Category: Bureaucraps

NAILED IT! The FBI DID Send Hundreds of Undercover Assets Into the J6 Protest!

Yet another victory for the tinfoil hat, “conspiracy theory” crew: the FBI sent 274 “plainclothes” agents into the crowd of people protesting in and near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to Just the News.

And many of those agents are not happy about how it all went down, not to mention the bureau’s liberal bias.

FACT-O-RAMA! When the House Judiciary Committee asked him if the FBI had undercover assets involved in the January 6 protest, then-FBI director Christopher Wray testified that such an idea is “ludicrous.” Maybe he and James Comey can enjoy a little yard time together.

An FBI after-action report that Kash Patel’s office recently discovered not only reveals that the agency sent 274 agents and personnel into the January 6 fracas but also how poorly planned and executed the plan was. The report also reveals that many rank-and-file FBI agents complained that they felt as though they were “pawns in a political war.” Others suggested that the FBI was too “woke.”

After the January 6 melee, dozens of FBI agents and officials lodged anonymous complaints to the bureau, outlining how the bureau sent them into a dangerous situation without safety gear or a proper way to identify themselves as armed federal agents to other law enforcement officers.

The most common complaint from the agents was the left-leaning political bias of the bureau and how the BLM rioters of 2020 received far better treatment than the January 6 protestors.

Some of the complaints were scathing. One of the bureau’s damning complaints read:

The FBI should make clear to its personnel and the public that, despite its obvious political bias, it ultimately still takes its mission and priorities seriously. It should equally and aggressively investigate criminal activity regardless of the offenders’ perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations; and it should equally and aggressively protect all Americans regardless of perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations.

That same agent also asked the FBI “to identify viable exit options for FBI personnel who no longer feel it is legally or morally acceptable to support a federal law enforcement and intelligence agency motivated by political bias.”

Another agent pulled no punches and suggested that the problem of political bias wasn’t just an FBI problem but that it extended to the Office of the U.S. Attorney:

Currently, the US Attorney’s office is dictating what it is that gets investigated. This is a dangerous precedent because we can barely get them to prosecute investigations that clearly meet thresholds needed for Federal prosecutions,” the agent wrote. “However, their willingness to conduct a search warrant on someone’s life for a misdemeanor seems ridiculous. It is unreasonable for the FBI to conduct investigations involving misdemeanor violations at a federal level… it is not our role.

Many agents focused their ire on the “wokeness” of the Washington Field Office (WFO), with one writing, “WFO is a hopelessly broken office that’s more concerned about wearing masks and recruiting preferred racial/sexual groups than catching actual bad guys.”

Yet another agent lowered the boom and spoke directly about the FBI’s treatment of January 6 suspects:

However, their willingness to conduct a search warrant on someone’s life for a misdemeanor seems ridiculous. It is unreasonable for the FBI to conduct investigations involving misdemeanor violations at a federal level… it is not our role.

 

FACT-O-RAMA! A vast majority of J6 defendants were charged with four misdemeanors, one of which involved trespassing. Most were not sentenced to serve time in jail.

This bombshell after-action report discovery comes hot on the heels of the arrest of former FBI Director Comey, who faces charges of lying and obstruction.

Had enough yet?

The Federal Trade Commission Takes On the 2nd Amendment

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson requesting the FTC investigate whether the Biden Administration’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention worked with anti-Second Amendment organizations to demand that the agency crack down on “deceptive and misleading claims” made by gun manufacturers. These efforts were supported by a group of anti-Second Amendment senators who wrote to then-FTC Chair Lina Khan asking her to investigate the gun industry’s advertising practices.

The senators’ letter accused the gun industry of marketing to children because their ads referenced popular “first person shooter video games” like Call of Duty. The problem with this claim is that the majority of gamers are over 18—making it perfectly legal for the firearms industry to market their products to them. The letter also suggests that the gun industry is engaging in “deceptive” advertising by focusing on how firearm ownership can help law-abiding citizens protect themselves, their families, and their property. Once again, the senators’ claims do not fit the facts.

Gun owners use firearms in self-defense between 60,000 and 2,500,000 times per year, and private citizens are 85% more likely to use a gun for self-defense than to be killed by a firearm. It is not misleading to say that firearms can be a useful tool for self-defense. Sadly, it is also true that there are around 526 accidental gun deaths per year, as well as over 40,000 people wounded due to the careless use of firearms. However, the solution is not to restrict firearm advertising—but to promote responsible gun ownership. The gun industry, along with other pro-Second Amendment organizations, does engage in plenty of work in this area.

As weak as the arguments for restricting firearms advertising are, the main argument against such restrictions is that they violate the First Amendment. Supreme Court precedent establishes that commercial speech like advertising is protected by the First Amendment, although at a lower level than political or religious speech. Even under this lower standard of review, banning or otherwise restricting advertisements for firearms would likely be struck down by the courts.

But while a future gun-grabbing FTC Chair may not be able to directly restrict gun advertising, they may try to ban gun ads through the back door. One way to do this would be to condition approval of mergers and acquisitions of media companies—including social media companies—on an agreement to not promote “dangerous” products such as firearms. If this sounds familiar it is because it is the approach of current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson. Ferguson has conditioned approval of advertising firm Omnicom’s acquisition of fellow advertising company Interpublic on the firms agreeing not to restrict web ad placements based on the sites’ political content. Is it too hard to imagine a future progressive FTC conditioning a similar merger on a company’s agreement to not place ads on sites that promote products dangerous to public health, such as firearms?

Government agencies may not even have to directly threaten to deny approval of a merger or acquisition to get a company to disregard the Second Amendment rights of their consumers. For example, before winning approval of their purchase by Skydance, Paramount—who owns CBS—settled a lawsuit brought by President Trump alleging that 60 Minutes edited their interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make her appear more knowledgable and coherent. President Trump claims this was done to make the Vice President more appealing to voters, and thus constituted election interference.

A long time 60 Minutes producer resigned earlier this year, saying the network was interfering with the program’s editorial decisions to moderate criticisms of President Trump. While FCC Chair Brandon Carr did not explicitly demand these actions, his rhetoric about broadcasters being required to act in the “public interest”, and his threats to block the Paramount-Skydance deal, no doubt played a role in Paramount’s actions.

It is easy to imagine a progressive FTC or FCC Chair using this precedent to forbid a news program, podcast, or even entertainment program from including content considered pro-gun. Fortunately, the pro-Second Amendment movement is fighting any attempt to use spurious claims of “false and deceptive” advertising to infringe on the Second Amendment. According to Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, his group “is leading the charge to unravel many of Biden’s unconstitutional restrictions in the courts, and we applaud President Trump for working to roll back other abuses—because the Second Amendment isn’t a bargaining chip, it’s the cornerstone of every American’s freedom.”

DOJ Takes Troubling Position in Second Amendment Case

The case Reese v. ATF challenges the prohibition on 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns. Victorious at the Fifth Circuit, they’re now working towards a final judgment at the district court level, but the Department of Justice has taken a position that’s not sitting well with Second Amendment advocates.

After the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered an opinion on Reese v. ATF, the case was remanded for final judgment to the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The circuit court concluded that “the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected.” The plaintiffs filed an important brief on Friday in support of their proposed judgment.

The government ended up exhausting their timeline to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. When remanded back to district court, both the plaintiffs and the government filed proposed judgments because “a good faith attempt to reach agreement with Government” failed.

The plaintiffs are proposing the government be enjoined from enforcing prohibitions on the sale of handguns to all eighteen-to-twenty-year-old members. The government is requesting that the law be enjoined only “with respect to the identified and verified persons described” in the proposed judgment. In short, the government essentially wants the order to apply only to the individual plaintiffs, not every member of the associations who are part of the lawsuit, which include the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Louisiana Shooting Association.

“The laws challenged in this case prevent 18-to-20-year-old adult Americans from acquiring handguns or handgun ammunition in the ordinary commercial market. The Fifth Circuit has held that those laws and their supporting regulations are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment,” the filing states. “And now the Government has taken the position that even so, Plaintiffs should be entitled only to illusory relief and the Government should be free to continue to enforce these unconstitutional restrictions against Plaintiffs’ affected members as though they never brought and won this suit.”

The 19-page brief goes on to explain why the final judgment should not give deference to the government by delivering what would amount to an as-applied opinion. Given the amount of time it takes to bring such cases to completion, many plaintiffs are mooted out by coming of age before there are any final judgments—something the government incorporated in their proposed order.

“What’s at stake now is the scope of the injunction–meaning, which young adults will be able to exercise their rights,” said Second Amendment Foundation’s Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “Although it chose not to appeal the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, it is now the ATF’s position that the scope of relief should be so narrow as to cover literally no one. That position is contrary to well-settled law. SAF sued on behalf of its members, and the relief SAF won in the Fifth Circuit flows to those very members. All SAF members should be covered by this injunction.”

“SAF’s victory in this case rightly applies to all of our members, and that is precisely what this brief makes clear,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The government cannot continue to trounce on the Second Amendment rights of young adults by trying to avoid the practical effectiveness of an injunction mandated by a federal circuit court.”

The Firearms Policy Coalition had some harsh words for the Department of Justice. FPC said the government’s brief was full of “brazen arguments” and that “the DOJ is working to push all effective, cause-driven organizations … out of court altogether, and force people to pursue their rights through slow, complex, and expensive class-action lawsuits.” FPC alleges that these moves are all part of a new government ploy.

“The DOJ’s cynical scheme to undermine associational standing and relief for our members is nothing but an attempt to put constitutional accountability out of the reach of ordinary Americans,” Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs said in a statement. “The federal government, having lost on the merits, is now trying to rig the process. But we will not be deterred. While the government has placed FPC and our members in its crosshairs, we are proud to expose and oppose this dangerous strategy as we pursue a world of maximal liberty for all peaceable people.”

We’re allegedly living at a time when the most pro-Second Amendment administration is in power. The government yielding by allowing the clock to run out on appealing to the High Court certainly was a win, but not if in the next breath they’re saying that the relief the plaintiffs are seeking should be grossly limited. The Fifth Circuit was clear when it said that 18-to-20-year-olds are part of “the people,” there should be no further argument—yet here we are.

This is what can happen when a state decides to be the NICS point of contact for dealers. Of course, states actually do this to make an illegal registry of, if not guns, gun owners. And, you have to wonder just how real the “hack” is, as opposed to the state goobermint simply wanting to shut down dealers for however long they want.

Nevada Cyberattack Leaves Gun Buyers in Limbo

Many gun sales in the Silver State have been stuck on hold for the past few weeks after a cyberattack on multiple state agencies, and there’s no telling when the state’s background check system will be back online.

Hannah Miles, owner of Guns N Ammo in Gardnersville, Nevada, tells Bearing Arms that she currently has more than 20 background checks pending; all from customers who’ve paid for their firearms but can’t take possession because of the outage. Miles adds that she’s heard it could be a couple of months before the problem is rectified, and the state has offered no alternative for FFLs to conduct the checks while the system is offline.

The cyberattack took place on August 24, so it’s already been more than two weeks of frustration for gun buyers and sellers. Individuals who hold a valid Nevada concealed carry license are exempt from the background check requirement on gun sales, but the outage is impacting everyone else.

Gun store owners told News 4-Fox 11 the outage has affected gun sales, but they were more concerned with the cyberattack affecting Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights.

“The state’s priority should be the constitutional rights of the citizens,” said Michael Alaimo, owner of Rightful Liberty Arms in Reno. “When you go to the state website, it doesn’t say anything about the firearms. Everything says about payroll and DMV, and those are not rights. You know the right to bear arms is in our constitution.”

Alaimo said roughly half of his sales are to people that require a federal background check, while the other sales are to concealed carry permit holders.

Meanwhile, Marcus Hodges, Reno Guns & Range’s assistant general manager, said he has a table ‘piling up with firearms’ that cannot be given to customers.

“There are some people that are foregoing the sale at this point in time. Unfortunately, it’s affecting everybody in the state,” Hodges said.

Nevada is what’s known as a Point of Contact state, meaning Nevada FFLs contact the state’s Department of Public Safety’s Records Bureau instead of going to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System directly. According to the state, “the advantage to this is that the Point of Contact Firearms Program has access to Nevada criminal history records.”

The disadvantage, of course, is that an untold number of Nevadans are now unable to exercise their Second Amendment rights because of this cyberattack. That’s a real problem, from both a practical and constitutional standpoint.

A right delayed is a right denied, and at the moment the right to keep and bear arms is being denied to every first-time gun buyer in Nevada who doesn’t hold a valid carry license. There is no way for them to legally acquire a firearm unless they can find a seller who fits in the state’s narrow exceptions to its universal background check law, and that’s not going to be possible for many residents.

The effects on gun sellers are equally profound. Most people aren’t going to spend money on a gun if they can’t actually take possession of it until some unknown date in the future, and the inability to process background checks for weeks on end will certainly have an impact on the finances of many FFLs. It’s possible that some shops will have to cut staff or even close entirely if these delays last much longer.

I’m honestly not sure what it would take to allow FFLs to go directly to NICS itself, but unless there’s a provision in state law that allows for that in the case of a system failure it would most likely involve litigation, and the prospects of any legal relief are slim. I’m not aware of any lawsuit that’s been filed over the delays, but even if gun stores or gun buyers were to sue it would take some time to get before a judge, and even longer to obtain injunctive relief. By then the system may once again be operational, and my guess is that most FFLs don’t want to spend the money hiring an attorney and suing the state if there’s a chance their lawsuit will be mooted by the time they get their day in court.

At this point, though, it might be worth the effort. If nothing else, lawmakers need to revise or amend the state’s background check law to allow FFLs to go directly to NICS if and when the DPS Records Bureau is unable to conduct background checks in the future. That won’t fix the ongoing problems, but it would at least prevent them from re-occurring the next time the state gets hit with a cyberattack.

Rogue DOJ Lawyers Rebel Against Trump, Still Fighting GOA in Court Over Biden’s Gun Control

Washington, D.C. – Rogue lawyers inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) are actively resisting the Trump administration’s pro-Second Amendment agenda, continuing to fight against Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) in federal court over Biden-era gun control policies.

A Policy Repealed—But Not Forgotten

The controversy centers on the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, a rule that allowed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to strip federal firearms licenses from dealers for minor paperwork errors. The policy was repealed in April, with Attorney General Pam Bondi declaring it had “unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners.” ATF Acting Director Daniel Driscoll admitted in May that dealers were punished for “simple mistakes such as forgetting to put their license number on forms.”

Yet despite those public reversals, DOJ lawyers have refused to drop their defense of the old policy. According to court filings, they informed GOA that the government has “no plans to abandon its previous arguments” in the ongoing lawsuit.

Gun Owners Foundation Sounds the Alarm

Gun Owners Foundation highlighted the stakes in a statement on X, warning that without a permanent ruling in court, nothing prevents the policy from coming back.

“BREAKING – DOJ is trying to moot GOF’s & GOA’s lawsuit against the Biden ATF’s Zero Tolerance Policy. Without a permanent fix in court, the next President could EASILY re-instate this gun control. DOJ is ‘evading review’ & we will continue to fight!” — Gun Owners Foundation, via X

GOA: The Fight Isn’t Moot

 

GOA leaders say the case is about more than just one rule—it’s about stopping the ATF from using executive “policies” to bypass Congress.

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ATF says concealed carry ‘puts everyone involved at risk’
When will the ATF’s civil rights violations end?

by Lee Williams

The millions of law-abiding Americans who have chosen to carry a concealed firearm are putting “everyone involved at risk,” the ATF announced this week in a post on X.

“Take a look into our world. This is a scenario @ATFWashington frequently faces when combatting violent crime and maintaining public safety. Many people attempt to conceal firearms on their person or belongings which puts everyone involved at risk. #MakeDCSafeAgain #ATF,” the ATF posted.

As you can imagine, ATF’s message received hundreds of overwhelmingly negative responses including many that are not fit to reprint.

“Concealed carry is not the issue—you are. Millions of law-abiding citizens carry concealed every single day without incident. Concealed carry saves lives. Disarming people and vilifying them on social media doesn’t,” Ammoland News posted.

Noted Second Amendment scholar and attorney Mark W. Smith asked a prominent Justice Department civil rights attorney in a post on X to “speak with the Washington ATF field office about the Second Amendment and the Bruen decision. I suspect their social media person lacks the relevant knowledge.”

Aiden Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, tweeted “Try reading Heller, McDonald, Bruen, and the Second Amendment again, tyrants.” In his tweet, he added a picture of the Bruen decision.

The Firearms Policy Coalition tweeted simply: “Your existence puts everyone at risk. AMIRITE?”

“Times have changed. This isn’t 1934,” firearms trainer and author Ranjit Singh posted.

The ATF posted their tweet at 9:05 a.m., Thursday.

Twenty-seven hours and thirty-seven minutes later, the ATF “corrected” their post.

“EDIT-Take a look into our world. This is a scenario @ATF Washington frequently faces when combatting violent crime and maintaining public safety. Many CRIMINALS attempt to conceal firearms on their person or belongings which puts everyone involved at risk. #MakeDCSafeAgain,” the ATF posted.

Takeaways

Most gun owners will not buy ATF’s response, changing “Many people …” to “Many CRIMINALS …”

The reasons for this is simple: We all know too well that the ATF has never understood the massive difference between law-abiding gun owners and criminals.

To the ATF, everyone who owns a firearm is a criminal. This has become their modus operandi. They treat every single gun owner as a criminal.

If you need proof, look at the ATF’s recent history. Look at how they treated Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, Mark “Choppa” Manley, Russell Fincher or Brian Malinowski.

The ATF sent their SWAT teams to raid the homes of all four men, but not a single illegal item was found, even though Adamiak is serving a 20-year sentence for made-up crimes, and Malinowski was shot and killed in his home by ATF Agent Tyler Cowart.

That the ATF actually views concealed-carry as a crime is not a surprise. What is surprising is that no one has done anything about it, at least not yet.

It is definitely time for President Donald J. Trump to end the ATF.

DOJ Officially Publishes Proposed Rule on Firearm Rights Restoration

The Department of Justice has officially published its proposed rule re-establishing a process for those prohibited from possessing a firearm to regain their Second Amendment rights; a program that exists on paper but has been defunded by Congress for the past several decades.

The rule can be found here, and folks can comment on the proposal until mid-October. The DOJ estimates as many as 1 million people could apply for relief in the first year the rule is in place, at a cost of about $20 million. DOJ wants to offset that expense by charging a $20 application fee; a substantial savings compared to hiring an attorney and suing to have rights restored.

DOJ isn’t making a secret of the desire to cut down on the number of prohibited persons cases in the federal courts.

Since the Bruen decision, there have been many challenges to section 922(g)’s constitutionality under the Second Amendment, with a particularly large volume focusing on section 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on firearm possession by felons. Some of those challenges are declaratory judgment actions brought by felons who have not themselves violated section 922(g)(1) and who maintain that their prior convictions for non-violent offenses do not indicate that they pose an ongoing danger to others. Some of these plaintiffs have had success in challenging section 922(g)(1), as courts have found that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to them. At the same time, some courts have expressly recognized that section 925(c) would alleviate any such constitutional concerns, absent the proviso prohibiting ATF from carrying it out.

As recognized by courts, a functional section 925(c) process would render much of this litigation unnecessary and ensure that individuals meeting the relevant criteria may possess firearms under federal law in a manner consistent with the Second Amendment, while still protecting public safety.

Even more broadly, the Supreme Court has been clear that the rights of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is foundational. This rulemaking reflects the Department’s commitment to the Second Amendment as an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty and a policy decision that the Department must find a way to both advance public safety and ensure that the rights of the people enshrined in the Constitution are not infringed.

Even before the rule was formally published today, the Department of Justice has been arguing that section 925(c) precludes at least some legal challenges to 922(g)(1), including a case heard by the Third Circuit on Monday.

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Cynical Publius

Dear Democrats:

Hey. How’ve you been?

It’s been a rough 25 years. It feels like ever since that hanging chad election in 2000, we have been at each others’ throats. Mostly this is because we’ve let the hyperbole and the wild conspiracy theories control us on both sides. Now I say that is 80% you and 20% us (because you control the media), and we’ve done our fair share with Birthers and Big Mikers, but the bottom line is that neither side trusts what the other side says.

That’s a shame.

I get why you may not trust us. But you are going to have to on what we are about to tell you. Sometimes objective truths need to be said, and we’re about to say them.

Buckle up Buttercups. What you are about to read is 100%, verifiably true:

1. In the 2016 presidential election, the Hillary Clinton campaign fabricated out of the ether a wholly fictional “dossier” alleging that Donald Trump was an agent of the Russian Federation.

2. This “dossier” was shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the friendly Obama Administration, and treated as reliable intelligence even though those agencies knew it was highly suspect.

3. This wholly-fabricated “dossier” was then used as a legal basis for surveillance and wiretaps on members of the Trump Team before and after the election, and the communications equipment in the Trump Transition Team HQ in New York was in fact wiretapped by the Obama Administration.

4. After the election was over and Trump had won, the intelligence community determined that there was no material Russian interference in the election. Barack Obama directed them to reverse that finding.

5. This new, false finding, coupled with the ongoing concerns regarding the dossier became the bases for a concerted effort by the Obama Administration to prevent Donald Trump from ever taking office, even though the American people had just elected him. The ongoing Potemkin Villages of the dossier and the IC report were the bases for numerous unlawful warrants on the Trump team, the creation of interview traps where Trump members might incriminate themselves by making a false statement to the FBI, and generally encircling the entire Trump transition team via subterfuge and placing them in a public aura of an illegal enterprise and not a validly-elected administration.

6. With the Obama plan unable to prevent Trump from taking office, his loyalists who remained in the new Trump Administration did their very best to work towards removing Trump via scandal, with James Comey being the chief bagman via the bogus dossier.

7. While everything described above was happening, it was all being leaked to the media in an effort to discredit and cripple the Trump Administration. Often bogus information would be fed to a media source, the source would report it, and then the fact that the media reported the bogus information was used by Democrat operatives as a basis for legitimizing it, i.e. “the wrap up smear.”

8. All of the above became such a burden on the new Trump Administration that a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, was appointed to cut through to the truth. Unfortunately Mueller was relying on the same fake dossier and bogus IC reports, so bogus data led to a bogus investigation that served no other purpose than to cripple the Trump Administration for two years.

9. To summarize points #1 through #8 above, the Obama/Hillary plan had three steps: (i) spread Russia lies so Trump loses the election; (ii) if Trump wins the election, spread Russia lies so he is never inaugurated; and (iii) if he is inaugurated, spread Russia lies to cripple his ability to govern.

10. After Trump lost in 2020 and he started indicating that he would run again, the Obama team, now with Biden installed in the White House as a puppet, knew they could not let him win as he would unravel what they had done, make it public, and potentially cause a bunch of them to end up in prison. So they coordinated lawfare attacks on Trump across the nation using Democrat operatives, thinking that Trump would end up in prison or his reputation would be in such tatters that he could never be elected. That backfired.

11. Trump got elected in 2024.

12. On July 18, 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a treasure trove of heretofore hidden information which, alongside already-public information about the fake dossier, shows that everything we say above is 100%, inarguably, reliably, factually, objectively accurate.

We repeat, everything written above is VERIFIABLY, OBJECTIVELY TRUE.

We know you love to say how much you “love democracy.”

Do you? Do you REALLY “love democracy”?

What is described above is the most undemocratic thing imaginable.

Forget any arguments about whether something was criminal or the statute of limitations or whatever other technicality distractor gets thrown out there, we have a very simple question for you:

HOW CAN YOU TOLERATE THIS?

Please consider this letter a peace offering. If you are willing to acknowledge what transpired and offer an apology, we might be able to begin to trust each just a teeny bit. We are all Americans, after all.

Sincerely,

The American Coalition of Non-Smoothbrained Conservatives

ATF Pistol Brace Rule Tossed After DOJ Drops Appeal

The Biden-era ATF rule restricting pistol braces was vacated Thursday after President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to drop its appeal in a federal lawsuit, delivering a major victory to gun-rights advocates, Breitbart reported.

The move marks a significant reversal in federal firearms regulation and concludes a lengthy legal battle over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ 2023 rule that reclassified AR-pistols with braces as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act.

“This afternoon, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and the federal government agreed to a joint dismissal of the government’s appeal in our Mock v. Bondi lawsuit, a case that successfully challenged the Biden ATF’s ‘pistol brace’ ban and secured injunctive relief for gun owners while the case was being litigated to final judgment, which completely vacated the rule,” the Firearms Policy Coalition said in a statement.

The pistol brace rule was published in the Federal Register on Jan. 31, 2023, and was met with immediate legal opposition. It sought to bring AR-style pistols equipped with stabilizing braces under the purview of the National Firearms Act, subjecting owners to the same requirements as those purchasing fully automatic firearms. That included mandatory registration and additional federal scrutiny.

Gun-rights groups hailed the dismissal as a pivotal legal win. The company Daniel Defense, a prominent manufacturer of AR-15 rifles, also praised the outcome on social media, proclaiming the ban “terminated.”

Firearms Policy Coalition CEO Brandon Combs emphasized that the regulation contradicted Second Amendment protections.

“As we explained in the case filings, braced pistols are not short-barreled rifles. But either way, they are unquestionably arms protected under the Second Amendment,” he said. “We are thrilled to have secured this important win for liberty and excited to take on even more unconstitutional laws so you can exercise your rights when, where, and how you choose.”

The legal resolution comes as broader gun policy debates continue to unfold nationwide.

In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Maryland’s ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, letting a lower court’s decision stand.

That state law, enacted in 2013 following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, specifically bans the AR-15 and similar firearms. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, ruling that Maryland may constitutionally prohibit the sale and possession of such weapons. The Supreme Court’s decision not to take the case was seen as a significant victory for gun-control advocates.

Although the AR-15 is banned in Maryland and eight other states, it remains legal in 41 states. The rifle is estimated to be in circulation in numbers ranging from 20 million to 30 million units, making it the most popular gun in America.

 

The Bombshell Tulsi Gabbard Just Dropped on the Russian Collusion Hoax Should Terrify Every American

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday released an earth-shattering report detailing how federal agencies under the Obama administration manipulated intelligence findings to concoct and promote the Russiagate hoax.

This, along with earlier revelations about how intelligence agencies pushed the false narrative about President Donald Trump and Russia, shows just how deep the scheme ran.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, multiple internal assessments concluded that the Russian government was not trying to influence the outcome of the race, according to a memo that Gabbard released. Multiple intelligence agencies came to the same conclusion.

On August 31, 2016, “a DHS official tells former DNI James Clapper that there was ‘no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.’”

Nevertheless, the FBI allegedly asked the agencies to water down their assessments to avoid coming to solid conclusions. On September 2, the Bureau asked that a whistleblower’s report be “softened” and acknowledged that they were “uncomfortable” with implying “definitive information that Russia does intend to disrupt our elections.”

Later, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) insisted that the next Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) should affirm that the Kremlin “probably is not trying…to influence the elction by using cyber means.” Several IC officials concurred.

These assessments resulted in the September 12 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which noted that “foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks on election infrastructure.”

After Trump won the 2016 election, intelligence officials reaffirmed that Russian cyber operations had not influenced the outcome. However, the assessment was abruptly suppressed. In December, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office started compiling a new Presidential Daily Briefing that also confirmed that Russia did not sway the results of the race.

However, Gabbard’s memo notes that the FBI “inexplicably withdraws from coordinating on the product” and expressed plans to draft a dissent. Later in the day, a senior PDB official kills the PDB ‘based on some new guidance.’” The original briefing, noting that Russia did not affect the election, was never published.

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One year after Chevron’s demise, gun regulation is unraveling

Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court struck down one of the main pillars of how modern federal regulation works — the Chevron doctrine.

This rule, whose name was taken from a 1980s Supreme Court case, had required federal judges to defer to federal agency interpretations of their own authority in cases where the underlying laws were vague.

The Loper Bright ruling that ended so-called “Chevron deference” last June was described as a “return to judicial balance” — a technical correction. But its consequences are now impossible to ignore.

This decision gas hit gun regulation especially hard, stripping the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of one of its key tools for enforcing gun control. Between Loper Bright and the Supreme Court’s striking down of the ban on bump stocks in Garland v. Cargill, courts across the South have begun systematically overturning rules.

Before Loper Bright, the ATF claimed the authority to decide what counts as a firearm — including whether modifications or added parts fell under regulation. The agency used that flexibility to slow the spread of dangerous modifications.

After the demise of Chevron, however, courts are no longer required to defer to agency interpretations, meaning that agencies like the ATF can no longer count on winning if they “fill in the blanks” where Congress was vague. That means every new restriction must be clearly written into law, and older rules are now being challenged in court. The ATF is left watching from the sidelines as Loper Bright has become a standard reference in gun-related cases.

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Why Are Authorities STILL Hiding Social Media Profiles After High-Profile Crimes?

It happens every time there’s a high-profile crime. Law enforcement officials, in collusion with social media companies, surreptitiously disable the social media profiles of suspects, leaving Americans in the dark about their motives and political leanings.

The question is why. And who benefits?

The most recent example is Wess Roley, 20, who is accused of starting a fire in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Sunday so he could ambush first responders. Two firefighters died in the attack, and a third was critically wounded. Roley was later found dead on Canfield Mountain. It’s not clear whether his gunshot wound was self-inflicted or the result of a firefight with police. The Kootenai Sheriff’s office, as per usual when these things happen, has not released a motive in the shooting.

Also, as per usual, his social media profiles have been scrubbed. The gatekeepers have decided that the public will not see his posts unless and until they decide to release them. Most likely, that won’t happen until they are forced to release the files as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That could take months, or even years.

The standard arguments for removing content created by suspects in major crimes are that leaving the accounts intact would encourage copycat crimes or incite violence. I asked Grok, X’s AI, about this and learned that the platform has a “general practice of not publicly detailing individual content moderation actions unless legally compelled or highly publicized.” I asked the same questions of Meta AI and was given the runaround rather than a straight answer. (My previous requests for information on how these policies work went unanswered by Facebook and X representatives.)

Instead of transparency, what now happens in the wake of a major crime is that, after social media profiles are scrubbed, the internet immediately goes to work creating fake profiles that circulate and are viewed by thousands or sometimes millions of users, as happened after Matthew Crooks tried to murder Donald Trump. There are also multiple fake profiles for Roley floating around social media today.

How does that help anything?

Investigative journalist and self-described “FOIA Queen” Sarah Fields described what she discovered about Roley in an X post:

Roley’s social media activity, particularly on X, revealed disturbing content. He posted about his disdain for authority figures, including police and firefighters, and expressed radical views. His posts included threats and general hostility toward society, which raised concerns among those who followed him. Additionally, he was known to have made threats against his family, leading to a no-contact order being issued against him.

Fields told PJ Media. “I believe that the public has the right to know. I think we all have a right to know all of the factors that lead to someone committing these heinous acts.” She added that scrubbing the profiles “gives the FBI, media, etc., the opportunity to create a narrative about the situation. Which they are already doing.”

Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if something like this happened in the wake of a major crime event?

  1. Law enforcement identifies a suspect.
  2. Law enforcement tracks down the suspect’s social media profiles and requests that the platforms preserve the content and ensure that it cannot be manipulated.
  3. Law enforcement verifies which social media profiles belong to the suspect, allowing fake profiles to be immediately debunked.
  4. End of story. Instead, we have to play hide-and-seek and hope that we eventually uncover the truth by FOIA or by lawsuit.

And it’s not just social media. Remember how authorities fought tooth and nail to avoid releasing the manifesto of Nashville Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale? After a flurry of lawsuits from media organizations and public transparency advocates, we finally got to see what was in it.

One of the plaintiffs who sued the FBI was the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which reported:

On March 27, 2023, a transgender shooter entered The Covenant School in Nashville and tragically killed three nine-year-old students and three adults—an administrator, substitute teacher, and a custodian. Law enforcement officers bravely entered the building and killed the shooter.

Our client requested a copy of the manifesto from the FBI through a formal FOIA request, which was denied by the Biden-era FBI. WILL sued, and after FBI Director Kash Patel was confirmed, settlement negotiations began to resolve the matter. The FBI then released 120 pages of the manifesto and settled the case with WILL.

Whom did the delays benefit? It arguably benefited the trans lobby, which had an interest in covering up the story, and Joe Biden’s flailing re-election campaign. But the public? Not so much.

Now that Kash Patel is in charge of the FBI, it’s time to stop scrubbing the records and hiding the backgrounds of these sickos. Full transparency. Now.

Bondi Not Backing Down From Merging ATF With DEA

The proposal to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives with the Drug Enforcement Agency has been almost universally panned by both Second Amendment organizations and gun control, groups, as well as the firearms industry. Attorney General Pam Bondi, though, gave her full support to the idea on Monday during an appearance before a House Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations subcommittee hearing.

While gun control groups worry that the move would hollow out the ATF, Second Amendment organizations like Gun Owners of America are concerned that the opposite would happen; a supercharged federal agency that would treat the firearms industry and gun owners with suspicion.

Bondi told lawmakers that “guns and drugs go together” and the merger would be a “great marriage between those two agencies.”

“They’re working hand-in-hand on task forces already. Now, they will be working under one umbrella, and it’s going to be great for our country,” Bondi said.

That comment is a prime example of why 2A groups are so alarmed by the proposal. Guns and drugs do not go together, in either recreational and regulatory functions. Lumping “guns and drugs” together makes guns seem taboo and shady, instead of the constitutionally protected items that are lawfully possessed and used by tens of millions of Americans that they are.

“Bureaucracy has been around for a very long time, and just because things have been done one way for decades and decades doesn’t mean that is the most efficient way to do them in the future,” she said.

The House and Senate have not released their fiscal 2026 spending bills that includes DOJ funding, although the House is expected to do so in early July.

The proposed language was part of a broader budget proposal from the Trump administration that would cut salaries and expenses funding for key law enforcement agencies and make overhaul changes to the department.

It’s not efficiency that has groups like the National Shooting Sports Foundation so worried about the effects of a merger. As NSSF senior vice president and general counsel Lawrence Keane recently told Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, the DEA doesn’t have a great working relationship with the drug companies and pharmacies that they police.

After living through the Biden administration’s weaponization of the ATF, the gun industry was looking forward to resetting its relationship with the agency, and have had mostly high praise for Acting ATF Director Dan Driscoll and Deputy ATF Director Robert Cekada over the previous months as the pair have sought to treat gun makers and sellers as partners, not adversaries, in the fight against illegal gun trafficking and violent crime.

Bondi said the department is reorganizing the ATF. “We will not be having ATF agents go to the doors of gun owners in the middle of the night, asking them about their guns — period. They will be out on the streets with [the] DEA,” Bondi said.

I’m all in favor of not having ATF agents show up at the homes of gun owners, either in the dark of night or broad daylight, but it’s possible to curb those abuses without creating a superagency that could be used to target us the next time a hostile administration is in power.

“We would rather deal with an ATF that we understand and have a working relationship with on the regulatory side to achieve compliance than to deal with a behemoth that has no culture of regulating the industry or working with the industry,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president for government and public affairs and general counsel at the NSSF.

“We don’t think it’s in the best interest of gun owners,” he said.
The Firearms Policy Coalition said in a statement it “strongly opposes any plan to merge the ATF with any other federal law enforcement agency.”

Luis Valdes, national spokesman for the Gun Owners of America, said merging the AFT with another agency would increase the available budget while providing reduced oversight and accountability.

In its current form, he said, the ATF is under a microscope.

“Everything they do is watched, and it’s far easier to control their budget and make sure that they don’t grow in scope, budget and manpower to violate [Americans’] Second Amendment rights,” Valdes said.

I don’t think the DOJ has any nefarious intent with the proposed merger, but even good intentions can result in bad policies and practices. I hope that Bondi, other DOJ officials, and House and Senate members will listen to the chorus of voices in the 2A community who are urging them to drop this idea and stick with reforming the agency instead of creating a monster that could easily be used to attack the firearms industry and gun owners alike.

ATF very worried about merging with DEA

The ATF and the DEA were told just last month that the Justice Department plans to merge both agencies, which sources say could occur by October 1.

Officially, no one is talking about the merger, which would likely require congressional approval.

Unofficially, the ATF is going a bit nuts.

“ATF leadership is trying to fight this and convince everyone it’s not a good idea to merge the two organizations,” said John “JC” Clark of FFL Consultants.

Clark is former law enforcement and a former corporate compliance officer. The firm he cofounded, FFL Consultants, trains hundreds of gun dealers each month and thousands annually, virtually and in person. Few understand ATF’s innerworkings better than Clark and his team.

The proposed ATF/DEA merger is something few want to discuss. Both agencies seem difficult to combine, since each has different missions and rules. Both have an industry and a criminal enforcement side, although the DEA relies heavily on the pharmaceutical industry to regulate itself.

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In the 22 years I had a dealer FFL, I was inspected only twice, and both were during the first 10 years.

Department of Justice Plans to Cut Two-Thirds of ATF’s IOI Firearm Inspectors.

The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals, according to budget documents.

The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.

The department plans to eliminate 541 of the estimated 800 investigators responsible for determining whether federal dealers are following federal law and regulations intended to keep guns away from traffickers, straw purchasers, criminals and those found to have severe mental illness, according to a budget summary quietly circulated last week.

Department officials estimated the reductions would reduce “A.T.F.’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40 percent” in the fiscal year starting in November — even though the staff cuts represent two-thirds of the inspection work force. The cuts are needed to meet the White House demand that A.T.F. cut nearly a third from its budget of $1.6 billion.

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ATF to Return Legal Gun Parts, Leaving 16 Blue State AGs to Suffer a Collective Meltdown

The whole “bump stock” hooraw has been settled, for the time being, following the Trump administration’s settling of a lawsuit brought by the National Association for Gun Rights. These devices, more properly called “forced-reset triggers,” allow for firing a semi-automatic rifle more quickly, at the cost of some accuracy. In the interests of complete reporting, we should note that the action of one of these devices can be duplicated with such readily available things as rubber bands or belt loops. Following the settlement, the ATD has been ordered to return some 100,000 seized devices to their rightful owners.

To summarize, 100,000 pieces of legally owned private property are being returned to their owners.

So, of course, 16 blue state attorneys general are screeching and soiling themselves in terror. They are demanding that these people not be given back their property, and as is typical, they don’t even know what they’re talking about. Consider this, from Colorado’s AG, Phil Weiser:

“The law is clear: Machine guns, and devices that turn a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun, are illegal,” Weiser said in a statement. “We’re suing to stop the ATF and the administration from making our communities more dangerous by distributing thousands of devices that turn firearms into weapons of war.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. These are not machine guns, and they cannot turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun. With or without a forced-reset trigger, the weapon functions the same: One shot for each trigger pull. The device makes it easier to fire more quickly, but so can a thumb thrust through a belt loop.

Furthermore, machine guns are not illegal. The supply is restricted, they are very expensive, and one has to go through a defined process to own one, including a background check and payment of a “transfer tax.” But they are not illegal. Given money and patience, any law-abiding citizen can legally own one. Like this guy does.

Moving on: We’ve seen, time and again and in fact quite recently, that if you want to make your community less safe, the easiest way to do that is to elect Democrats to run that community. But the simple fact is that rifles, modified are not, are very rarely used in crime; you are about as likely to be killed by a falling vending machine as by a mass shooter with an AR-15.

And, finally, these are not weapons of war. Nitwits like AG Weiser, who know less than nothing about guns, can’t explain why an AR-15 is a weapon of war, but a functionally identical but less scary-looking Winchester 100 is not; and yet, the legislation they propose almost always prohibits the former while ignoring the latter.

It’s just stupid all the way down.