The Quantitative and Qualitative Superiority of Armed Self-Defense
Category: RKBA
We’ve been able to do online sales for the past 40 years. (FOPA ’86)
At least for the time being, this is standard operational grandstanding that’ll go nowhere.
More Restrictions: Democrat Reps. Push Bill to Limit Online Ammo Sales
Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) announced Friday their re-introduction of legislation to limit the online sale of ammunition.
A press release from Mfume’s office indicates the bill, called the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, “would require federally licensed ammunition dealers to confirm the identity of individuals who arrange to purchase ammunition over the internet by verifying a photo I.D. in person.”
The legislation would “also require ammunition vendors to report any sales of more than 1,000 rounds within five consecutive days to the U.S. Attorney General, if the person purchasing ammunition is not a licensed dealer.”
Rep. Mfume commented on the legislation, saying, “Since we last introduced this bill, the crisis of mass shootings has continued unabated. We’ve been living with this scourge of violence for so many years as assault weapons and enormous amounts of ammunition continue to fall into the hands of diabolical people.”
He added, “Mass shootings are not going to stop on their own, and we cannot keep waiting for the next one to occur.”
Rep. Coleman said:
Regulating online ammunition sales is a commonsense step to countering the number of mass shootings we see every year. This legislation closes the loophole that makes tragedies like these so unfortunately common. Public safety must come before convenience for an unregulated market: Americans send us to Washington because it is our job to protect them, not mourn them.
The online ammo sales gun control bill has 17 co-sponsors.
Report: Murders Plummeted in 2025; Meanwhile, Gun Ownership Up
By Dave Workman
A new report from the Council on Criminal Justice says homicides have declined more than 20 percent in 2025 from the previous year, based on data from 40 large U.S. cities, and the media is playing it up.
As note by the New York Times, “Last year will likely register the lowest national homicide rate in 125 years and the largest single-year drop on record.”
According to the Council on Criminal Justice report:
- Looking at changes in violent offenses, the rate of reported homicides was 21% lower in 2025 than in 2024in the 35 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 922 fewer homicides. There were 9% fewer reported aggravated assaults, 22% fewer gun assaults, and 2% fewer domestic violence incidents last year than in 2024. Robbery fell by 23% while carjackings (a type of robbery) decreased by 43%.
- When nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.
This has occurred at a time when gun ownership appears to be at record levels in the U.S. Raw data from the FBI’s National Instant Check System shows more than 2 million background checks each month during 2025, and adjusted data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows gun sales have declined, but they are still healthy.
In its annual report, NSSF included this caveat: “Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions. In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions for sales or transfers of new or used firearms.
“It should be noted that these statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold or sales dollars. Based on varying state laws, local market conditions and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”
When NSSF released its annual report on firearm production in the U.S., including import and export data from 2023, it estimated there were 506.1 million firearms in civilian possession from 1990 to 2023. It has likely increased from that figure by several million.
Establishment media reports on the plummeting murder statistics have ignored or carefully avoided any mention of increased gun ownership and the number of firearms in private hands.
For several years, the gun prohibition lobby has been adamant with predictions that increased private gun ownership would result in a dramatic increase in homicides. This new report suggests otherwise.
The Perversity of Citing The Black Codes To Defend Gun-Control Laws.
Neal Katyal and Justice Jackson were placed in the uncomfortable spot of having to explain why racist legislation to disarm the freedman was actually relevant.
One of the most bizarre aspects of modern Second Amendment litigation is how supporters of gun control are forced to favorably cite Jim Crow laws. In all other contexts, these sort of anti-canonical statutes would be untouchable. Yet, when it comes to guns, all the usual rules go out the window. In Wolford v. Lopez, one of the leading authorities for Hawaii’s law is an 1865 Louisiana statute. Neal Katyal described it as a “dead ringer” for the Hawaii statute.
During the oral argument, Justice Gorsuch was incredulous that Hawaii was relying on this shameful precedent. He asked Wolford’s counsel if it was appropriate to rely on such a law to inform the nation’s traditions.
Supreme Court Seems Skeptical Hawaii’s ‘Vampire Rule’ Comports With Second Amendment
A majority of Supreme Court justices appear ready to strike down Hawaii’s “vampire rule” that prohibits lawful concealed carry on all private property unless the property owner expressly gives their consent, though during oral arguments today the three liberal justices seem inclined to uphold the law.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, for instance, repeatedly questioned plaintiffs’ attorney Alan Beck and Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris (who participated in the oral arguments alongside the plaintiffs) about why this case wasn’t simply about property rights, without any Second Amendment implication whatsoever.
When Jackson asked whether this was really a case about property rights, not the Second Amendment, Beck rightfully responded that the law directly implicates their Second Amendment rights, but Jackson argued that while their rights might be “affected,” they’re not necessarily “implicated.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s line of questioning pushed back against Jackson’s contention, noting that the courts don’t allow property rights to be defined in a way that infringes on other constitutional rights.
Justice Sonya Sotomayor, meanwhile, appeared ready to completely disregard the Supreme Court’s “text, history, and tradition” test by suggesting that Hawaii’s “culture” of not carrying firearms in public trumps the national tradition of bearing arms in publicly accessible places. Both Beck and the Harris rebuked that suggestion, pointing out that the Court has specifically discussed a national tradition.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh buttressed that argument in his own question to Harris, wondering if the government wasn’t making the issue too complicated by raising questions about pre-textual laws instead of simply looking to see whether Hawaii’s “vampire rule” is part of a “deeply rooted tradition,” which he defined, in part, as laws that were widely adopted among a number of states.
Several conservative justices raised questions about the level of generality that can be used when looking for historical analogues, which indicates that, whatever SCOTUS ultimately decides about Hawaii’s law in question, the opinion will address, to one degree or another, how close any law from the past must be to a current regulation in order to be useful history for judges.
Given the discussion and debate about Hawaii’s use of the 1865 Louisiana law that prohibited bringing guns onto plantations without the plantation owner’s permission (a law that was part of the state’s infamous Black Codes designed to restrict the rights of newly-freed slaves), I’m cautiously optimistic that the Court will not only address the level of generality for historical analogues, but also the relevance of statutes found in history that are unquestionably unconstitutional today.
Justice Jackson argued that those laws must be considered a part of the national tradition, but Harris pushed back on that. In her view, unconstitutional laws are, by their very nature, outliers. And under the Supreme Court’s test, outlier laws are not a part of the national tradition of keeping and bearing arms.
Neal Katyal, arguing for Hawaii, echoed Sotomayor’s contention that local laws and customs matter more than a national tradition of gun ownership, while still arguing that the national tradition of gun ownership includes the ability of states to flip the default rules.
Gorsuch asked Katyal about relying heavily on the “outlier” Black Code law in defending Hawaii’s statute. Katyal called them a shameful part of American history, but argued that the law was presumptively constitutional because Louisiana was re-admitted to the Union with that law still in place. Katyal, however, never really explained why the Louisiana law shouldn’t be considered an outlier.
Katyal also got pushback for asserting that the Bruen test requires looking at history when trying to figure out if the Second Amendment is being implicated, as opposed to looking at history when determining whether a law fits within a national tradition. To do otherwise, he said, would be to put the government in the position of having to defend the history of all laws regarding firearms. Kavanaugh and Barrett both disagreed with Katyal, arguing that’s exactly what the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence dictates.
Both Beck and Harris did a great job in tearing apart Hawaii’s statute, and while Neal Katyal did his utmost to defend the law I don’t see him getting support from any of the more conservative justices. I predict the Court will drive a stake through the heart of Hawaii’s “vampire rule” when the Wolford opinion is released, though I’m sure anti-gun lawmakers in the Aloha state are already working on their next scheme to infringe on our right to bear arms.
Anti-Gunner Hacks Use Martin Luther King Jr. to Push for Gun Control, but There’s a Problem
While America is honoring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., some on the left are using his birthday to push for stripping Americans of their Second Amendment rights.
Giffords, one of the nation’s leading anti-gunner organizations, wrote a post on X in which it noted that King “dreamed of a world rooted in justice and peace,” but his “life was cut short by gun violence.”
The organization is honoring King “by continuing the fight for safer communities for all.”
The Stop Gun Violence PAC noted that King “taught us that every person has the right to live free from fear,” but “gun violence steals that freedom from our families every day.”
Here’s something the anti-gunners won’t tell you about King. He applied for a concealed carry permit in 1956 after his home in Montgomery, Alabama, was firebombed.
Back then, the police were responsible for determining who would be allowed to have a permit. They denied his application as they had with most other Black applicants.
King wished to carry a firearm to protect himself and his family against the KKK and others. Yet, the sheriff deemed him “unsuitable.”
The civil rights leader was known for his nonviolent approach to fighting for equality. Yet, most don’t know that he still approved of the use of firearms for self-defense in one’s home.
The Trump admin tried to merge DEA and ATF. After pressure, it quietly abandoned the plan
After pushback from both gun rights and gun control groups, the Trump administration has quietly abandoned its plan to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to people briefed on the matter.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced plans last year to merge ATF into the DEA, a proposal that would require Congressional budgetary approval and is part of the early administration-wide effort to shrink the size of federal government agencies.
Officials involved in the proposal told CNN at the time of Blanche’s proposal that the two agencies had different missions — ATF is tasked with investigating violent crime, gun trafficking, arson and bombings, while DEA agents enforce the nation’s drug laws — but they naturally went hand-in-hand.
“Where there are drugs there are usually guns, and where there are guns there are usually drugs,” one of the officials previously told CNN.
The effort was re-affirmed in June, when Justice Department officials suggested eliminating the ATF “as a separate component, with its functions merged into the Drug Enforcement Administration,” leaving the DEA as “a single component that will address violent crime, drug enforcement, and crimes relating to firearms” in their budget proposal.
Administration officials’ expectations that pro-Trump gun-rights groups would welcome the plans were dashed almost immediately.
Some conservative and gun-rights groups have long called for the ATF’s abolishment but raised concerns that a merger with another agency would empower the agency’s gun-related efforts, not weaken them. The MAGA groups want ATF gone and the laws it enforces repealed. Giving its powers to another agency makes things worse, a gun rights source told CNN.
“Regulating guns is a hot potato. Everyone is for eradicating illegal drugs. Not everyone is for gun regulation,” one person involved in the Trump administration discussions that followed the Blanche memo told CNN.
Florida House Wastes Little Time Repealing Parkland-Era Gun Control Law
It didn’t take long for the Florida House to approve a bill that would allow adults 18 and older to once again purchase long guns in the state, undoing a measure adopted after the Parkland shootings in 2018 that raised the age to purchase a firearm to 21. The 2026 session kicked off in Tallahassee on Tuesday, and by Thursday afternoon the repeal bill had already cleared the lower chamber in a 74-37 vote.
House Majority Leader Tyler Sirois, a Merritt Island Republican who is sponsoring this year’s bill, said the Parkland shooting was a “tragedy.” But he said lowering the minimum gun-buying age to 18 is about Second Amendment rights.
“The legislation seeks to restore the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Sirois said.
But Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, a Parkland Democrat who was the city’s mayor at the time of the mass shooting, said the law that increased the minimum age to 21 has “stood the test of time” and that it has been found constitutional by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This bill today is going to hurt families,” Hunschofsky said.
It’s true that the Eleventh Circuit upheld Florida’s law using the bizarre argument that “minors” couldn’t enter into legal contracts at the time of the Founding, which it considered analogous to depriving young adults of their ability to purchase a firearm today. But Hunschofsky failed to acknowledge that other appellate courts have concluded that adults under the age of 21 are fully vested with their Second Amendment rights, and the Supreme Court is currently hanging on to close to a half-dozen cases dealing with the conflict, including the NRA’s challenge to Florida’s law.
The law in question has been in place less than a decade, so it’s hardly stood the test of time. It has, however, remained in place despite the fact that the Florida House of Representatives has voted to repeal it for four years straight. Over the past three years the Florida Senate has failed to follow suit, and it sounds like gun owners once again have their work cut out for them in the upper chamber.
When asked Tuesday about the issue, Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, noted that last year, senators “were not supportive of it. I have not heard anything different this year.”
“We are clearly a responsible gun-law state and we have a lot of freedoms here with the Second Amendment, which I’m proud of,” Albritton said. “But as it relates to that bill, it will be determined by the (committee) chairs in the Senate and the Senate appetite for such a bill as a whole.”
Albritton himself has been noncommittal about repeal, but former Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, has been vocally opposed to undoing the gun control law. Albritton could always use some parliamentary slight of hand and assign the House bill to another committee, but at this point he’s expressed no interest in doing so.
Florida gun owners should be contacting their state senators and demanding they restore the right to keep and bear arms to young adults in the Sunshine State. I think there’s a very good chance the Supreme Court will eventually say that it’s unconstitutional to block adults under the age of 21 from purchasing or possessing firearms, but we’re still probably a couple of years away from that decision. In the meantime, the rights of under-21s continue to be curtailed, and its up to the Florida legislature to correct its error. The House has done its part. Now it’s time for the Senate to do the same.
DeStefano flown to New York City, prepping for court hearings
by Lee Williams
Indie Guns owner Lawrence Michael DeStefano was picked up from Florida’s Orange County Jail by New York detectives this week after serving nearly 90 days in custody and flown to New York City aboard a private jet.
When they landed, the officers took a group photo and then rushed DeStefano to an NYPD precinct to be booked, and then to a quick court hearing in Queens. Afterward, he was taken to Rikers Island, a notorious 413-acre state prison located in the East River near the Bronx, where he remains incarcerated.
At the court hearing, a New York State prosecutor tried to portray him as an “evil gun runner,” DeStefano said, but the judge cut her off.
“The judge looked at her and said, ‘I have a 65-year-old man with no criminal record and you’re saying all these bad things about him.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘You’ve got some real serious charges against you. If you’ve got somewhere to stay, I will let you out on bail,’” DeStefano said over a jail phone Friday morning. “This is going to be a fight and the gloves are off. I am going balls-to-the-wall on this. It’s going to get ugly.”
DeStefano’s court-appointed defense attorney was of little help. She showed up just seconds before the hearing began.
“She had no idea what was going on,” he said.
He will appear in court for a bail hearing in two weeks, DeStefano said.
“I need to figure out how to get a message to the gun community,” he said. “If I am out on bail, I could win this. I know what I need to do to win this. I need to do research, but they’re seizing it for evidence. They already deleted my Telegram account after they got my password,” he said.
Throughout the trip, the detectives were talking furiously with the New York State Attorney General’s Office about whether to issue a press release, DeStefano said.
“It was chaos. Everyone was on their phones. They decided to issue a press release,” he said. “You guys really think you’re doing a press release? You’re helping me. The gun culture is a tight-knit family.”
New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a massive press release late Wednesday, titled, “Attorney General James and NYPD Commissioner Tisch Announce Indictment of Florida Man for Illegally Shipping Firearms and Ghost Guns to New York.”
It contains a link to a 42-page indictment that charges DeStefano with 71 felonies, which could see him jailed for a total of 521 years.
“Lawrence Destefano and his company Indie Guns are accused of flooding New York with illegal firearms, and we are determined to bring him to justice,” James said in the press release. “I will not tolerate illegal and dangerous weapons in our communities, and I thank our partners in law enforcement for their work to shut down this ghost gun supplier.”
Despite the allegation and the centuries behind bars DeStefano faces, the press release indicates that only a dozen actual firearms were recovered, along with “two ghost gun kits, 28 high-capacity magazines, and over 1,400 rounds of ammunition, which were mailed to locations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County.”
The press release also mentions the default judgement James won in a civil suit against DeStefano, which he ignored.
“In March 2024, Attorney General James secured a $7.8 million judgment and court order against Indie Guns prohibiting it from selling firearms in New York,” the press release states.
The lengthy press release even includes quotes from NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel and USPIS Inspector in Charge Ketty Larco-Ward of the New York Division. All strongly supported James for “disrupting the dangerous illicit weapons pipeline,” and for “dismantling gun trafficking networks.”
DeStefano knows he will be severely outgunned in court.
“I am ready for the fight,” he said.
Supreme Court limits dual charges in overlapping gun statutes
WASHINGTON (TNND) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday clarified how federal gun statutes apply when a single act potentially violates two overlapping provisions, holding that prosecutors may not secure separate convictions under both statutes when one act triggers identical criminal elements.
The decision in Barrett v. United States (No. 24-5774) reversed part of a lower court’s judgment and sharply restricts the government’s ability to secure cumulative punishments for a single criminal act involving guns.
Background of the Case
The case stems from the prosecution of Dwayne Barrett, who was convicted in federal district court of robbery and related gun offenses.
According to court documents, Barrett committed a series of robberies between August 2011 and January 2012. During one, Barrett’s confederate shot and killed Gamar Dafalla.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) previously said Barrett, as well as a co-defendant, were convicted in March 2013 of murder, robberies, and gun charges after a two-week jury
During the commission of the underlying crime, Barrett carried and used a gun, conduct that prosecutors charged under two separate provisions of federal law, including one that makes it a crime to use or carry a gun during and in relation to a crime of violence or drug trafficking, as well as other that escalates the penalty where a person causes death while committing an offense, potentially exposing a defendant to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
At trial and on appeal, the government argued that Barrett could be convicted under both statutes for the same act, essentially treating the gun use that caused Dafalla’s death as a basis for two separate convictions.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) January 14, 2026
How Many Historical Gun Laws Constitute a ‘National Tradition’?
The Supreme Court has explicitly stated that, in order for a modern gun law to be constitutionally sound, it must comply with the text of the Second Amendment as well as the history and tradition of gun ownership (and gun regulation). So far, though, the Court hasn’t given a whole lot of advice as to what constitutes a national tradition.
In Bruen, SCOTUS doubted that “just three colonial regulations could suffice to show a tradition of public-carry regulation,” but declined to state definitely what would suffice; both in terms of the number of laws as well as when those laws were put into effect. Is 1791 the most important date, since that’s when the Second Amendment was ratified; is it 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified; or are both equally important?
Pete Patterson, an attorney at Cooper & Kirk with an extensive background as a Second Amendment litigator, was asked about this by SCOTUSblog’s Haley Proctor for her 2A-focused series “A Second Opinion,” and his answer worth discussing.
What does it take to make a sufficient showing of a history of firearms regulation? How many laws or practices do you need, from what historical period, and how do we describe the tradition those laws represent?
These are all issues that are hotly contested, but I will give you what I think is the view most consistent with Bruen and Supreme Court precedent generally.
First, the relevant historical period should be centered on 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. The court has held in many cases that when provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states, they have the same meaning as they have against the federal government.
It should follow that the meaning was set in 1791, when those provisions were first ratified and applied to the federal government. To be sure, those rights were not incorporated against [applied to] the states until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, but that amendment did not purport to change the substantive meaning of the Bill of Rights.
This conclusion is consistent with the court’s practices, including its holding in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that the laws of over 30 states from the second half of the 19th Century could not alone “establish an early American tradition” that would inform the meaning of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
That makes sense, both from a legal and practical standpoint. As Patterson points out, there’s nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that suggests any type of revision to the Bill of Rights. It’s purpose wasn’t to update the Bill of Rights, but to ensure that those rights were safeguarded against intrusion by state and local governments as well. And during the congressional debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms was front and center.
Second, what the government should have to establish is a limitation that was widely understood by Americans at ratification to qualify the scope of the right to keep and bear arms.
The common law frequently will be a primary resource in this inquiry, as that was law that was understood to be generally applicable. The common law is reflected in sources like case law and prominent secondary sources such as Blackstone’s Commentaries.
Of course, the focus should be on the prevailing American understanding rather than British understandings that Americans may have repudiated, so consulting American sources like Tucker’s Blackstone is an important part of the inquiry.
Statutes also play a role, of course, but the government should have to show that any statutes it relies on are consistent with the prevailing, general understanding and not a departure from it. That presumably is why Bruen repeatedly emphasizes that a handful of outlier statutes cannot establish a tradition of regulation.
I think its also important to note that the Supreme Court talked about a “national” tradition, not a state-specific or regional tradition. If three colonial-era statutes aren’t enough to suffice, then three statutes from one part of the country shouldn’t be enough either. This is particularly important when courts are considering laws adopted around the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, given that many southern states instituted laws restricting the right to keep and bear arms that might have been racially neutral on their face, but were hardly enforced in a colorblind fashion.
Patterson adds one more metric in determining a “national tradition.”
Third, the tradition should be described at a level of generality that is general enough not to make arbitrary distinctions, but specific enough not to risk eviscerating the right.
If readers are interested in the level-of-generality question, I recommend the brief my colleague John Ohlendorf filed in Wolford on behalf of professor [Joel] Alicea, which address that question at some length.
As an example of the need for the Court to address the level of generality that’s most appropriate, Ohlendorf cites the historical tradition recognized in Bruen of states prohibiting arms “in legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses.”
v
The word “debunked” gets thrown around an awful lot by the leftist media, and it’s amazing how often it really boils down to “we said it’s false and that’s all you need to know.”
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Now, if the media were trustworthy, that might be enough. If someone is worthy of trust, you can take their word at face value. The phrase “trust me, bro,” isn’t needed when someone is trusted.
But I came across a story earlier today that, frankly, highlights how the leftist media’s myths can, in fact, be prophecy.
In 2009, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin created a sensation when she claimed that government-run healthcare would inevitably lead to the creation of bureaucratic boards responsible for deciding who should and shouldn’t receive treatment.
It’s from this charge that we got the term “death panel,” which became a near constant reference during the congressional debate over the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Palin was called a loon and a crank.
Even today, a simple search on Microsoft’s Copilot for the date when the former governor coined the term “death panel” carefully notes that her accusation quickly became a viral talking point despite “being widely debunked as a myth.”
Fifteen years after Palin’s remark, disability advocate Krista Carr testified before members of the Canadian parliament that her organization receives weekly reports of medical assistance in dying (MAID) services being suggested unprompted to disabled individuals during routine, non-terminal care visits.
Who could have predicted that government-controlled healthcare, combined with legalized euthanasia, would eventually lead to the sick and uncomfortable being told to kill themselves?
Where does Palin go for her apology?
Palin was a flawed candidate, whom I mocked at the time as well, but on this, she was right. While there may not be an express panel simply deciding who lives and who dies, the fact that Canada, with its socialized healthcare system, finds it cheaper to kill patients rather than treat them, so they suggest suicide.
How is that better than simply denying treatment so people can waste away slowly? Is it a bit more humane? That depends on your perspective, but the point is that they’re still trying to use MAID to rid their system of people who require more care and, as a result, cost more money.
This was “debunked as a myth,” but that “myth” was nothing of the sort.
It’s like how the media keeps trying to claim that gun bans aren’t on the table simply because a candidate isn’t expressly talking about them at that particular moment.
When anyone on the right makes a logical inference on the result of a given policy, even if it’s not expressly spelled out as such in the proposals being discussed, the media turns to the text and calls BS, even if anyone with half a brain can see where that’s coming from.
It’s not that different than CNN calling Minnesota day cares and reporting that the one that answered the phone said it was legit, so everything Nick Shirley uncovered was debunked.
To call it asinine is too mild a term for this level of vile.
The truth is that while I’m a big fan of pointing out when the Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head, there are many times we can see those consequences coming from a mile away.
Like “death panels” being the ultimate result of state-run healthcare. Like gun control’s failures eventually leading to a proposal for banning firearms almost entirely. Like making fraud easy results in fraud.
The difference between the mythology of Palin’s warning and what we can now see was clearly prophecy is a matter of time.
Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no mainstream coverage of the supposed prophecies of how the Bruen decision was going to lead to more homicides on our streets, which has now been debunked not by the media but by history.
Violent crime is down. Homicides are down. “Mass shootings” are down. Everything is down compared to where it was when Bruen was decided.
Nothing they said would happen actually happened, but they don’t talk about that being “debunked.” That would mean acknowledging that their buddies were wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about.
It’s like the prophecies of climate change. Every model is, in essence, an attempt at prophecy, though one based on supposed science rather than mysticism. Yet those models have a track record that would only be improved if they relied on pig entrails or tarot cards.
Those are never framed as “debunked,” either.
Weird, isn’t it?
The difference between mythology and prophecy, at least in this context, is nothing more than the media’s continued fixation on advancing leftist policies, downplaying anyone on the right, and otherwise being anything but the journalists they want us to believe they are.
BREAKING NEWS!
Under the direction of President Trump, the United States has officially withdrawn from the UN Register of Conventional Arms.
UNROCA works closely with the UN Arms Trade Treaty and requires participating countries to submit detailed import and export reports.… pic.twitter.com/eKxtxO78Lk
— National Association for Gun Rights (@gunrights) January 8, 2026
California ban on open-carry firearms is unconstitutional, appeals panel rules
A federal appellate court ruled Friday that California’s ban on openly carrying a firearm throughout most of the state is unconstitutional.
The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaned heavily on the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a New York state law regulating concealed weapons. That ruling worried lawmakers in California at the time – including the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said the 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision meant “more people will carry guns in bars, in shopping malls, in churches, hospitals, movie theaters, even schools.”
“We are committed to defending California’s commonsense gun laws,” according to a written statement from the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta in response to Friday’s appellate court ruling. “We are reviewing the opinion and considering all options.”
The 9th Circuit appellate decision stemmed from a civil rights lawsuit filed by Mark Baird of Siskiyou County. Baird argued in Sacramento federal court that he wished to openly carry a firearm for self-defense throughout California, but the state’s ban made it illegal in counties with populations exceeding 200,000 residents.
U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who wrote the appellate panel’s opinion, said the most recent Census shows that California counties with more than 200,000 residents are home to roughly 95% of the state’s population. There are 28 of California’s 58 counties have a population above the threshold, accounting for 37.3 million residents. Only 5% of California’s population for whom open carry is not outright banned, VanDyke said, are purportedly able to apply for a license that would allow them to open carry in just their counties.
VanDyke said openly carrying a gun has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms for most of American history. When applying the standard set in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, VanDyke said the historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition.”
VanDyke, appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, said open carry remains the norm across the country with more than 30 states that generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations.
“Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California,” VanDyke wrote. “From 1850, when California first became a state, until the Mulford Act of 1967, public carry of firearms in California (open or concealed) was entirely unregulated. And when California first deviated (or considered deviating) from this practice, its reasons for doing so were less than morally exemplary.”
U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith provided a partial dissenting opinion, arguing that California’s ban complied with the 2022 Supreme Court decision. Smith, who was appointed in 2007 by former President George W. Bush, said his colleagues “got this case half right” but misread the Supreme Court’s ruling on the New York state gun law.
VanDyke was joined in his opinion by another Trump appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee, also appointed by Trump in 2019. VanDyke said California law recognizes two methods to carry a firearm in public: concealed, such as hidden under a shirt and not visible to others, and open carry, such as visible in a holster and exposed to public view.
“Regardless of how a firearm is carried in California – concealed or openly – as a general matter it is unlawful under California law to publicly carry a firearm without a license to do so,” VanDyke wrote. “The reality is that no one in California can open carry – with or without a permit – in the counties where 95% of Californians live. Nor can the 95% of Californians who live in those urban counties get any open-carry permit at all, even to carry openly in one of California’s rural counties.”
For now, the ban remains in place and the case was remanded to Sacramento federal court with instructions to rule in favor of Baird on the open-carry ban. Bonta and his office have the option to request an en banc review from the full 9th Circuit.
Bondi is wrong. The Trump DOJ is wrong. The 2nd amendment protects Arms, not just guns. That includes guns, knives, swords, bows and arrows.
BLUF
The Bigger Issue
This case is not really about knives.
It is about whether the Second Amendment is a principle or a policy tool.
If “arms” means only modern firearms — and only when politically expedient — then the amendment has already been hollowed out.
If it means what it says, then the government does not get to pick winners and losers based on aesthetics, mechanics, or public discomfort.
The courts will decide this case.
But the DOJ has already made its position clear — and it should concern anyone who takes the Second Amendment at face value.
Trump DOJ Says the Second Amendment Protects Guns, But Not Knives
The phrase “shall not be infringed” has a way of revealing who actually believes it — and who only supports it when it is politically convenient.
That tension is now on full display inside the Trump Administration itself.
While the Department of Justice has aggressively challenged gun control laws in blue states and territories, it is simultaneously telling federal courts that the Second Amendment does not protect switchblade knives. According to the DOJ, Americans may have a constitutional right to own AR-15s and carry handguns, but automatic knives are a bridge too far.
That position has landed the administration squarely at odds with Second Amendment advocates — and exposed a familiar fault line in how the federal government treats “arms” it finds uncomfortable.
The Case at the Center of the Fight
The issue is playing out in Knife Rights v. Bondi, a case currently before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Knife Rights, a national advocacy group, is challenging the constitutionality of the Federal Switchblade Act — a 1958 law that restricts interstate commerce in automatic knives and bans their possession on certain federal, tribal, and territorial lands.
Rather than backing the challenge, the Trump DOJ is defending the law.
In its appellate brief, the Department argues that switchblade knives are “well-suited to criminal misuse” and fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment altogether. According to the government, history supports broad regulation of “inherently concealed” weapons, and automatic knives fall under that category.
The DOJ’s conclusion is blunt: there is no constitutional right to carry or possess them.
A Narrow View of “Arms”
To justify its position, the Justice Department leaned heavily on 19th-century laws regulating the concealed carry of weapons such as Bowie knives, dirks, daggers, and pocket pistols. Those laws, the DOJ argues, demonstrate a long-standing tradition of restricting weapons deemed particularly suitable for concealment.
According to the brief, the Federal Switchblade Act fits neatly within that tradition because it targets only knives whose blades are concealed inside the handle and deploy automatically. Fixed-blade knives, the DOJ noted, remain unregulated under federal law.
In the Department’s view, that distinction is enough to survive constitutional scrutiny.
What the DOJ did not address is why concealability alone strips an object of Second Amendment protection — especially when concealed carry of firearms is now constitutionally protected nationwide.
Montana Accidentally Made Things Right on Gun-Free School Zones
I don’t think that schools should be totally gun-free zones. While I get that Bruen said that sensitive places could be gun-free, and schools are probably about as sensitive a place as you can name, I don’t think that barring lawful carry in schools for staff and parents is a winning strategy. After all, how many school shootings have we seen despite the schools having this status?
Yeah, plenty.
But the truth is that in most places, schools are as off-limits as they come. At least they are when it’s K-12 schools. Colleges are a different matter in many states, but below that level? The rules are firm.
And those rules include a “buffer zone” of sorts that prohibits the carrying of firearms around the school, regardless of most any other factor.
And Montana accidentally exposed a loophole and made things right, even if that’s not quite what they were trying to do.
Sometimes the most consequential gun control stories don’t start with a bill banning firearms. They start with lawmakers trying to expand freedom — and discovering that the Constitution doesn’t bend the way critics expect it to.
That is exactly what just happened in Montana.
In an effort to strengthen the right to carry, Montana lawmakers may have effectively erased gun-free school zones everywhere except on school property itself. Not through activism. Not through litigation designed to gut federal law. But through their own permitless carry statutes — and a federal court noticed.
The result is a ruling that has left gun-control advocates furious, school administrators uneasy, and Second Amendment supporters pointing out an inconvenient truth: when the state recognizes the right to carry as a right, federal carve-outs start to fall apart.
It all boils down to a guy who would go for a walk near a school. Sometimes, he’d carry a gun openly, and other times, it would be concealed. Local police told the school that he wasn’t breaking any state law, so they couldn’t do anything about it. The school moved kids away from the man and tried to erect visual barriers so no one would see him.
Eventually, the feds stepped in, arrested him, and saw the whole thing thrown out.
Why?
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because Montana statutorily authorizes concealed carry for eligible citizens, those citizens qualify for the federal licensing exception.
In plain terms: if everyone is licensed by law, then everyone qualifies for the exemption.
The court dismissed the charges and made it clear that the outcome wasn’t an accident; it was the logical result of Montana’s legislative choices.
The ruling emphasized that Montana did not delegate licensing authority to agencies or local officials. The Legislature itself granted the authority. Congress, the court said, did not clearly prohibit states from doing that.
As a result of that ruling, though, gun-free school zones are confined exclusively to the school itself, not the area around the school.
If schools are going to be gun-free zones, this is how it should be. The idea that the area around the school is also gun-free is a major problem because, frankly, people travel by those schools all the time. They have to in order to get to where they’re going, and unless they’re licensed under state law, they may be committing a felony.
The “buffer zone” thing has always been wrong, but Montana accidentally fixed it for residents there. Instead of just saying a license isn’t needed, they licensed everyone, which had an unintended but positive effect regarding the whole school zone thing.
Maybe other states should address this via their own constitutional carry laws. Most didn’t take quite the same approach as Montana, but they could make that happen and change things once and for all.
It would be a win for gun rights, sanity, and everything else decent in the universe, and the anti-gunners would still have their allegedly gun-free schools.
Again, not that it seems to do much good.
California: Background Check Requirement for Gun Barrel Sales Takes Effect January 1, 2026
California’s narrowing of gun barrel sales to licensed dealers only and background check requirement for said sales takes effect January 1, 2026.
Breitbart News reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed the gun barrel controls on October 10, 2025, noting that the new law “will require all gun barrel sales to be conducted by licensed firearms dealers, mandating that said dealers conduct an ‘eligibility check’ before selling a barrel.”
The language of the bill makes clear that a five dollar fee will be added to each barrel sale to cover the cost of the “eligibility check.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta put out a press release noting that the gun barrel controls take effect January 1, 2026, noting that the new law updates the definitions of “Firearm Accessory” and “Firearm Manufacturing Machine.”
Moreover, the new controls include an “updated definition and cause of action for unlawful distribution of digital firearm manufacturing code to unlicensed individuals” and create a “new criminal offense and civil cause of action for facilitating, or causing another person to engage in, the unlawful manufacture of firearms.”
If a barrel is purchased online, the new law requires that the “seller…ship the barrel to a licensed firearms dealer in California to complete the in-person transaction and final delivery pursuant to section 33700 of the Penal Code (codified by SB 704).”
California has more gun control than any other state in the Union, yet the FBI noted that California led the nation in “active shooter incidents” 2020-2024.
Grassroots Legislative Update—December 29, 2025
By Tanya Metaksa
HAPPY NEW YEAR
What’s New—2025 Legislative Summary Part I, Legislative Sessions; The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia-April 4; Idaho-April 4; Indiana-April 24; Kentucky-March 28; Maryland-April 7; Mississippi-April 3; 2026 Pre-Legislative Action-Florida; Carry-over action-Michigan; New Jersey; North Carolina;
State Legislative 2025 Summary (Part I, Part II next week)
The following states are still in SESSION:
Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia: April 4; Idaho, April 4; Indiana April 24; Kentucky: March 28; Maryland: April 7; Mississippi: April 3;