Category: Goobermint

Not surprised in the slightest.

Gabbard: 2,000 Afghan refugees in U.S. have ties to terrorism.

An estimated 2,000 Afghan nationals admitted to the United States following the deadly 2021 pullout of American forces from Afghanistan have ties to terrorism, according to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard made the astonishing revelation during an interview on Fox News Friday morning, following a tense House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted national security risks to the homeland.

The Center Square previously reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General released a report in January 2022 that admitted thousands of Afghan evacuees who entered the U.S. following the American military evacuation in August 2021 were not properly vetted.

“[The DoD] found that Afghan evacuees were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) using all DoD data prior to arriving in CONUS,” the report said.

The report also noted, during an “analytic review, NGIC personnel identified Afghans with derogatory information in the DoD ABIS database who were believed to be in the United States.”

The 2022 report affirms Gabbard’s concerns that some individuals admitted to the U.S. under the Biden administration may pose a national security risk.

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The DOJ Says It Will Challenge Unconstitutional Gun Policies. Maybe It Should Stop Defending Them.
The Justice Department’s litigation positions are at odds with its avowed intent to protect Second Amendment rights.

The Justice Department recently established a “Second Amendment Section” within its Civil Rights Division. On its face, that move is a welcome development for defenders of the constitutional right to armed self-defense—an impression reinforced by the alarm the new initiative has generated among gun control advocates. But the section’s mission statement raises doubts about its commitment to Second Amendment advocacy. So does the Justice Department’s ongoing defense of constitutionally dubious federal gun laws.

“I’m really excited about this,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division, told Fox News. “For the first time, the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the DOJ at large will be protecting and advancing our citizens’ right to bear arms as part of our civil rights work….As Attorney General Pam Bondi has said, the Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and I couldn’t agree more with my boss.”

Dhillon said the Justice Department will challenge obstacles to obtaining concealed carry permits such as “multi-thousand-dollar costs” and “unreasonably long delays.” Another potential target, she said, is state bans on “guns that should be protected by the Second Amendment” under “recent Supreme Court precedent,” by which she presumably meant “assault weapon” bans. In a recent Supreme Court brief, the government’s lawyers suggested that “cases involving state laws banning AR-15 rifles” provide good “vehicles for clarifying the appropriate framework for discerning what types of arms the Second Amendment protects.”

So far, so good. But the Justice Department’s description of the Second Amendment Section’s agenda should give pause to anyone familiar with the litigation inspired by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which clarified the Second Amendment test for gun control laws and cast doubt on the constitutionality of many longstanding firearm restrictions.

The Second Amendment Section aims to protect “the natural firearm rights of law-abiding American citizens and ensure that such rights to keep and bear arms will not be infringed,” the Justice Department says. “The mission of the 2nd Amendment Section is to ensure that law-abiding American citizens may responsibly possess, carry, and use firearms.”

That “law-abiding” qualifier does not appear in the text of the Second Amendment. Nor is it “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test established by Bruen. And taken literally, it excludes millions of peaceful Americans from exercising “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” which is in fact the upshot of policies that the Trump administration defends.

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What we really need is for the courts to overrule Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) where the Supreme Court ruled that even traveling state to state was ‘commerce’ and could be regulated by goobermint under the Constitution’s  commerce clause, thus unfortunately allowing the Feds to run amok.

As of October, “E-Form” .20s are already active, but as of now only works for those items that were made or transferred within the E-Form system. Those of you who know I have had – among others – an UZI smg for over 40 years are not aware of the problems I encounter with the lower level bureaucraps at ATF with traveling with it, that have to be resolved at higher levels….because the worked bees don’t appear to be all that bright.

ATF Proposes Changes to Make Travel With NFA Items Easier.

Until the National Firearms Act is a relic of the past, every little bit that makes it easier to navigate can surely help. In recent weeks, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives published their intent to do just that in the form of a two-fer.

A proposed rule would help clarify and streamline the process for those transporting National Firearms Act-regulated items across state lines. In simplifying and digitizing that process, the move would also get rid of some unnecessary bureaucracy at ATF, as well as save time and money for both NFA-item owners and the agency.

Currently, a person wishing to transport certain NFA-regulated items – such as “short-barreled” rifles and shotguns – must, per 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(4), complete and submit ATF Form 5321.20, the Application to Transport Interstate or to Temporarily Export Certain National Firearms Act (NFA) Firearms to ATF in advance of the travel. Alternatively, a person can mail a letter of request, in duplicate, containing all information required on the ATF Form, in lieu of the form.

Note just a few of the archaic instructions:

The registered owner of NFA firearm(s) shall complete two copies of ATF Form 5320.20 and forward the forms to the Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 244 Needy Road, Martinsburg, WV 25405 (Attention: NFA Division).  The form can be submitted via facsimile to the NFA Division at (304) 616-4501 or may be scanned and emailed to NFAFax@atf.gov.

All signatures on both copies of the form shall be in ink. All other entries on the form shall be printed in ink or typewritten.

In the notice ATF submitted to the Federal Register, it stated that the plan is to permanently overhaul and digitize the process by revising the information collection method to make the form electronically fillable and allow it to be emailed directly, as well as auto-fill the required second copy. Additionally, the form will be part of its online eForms section on the ATF website for easier access and include more clarifying language on the application of the regulation for travel.

This latest proposal by ATF appears to be part of the ongoing effort announced as a “new era of reform” as posted on the ATF website earlier this year: https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/atf-launches-new-era-reform. A quick perusal of the ATF Forms and Information Collection site shows multiple recent and similar updates meant to assist in streamlining forms, reducing paperwork, and updating procedures through digitization, all great efforts helping to ultimately reduce wait times and resources that burden both agency and citizen.

ATF is seeking public feedback on this proposed rule until January 27, 2026, to help assess the utility of the efforts and asks specifically for comments that:

  • Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary to properly perform ATF’s functions, including whether the information will have practical utility;
  • Evaluate the agency’s estimate of the proposed information collection’s burden for accuracy, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used;
  • Evaluate whether, and if so, how the quality, utility, and clarity of the collected information can be enhanced; and
  • Minimize the information collection’s burden on those who are to respond, including using appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses.

While there is still much work to be done in repealing the NFA, work NRA continues alongside Second Amendment partners in multiple lawsuits, for today, modernization is far better than weaponization.

Pentagon rolls out GenAI platform to all personnel, using Google’s Gemini.

Other “frontier AI capabilities” will join Gemini on the new GenAi.mil platform, meant to make generative AI tools available to all three million military and civilian personnel, the Department of Defense announced.

WASHINGTON — This morning the Defense Department announced the launch a new website, GenAi.mil, meant to bring generative AI tools to all three million of its military, civil service, and contractor personnel.

“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exclaimed in a video released on X.com. “At the click of a button, AI models on GenAI.mil can be utilized to conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video and imagery at unprecedented speed.”

The first AI available on the site will be the government version of Google Gemini, which can handle highly sensitive but unclassified information (what the Pentagon calls IL-5 data). But the Pentagon’s plan is to grow GenAi.mil to offer “several frontier AI capabilities,” the announcement said — and the Department’s chief technology officer, under secretary for research and engineering Emil Michael, wants GenAI for classified data as well.

“For the first time ever, by the end of this week, three million employees, warfighters, contractors, are going to have AI on their desktop, every single one,” Michael said at DefenseScoop’s DefenseTalks conference this morning. “[We’ll] start with three million people, start innovating, using building, asking more about what they can do, then bring those to the higher classification level, bringing in different capabilities.”

Michael, a former Uber executive who recently took over the Pentagon’s formerly independent Chief Digital & AI Office, downplayed the previous administration’s efforts to advance artificial intelligence. “For the past five years, the Department has had very little to show in the way of AI,” he told the conference.

Michael had made a similar complaint on Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, although he singled out fellow panelist Adm. Sam Paparo and his Indo-Pacific Command as an pathfinder. “For a department of three million people, we’re vastly under-utilizing AI relative to the general population,” Michael said. “Admiral Paparo and his command is probably one of the premier users; they’ve adopted it faster than sort of any other component, because they’ve seen the utility and they’re most urgent about it, and so we work most closely with him, and then we take the learnings that he’s developing and bring it to other places.”

Michael emphasized in both appearances that he wants to apply AI not just to Pentagon business processes — which have a lot in common with the private-sector functions that commercial GenAI is trying to take on — but also for intelligence analysis and even “warfighting” functions like logistics planning and combat simulations.

“I think in the next few weeks to months, not years, you will see this proliferate throughout the entire Department of Defense,” Michael said at the Reagan Forum. “It’s going to be my number one priority for the rest of my term.”

 

The Somali Welfare Fraud Scandal Is Even Worse Than You Think

“We believe the Somali fraud operation in Minnesota is the single greatest theft of taxpayer dollars, through welfare fraud, in American history.”

Survey Says: Majority Think Government Corrupt, Disagree Who Can Fix It

A new Rasmussen survey released Tuesday reveals that four out of five likely voters believe corruption is a problem in Washington,. D.C. but they disagree on who can fix the problem.

Of the 80 percent who say government is corrupt, 44 percent think it is “very corrupt.”

And Republicans need to be careful, because Rasmussen says 43 percent of survey respondents think Democrats can handle the issues of government better, while 41 percent think the Republicans can do a better job. Sixteen percent aren’t sure one way or the other.

The survey of 1,155 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on Nov. 13 and 16-17 by Rasmussen Reports with a margin of sampling error at +/- 3 percentage points and a 95% level of confidence.

“Not surprisingly,” said Rasmussen, “78 percent of Democrats trust their own party more to handle issues of government corruption and government reform, and 77 percent of Republican voters trust the GOP more. Unaffiliated voters are about evenly divided, with 37 percent trusting Republicans more and 36 percent trusting Democrats more to handle corruption and reform issues, while 27 percent are not sure.”

The survey results probably should not surprise anyone, considering all that has been said about certain members of Congress getting wealthy from insider trading and not being held accountable. On the other hand, some people on Capitol Hill have been criminally prosecuted over the years, with individuals such as New Jersey’s Bob Menendez and New York’s Anthony Weiner going to prison.

According to Rasmussen, “76 percent of voters agree that federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA need major reform, including 45 percent who Strongly Agree. Only 17 percent disagree.”

Breaking things down along party lines, Rasmussen said “Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans at least somewhat agree that federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA need major reform, as do 71% of Democrats and 75% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

“Forty-nine percent (49%) of Democrats, 39% of Republicans and 45% of unaffiliated voters believe the federal government is Very Corrupt,” Rasmussen added.

FLASHBACK:(Deceit O’ The Day)

What is Operation Allies Welcome? The refugee scheme that allowed DC shooting suspect into the US

The man accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House Wednesday night entered the country through Operation Allies Welcome, a resettlement program to assist Afghan nationals.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the suspect – an Afghan man identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal – arrived in the U.S. in 2021. He later applied for asylum in 2024, which was approved this year under the Trump administration.

The U.S. has now suspended all Afghan immigration requests in response to the shooting outside a metro station in downtown Washington D.C., which officials described as a targeted ambush. The two guard members are still in critical condition.

In a televised address from Mar-a-Lago, Trump condemned the attack – the day before Thanksgiving celebrations get underway – as a “crime against humanity”.

On Wednesday, Trump lashed out at former president Joe Biden’s administration for letting in “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” to the US through the Operation Allies Welcome program. However, this figure appears to be an enormous exaggeration.

The scheme was launched in August 2021 during Biden’s presidency, following the chaos of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power.

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New York’s Assault on the NRA — and Free Speech — Gets a Court Bailout

In 2017, under the direction of then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state of New York launched a coordinated campaign to cripple the National Rifle Association (NRA) because of its defense of the Second Amendment and protected speech. New York’s Department of Financial Services contacted banks and insurance companies that did business with the NRA and delivered an unmistakable message: Continue associating with the NRA, and the state would investigate, cite, and regulate your business into oblivion. Coming from the state’s top financial regulator, the warning carried real weight – exactly as intended.

The strategy worked. Financial institutions and insurers quickly distanced themselves from the NRA, leaving the organization unable to secure even basic corporate services in the state. If that sounds like an obvious First Amendment violation, that’s because it is. More than 60 years ago, the Supreme Court made clear in Bantam Books v. Sullivan that government “threat[s] of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion” against third parties to suppress disfavored speech are flatly unconstitutional.

Because that rule remains as clear today as it was in 1963, the Supreme Court agreed with the ACLJ’s amicus brief and ruled unanimously for the NRA last term. Justice Sotomayor, writing for the Court, put it plainly: “A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.” When regulators use the power of their office to pressure private actors into isolating or punishing a speaker, they violate the First Amendment just as surely as if they had censored the speech directly.

This case sits squarely at the intersection of the First and Second Amendments. The NRA’s policy views related to the Second Amendment, its speech, its advocacy, and its expression are all protected by the First Amendment. A government that can strangle a gun-rights group through financial coercion can use the same tools to silence pro-life organizations, religious ministries, parental-rights groups, or anyone else who falls out of political favor. That is why the ACLJ fights not just for the substance of constitutional rights, but also against government efforts to punish those who speak about them.

That unanimous ruling should have ended the matter. It should have allowed the NRA’s lawsuit to proceed so a jury could determine the full extent of the constitutional violations. But the Second Circuit had other ideas. In defiance of both the Supreme Court’s clear command and the First Amendment itself, the court held that New York’s officials were entitled to qualified immunity – meaning the case had to be dismissed.

Qualified Immunity Was Never Meant to Shield Deliberate Speech Suppression

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DOJ Official Says Congress, Not Courts, Should Address NFA Taxes, Registration

Despite ongoing objections from Second Amendment groups and a letter from Rep. Andrew Clyde and more than two dozen other members of Congress urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to recognize congressional intent and stop defending the National Firearms Act’s taxes and registration requirements for National Firearms Act items, the DOJ’s latest brief in an NFA case offers a full-throated defense of those measures.

The  brief, filed in Silencer Shop, et al v. BATFE, not only argues that the Constitution empowers Congress to adopt the challenged NFA requirements and that the $200 tax and registry of who has paid it remain a valid exercise of Congress’s taxing power, but that the tax and registration mandates “comport with the Second Amendment” as well.

… the NFA’s regulation of short-barreled shotguns and rifles, suppressors, and AOWs is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” As the Supreme Court has consistently observed, American legislatures have long “prohibited the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’” Laws dating back to theFounding Era targeted, through outright bans or lesser regulation, particularly dangerous weapons that were uniquely susceptible to criminal misuse. Similarly, many states have long regulated the size of firearms. The NFA fits within that historical tradition by targeting particularly dangerous weapons that “could be used readily and efficiently by criminals,” though its requirements are much more modest than the categorical bans of the past. That alone demonstrates that the NFA comports with the Second Amendment.

Gun Owners of America, among others, has objected to the DOJ’s continued defense of the NFA, which led to a rebuke of the 2A organization from a DOJ official.

McGavick’s argument is an odd one, given that the Supreme Court does have the power to declare laws unconstitutional. And in the case of the NFA’s taxation and registration schemes, it’s clear that the intent of Congress was to repeal those provisions. The $200 tax has been zeroed out as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but though the Senate also removed the accompanying requirement that those who pay the tax have to register that payment with the federal government, the Senate parliamentarian objected to that provision, so the registry remains.
The DOJ could have taken the position that, since the registration is actually a registry of all those who’ve paid the tax, and the tax has no been zeroed out, the registration requirement is moot. It could also, of course, have taken the position that the NFA does violate the Second Amendment, despite what the Court has said in cases like Miller and Heller.

Part of the DOJ’s problem is that it has previously admitted in the Peterson case that challenges the NFA’s restrictions on suppressors that those items are, in fact, protected by the Second Amendment. Still, the DOJ took the position that the $200 tax and registration requirements are only “modest burdens” on the right to keep and bear arms, at least as they apply to those items.

The Supreme Court has never suggested that there are various levels of protection for arms that fall under the Second Amendment’s umbrella, so the DOJ’s position arguably leaves the door open for similar requirements on all arms protected by the Second Amendment. If the DOJ is going to to defend the National Firearms Act, it might have been better for the agency to argue that NFA items aren’t protected at all instead of coming up with a convoluted theory about tiers of protection and what kind of restrictions might be allowed for some arms. That still wouldn’t satisfy groups like GOA, FPC, and NRA, but it also wouldn’t allow gun control groups and anti-gun polticians to adopt the DOJ’s language and apply it to handguns or semi-automatic long guns in the future.

When Rep. Clyde joined me on Bearing Arms Cam & Company to discuss the letter to Bondi, he indicated that if the DOJ didn’t fall in line behind Congress’s intent he might re-open the letter to gather more signatures before submitting its rebuke into the official congressional record. Clyde says he’s also working on an appropriations bill that would remove the registration requirements, which would be fantastic if it comes to pass, but that action in the legislative branch still doesn’t mean that the executive branch’s hands are tied when it comes to the NFA and its infringements on our right to keep and bear arms.

New York City residents should keep Bernie Goetz’s travails in mind if they’re going to go armed in public.

Senior citizen who saved himself from would-be mugger is heading to prison because of NYC’s ‘draconian’ laws

A Queens senior citizen who shot dead a man who tried to rob him will spend four years in prison after admitting to toting an unlicensed revolver — as his lawyer ripped the city’s “draconian” gun laws.

Charles Foehner, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal weapons possession Thursday in a deal to end his case more than two years after he fatally shot would-be thief Cody Gonzalez, who charged at him near his Kew Gardens home.

The Queens District Attorney’s Office chose not to prosecute Foehner, a retired doorman, for Gonzalez’s killing after he told cops that he’d defended himself from a mugger who lunged at him late at night holding what looked like a knife — but which turned out to be a pen.

Foehner was not charged with manslaughter after claiming self-defense, but pleaded guilty to a lesser gun charge.Brigitte Stelzer

But prosecutors slapped Foehner with a slew of weapons raps for the unlicensed handgun and for an arsenal of illicit handguns, revolvers and rifles inside his home in the quiet neighborhood.

Foehner took the plea deal to avoid a trial, where he faced 25 years in prison on gun charges that are not hard to prove, said his attorney Thomas Kenniff after Thursday’s hearing in Queens Supreme Court.

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Gun Owners of America Learns Gag Orders Makes Strange Bedfellows

Gun Owners of America has been challenging the Department of Justice over a troubling program where American gun buyers are seeing their purchases monitored by the ATF. There’s no due process involved at all, either. All it takes is for a law enforcement officer to say he suspects someone of not being an ideal citizen, and suddenly, they’ll get a notification whenever that person has a NICS check performed.

Just how bad are things? We don’t know.

It seems GOA knows, but they’re not talking. It’s not because they don’t want to. They’re not allowed to. They’re under a gag order that prevents them from telling what they know.

Unsurprisingly, others have an issue with that.

However, as this video from GOA tells us, what’s surprising is who is standing with them on this.

The fact that we’re being monitored for exercising our Second Amendment rights is far from new information. That doesn’t make it a good thing, only that it’s nothing new.

But for groups like Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox, NPR, and Politico, among others, to stand with gun owners and have a problem with the gag order is very, very new.

As noted in the video, many of these organizations are generally very hostile toward the Second Amendment and Second Amendment organizations like Gun Owners of America.

Yet this isn’t a gun issue. Not really.

Sure, the underlying surveillance is very much a relevant issue for gun rights supporters, but the fact that Gun Owners of America isn’t allowed to speak about information that was given to them, inadvertently, by the Biden Department of Justice, is troubling for anyone in the media. After all, we get information from a variety of sources. Not all of that information was intended for public consumption, which is often the point. It betrays troubling behavior by the government that’s hidden under various laws pertaining to classified material.

And the courts have traditionally understood that and sided with the free press on such things most of the time.

If GOA is unable to speak with material handed to them directly by the DOJ, even if it wasn’t intentional, then what about a reporter who finds out that the government is funding an illegal arms trafficking network via drug sales in our inner cities? Just to name one completely random and not at all historical example.

Will Reuters get slammed with a gag order because a source gives them information on how the CIA is arming cartels so they can fight a different cartel? Again, a hypothetical, though this one is actually one I pulled out of my fourth point of contact.

That’s what this stand is truly about, of course, and I get that. It’s even fair that they’d side with GOA over their personal interests above and beyond any potential intrinsic desire to stand for rights as a whole. They’re not suddenly going to be pro-gun. This is about them and only them. In fact, I doubt they give a damn about the monitoring effort at all.

But politics is said to make strange bedfellows. It seems so do gag orders.

 

Just another long serving bureaucrap. Will he ever learn?

Trump Has Found His Pick for ATF Director

Since Donald Trump began his second term as president and Biden’s ATF Director Steve Dettelbach resigned ahead of being fired, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has been run by a couple of different interim directors, starting with FBI Director Kash Patel. Patel was replaced after reports surfaced that he was essentially a non-entity at the agency, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has been doing double duty interim director alongside his work with the Department of Defense in April.

Shortly after Driscoll was named as the interim head of the agency, the ATF’s Deputy Director Marvin Richardson stepped down (or was pushed out), and was replaced by Robert Cekada, who was previously Executive Assistant Director and oversaw the agency’s Office of Regulatory Operations, Office of Field Operations, and the Office of Intelligence Operations.

Now President Trump has nominated Cekada to become the agency’s permanent director; not exactly a surprising move, but not completely expected either. Trump has shown a desire to install outsiders at the helm of many agencies and cabinet positions, but Cekada has worked for the ATF for 20 years. He started as a field agent Hyattsville, Maryland and worked on the Regional Area Gang Enforcement Task Force from 2005 to 2011 before transferring to the Tampa field office for two years. He’s been at ATF headquarters since 2013, moving up the ranks from his position as project officer in the Firearms Operations Division’s Frontline Branch.

Before joining ATF, Cekada was a part of the NYPD and a member of the Plantation, Florida police. He held a variety of roles in those departments, including serving in the NYPD’s Anti-Gang Enforcement Unit and the Street Crime Unit and the SWAT unit in Plantation.

When Cekada was named the agency’s second-in-command back in April, the news was received positively by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. As we reported at the time:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the firearms industry, was quick to praise Cekada as Trump’s choice as the ATF’s Number Two, pointing to his extensive history going after violent criminals and his respect for the right to keep and bear arms.

“Deputy Director Cekada has the experience, wisdom and respect of his colleagues to effectively lead the men and women of the ATF,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Deputy Director Cekada respects the Second Amendment and understands that the firearm industry is not the ‘enemy’ but valuable partner that assists ATF in its core mission of combatting violent crime. Firearm retailers are on the front lines helping to prevent the criminal acquisition of firearms. They are a vital source of information to ATF special agents on illegal straw purchasing of firearms.”

As a Special Agent-in-Charge, Deputy Director Cekada has been on the ground with the firearm industry to promote public awareness to stop these crimes from occurring and has the career history of working with the firearm industry to ensure law-abiding citizens can exercise their Second Amendment rights.

The fact that Cekada has already established a good working relationship with the firearms industry is a good sign, and I’ve heard from sources who have knowledge of the ATF’s day-to-day operations that he was instrumental in getting rid of the “zero tolerance” policy on gun dealers that Richardson continued to enforce even after Steve Dettelbach resigned as ATF Director when Trump assumed office for his second term.

Since his appointment as Deputy Director, Cekada has been working alongside the agency’s new Assistant Director and lead attorney Robert Leider, a former professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law specializing in Second Amendment issues. The pair have been overhauling many of the ATF’s rules and regulations, and though the shutdown sidelined much of their work for the past month, the agency has already announced it’s rolled back the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that treated minor paperwork errors cause to revoke federal firearms licenses.

Biden’s pistol brace ban has been undone as well, with the DOJ deciding not to appeal a court decision that found the rule was a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, and it’s expected that Biden’s “engaged in the business” rule treating almost every gun owner who sells a firearm from their personal collection as an “unlicensed gun dealer” will also soon be axed.

That doesn’t mean that Cekada’s nomination will be smooth sailing, however. Senate Democrats are likely to challenge Cekada’s reforms, while Republicans may bring up issues like the agency’s railroading of Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, who’s currently sitting in a federal prison after being convicted of selling restricted firearms that weren’t really functional or illegal to possess, purchase, or sell.

Cekada should have the support of NSSF, which could also hurt his chances among Senate Democrats, but that could prove valuable among the Senate Republicans who will decide if he should take the helm of the agency.

Cekada is no David Chipman, the former ATF agent turned gun control advocate who was Biden’s first choice to head up the agency. Cekada has already demonstrated a willingness to be a change agent at the ATF, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to say about the need for more fundamental reforms within the agency and how he plans to accomplish those goals as the confirmation process gets underway.

This Gun Case Harks Back to Constitutional Concerns About the Limits of Federal Power That Now Seem Quaint
Congress justified that National Firearms Act of 1934 as a revenue measure—a rationale undermined by the repeal of taxes on suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

Testifying in favor of the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934, Attorney General Homer S. Cummings noted that the federal government “of course” had “no inherent police powers to go into certain localities and deal with local crime.” Rather, “it is only when we can reach those things under the interstate commerce provision, or under the use of the mails, or by the power of taxation, that we can act.”

Cummings explained how “the power of taxation” worked in this context: “If we made a statute absolutely forbidding any human being to have a machine gun, you might say there is some constitutional question involved. But when you say, ‘We will tax the machine gun,’ and when you say that the absence of a license showing payment of the tax has been made indicates that a crime has been perpetrated, you are easily within the law.”

Last July, Congress eliminated that legal pretext for several NFA provisions by repealing the federal taxes on sound suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. That change, several gun rights groups argue in a memorandum they filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, fatally undermines the constitutional rationale for the NFA’s requirement that dealers and owners register those products, which was supposed to facilitate the collection of the taxes.

The case, which Reason‘s Brian Doherty covered after the original complaint in Brown v. ATF was filed on August 1, might seem of little moment unless you own the covered products or would like to acquire them. But the lawsuit goes to the heart of congressional authority to intervene in matters that were long understood to be outside the federal government’s purview.

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Gun Control Orgs Ready to Floor It in Virginia As Soon As Spanberger Takes Office.

On November 4, Virginia elected its first woman governor, Democrat Abigail Spanberger.

It also got something else: another chance to pass comprehensive gun reform, something the majority-Democrat General Assembly had tried to do for the past two years, but was stymied by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Youngkin has vetoed 42 gun reform bills since he took office in 2022, including an assault weapons ban, a prohibition on abusive dating partners owning guns, and a minimum age for rifle purchases, according to a Trace analysis. He vetoed 24 of those bills in 2024 alone. The following year, Democrats reintroduced 15 of the same bills — plus three new ones — knowing they had little chance of passage. Now, with Spanberger set to be sworn in on January 17, Democrats are mobilizing for another try.

“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas,” State Senator Adam Ebbin, who chairs the Legislature’s gun violence prevention caucus, told The Trace. Ebbin plans to reintroduce the bills he sponsored that were vetoed by Youngkin last year. “I know that we’ll have others as well who are strategizing on it currently,” he said of his fellow Democratic lawmakers. “So there’ll be a substantial gun safety package reintroduced. And I expect the bills to be signed.”

“We have consistently voted for gun safety reform, and our voters prioritize it,” Ebbin added. “Governor-elect Spanberger is on the right side of those issues.”

Spanberger, who represented the Fredericksburg area in Congress until this year, has been a gun reform advocate since before she embarked on a career in politics. A former CIA operations officer, Spanberger joined a local chapter of the gun reform group Moms Demand Action shortly after she left the agency in 2014, according to a Washington Post profile.

— Jennifer Mascia in Virginia’s Election of a Democratic Governor Primes the State for Gun Reform

The 12 gun bills passed by the Colorado legislature this year and signed into law.

Democrats in the Colorado legislature this year passed a dozen bills imposing new gun regulations, all of which were signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.

They included measures limiting who can purchase most semiautomatic rifles on the market today, raising the minimum age to buy ammunition and aiming to improve Colorado’s response to mass shootings.

While some don’t go into effect until next year, and a few are sure to draw legal challenges from gun rights groups, they represent some of the most wide-reaching changes to Colorado’s firearms laws ever adopted.

Here’s a breakdown of what gun measures the legislature passed this year and what they will do.

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BLUF
They gaslit America for years, censored the truth, and rewrote intelligence reports to keep Trump from being proven right. Now the cover-up is unraveling, but half the country still believes the lie. PJ Media has been sounding the alarm on Deep State corruption from Day One, and we’re not backing down.

Kash Patel Drops Covid Origin Bombshell

FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell during a recent interview with Glenn Beck, and anyone who has watched the federal bureaucracy sabotage President Trump at every turn will recognize the pattern instantly. Patel walked through how the Trump administration evaluated intelligence about the virus in the early days and how that assessment collided with a coordinated effort inside the bureaucracy and the media to protect China, shield Anthony Fauci, and deny Trump credit for getting it right.

Patel reminded Beck that the team briefed Trump based on the intelligence they had. Trump listened, weighed the facts, and acted. Then the usual suspects stepped in: “Then enter Fauci and the media. ‘No, no, no. The Chinese would never do this. It’s not about… No, no, it didn’t come from that.’ Then the wet bat thing came out and some other goofy whatever.”

We all remember what went down. Fauci played the patronizing scientist. The legacy media enforced the talking points. Big Tech censored any dissent. The establishment insisted the virus emerged from some Wuhan wet market and treated anyone who questioned that tale like a threat to democracy.

Patel then pointed out the bombshell that dropped just weeks ago. According to him, former CIA Director Gina Haspel “authorized six case officers and intelligence analysts to be paid off so that they would change their assessment on COVID originations.”

“That’s a CIA institutional decision to spend taxpayer dollars to lie to the world where COVID came from because it fit the narrative that Fauci and the media wanted out there, along with Gina Haspel, because she didn’t want Donald Trump to get the credit for reading the intel right and making the hard right decision,” he said.


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