s right, as a nondangerous felon, to keep and bear arms,” Uthmeier wrote. “The state must therefore confess error and urge this Court to reverse.”
In the court document, Uthmeier spells out that he is Florida’s “Chief Legal Officer,” and that he swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.
“It is thus the Attorney General’s duty to admit when he believes the State has obtained a conviction in violation of the Constitution,” he wrote.
If the court permits him to file a brief for this case, Uthmeier’s team wrote, he will “discuss the lack of historical evidence supporting the dispossession of all felons as distinct from the strong historical evidence supporting the dispossession of dangerous felons.”
Missouri Senator Introduces Second Amendment Financial Privacy Measure
A measure introduced in the Missouri state Senate on February 9 is designed to protect the privacy of lawful gun owners and gun purchasers in the Show Me State.
Senate Bill 216, the “Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act,” was introduced by Republican state Sen. Jill Carter and presented in the Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee. The measure would prohibit government entities from keeping a list, record or registry of privately-owned firearms.
Records may be maintained during a criminal investigation and prosecution of gun ownership. It also bans credit card networks from using a merchant category code (MCC) to differentiate firearm sales from other transactions.
At issue is a relatively new MCC for gun purchases adopted by the International Organization for Standardization in early 2023. MCCs are used by payment processors (like Visa and Mastercard) and other financial services companies to categorize transactions. Prior to the creation of the specific gun code, firearms retailers were classified under the MCC as sporting goods stores or miscellaneous retail.
When the new code is used, credit card companies and other payment processors can tell that the purchases were firearms, creating a de facto gun registry. The U.S. Senate is currently considering a measure that would ban use of the gun-specific MCC nationwide.
VA undoes decades-old wrong and protects Veterans’ Second Amendment rights
February 17, 2026
WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced a major new step to protect Veterans’ Second Amendment rights. Effective immediately, VA will not report Veterans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System as “prohibited persons” only because they need help from a fiduciary in managing their VA benefits.
This corrects a three-decade-old wrong that deprived many thousands of Veterans in VA’s Fiduciary Program of their constitutional right to own a firearm without a legal basis.
After a thorough review, VA recognized that many Veterans had been deprived of their Second Amendment rights without hearings or adequate determinations that they posed a sufficient risk of danger to themselves or others. In consultation with the Department of Justice, VA has determined this practice violates both the Gun Control Act and Veterans’ Second Amendment rights. According to federal law, a decision by a judicial or quasi-judicial body is needed before someone can be reported to NICS.
A determination by the VA that a fiduciary is needed to help manage a Veteran’s VA benefits falls far short of this legal standard.
In addition to immediately stopping the reporting of VA Fiduciary Program participants to NICS, the department is working with the FBI to remove all past VA reporting from NICS, so no Veterans are unfairly deprived of their Second Amendment rights based solely on participation in VA’s Fiduciary Program.
“Many Americans struggle with managing their finances, and Veterans’ Second Amendment rights shouldn’t be stripped just because they need help in this area. But for too long, Veterans who needed the services of a VA fiduciary were deprived of their right to bear arms,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “Under the leadership of President Trump, we’re correcting this injustice and ensuring Veterans get the same due-process and constitutional rights as all Americans.”
The Department of Justice supports this action.
“It is both unlawful and unacceptable for Veterans who serve our country to have their constitutional rights threatened,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “It has been my pleasure to partner with Secretary Collins on this project, and I am directing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to review its regulations and propose changes that will prevent current and future violations of our Veterans’ Second Amendment rights.”
Indianapolis Police Get It Right on First, Second Amendments
I’ve never been one to make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day, but I can think of about a million things more romantic than going out and protesting ICE with my sweetheart. I can’t imagine that an anti-ICE protest in downtown Indianapolis on Valentine’s Day is going to draw a huge crowd, but its organizers are hoping for a big turnout, include armed demonstrators.
If anyone is hoping that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will be cracking skulls and arresting those who dare exercise their First and Second Amendment rights at the same time, they’re going to be sorely disappointed.
A group called Strong Neighbor is hosting the protest at the Abraham Lincoln statue in University Park, at least partly in response to the comments by President Donald Trump and other administration officials suggesting there’s no such thing as peaceably carrying a gun at a protest after the killing of anti-ICE activist Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month.
Strong Neighbor calls those statements “an attack and dismissal of our constitutional rights,” though the group’s broader disagreement seems to be with the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. The following Monday, for instance, the group will be taking part in a “Gen Z Against ICE” protest. For those not interested in protesting, though, next weekend they’ll be hosting a “Potting Party” where attendees can “plant seeds you can take home, learn about hydroponics, and build community”. No word on whether lawfully possessed firearms will be welcome at either of those events.
In response to the planned protest, the IMPD put out a statement making it clear that there’s no conflict between the First and Second Amendment, at least from the agency’s perspective and that of state and federal law.
The presence of guns at a protest is both not a crime nor a reason for law to intervene, an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department statement said.
Our team recognizes that the visible presence of firearms can make some community members uncomfortable or concerned,” the statement reads. “The IMPD recognizes and respects the constitutional rights of all members of the community to peacefully assemble and exercise free speech.”
That’s all that needs to be said, really. And so long as the “strong neighbors” who show up for the protest aren’t violent, I wish them well.
If, on the other hand, there are protesters who cross the line, as we’ve seen at another anti-ICE protest in Indiana, I suspect the IMPD is going to quickly move to take that individual into custody. Just pointing a gun at someone who’s not threatening you is a serious offense, as Ryan D. Hughes has learned. The anti-ICE demonstrator’s been charged with a felony and a misdemeanor for allegedly pointing a loaded shotgun at the driver of a van passing by the protest, as well as purportedly pepper-spraying several of his fellow protesters.
I sincerely hope that nothing like that happens in Indianapolis tomorrow, but as we’ve seen with other protests and counter-protests about ICE, they don’t just bring out the passionate. They have a tendency to bring out the nutballs as well.
How Many Historical Gun Laws Constitute a ‘National Tradition’?
The Supreme Court has explicitly stated that, in order for a modern gun law to be constitutionally sound, it must comply with the text of the Second Amendment as well as the history and tradition of gun ownership (and gun regulation). So far, though, the Court hasn’t given a whole lot of advice as to what constitutes a national tradition.
In Bruen, SCOTUS doubted that “just three colonial regulations could suffice to show a tradition of public-carry regulation,” but declined to state definitely what would suffice; both in terms of the number of laws as well as when those laws were put into effect. Is 1791 the most important date, since that’s when the Second Amendment was ratified; is it 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified; or are both equally important?
Pete Patterson, an attorney at Cooper & Kirk with an extensive background as a Second Amendment litigator, was asked about this by SCOTUSblog’s Haley Proctor for her 2A-focused series “A Second Opinion,” and his answer worth discussing.
What does it take to make a sufficient showing of a history of firearms regulation? How many laws or practices do you need, from what historical period, and how do we describe the tradition those laws represent?
These are all issues that are hotly contested, but I will give you what I think is the view most consistent with Bruen and Supreme Court precedent generally.
First, the relevant historical period should be centered on 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. The court has held in many cases that when provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states, they have the same meaning as they have against the federal government.
It should follow that the meaning was set in 1791, when those provisions were first ratified and applied to the federal government. To be sure, those rights were not incorporated against [applied to] the states until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, but that amendment did not purport to change the substantive meaning of the Bill of Rights.
This conclusion is consistent with the court’s practices, including its holding in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that the laws of over 30 states from the second half of the 19th Century could not alone “establish an early American tradition” that would inform the meaning of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
That makes sense, both from a legal and practical standpoint. As Patterson points out, there’s nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that suggests any type of revision to the Bill of Rights. It’s purpose wasn’t to update the Bill of Rights, but to ensure that those rights were safeguarded against intrusion by state and local governments as well. And during the congressional debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms was front and center.
Second, what the government should have to establish is a limitation that was widely understood by Americans at ratification to qualify the scope of the right to keep and bear arms.
The common law frequently will be a primary resource in this inquiry, as that was law that was understood to be generally applicable. The common law is reflected in sources like case law and prominent secondary sources such as Blackstone’s Commentaries.
Of course, the focus should be on the prevailing American understanding rather than British understandings that Americans may have repudiated, so consulting American sources like Tucker’s Blackstone is an important part of the inquiry.
Statutes also play a role, of course, but the government should have to show that any statutes it relies on are consistent with the prevailing, general understanding and not a departure from it. That presumably is why Bruen repeatedly emphasizes that a handful of outlier statutes cannot establish a tradition of regulation.
I think its also important to note that the Supreme Court talked about a “national” tradition, not a state-specific or regional tradition. If three colonial-era statutes aren’t enough to suffice, then three statutes from one part of the country shouldn’t be enough either. This is particularly important when courts are considering laws adopted around the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, given that many southern states instituted laws restricting the right to keep and bear arms that might have been racially neutral on their face, but were hardly enforced in a colorblind fashion.
Patterson adds one more metric in determining a “national tradition.”
Third, the tradition should be described at a level of generality that is general enough not to make arbitrary distinctions, but specific enough not to risk eviscerating the right.
If readers are interested in the level-of-generality question, I recommend the brief my colleague John Ohlendorf filed in Wolford on behalf of professor [Joel] Alicea, which address that question at some length.
As an example of the need for the Court to address the level of generality that’s most appropriate, Ohlendorf cites the historical tradition recognized in Bruen of states prohibiting arms “in legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses.”
Lysander Spooner: The Second Amendment Isn’t the Ceiling — It’s the Basement Floor
Most “pro-2A” people treat the Second Amendment as if it were the ceiling of our rights.
Lysander Spooner read it and laughed. To him it was the basement floor of a natural right that no government on earth can legitimately restrict.
Who Was Lysander Spooner?
1808–1887. Lawyer, abolitionist, individualist anarchist. A man who made the Founders look like moderates.
Spooner in His Own Words
On the natural right to arms (completely independent of any constitution):
“The right of self-defence is the first law of nature… The right to keep and bear arms is only a declaration that this natural right shall not be infringed.”
— A Letter to Charles Sumner (1860s)
On what happens when the people are disarmed:
“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it… All restraints upon the government are inefficient, unless the people are in possession of the means of resisting it.”
— No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)
On the purpose of an armed populace:
“The right of the individual to keep and bear arms… is the great bulwark against tyranny, the only efficient security for the preservation of liberty.”
— Vices Are Not Crimes (1875, manuscript)
On the idea that citizens should be limited to “sporting” arms while government has military weapons:
“A man’s right to defend his life and liberty is as perfect against a thousand as against one… He has the same right to whatever weapons are necessary for that defense that the government has to whatever weapons it may choose to use against him.”
On every gun law ever written:
“All legislatures… that assume to enact laws forbidding or restricting the people in the exercise of their natural right to keep and bear arms, are guilty of usurpation and tyranny.”
— Direct paraphrase from multiple Spooner writings, crystallized in No Treason and his legal essays
Tucker vs. Spooner
St. George Tucker (1803):
“The several departments and officers of the governments… are bound by oath to oppose [unconstitutional acts]; for, being bound by oath to support the constitution, they must violate that oath, whenever they give their sanction… to any unconstitutional act.”
Spooner went further: the unconstitutional gun laws themselves are acts of war against the people, and armed resistance against their enforcers is morally justified.
The Spooner Standard
“If the people are to retain their liberty, they must be at least as well armed and disciplined as the government that rules over them.”
— Consistent theme across No Treason and his abolitionist writings
If you still think “reasonable regulations” are compatible with liberty, you’re closer to Everytown than you are to Lysander Spooner.
Read him.
Burn every compromise to the ground.
Own what your rulers own — in the same quantities, or more.
Because the moment you accept anything less, the experiment in liberty is already over.
Government Control in the Digital Age
John Stossel
Politicians push government IDs.
In a TSA announcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sternly warns, “You will need a REAL ID to travel by air or visit federal buildings.”
European politicians go much further, reports Stossel TV producer Kristin Tokarev. They’re pushing government-mandated digital IDs that tie your identity to nearly everything you do.
Spain’s prime minister promises “an end to anonymity” online!
Britain’s prime minister warns, “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID.”
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enthusiastically told the World Economic Forum that digital IDs are good for knowing “who actually got a vaccination or not.”
Many American tech leaders also like digital IDs. The second richest man in the world, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, says, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything.”
That’s a good thing?
“That is a recipe for disaster and totalitarianism!” says privacy specialist Naomi Brockwell. “Privacy is not about hiding. It’s about an individual’s right to decide for themselves who gets access to their data. A digital ID will strip individuals of that choice.”
“I already have a government-issued ID,” says Tokarev. “Why is a digital one worse?”
“It connects everything,” says Brockwell. “Your financial decisions, social media posts, your likes, things that you’re watching, places you’re going. You won’t be able to voice things anonymously online anymore. Everything you say will be tied back to who you are.”
Digital ID backers say the new ID will make life easier. “You can access your own money, make payments so much more easily,” says the U.K.’s prime minister.
Yes, says Brockwell, “until those services start saying, ‘No, you can’t use our system.'”
Even without a digital ID, Canada froze the bank accounts of truckers who protested COVID vaccine mandates. With a digital ID, politicians could do that much more easily.
Gun Bans Aren’t Enough for Everytown, Giffords
My colleague Tom Knighton did a great job of poking holes in Everytown’s new “study” accusing some of the biggest gun makers of intentionally arming criminals and turning a blind eye for gun trafficking, but there’s another aspect of the anti-gun group’s report that we need to talk about as well.
In addition to pointing the finger at the firearms industry, Everytown also wants politicians to crack down on tech companies; specifically, those who manufacture 3D printers.
The gun control group claims that the seizure of 3D-printed guns increased by 1,000% between 2020 and 2024, though in the 20 cities they examined that accounted for just 325 firearms seized last year. In its report on Everytown’s “study,” NPR claims that these guns “recovered at crime scenes,” though ATF trace data doesn’t distinguish between a gun that was recovered at the scene of a homicide versus a gun that was traced as a “firearm under investigation” or a “found firearm”.
Everytown also claims that “while these guns are just beginning to proliferate domestically, they have already caused harm prominently abroad, where 3D-printed firearms have been used in military conflicts in Myanmar, by crime organizations in Europe, and in a synagogue shooting in Germany.”
What Everytown doesn’t say is that the 3D-printed guns used in military conflicts in Myanmar are generally used by those resisting the military junta that seized power several years ago. I can understand why Everytown would like to ignore the fact that these guns are helping pro-democracy forces resist government tyranny, but the truth is that 3D-printed guns, like their mass-produced counterparts, are still inanimate objects that can be used for both good and evil.
Several blue states have already cracked down on home-built firearms, but those bans aren’t enough for Everytown and other gun control organizations. They want to see printer controls as well.
Gun control advocates say there are strategies to regulate the printing of these firearms. Companies that make 3D printers could develop algorithms to block the printing of firearms, for instance, or states could make it illegal to publish blueprints for 3D printing a gun.
“I think what makes sense is to explore all of (the strategies) right now, to have every approach and push it forward,” [Giffords Law Center Legal Director David] Pucino said, “because this is such a new area and it’s such a concerning threat.”
When you’re intent on shredding the Second Amendment, I suppose it’s not a big deal to infringe on our First Amendment rights as well.
Make no mistake, what Pucino is calling for is criminalizing speech. If the gun control groups had their way, we could be criminally charged and imprisoned simply for disseminating lines of code. Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice established more than twenty years ago that code is speech protected by the Second Amendment, so when Pucino says that states could make it illegal to publish codes used for 3D printing gun parts he is talking about putting people in prison for exercising their First Amendment rights.
The Anarchist’s Cookbook contains recipes for making explosives and illegal drugs, yet it remains available for sale in the United States and can be found online as well. If that is protected speech, then lines of code that can be used to help build a gun protected by the Second Amendnment clearly can’t be banned or made illegal.
Pucino might hate this fact, but home-built guns are a part of the national tradition of gun ownership in this country and are generally protected by the Second Amendment. 3D printing undoubtably makes it easier to build a gun at home, but advances in technology don’t cancel out our constitutionally protected rights.
The gun control lobby has become increasingly aggressive in its attempts to infringe on the First Amendment rights of gun owners and the firearms industry. California, for instance, passed a law that prohibited firearm advertising that “reasonably appears to be attractive” to minors that, thankfully, was struck down by the Ninth Circuit as a violation of the First Amendment. It and other blue states have also adopted public nuisance laws that allow for lawsuits against gun makers and sellers over the language and images used in their advertising.
Then there are those efforts aimed, not at government censorship of gun owners, but pressuring private businesses to prohibit peaceable assemblies of gun owners like Friends of NRA dinners. Those efforts aren’t necessarily direct attacks on our First Amendment rights, but when anti-gun politicians join in the calls to shut down these events they arguably do infringe on our right to peaceable assembly.
The push to ban code shouldn’t be seen in isolation, but as yet another front in the gun control lobby’s war on the First Amendment rights of those exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.