Category: Gun Schtuff
New CCW Report Says Decline Reflects ‘Constitutional Carry’ Impact
For the second year in a row, the number of active concealed carry permits and licenses in the U.S. has declined slightly, but the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) suggests the drop reflects the impact of “Constitutional Carry” permitless states, so it’s not as though fewer people are packing heat.
“Last year,” CPRC reported, “the number of permit holders dropped by 0.38 million to 21.46 million – the second year in a row with a decline. It hit a high of 22.01 million in 2022. The main reason for the drop is that the number of permits declined gradually in the Constitutional Carry states even though it is clear that more people are legally carrying.”
CPRC, based in Missoula, Mont., has been tracking concealed carry patterns for several years. Its annual report is published in the fall, typically in late October or early November.
Among this year’s revelations:
- Twenty-nine states have now adopted “Constitutional (permitless) Carry” for their entire state, meaning that a permit is no longer required. Because of these Constitutional Carry states, the concealed carry permits number does not paint a full picture of how many people are legally carrying across the nation. Many residents still choose to obtain permits so that they can carry in other states that have reciprocity agreements, but while permits are increasing in the non-Constitutional Carry states, they fell in the Constitutional Carry ones even though more people are clearly carrying in those states.
- In 2024, women made up 29.1% of permit holders in the 14 states that provide data by gender. Seven states had data from 2012 to 2023/2024, and permit numbers grew 111.9% faster for women than for men.
- Five states now have over 1 million permit holders: Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the top states with 2.46 million permits. Alabama has fallen below 1 million permit holders this year, but it has become a Constitutional Carry state since January 1, 2023, meaning that people no longer need a permit to carry.
- Three states that have detailed race and gender data for at least a decade show remarkably larger increases in permits for minorities compared to whites. In Texas, black females saw an 8.4 times greater percentage increase in permits than white males from 2002 to 2023. Oklahoma data from 2002 to 2023 indicated that the increase of licenses approved for Asians was slightly over four times the rate for whites. North Carolina had black permits increase twice as fast as whites from 1996 till 2016.
- From 2015 to 2021/2023/2024, in the four states that provide data by race over that time period, the number of Asian people with permits increased 219.2% % faster than the number of whites with permits. Blacks appear to be the group that has experienced the largest increase in permitted concealed carry, growing 283.9% % faster than whites.
- At least 8.2% of American adults have permits. Outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 9.8% of adults have a permit.
In sixteen states, more than 10% of adults have permits. Oregon has fallen slightly below 10% this year. Indiana has the highest concealed carry rate — 23.1%. Alabama is second with 20.5%, and Colorado is third with 17.7%, followed by Pennsylvania (15.88%) and Georgia (13.55%).
The 73-page report said this year saw two more states join the permitless carry column—South Carolina and Louisiana—bringing the total to 29, and that’s a majority of states. By no small coincidence, holdout states are controlled by Democrats.
My Reverse New Year’s Resolutions: Things I Won’t Stop Doing, Despite Leftist Finger-Wagging
I’ve never cottoned to the idea of “New Year’s resolutions.” I reckon that if you have to resolve to do something you weren’t already doing, then you probably still won’t do it. Oh, you might try to keep the resolution for a while, but the long-term success rates for keeping such resolutions are down there with the success rate of Kamala Harris trying to sound thoughtful and intelligent. No, most people, myself included, are creatures of habit, and habits are hard to break.
As it happens, though, I do have a list of things I already do, will continue to do, and will not give up no matter how many leftist scolds wag their fingers at me. For example:
I will not give up my guns. (See photo above.) I simply won’t; I’m at the point in my life now where, if some future, radical left government insists I hand them in, I’m willing to tell them, “Yeah, come and get them.” I do not trust any government that does not trust me with firearms, and I’m willing to take that principle all the way, in the event it should be required; and I have lots of company. If anyone tries to disarm me at this point, I will give them the ammo first.
I will not give up my rural Alaska home. Oh, I suppose there may come a time when age and decrepitude force a move back to the lower 48, where our kids all live. Locals hereabouts will know when that happens because of the long grooves in the pavement of the Parks Highway that my fingernails leave when they drag me out. But there are climate scolds and others who rail against my presence here; they don’t like our wood stove, our big four-wheel-drive truck, our ATVs, the necessity of driving 30 miles to get groceries. They can shut up; I’m staying in Alaska. Nobody’s helping me to pay for that truck or the gas to drive back and forth, so it’s nobody else’s business.
I will not give up my understanding of basic biology. There are two sexes. Barring a few very rare genetic abnormalities that can lead to sexual ambiguities, every human has either XX or XY sex chromosomes, and if you have XX, you are a woman; if you have XY, you are a man. You can claim to “identify” as a pumpernickel bagel for all I care about, but you can’t change biology. Oh, I’m big on minding my own business and don’t really care what people do, so long as they leave me alone; but don’t expect me to cater to it. I won’t give my pronouns, I won’t “celebrate” your lifestyle. I don’t give one ounce of rat’s droppings about your lifestyle. I don’t expect you to give one ounce of rat’s droppings about my lifestyle. Leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone. We’ll get along just fine.
I will not give up my pride in my heritage. I’m an American, above and beyond anything else, but my ethnic background is from the British Isles – Scotland, Ireland, and England – and Germany. The English-speaking people have done more to spread civilization around the world than any other group of people; these are facts. I’m proud of that heritage, and I won’t stop being proud of it.
I will not surrender my right to say what I please, when I please, where I please. I live in a free-speech zone. It’s called the United States of America. If you don’t like what I have to say, don’t listen; the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee me an audience, any more than it does anyone else. The same applies in reverse; I will not mouth your slogans, cater to your hypersensitivities, or pay obedience to your neuroses.
I will not change my lifestyle to cater to the paranoia of climate scolds. I will not give up my truck or my ATVs. I will not eat bugs, I will not live in your 15-minute, rabbit-warren cities, and I will not stop eating steaks and cheeseburgers. Do those things if you like; I won’t.
I will not surrender my autonomy. I am self-sufficient and will remain that way. I can hunt, I can catch fish, I can run a trapline. No matter what happens, I will not surrender that.
I will remain free. I will remain independent. I will remain a citizen, not a subject.
These things, for 2025, I can promise.
I’ll add one more: I will not stop expressing my thoughts online. I’m fortunate to be able to express myself here at RedState, among a group of people who amaze and humble me every day with their dedication, intelligence, good sense, and talent. As long as the internet continues to function, I’ll find an outlet. As long as the power stays on, I’ll keep writing. And if the internet goes down and the power goes off, I’ll go stand out in the road and shout my opinions to the birches and the black spruce. I will not be silenced.
Those, dear readers, are my anti-resolutions for 2025. Stay tuned, because, as one of my countrymen once famously said, I have not yet begun to fight.
Cue Chevy……..
This is the best thing I have ever seen.
Dual mounted American 180.
This thing can shoot 3000 rounds per minute. pic.twitter.com/DOhs0PGmt8
— Gun Lovers Club (@GunloverClub1) December 18, 2024
It means;
1 ‘You can’t stop the signal’
2 Gun control has been dead for years, but the moron wanna-be gun grabbers haven’t yet gotten to the ‘acceptance’ stage of grief.
What Would It Mean if CEO Killer’s Suppressor Was 3D Printed?
In the early days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder, there was a lot of speculation as to what exactly the killer used. With the arrest of Luigi Magione, though, many of them have been answered. We know that Magione was in possession of a 3D-printed handgun and he had a suppressor.
However, what we’re not seeing in most of these reports is just where the suppressor came from.
I’ve reached out to the NYPD for answers, though they haven’t responded by the time this particular piece has gone live. In fairness to them, I sent that email early this morning before most decent people were awake.
What’s interesting, though, are a lot of reports that this was like a 3D-printed suppressor.
‘I can confirm it is a 3D-printed gun,’ Print Shoot Repeat, who runs the YouTube channel PSR, said. ‘What are the odds it was a 3D-printed suppressor? Well, I think kind of high honestly.’
He explained that a 3D printer suppressor is ‘super light,’ but does not allow the slide the cycle properly.
The shooter of Thompson experienced a similar issue during the murder when he shot and had to recycle the slide to take another shot.
However, another gun expert with more than 30 years of training told Dailymail.com that most guns with a suppressor will behave that way.
‘There are different causes for jamming,’ the expert, who spoke on anonymity, said.
‘Sometimes the ammunition is poor sometimes the firearm is dirty, it’s not maintained. The ammunition is a poor grade. It doesn’t matter what kind of gun it is.
So yeah, there’s debate.
What we don’t have are answers.
3D-printing a suppressor fits what we know about the killer. We know he printed the receiver for his gun–my speculation has been that he knew all the media reporting on “gun tracing” but didn’t understand what that meant, so he wanted to avoid being identified quickly or easily–and that suppressors are more tightly controlled than firearms are. It’s very likely he did print his suppressor.
That brings up all kinds of possibilities and probabilities that a lot of gun control activists aren’t going to like.
First, again, suppressors are tightly controlled. There aren’t “suppressor kits” marketed throughout the internet where you guy buy a kit, print some key parts, and you legally have a suppressor. It doesn’t work like that. One could argue that there are kits available, but they’re not marketed as such and I have yet to find one that requires a 3D-printed part to work.
So that brings us to the idea that the whole thing was 3D printed.
No laws on the books allow just anyone to print themselves a suppressor.
“Yeah, but the files are all over the internet, most likely.”
Sure. However, there’s a problem with that argument. See, while possession of those files might not be illegal, having them on the internet likely is.
The gun files you can find on the internet are generally only there because the State Department has decided that they don’t violate the International Traffic in Arms Regulations or ITAR. That basically says that weapons and weapons technology can’t be exported without federal approval. That includes technical data.
On Monday, a State Department spokesperson confirmed to Bearing Arms that the U.S. Munitions List in Category I does, in fact, include suppressors and the technical data required to make them.
In other words, those files shouldn’t lawfully be on the internet in the first place.
While the State Department wouldn’t comment on any potential investigation, this still blows all the “we should ban ‘ghost guns'” rhetoric out of the water.
In no way are suppressors lawfully produced, and yet Magione allegedly produced one. If such a tightly controlled item can be produced from tightly controlled information, then just how does anyone really think they can stop guns from being made?
Yes, Magione reportedly used a kit, but we’ve covered the FGC-9, which doesn’t require any kits, just parts from the hardware store.
The truth of the matter is that just the possibility that Thompson’s killer used a 3D-printed suppressor illustrates that gun control isn’t a winning strategy. You’re never going to keep things out of the hands of people who want them badly enough. They’ll find a way.
While everyone is going nuts about the gun itself, the suppressor is the bigger issue, which is why no one wants to talk about it.
NBC Falsely Claims Magazine Disconnects Increase Safety
Around 11 people are killed each year because their handguns lacked a magazine disconnect, according to a massive 4,600-word special report by NBC News, which was released Friday.
The story’s title tells you all you need to know about the content: “A simple device could help curb accidental gun deaths, but most firearms don’t have it.”
“Since 2000, at least 277 people have been killed in gun accidents in which the shooter believed the weapon was unloaded because the magazine had been dislodged or removed, an NBC News investigation found. That total – based on federal data collected from states, as well as media reports, lawsuits and public records – is likely a significant undercount since many states only recently began reporting their data, and information on the cases may be incomplete. NBC News found 41 cases that weren’t captured in the data,” the story claims.
Most of the story focuses on those allegedly killed by a handgun that was improperly used – pointed at an innocent person and the trigger pulled.
So, friend A.K. Church comes by today with a couple of his Short Barreled Shotguns to post on a BBS.
Maverick 88 “12 by 12”
Winchester Model 25
Should We Get Ready For a NFA Amnesty?
For the past several weeks, President Trump has been very busy naming his cabinet appointments. One that is still uncertain is his choice to become the new BATFE Director. The current director, Steven Dettelbach, is a clueless anti-gun buffoon who can’t give congressmen a straight answer. Many American gun owners are hopeful that DJT will appoint 07/02 FFL holder, gun designer, and pro-gun pundit Brandon Herrera as the new Director. If that happens, it will surely inspire some boisterous celebration. In addition to his vows to slash the ATF’s budget and operations, Herrera has also promised to begin a series of National Firearms Act (NFA) registration amnesty periods. There was a provision for tax-free amnesty periods written into the Gun Control Act of 1968. But thusfar, just one 30-day amnesty was held, back in 1968. That amnesty was very poorly publicized, and not many gun owners took advantage of it.
Today, there are probably hundreds of thousands of unregistered full autos in the country. And there are parts in civilian hands to quickly make a million or more. What can I say, but: Americans just love to tinker.
Under the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986, the number of Federally transferable machineguns was arbitrarily frozen. As of November 2006, the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) held registrations for 1,906,786 weapons. These included 1,186,138 destructive devices, 391,532 machine guns, 150,364 silencers, 95,699 short-barreled shotguns (SBSes), 33,518 short-barreled rifles (SBRs), and 48,443 weapons categorized as “any other weapons,” (AOWs.) Since then, the number of SBRs, SBSes, and suppressors has risen sharply, but the number of registered transferable machineguns has hardly changed at all.
Not only did the Hughes Amendment freeze cause the prices of full auto guns to inflate radically, it also left Americans with no opportunity to legally build and register any new $200 tax stamp machineguns. Many did so in defiance of the law, risking Federal felony prosecution. Most of those guns are kept very well hidden, mostly underground.
I am hopeful that Brandon Herrera will indeed become the new ATF Director. And I am fully confident that he will keep his promise and consult with the new Attorney General to open at least one six-month-long amnesty period, with tax-free registration of machineguns, partly or fully-finished machinegun receivers, autosears, and other NFA-restricted items. Once that amnesty window opens, the clock will begin ticking. So owners of semi-auto firearms who wish to become legal registered full-auto owners will have to get busy. They will need to either drill existing receivers or bring any unfinished receiver blanks or tubes up to a recognizable level of completion and apply serial numbers, so that they can be registered before the amnesty period expires.
“I’m doing my part!”
Despite ATF Roadblocks, Nearly 5 Million Suppressors Legally Owned
The number of legal suppressors in the USA is almost certainly over five million. The National Shooting Sports Federation (NSSF) revealed a Freedom of Information Act request submitted to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which was finally answered this summer. The total number was 4.86 million at the end of July 2024. From the NSSF:
In a recent Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA), NSSF received from ATF the additional number of silencers from May 2021 to July 2024. An incredible 2,193,123 more suppressors are protecting the hearing of hunters and shooters. That means a whopping 4.86 million silencers and counting are in possession by law-abiding Americans.
The number of tax stamps issued for silencers, also commonly referred to as suppressors, had to be pried out of the ATF with a FOIA. The ATF has gained a reputation for long waits and poor responses to FOIA requests. Before the Biden administration took power, detailed information on all National Firearms Act items was publicly available in an annual report called Firearms Commerce in the United States. Once the Biden administration took control of the ATF, the annual report was, without notice, discontinued. The ATF would not publish the information. They slowly responded to FOIA requests, which is how the NSSF finally obtained the numbers. The numbers show an accelerating demand for legal silencers, with an average of nearly 60,000 tax stamps being issued each month.
The average does not tell the whole story. Demand has been accelerating. Information shows there were 3.5 million silencers through January 2024. Thus, 1.4 million silencers were added in the six months from January 2024 to the end of July 2024. It is virtually certain there are over 5 million legal silencers in the USA today.
Much of the increase has come from the ATF streamlining the tax stamp approval process for commercially made silencers while complicating the process of making your own silencer. Another part of the increase comes from the major inflation created by the Biden administration in the last 3.5 years. While everything else has become more expensive, the tax stamp remains the same as it was when created in 1934: $200. In 1934, $200 was roughly four months wages for a common laborer. Today, it is one or two days wages. In 1934, a silencer might cost $5-10. Today, they can cost $200 – $2,000, so the tax stamp becomes a fraction of the total cost instead of 95% of the cost.
Sales of silencers/suppressors may slump with the election of President Trump. The possibility of something like the Hearing Protection Act is plausible. One of the giants in the silencer/suppressor industry is not worried. Brandon Maddox explained there is such a pent-up demand for silencers that his business will only increase if the regulatory hassles are eliminated.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are looking for programs to cut, to increase efficiency. Moving silencers out of the NFA would take legislation. President Trump could declare an amnesty, as is allowed under federal legislation. An amnesty might incentivize Congress to reform the NFA and pass the Hearing Protection Act.
More incentives to remove items from the NFA exist in the courts. The case in Illinois looks promising.
President Trump is moving much faster this term. He has put together an incredible team, well in advance of taking office. He now understands the treachery inherent in the bureaucracy. Top level bureaucrats have monetary and power incentives to oppose him. They may have significant crimes to hide which may be revealed.
He who cuts the first deal to reveal potential criminal actions usually gets the best deal. There are thousands of people in the bureaucracy who know where good information is to be found about criminal activity. They have jobs, pensions, and perks to protect. Some of them are already talking. Many of them know how practices can be streamlined and where positions can be cut.
2,593,565 NICS checks were done by the FBI last month, totaling for 2024, so far, to 25,339,838.
This being the 26th anniversary of NICS with over 498 MILLION checks.
FYI, they’re ‘often called silencers’ because 1, the inventor, Hiram P. Maxim called them that and 2, that’s what they’re called in federal law; NFA-34
Major Medical Group Endorses Firearms Silencers to Prevent Hearing Loss
Sound suppressors, often called silencers, help protect gun owners’ hearing.
That’s the conclusion one of the largest ear-doctor organizations, with more than 13,000 members, reached this month. The American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) issued a position statement backing the use of the noise-reducing devices. It pointed to three different studies that found suppressors help prevent hearing loss.
“Sound suppressors are mechanical devices attached to the barrel of a firearm designed to reduce harmful impulse noise of firearms at its source,” the group’s statement reads. “CDC research has shown that ‘The only potentially effective noise control method to reduce [shooters’] noise exposure from gunfire is through the use of noise suppressors that can be attached to the end of the gun barrel.’ Suppressors reduce muzzle blast noise by up to 30 dB.”
The backing of a major medical organization could help boost the use of suppressors among gun owners. It could also lend support to efforts to reform the laws governing their purchase and possession. While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has opened up online suppressor registration and increased the speed they process those registrations, the devices remain heavily regulated under the same federal law that governs machine guns.
Reform is what Dr. Timothy Wheeler was hoping for when he proposed the statement alongside six colleagues. Wheeler, a board-certified otolaryngologist and AAO-HNS life fellow, is also the founder of Doctors For Responsible Gun Ownership. He said he hopes AAO-HNS’s adoption of the statement leads to a different approach to gun ownership at major medical organizations.
“My personal hope is that this represents maybe a change of heart for at least one small part of academic medicine,” Wheeler told The Reload. “Academic medicine has a very long way to go to climb out of the credibility gap that they have created for themselves in the public eye because they’ve been pretty much taken over by a lot of social and political crusades, including gun control, going way back to the late 1980s.”
He emphasized the AAO-HNS statement doesn’t advocate for any law or policy changes.
“It’s purely a scientifically based observation,” Wheeler said. “They are saying nothing beyond what’s in the statement.”
Making your defensive pistol of choice work for you is a process.
I am continuing to carry my 4-inch Smith & Wesson Model 19-3 as much as possible. You may recall that I made the commitment to carry this particular handgun as much as possible for the next year. Familiarity and continued use makes the handling of a particular gun second nature, cutting valuable milliseconds off of pistol presentation, sight alignment and the proper trigger press. And I took on this project in the continued effort to make myself the best handgunner that I can possibly become.
One connected project was selecting the best ammunition for my use in personal defense as well as taking various varmints and critters that I encounter in the rural setting where I hang my hat. After experimenting with various .38 Spl./.357 Mag. loads from mainstream manufacturers, I have settled one one from Underwood Ammo. Specifically, it is the .38 Spl. +P load that utilizes a 158-grain SWC lead hollow point that features a gas check and a polymer coating.
This particular Underwood .38 load is reported to generate 1,160 fps from a 4-inch barrel. And that, my friends, is about what the old .38 Spl. Heavy Duty ammo provided in the days before the .357 Mag. was introduced. It is a hot .38 Spl. load, but not quite as hot as the current magnum loadings that will eventually cause problems in a medium-frame revolver. More importantly, I find it quite accurate in my Smith & Wesson.
It is critically important that a defensive ammo first be very reliable and the Underwood load passed that test. Secondly, it should shoot to point of aim but, since my gun has adjustable sights I gave this load points for shooting nice tight groups at 25 yards. From a rest, it delivers 2 inches, or slightly less, and those results are quite uniform from shooting session to shooting session. So it appears that my ammo search is over.
My ongoing project has also revealed that my choice of appendix carry was a wise one. Since our hands are nearly always at or near the front of our body, they are also a bit closer to the defensive handgun. The results are that I find that my pistol presentation is just a bit faster from this position. In addition, with a bit of practice, the handgun is also accessible for a support-hand draw, should my shooting hand be injured or otherwise occupied, an important consideration. And this carry position presents no more challenges than any other carry method on or about the waist; you simply work out what kind of covering garment will suffice.
The real key to finding your personal defense gun is to first get good professional training in marksmanship, gun handling and safety, then, based upon that training, begin to experiment with guns, ammo and carry methods until you find what works for you. Several readers have said that they would be engaging in their own personal challenge and I would like to hear how that is working out for you.
Low Round Count Pistol Drills: Sharpen your skills without emptying your wallet.
The price of ammunition continues to rise, and our lives keep getting busier and busier. Range time is more and more scarce, which makes the efficient use of your time and ammo on the range a very good thing indeed. To help with those goals, I’ve collected a few practice drills which sharpen your pistol skills without wasting your time or emptying your wallet.
2,374,172 firearm background checks were initiated with the FBI last month, bringing the total for 2024 so far, to 22,746,273. It appear that the noted ‘ball through the python’ rate caused by the combination of COVID and SloJoe is returning to a more or less “normal” rate.
Gun Made Launches The Largest Online Search Engine For Guns and Ammunition
Gun Made just launched the largest online search engine for firearms and ammunition, connecting consumers to more than 4,000 gun stores across the United States. The coolest thing about this search engine is it provides gun buyers with real-time inventory so they can not only check the price, but see if a nearby brick-and-mortar store has the gun in stock. Gun Made tracks over 500 million items so consumers can locate in-stock products on shelves anywhere in the country, including right in their own backyard with a simple ZIP code search for local inventories.
Gun Made also plans to expand the search engine’s capabilities by the end of the year to include firarms parts and accessories as well. The sheer volume of tracking necessary to bring this information to your computer, tablet, or phone browser is remarkable, however, Gun Made has faced the challenge head-on, making it the first website in the firearms industry to provide this capability.
Despite Democrats’ Best Efforts, a New Generation Discovers the Joys of Shooting
Colorado’s lurch to the left over the past couple of decades has led to repeated attacks on lawful gun owners and the right to keep and bear arms, but despite their best efforts, Democrats haven’t managed to destroy a culture of responsible gun ownership.
In fact, in Lake County, Colorado, interest in the shooting sports has led to the creation of the county’s first ever high school trap shooting team.
The team was formed after students expressed interest in having a local trap shooting program. One of those students was senior Raymond Harvey, who previously had to travel to Buena Vista to participate in the sport.
“I started attempting to get a team up here my freshman year,” Harvey said in sharing his determination in bringing the sport to Leadville. “I contacted the athletic director at the time. Then we got a new athletic director, and I worked with Jake, and we finally got a team up here.”
Now, trapshooting is an official club sport at Lake County High School and counts as an extracurricular just like football or any other sport. [Head Coach Jake] Farber said the team is also integrating with 4-H and partnering with the Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA) and the Scholastic Clay Target Program for special events.
It’s great to see another high school embrace shooting sports, and it’s even better that the push came from students like Raymond Harvey.
“Trap shooting is one of the fastest-growing female sports,” Josh Homer said. “It’s great because it’s a nice integrated sport where males and females compete right next to each other and still have a great time.”
He also emphasized that trap shooting is the safest high school sport.
“Year after year, it ranks as the safest, with very few accidents,” Josh Homer said. “We really emphasize firearm safety and proper conduct.”
Students interested in joining don’t need their own firearm. The Ascent Opportunity Development Division (AODD), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, provides shotguns for participants who don’t have their own. The provided gun is a single-shot break-open model to ensure safety. If a student decides to purchase their own firearm, AODD can assist in choosing the right one.
Who could be opposed to this? Even gun control activists should be okay with high school trap teams. After all, Tim Walz an out-and-proud trap shooter and hunter, and that didn’t stop virtually every gun control group in the country from endorsing him and self-proclaimed gun owner Kamala Harris. If there’s any gun-related activity that groups like Giffords, Brady, and Everytown find acceptable, it has to be trap shooting, right?
“The NRA’s influence concerns Kris Brown, president of Brady, the national gun-violence prevention group. “I look at anything funded by the National Rifle Association with a jaundiced eye, because about 30 years ago they stopped talking publicly about any risks associated with firearms,” she said. “In this country, suicide with a firearm is at a 40-year high, and that is particularly true with teenagers.”
Brown claims not to have a problem with the shooting sports, but if there’s any involvement by the NRA or other Second Amendment groups then there’s an issue. I’m honestly surprised that Brady and other anti-gunners haven’t complained more about 4-H’s shooting sports programs, but maybe we just need to give them a little more time.
Youth shooting sports programs are apolitical in nature, but the anti-gunners still view them as a gateway to Second Amendment activism. They can’t stand the idea of kids learning how to be safe and responsible with firearms while also having a truly great day at the range. But while they complain about the NRA and other groups promoting youth shooting sports, the programs themselves keep growing in popularity… even in those places where responsible gun culture is under sustained assault.
Opening Arguments Begin in ‘Ghost Gun’ Challenge
While so-called ghost guns get a lot of hype in the media, the reality is that they account for only a tiny fraction of those firearms used in illegal acts. However, because they’ve grown in supposed popularity–probably because of media hysterics cluing bad guys in that these are a thing–they’re the worst thing ever.
When the Biden administration took steps to try to regulate these firearms, the usual suspects in the media and anti-gun activism celebrated it.
However, such a decree was never going to go unchallenged. Today, opening arguments begin in that case. (Arguments begin at 11:00 AM Eastern; you can watch them here.)
Among those party to the challenge is the Second Amendment Foundation, which sent a press release about today’s opening statements.
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) challenge to ATF’s regulation expanding what constitutes a “firearm.”
Arguments will begin at 11 a.m. EST and will be broadcast live here.
SAF is joined in the case by Defense Distributed and Not an LLC (doing business as JSD Supply). SAF and its partners are represented by attorneys Charles R. Flores and Josh Blackman of Houston, and SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut.
In April 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) published its Final Rule amending the regulatory definition of the term “firearm” to encompass precursor parts that, with enough additional manufacturing operations, would become functional firearms frames and receivers, but in their current state were non-functional objects.
In seeking to regulate these “non-firearm objects” the ATF’s Final Rule directly contradicted Congress’ definition of “firearm” set forth in the Gun Control Act of 1968. The ATF’s re-definition of “firearm” in the Final Rule establishes a practical ban on the private manufacture of firearms – a constitutionally protected tradition.
In December 2022, SAF filed to intervene in an existing lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas known as VanDerStok v. Garland. The case challenges the lawfulness of ATF’s regulatory re-definition of a “firearm” under the Administrative Procedures Act. SAF scored a major victory in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated significant portions of the Rule. The Biden Department of Justice now seeks to resurrect the rule before the Supreme Court.
For more information about the case, visit saf.org. To listen to the arguments live, click here or follow SAF’s X page for live updates.
The key takeaway is that the argument will be that the ATF exceeded it’s regulatory authority by trying to redefine what is and isn’t a firearm. This is what the ATF did with bump stocks when they opted to redefine them as machine guns. The Supreme Court ruled they had no such authority, so it’s unlikely this will be any different.
That’s bad news for the anti-gun side because the reason Biden went the executive order route and had the ATF act unilaterally was because there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades that Congress was going to pass any bill trying to accomplish what the ATF tried.
Yet that’s not a valid reason to try and go around Congress like this and redefine things differently than Congress did.
Had there never been a law that specifically defined a firearm, they might could have gotten away with it. One could argue that the lack of definition would put the onus for defining what is and isn’t a gun on the ATF. The problem is that they did define it. The ATF has to work within that definition, not make up their own because they really don’t like that people do things they don’t approve of.
The Vanderstock case is likely to be another smackdown of the ATF’s overreach, much like what we saw in Cargill.
Analysis: The First Crack Forms in Federal Machinegun Ban
For the first time, a federal judge has ruled the Second Amendment protects civilian machinegun possession.
On Wednesday, US District Judge John W. Broomes dismissed charges against a Kansas man for possessing a fully automatic .300 blackout AR-15 and Glock 33 handgun. He ruled that the federal ban on possessing or transferring machineguns (with limited exceptions) was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant.
“To summarize, in this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Judge Broomes wrote in US v. Morgan.
In many ways, the decision is the epitome of what some gun-rights advocates hoped the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision and the new test it laid down would bring to bear on America’s gun laws. The 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), which marked the first time the federal government regulated machineguns by requiring registration and a $200 tax stamp, has rankled a vocal section of activists. The same is true of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, a provision of which known as the Hughes Amendment—18 USC § 922(o)—functionally banned civilian ownership of automatic weapons manufactured after its enactment.
Those activists view the federal regulations, enacted for the first time more than 140 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, as incompatible with the Bruen standard because it prioritizes Founding-era approaches to weapons regulation when evaluating modern regulations. They see the ultimate liberalization of machinegun, suppressor, and short-barreled rifle regulations as the natural apotheosis of courts faithfully applying the Bruen test to America’s modern gun-control regime.
But court after court to address the question in recent years has rejected the idea the Second Amendment protects machineguns, largely based on the Supreme Court’s own words. Most often, they cite a section of the majority opinion in DC v. Heller that discusses the idea that fully automatic M-16s, which are functionally identical to the rifle at issue in Morgan, “may be banned.”
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in Heller. “Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”
Broomes interrogated this reliance on Heller’s brief discussion of M-16 rifles and reached a different conclusion on how much it binds courts confronting an explicit challenge to the federal ban on new machineguns.
ATF Requested Stay Denied in Force Reset Trigger Case
Federal District Court Judge Reed O’Connor for the Northern District of Texas denied the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) request for a stay on his ruling that blocked the ATF from taking enforcement actions over force reset triggers (FRT).
Earlier, Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the ATF exceeded its authority when it determined that FRTs were machine guns in the National Association for Gun Rights v. Garland. FRTs use the bolt carrier group (BCG) of an AR-15-style firearm to reset the trigger of the gun. This reset allows the shooter to increase the rate of fire of a firearm. The ATF claimed that since the rate of fire approaches that of a machine gun, it made the device a machine gun conversion device. Under federal law, any device that converts a semi-automatic firearm to a machine gun is itself a machine gun.
Machine guns are defined under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The actual law doesn’t reference a fire rate when determining a machine gun. According to the law, a machine gun fires multiple rounds with a single function of the trigger. An FRT doesn’t work that way. A firearm equipped with an FRT expels one round per trigger function. The ATF made the same argument about bump stocks in the Cargill case, but the Supreme Court ruled against the government and stated that bump stocks were not machine guns.
The statute reads: “For the purposes of the National Firearms Act the term Machinegun means: Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”
The plaintiffs claim that since an FRT requires that the user pull the trigger between each round, it could not be considered a machine gun. In the past, the ATF tried to use Chevron deference to change the meaning of a law, but because of the recent Supreme Court opinion in the Loper Bright Enterprises case, Chevron deference is dead. Chevron deference says when a law is unclear or ambiguous, the agency of authority has the final say as to the law’s meaning. This decision stripped the ATF of using Chevron deference in this case, even though it probably would not have been successful.
The ATF tried to use Chevron deference in the Cargill case, but SCOTUS rejected that tactic, stating that the definition of a machine gun is not unclear or ambiguous. Chances are high that the court would come to the same conclusion in this case. The ATF claimed that not issuing a stay would cause irreparable harm to public safety. The judge rejected the argument, saying that the only people charged with having an FRT were also charged with other crimes, so possessing an FRT was only an “add-on” crime. He also stated he did not believe that the defense was likely to succeed on the merits of the case.
The judge extended the time frame the ATF has to return the approximately 11,884 Rare Breed Triggers FRT-15s and Wide Open Triggers (WOT) it had confiscated from owners. Initially, Judge O’Connor gave the ATF 30 days to return all the triggers it confiscated from gun owners. The ATF went door to door to seize the triggers from owners but stated it could not return them in 30 days. The judge increased the time of the deadline by five months. The ATF now has six months to return all the triggers to their owners.
“For the foregoing reasons, the Court DENIES Defendants’ Motion to Stay Judgment Pending Appeal (ECF No. 104),” the order reads. “The Court grants Defendants an additional SIX (6) MONTHS to comply with the affirmative obligation, which SHALL be completed by February 22, 2025. This extension does NOT apply to the Individual Plaintiffs or members of the Organizational Plaintiffs who specifically request the return of their FRT devices and provide sufficient documentation to the ATF. ATF shall return those as soon as is practicable following the specific request.”
The ATF is appealing the judge’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, although since this is the same court that ruled against the ATF in Cargill, it seems like a long shot that they will side with the ATF. The arguments in both cases are almost identical.