Law Enforcement Trainers File Scotus Amicus Brief against Maryland Rifle Ban: Citizens should be able to choose the same high-quality defensive arms that peace officers choose.

Last week the International Law Enforcement Educators & Trainers Association filed an amicus brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case challenging Maryland’s ban on many common semiautomatic rifles. The case is Bianchi v. Brown, and it has an unusual procedural posture; it is a petition for certiorari before judgement. Yet the case is one on which the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled.

This post will first summarize the amicus brief, and then provide the procedural background, which is detailed in the Bianchi plaintiffs’ cert. petition.

The facts about the banned rifles

As detailed in the amicus brief, the semiautomatic rifles banned by the Maryland General Assembly fire only one shot each time the trigger is pressed. This is the same rate of fire as the most common semiautomatic handguns, such as those made by Glock, Smith & Wesson, or Ruger.

The claim by gun prohibition advocates that such guns fire 300 to 500 times per minute has no basis in fact, and is contrary to common sense. It would take a superhuman trigger finger pull a trigger at the rate of 5 to 8 times per second, let alone do so for a full minute.

Nor are the banned rifles, including those based on the AR-15 platform, more powerful than nonbanned rifles. To the contrary, their standard ammunition is .223 inch or 5.56mm bullets that are small compared to most other rifle ammunition. Accordingly, their kinetic energy is lower.

Because the banned rifles are more powerful than handguns, but less powerful than most other rifles, the relatively low wounding power of this ammunition has been confirmed by decades of study by the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory.

Moreover, as documented in police training manuals, the banned rifles are the safest for defensive use within buildings, because their ammunition is especially unlikely to penetrate a wall.

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If so, we can only hope the Court takes these cases and crams their rulings in Heller, Caetano, McDonald and Bruen down the lower court’s and state’s throats


Groundswell of Second Amendment Cases Seems Destined for the Supreme Court
Federal courts in blue states seem to be upholding the majority of gun control laws, even after landmark Supreme Court decisions upholding the fundamental right to keep and bear arms

We recently posted about the New York Second Amendment case challenging New York’s concealed carry permit law that requires that a permit applicant prove to a local official that he or she is of “good moral character.” Not only is this an absurd requirement (how exactly are you supposed to prove that you have “good moral character”), but even after doing so, said local official then has complete discretion on whether to approve the applicant’s permit request . . . or not. The challengers in the case just asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case after the Second Circuit approved the “good moral character” requirement:

From our report: Second Circuit’s Partial Upholding of New York’s Gun Carry Law Appealed to SCOTUS:

The key part of the Petition [asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case] is its discussion of the New York law’s requirement that New Yorkers prove that they have “good moral character” before obtaining a concealed carry permit:

[T]his case would allow this Court the opportunity to clarify that government may not selectively disarm law-abiding members of “the people” whenever licensing officials feel they are of poor character, potentially dangerous, or otherwise unworthy of enjoying the natural right to self-defense with which they were endowed by their Creator….

In Bruen, this Court rejected New York’s requirement that, to be authorized to bear arms in public, citizens first must demonstrate “proper cause” — defined as “a special need for self-protection.” Here, the panel sanctioned New York’s stand-in requirement that citizens convince licensing officials of their “good moral character” prior to licensure. As the district court explained, New York simply “replaced” proper cause with good moral character, “while retaining (and even expanding) the open-ended discretion afforded to its licensing officers….”

New York’s “good moral character” standard is…a prohibited “suitability” determination and, as the district court noted, is merely a surrogate for the “proper cause” standard that was struck down in Bruen…Indeed, under the CCIA, New York officials decide whether a person “ha[s] the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon….”

It is quite difficult to understand Bruen’s criticism of “suitability” not to include “good moral character.” And it is even more difficult to believe that this Court would approve the discretionary power to deny carry licenses to “all Americans” unless they first “convince a ‘licensing officer’” of their general morality.

In doing some research to see if other cases exist that are working their way through the courts, I was surprised to find out that there are — a lot of them.

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Attorney General Labrador Leads 27 States Encouraging SCOTUS Overturn Gun and Magazine Ban in Illinois

The following press release was sent out by the Office of Attorney General Raúl Labrador. Press releases do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

BOISE – Attorneys General Raúl Labrador of Idaho and Todd Rokita of Indiana led 26 other states in filing a brief with the United States Supreme Court challenging Illinois’ unconstitutional ban of AR-15 rifles and their standard 30-round magazines.

“This ruling from the Seventh Circuit flies in the face of the Bruen decision and the Second Amendment’s unqualified command,” said Attorney General Labrador. “To restrict an inanimate object based on nothing more than cosmetic appearance is absurd, and the Supreme Court needs to make this right with all expediency.”

The Seventh Circuit’s decision in Barnett v. Raoul found the Illinois gun ban constitutional, holding that the plain language of the Second Amendment and the term “Arms” does not apply to AR-15s because of their militaristic appearance. The Seventh Circuit’s decision lacks any textual or historical basis. In fact, the arms the Second Amendment originally protected were those used in military combat. The Seventh Circuit’s analysis bears no resemblance to the analysis prescribed by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The brief asks the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and correct the Seventh Circuit’s erroneous decision, arguing that,

“[e]ven apart from having no basis in the text of the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit’s artificial divide between “militaristic” firearms and firearms used for self-defense is indefensible.”

This brief was also joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the State Legislatures of Arizona and Wisconsin.

Utah governor signs bill encouraging teachers to carry guns in classrooms
Republican Spencer Cox approves legislation for firearms training that critics say incentivizes educators to bring guns on to campus

The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, has signed a controversial bill aimed at encouraging teachers to carry a gun or keep one in their classroom.

The legislation will fund annual training for teachers on how to defend classrooms against active threats, as well as safely use firearms in a school setting.

Michelle Oldroyd learns techniques during a free tactical training class for school teachers at a gun range in Hurricane, UT on June 6, 2018. Michelle is 53 years old, teaches 9th Grade, and shoots a Walther PPS.

The proposal builds upon a state law enacted last year that waived concealed-carry permit fees for teachers.

Taken together, the laws are aimed at incentivizing teachers to bring guns into their classrooms – a move that has been hotly contested by gun violence prevention advocates, who argue that more guns on campus does not equal better safety for students.

Utah is one of 16 states that allow school employees to carry guns in K-12 schools. State law currently allows people to carry firearms on public-school property if they have permission from school administrators or hold a concealed firearm permit, which requires a criminal background check and completion of a firearms familiarity course.

The new bill does not prevent teachers with a permit who are not involved in the program from carrying a gun on school grounds. Those who participate in the training program will be shielded from civil liability if they use the gun at school while “acting in good faith” and without gross negligence, according to the bill.

School districts also cannot be held liable if a participating teacher fires their weapon.

“We worked closely with the department of public safety to make sure we have all the necessary safeguards in place in this bill,” Cox’s office said in a statement. “We all want schools where our kids are safe and can thrive.”

Utah’s public schools have not seen any mass shootings on campus. But two students were killed and one was injured after they were shot by a then 14-year-old in a January 2022 shooting outside a high school. The next year, several schools were the targets of automated hoax calls reporting an active shooter.

The bill would cost the department of public safety about $100,000 annually. County sheriffs would appoint instructors to lead the course, which participating teachers would be expected to retake each year.

Some Utah educators, including retired public school teacher Stan Holmes, voiced concern that the half-day training would not be enough to prepare teachers to respond properly in an emergency. Holmes, a US army veteran, said he had taken a tactical training course offered by the state, which he referred to as “a joke”.

“I left unconvinced that all graduates could handle themselves in a crisis situation,” he said. “Parents of children in Utah schools have no reason to trust that the so-called educator-protector program trainings would be any better.”

Teachers participating in the program who choose not to carry the gun on their person would be required to store it in a biometric gun safe, which uses unique biological data such as a fingerprint or retinal scan to verify the owner’s identity. They would have to pay out-of-pocket for the storage device.

Jaden Christensen, a volunteer with the Utah chapter of Moms Demand Action, said in a statement published by Everytown for Gun Safety: “Let’s keep our educators centered on what they do best – teaching. We should be working on finding ways to keep guns out of the wrong hands and out of the classroom – not inviting them into our schools.

“It’s shameful that this new law will do the opposite.”

HB 119 is one of two bills that focuses on how to navigate campus-safety guns being in the hands and classrooms of teachers. The other, HB 84, which was signed on 13 March, updates the parameters for storing a gun in a classroom and creates a protocol for teachers, staff and parents to report concerning or threatening behavior.

In a statement to the Guardian, Cox’s office referred to HB 84 as a “significant piece of a multi-pronged effort to increase school security”.

Only thing discouraging me from buying guns is the ‘gun budget’ that gets eaten up by the necessity of home repairs and major appliances that need to be replaced.


House Committee Investigates Government’s Spying on Those Who Exercise Second Amendment Rights.

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government asked pointed questions to several Biden administration officials to get answers to why the federal government is working against the American people instead of for them.

The Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government delved into questions of why the federal government spied, and lied, about the lawful purchases by Americans by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The U.S. Treasury admitted that it collected information on Americans’ purchases of firearms and ammunition, shopping at several sporting retailers, including Cabelas, and even tracked people using search terms that include “Bible.”

The admission came by letter to U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) just one day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen refused to answer questions from Congress if the surveillance occurred. The letter would appear to implicate the federal government with violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights protecting against illegal search and seizure, as the activity was conducted without a warrant.

Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) laid out in his opening statement the grave concerns Congress has with this intrusive and potentially illegal search and seizure of Americans’ private financial data.

“Big government was colluding with big tech to censor Americans. That’s the first thing we learned,” Chairman Jordan explained. “But now, it’s big government colluding with big banks and big business to spy on everything Americans buy, every place they go, everything they do. Big government wants your financial data because it’s full of sensitive information about you.”

He continued, “And… and if you’re a gun owner, look out. You’re going to the top of the list. For simply exercising your Second Amendment right, you’re on the FBI’s target list. Never forget, the federal government got this information without any process. No warrant and frankly, no notification.”

The further the committee was able to dig into information provided by FBI whistleblowers, the more concerning the allegations became.

“Since then, we’ve learned that the financial surveillance was broader and there was actually a specific objective,” Chairman Jordan said. “The federal government is building profiles on the American people. And the profile isn’t based on criminal conduct. It’s based on political beliefs and if you’ve got the wrong political beliefs, well, you’re a potentially violent domestic extremist.”

“It’s Appalling…”

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Undaunted By Court Losses, Cali Lawmakers Push More Anti-Gun Measures

As California’s restrictive anti-gun laws continue to be deemed unconstitutional in the courtroom—the latest being a district court earlier this week striking down the law restricting purchase of handguns and semi-auto rifles to one every 30 days—the state legislature is pushing on, considering even more measures curtailing the rights of lawful citizens.

In recent weeks, courts have struck down a law that permanently denied Second Amendment rights to people who have had felony convictions vacated, set aside or dismissed, and their rights to possess firearms fully restored, a law allowing frivolous lawsuits against the firearms industry and the state’s on-again, off-again ammo background check law. You might think anti-gun legislators in the Golden State would finally back down, but alas they refuse to do so.

Now, California lawmakers are pushing a handful of restrictive measures that would further infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

Two such measures are scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Safety Committee on March 19. SB 1038, by Democrat state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, would cut the amount of time gun owners have to report lost or stolen firearms to 48 hours, down from five days. Such a law would make victims of theft repeat victims if they failed to meet the reporting requirement.

The other measure, SB 902, by Democrat state Sens. Richard Roth and Anthony Portantino, would add “animal mistreatment” to the list of misdemeanors that would result in a 10-year prohibition of firearms possession. Since the measure doesn’t include a clear definition of what is considered “animal mistreatment,” such a law could place California’s lawful gun owners at risk of losing their right to keep and bear arms.

Two other measures are scheduled to be heard by the same committee on April 2. SB 1160, by Sen. Portantino, would require gun owners to re-register their firearms each year and pay a yet-undetermined fee each time they re-register their guns. And SB 1253, introduced by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, would prohibit Californians from possessing a firearm without a valid Firearm Safety Card, with the requirement to renew the card every five years.

But wait, there’s more!

Two other measures are also under consideration, but have yet to be assigned to a committee. AB 3067, by Democrat state Assemblyman Mike Gipson, would force homeowner and rental insurance companies to ask applicants how many firearms they have in their home, along with how and where they are stored. And lastly, SB 53, again by Sen. Portantino, would ban firearm possession in the home unless the firearms are stored in a DOJ-approved locked box or safe that would deny access to anyone other than the owner.

If these measures are passed by lawmakers and sent to the desk of gun-ban advocate and still-presidential hopeful Gov. Gavin Newsom, it’s nearly certain that they will be signed into law. And if they become law, it’s likely we will hear about some of them again when pro-gun advocacy groups take the state to court over these unconstitutional restrictions.

Second Amendment Roundup: Delaware’s “Assault Weapon” Ban Argued in 3rd Circuit
Likelihood of prevailing on a constitutional claim may suffice for a preliminary injunction.

The Third Circuit heard oral argument on March 11 in a challenge to Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and ammunition magazines that hold over 17 rounds. Three overlapping cases were consolidated for argument on appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction. Before the Court got into the meat of the Second Amendment dispute, Judge Stephanos Bibas raised a question about the preliminary injunction standard as it applies in Second Amendment cases: do the plaintiffs need to show that every preliminary injunction factor weighs in their favor, or is it enough to show they are likely to succeed on the merits?

The Supreme Court refers to the preliminary injunction as “an extraordinary remedy” that requires plaintiffs to make a “clear showing” on four factors before being granted: (1) likelihood of success on the merits, (2) that they face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, (3) that the balance of the equities favor them, and (4) that the public interest would be served by the injunction. The plaintiffs in Delaware focused on the first point—that they were likely to show the laws they challenged violate their Second Amendment rights. Judge Bibas questioned whether that was enough.

It should be. In fact, while there are putatively four factors to be considered in granting a preliminary injunction, in litigation against the government over the constitutionality of a law, in practice they tend to collapse. In such cases, “likelihood of success” is “the first among equals” and is typically dispositive,   L.W. by & through Williams v. Skrmetti (6th Cir. 2023), and the third and the fourth factors, the public interest and the balance of the equities are considered as one. Nken v. Holder (U.S. 2009). Furthermore, if plaintiffs show that the law they challenge violates the Constitution, then those final factors necessarily weigh in their favor, because “the enforcement of an unconstitutional law vindicates no public interest.” K.A. ex rel. Ayers v. Pocono Mountain School District (3d Cir. 2013).

The same should be true for irreparable harm as well, as the Ninth Circuit recognized in its Second Amendment decision in Baird v. Bonta (2023), where it explained that “in cases involving a constitutional claim, a likelihood of success on the merits usually establishes irreparable harm, and strongly tips the balances of equities and public interest in favor of granting a preliminary injunction.”

Irreparable harm was the focus of Judge Bibas’s questioning in the Delaware argument. It is black-letter law, as the Supreme Court held in 2020 in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, that “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” There is every reason to think the same is true for the Second Amendment. “Irreparable harm” is an injury that cannot be easily measured in (and therefore compensated by) monetary damages. Some circuits have recognized that any constitutional right deprivation is necessarily “irreparable.” Melendres v. Arapaio (9th Cir. 2012). And the Third Circuit has extended it at least to cover Fourth Amendment rights, noting that “[p]ersons who can establish that they are being denied their constitutional rights are entitled to relief, and it can no longer be seriously contended that an action for money damages will serve to adequately remedy unconstitutional searches and seizures.” Lewis v. Kugler (1971). As the Supreme Court made clear in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Second Amendment deserves equal treatment with the other protections in the Bill or Rights.

In alignment with this, the Seventh Circuit in Ezell v. City of Chicago (2011) answered Judge Bibas’s question well when it noted that “[t]he loss of a First Amendment right is frequently presumed to cause irreparable harm based on the intangible nature of the benefits flowing from the exercise of those rights. . . . The Second Amendment protects similarly intangible and unquantifiable interests. Heller held that the Amendment’s central component is the right to possess firearms for protection. Infringements of this right cannot be compensated by damages.”

The limited scenarios in which a constitutional injury does not entitle a litigant to injunctive relief—in the Fifth Amendment takings context, for instance, where the proper remedy is money damages—supports the line the Seventh Circuit drew between “tangible” and “intangible” (but nevertheless real) injuries. Where plaintiffs show a likelihood of success in proving such an intangible injury, it follows that their injury is “irreparable” in nature.

At the Delaware argument, one of the attorneys defending the law argued that an injunction should not be the automatic result in a case showing likelihood of success in proving a constitutional violation, pointing to the Purcell principle. The Purcell principle, named after the Supreme Court case Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006), is the rule that courts should ordinarily not enjoin challenged election laws shortly before an election is set to occur, out of concern that such an injunction could result in voter confusion. But the Purcell principle is the exception that proves the rule—it speaks only to a very narrow circumstance where an injunction should not enter immediately (though to be sure, election laws can be enjoined immediately after the election upon a showing of constitutional infirmity) because of unique concerns about the fairness of elections. That the Delaware law’s defenders would look to such a dissimilar context shows how little they have to support their position.

One other point of interest from this argument. The Third Circuit panel showed some concern that the plaintiffs were pointing to information that was not technically in the preliminary injunction “record” of evidence submitted to the trial court. Judge Bibas asked the attorney for Delaware whether it was appropriate to look at such evidence because it went toward proving certain “legislative facts.” The attorney’s responded, “The very fact that they are citing expert declarations that plaintiffs in other cases chose to submit to those courts, but that for whatever reason, these plaintiffs chose not to submit here, is precisely evidence that these are adjudicative facts. . . . [and] that this is for trial courts to deal with on the record that is presented before them.” That betrayed a serious misunderstanding of the legislative facts that are crucial to Second Amendment (and a lot of other constitutional) litigation.

Legislative facts, as opposed to adjudicative facts, are not the sort of facts typically “found” through trials; they are not case specific but instead are general facts about the world. For instance, whether a plaintiff in a Second Amendment case desires to acquire an AR-15 rifle is an adjudicative fact; it is a fact specific to the plaintiff. Whether AR-15 rifles are in common use for lawful purposes, on the other hand, is a general fact about the world and therefore a legislative fact. The distinction matters because the rules of evidence only constrain courts with respect to adjudicative facts—as far as legislative facts are concerned, a court can find them based on record evidence, or it can find them based on its own research, or by reviewing law review articles and social science papers cited by the parties in their briefs.

And importantly, when a district court makes a decision based on legislative facts, its “findings” do not receive deference from the appellate courts. This makes sense, given that legislative facts are frequently the sort of facts that are used as the foundation for legal rules. That some legislative facts might be found in expert reports (or found in the sources an expert might otherwise cite) does not matter at all to their classification or to whether other courts can consider them without an expert submission of their own.

Take, as a particularly relevant example, the fact that the handgun is the most preferred firearm in America for self-defense is a legislative fact. Regardless of whether the district court received evidence on that question, and irrespective of what it might have purported to “find” about the topic, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was free to make its own decision, as the court of last resort in deciding constitutional questions, handling a legislative fact of relevance to constitutional reasoning. And that’s what makes Delaware’s whole argument so strange. Not only was Heller unrestricted by lower court findings on this issue, there actually were no such findings. Heller was working with a blank canvas. In that case, and in Bruen, the district court had disposed of the case without building any record at all. And yet, both Heller and Bruen made all sorts of factual assertions about firearm use, features, and history, all issues of legislative facts presented to it through the parties’ briefs, amicus submissions, and through its own research. It did not matter one whit that there had been no findings on those issues and in fact in both cases it declined to remand for development of an evidentiary record.

If the Third Circuit is considering constraining parties to a narrow “record” in resolving constitutional claims, it will have to look somewhere other than the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment caselaw to justify such a rule.

Appeals Court Ruling Poses Danger of Confiscation of All Firearms

An Obama-appointed judge in Rhode Island authored an exceedingly dangerous opinion last week, rejecting arguments that the state’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds was unconstitutional. Instead, Judge William Kayatta, a graduate of Harvard Law School, built the case cleverly, declaring that LCMs (large capacity magazines) weren’t protected under the Second Amendment and, by implication, neither are the firearms they feed.

At issue was the law passed in 2022 — HB 6614 — banning the possession of LCMs, with violations being declared a felony and violators facing five years in jail upon conviction. In other words, law-abiding citizens would lose not only their firearms, but their freedoms as well.

Lawsuits brought by pro-Second Amendment advocates were rejected at the district level and, when appealed, the lower court’s decision was affirmed. But Judge Kayatta went further — much further — to build a case that anti-gunners around the country will likely seek to emulate.

The plaintiffs, Ocean State Tactical, doing business in the state as Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, and four individual gun owners, complained that Rhode Island’s law violated their Second Amendment rights, the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

In reviewing and affirming the lower court’s decision denying their complaints, Kayatta wrote that the plaintiffs “failed to prove that LCMs are ‘Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment,” that the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment (“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”) was not violated by the state law, and that it further “posed no problems under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

There were several pieces of the puzzle Kayatta put together to avoid the demands of Bruen, namely that the state had to provide historical analogues to the infringements in order for them to stand.

Instead,

Given the lack of evidence that LCMs are used in self-defense, it reasonably follows that banning them imposes no meaningful burden on the ability of Rhode Island’s residents to defend themselves.

After discussing the history of states restricting possession of sawed-off shotguns and Bowie knives, he wrote:

In each instance, it seems reasonably clear that our historical tradition of regulating arms used for self-defense has tolerated burdens on the right that are certainly no less than the (at most) negligible burden of having to use more than one magazine to fire more than ten shots.

He then used what he called an “apt analogy” to support the state’s ban: rules on the private accumulation of gun powder. Without mentioning the fact that those state rules were driven by concerns over accidental fires, he wrote:

Founding-era society faced no risk that one person with a gun could, in minutes, murder several dozen individuals. But founding-era communities did face risks posed by the aggregation of large quantities of gunpowder, which could kill many people at once if ignited.

In response to this concern, some governments at the time limited the quantity of gunpowder that a person could possess, and/or limited the amount that could be stored in a single container….

It requires no fancy to conclude that those same founding-era communities may well have responded to today’s unprecedented concern about LCM use just as the Rhode Island General Assembly did: by limiting the number of bullets that could be held in a single magazine.

Indeed, HB 6614 is more modest than founding-era limits on the size of gun-powder containers in that it imposes no limits on the total amount of ammunition that gun owners may possess.

And then he completed the “workaround” he created in order to circumvent Bruen’s demands:

In sum, the burden on self-defense imposed by HB 6614 is no greater than the burdens of longstanding, permissible arms regulations, and its justification compares favorably with the justification for prior bans on other arms found to pose growing threats to public safety.

Applying Bruen’s metrics, our analogical reasoning very likely places LCMs well within the realm of devices that have historically been prohibited once their danger became manifest.

He executed his coup d’etat:

Common sense points in the same direction. It is fair to assume that our founders were, by and large, rational. To conclude that the Second Amendment allows banning sawed-off shotguns, Bowie knives, and M-16s — but not LCMs used repeatedly to facilitate the murder of dozens of men, women, and children in minutes — would belie that assumption.

Accordingly, it should not be surprising that Bruen’s guidance in this case leads us to conclude that HB 6614 is likely both consistent with our relevant tradition of gun regulation and permissible under the Second Amendment.

If this ruling isn’t appealed and overturned, the implication remains: If semi-automatic rifles are similar, if not identical, to military grade M-16s, and the LCMs that feed them can be confiscated and their owners jailed, then it’s a short step to declaring semi-automatic firearms themselves (both rifles and pistols) as contraband, and subject to the same penalties.

It is. Letting unelected, nearly unaccountable, bureaucraps decide, all on their own, what’s illegal is the essence of tyranny. Lazy judges are who allowed ‘deference’ to bureaucrap’s decisions become “law” so they wouldn’t have to stir themselves anymore than they absolutely had to.


The Atlantic Worries Bump Stock Case About More Than Bump Stocks

After the Route 91 massacre, the ATF reclassified bump stocks as machine gun parts. This was done, at least in part, to try and stave off legislation that would have banned not just bump stocks but a whole lot of other things–including, arguably, aftermarket triggers.

But regardless of why it happened, it wasn’t the right decision. The bump stock doesn’t change a semi-automatic into a full-auto weapon; not based on the NFA definition of a machinegun which is a weapon that is capable or can be easily made capable of firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger. Bump stocks just let you pull the trigger faster, which is perfectly legal, even now.

Over at The Atlantic, they worry that this case may end up being about more than just bump stocks.

Not so long ago, a case like Cargill would not have come down to whether a court agreed with an agency’s interpretation of a statute Congress had tasked it with enforcing.

Indeed, decades of administrative law, including but not limited to the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, recognized that agency experts were often in a better position to resolve ambiguities in the statutes that Congress tasked them with enforcing than federal judges were.

Thus, it had long been settled that, so long as an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous language in a statute (like what counts as a machine gun) was reasonable, the agency was allowed to act based upon that interpretation…

That was already worrying enough, but what’s alarming in Cargill is that the Court is in the midst of getting rid of deference to agencies outside of the “major questions” context, too. Thus, instead of debating whether ATF’s reaction to the Las Vegas shooting was reasonable (which it clearly was), the oral argument before the Supreme Court devolved into the justices struggling to understand the exact mechanical function of a bump stock—so that they could decide for themselves whether or not it fits within the statutory definition of a “machine gun.”

As even a cursory perusal of the transcript reveals, this wasn’t a high-minded debate about broader points of law; it was nine neophytes trying to understand the mechanics of something they’ve never touched solely by having it described to them.

One comes away from the transcript with the sense that the argument would have been far more productive had it been held on a shooting range. So instead of debating whether the executive branch overreacted or not, the debate was about what, in the abstract, the justices would have done in its place.

Of course, the author clearly frames this as a bad thing. Apparently, if unelected bureaucrats can’t essentially determine law by decree, then something is inherently wrong with our country.

Yet this kind of “thinking” is a major problem with our nation in the first place.

Yes, I get the concept that experts may well be better at understanding complex issues than elected officials who, frankly, write a lot of laws about things they don’t understand and do a poor job of it.

That’s entirely valid.

The problem is that unelected bureaucrats can unilaterally decide something is illegal just so long as they can come up with some reasoning that sort of looks valid. They do this with all sorts of things, not just firearms, but Cargill is a little different. This is something that was declared perfectly legal to sell, then reclassified as illegal simply because it became politically expedient to do so.

If that doesn’t highlight the issues with the current system perfectly, I don’t know what can.

If the ATF can suddenly decide that this device was legal but now isn’t, what’s the next thing they’ll decide is illegal?

While ignorant politicians are a danger, our system was created with the idea that they’d be the ones coming up with the laws and not bureaucrats. If this case turns out to be about more than bump stocks, then you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that it’s a bad thing.

I’ve got a phone number for him; 1-800-CRY-BABY


Dem mayor howls as pastor leads gun-toting citizen patrol to combat violence, clean up streets

Armed citizens are patrolling the violent streets of Hartford, Connecticut as the Democrat mayor decries people with guns taking the law into their own hands.

Minister Cornell Lewis launched the Self-Defense Brigade after Archbishop Dexter Burke demanded patrols following violent crime breaking out in Hartford. The group of citizens are patrolling the violent areas of the city while cleaning up the streets.

Burke remarked, “We are going to bring an armed security that’s going to walk the streets with individuals, help them to the bus stop. Help them to the grocery store and patrol the area,” the Daily Mail reported.

“We are legally armed, and we are patrolling,” Lewis told NBC Connecticut. “The people on Garden Street came to us and asked us for help.”

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Gun Control Activists Admit They Overreacted to This Concealed Carry Case

Gun control advocates have spent the past two years losing their minds over the Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, a case that affirmed citizens’ right to publicly carry a firearm for self-defense.

One of the commonly repeated criticisms of Bruen has been that the high court’s ruling is dangerous because allowing ordinary peaceable citizens to carry concealed handguns in public would increase rates of gun violence.

In a strange twist of events, some of those same gun control advocates now admit—unintentionally and with no sense of irony—that violent crime rates are actually on the decline in those restrictive gun control states forced by Bruen to recognize the right to bear arms in public.

Giffords, a prominent gun control advocacy organization, previously condemned the Bruen decision as “extremist,” arguing that it would “drastically affect the safety of a large swath of the U.S. population” by “escalating gun violence, leading ever more people to feel unsafe in their own communities.”

Two years later, while retweeting an article that criticizes conservatives for asserting that President Joe Biden’s failed border policies are partially responsible for an increase in crime rates (even though significant evidence suggests that this claim is false), Giffords now highlights a claim that crime rates are actually falling.

Gun control advocates can’t seem to get their story straight. Crime rates often appear to increase or decrease depending on whichever is most useful to the gun control narrative.

The truth is that lawful gun owners—and concealed carry permit holders, in particular—have never been the driving force behind criminal gun violence. At the same time, the right to keep and bear arms in self-defense offers ordinary Americans significant protection against threats to life, liberty, and property.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from past years)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in February. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.)

  • Feb. 5, Jackson, Mississippi: After arguing over text messages with a contractor for a water utility, police said, a man drove up to the house where the contractor was working and opened fire. The contractor and a member of his crew returned fire, striking the assailant three times. While fleeing, the wounded attacker soon crashed his getaway vehicle. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, police said.
  • Feb. 5, Marysville, Washington: Three armed men in a stolen car approached a homeowner as he pulled into his driveway, police said. The homeowner, also armed, engaged his assailants in a shootout, apparently hitting at least one, until they ran away. After an hourslong manhunt involving drones and K-9 units, police detained one suspect with a gunshot wound. Neither the homeowner nor anyone else in the neighborhood was injured, police said.
  • Feb. 6, Philadelphia: A gunman began shooting at a mechanic outside an auto shop, wounding a 12-year-old boy, police said. The boy’s father, who was getting his car fixed and wasn’t the gunman’s intended target, drew his own handgun and fired back to defend himself and his son until the gunman fled. The mechanic was seriously wounded, police said. The boy, who suffered a grazing wound to the head, was treated and released from a hospital.
  • Feb. 10, Tipp City, Ohio: An armed resident fatally shot two pit bulls who wandered onto his property and attacked his own dog, police said. The resident initially tried to scare off the pit bulls by yelling and firing a warning shot from his rifle. As the two pit bulls became more aggressive, however, he used his handgun to protect himself and his dog.
  • Feb. 11, Surprise, Arizona: After an argument broke out between customers waiting in a Taco Bell drive-through, a man got out of his car and threatened the occupants of another vehicle with a gun. A passenger in that car, also armed, fatally shot the gun-wielding assailant, police said.
  • Feb. 13, Houston: A man sleeping in the back seat of his truck used his AR-15 to shoot and kill an armed burglar who broke into the vehicle and tried to rob him, police said. The assailant had already burglarized other vehicles in the same parking lot, investigators said.
  • Feb. 19, Swansea, Massachusetts: A courier depositing money at a bank drop box was accosted by two armed robbers who forced him to the ground and tied his hands behind his back, police said. The robbers tried to disarm the courier, a concealed carry permit holder who had a holstered gun on his hip. When the courier resisted, the robbers pepper-sprayed him. But he was eventually able to free one hand, draw his gun, and fire three rounds at the robbers, causing them to flee in a stolen U-Haul van. A suspect was later arrested and charged with several offenses, including armed robbery with a firearm, police said.
  • Feb. 21, Memphis, Tennessee: A woman shot and wounded the father of her children after he smashed a window, forced his way into her home, and assaulted her, police said. The two had gotten into an argument earlier that day over alleged infidelity, and the woman put his belongings outside for him. When the man arrived, he became confrontational and then violent, police said. The woman fled the house but he followed, prompting her to shoot him once in the leg before asking a neighbor to call police.
  • Feb. 22, Palm Beach, Florida: During a road-rage incident, a man pointed his handgun at another driver who had two children in his car, police said. Fearing for his and his children’s lives, the other driver pulled out his own gun and fired it at the assailant in self-defense. The assailant was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said.
  • Feb. 27, Nashville, Tennessee: A rideshare driver fatally shot a passenger who became agitated during the ride, then pulled a gun on him and started making threats. The rideshare driver first called 911 by using an “SOS alert” on his smartwatch, which was also connected to his wireless headphones. That call was eventually disconnected because the dispatcher didn’t pick up on the driver’s “quiet hints” about the situation. The driver made a second call about 15 minutes later, after he had apparently been able to access his own gun and shoot the would-be kidnapper.
  • Feb. 28, Atlanta: Police said an armed man confronted his ex-girlfriend and her family outside her home, then fired shots into the air. After he refused to leave, the ex-girlfriend’s mom shot and wounded the man, who was detained by law enforcement.

Even during the “safest” times, we will never live in a society where violent crime ceases to exist, or where law enforcement can protect the innocent from every harm.

The right to keep and bear arms always will remain essential to a free state, and law-abiding Americans always will be the first line of defense for themselves and their loved ones against threats to their life, liberty, and property.

Gun control activists’ reactions to the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision never were based in reality. They were emotion-driven responses designed to evoke irrational fear in people who didn’t know any better.

We’re glad they’re finally willing to admit they got it wrong.

Idaho House passes bill blocking cities and counties from regulating knives
Opponents worry bill would require municipal performing arts centers to allow knives

The Republican-controlled Idaho House of Representatives voted Tuesday to pass a bill banning cities and counties from restricting knives, despite concerns raised that passing the bill would force municipal performing arts centers to allow knives at public concerts and performances.

Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, sponsored House Bill 620a. Redman said knives are a form of arms that are protected.

“This bill would enact a state knife preemption law, which would prevent political subdivisions in the state from regulating the possession, sale, transfer and manufacture of knives,” Redman told legislators Tuesday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise. “Idaho has (a) preemption law that protects firearms from local regulation, and we need to do the same for knives. It is important to remember that knives are arms too and protected by the Second Amendment. By protecting these we are doing the same as we are protecting the firearms.”

Under the bill, “any city, county, or other political subdivision of this state shall not enact any ordinance, rule, or tax relating to the transportation, possession, carrying, sale, transfer, purchase, gift, devise, licensing, registration, or use of a knife or knife making components in this state.”

Under Idaho state law, political subdivisions include cities, counties, municipal corporations, health districts and irrigation districts. House Bill 620a includes exceptions that would allow public schools, charter schools, court houses, law enforcement facilities, prisons, jails, other involuntary confinement facilities and political subdivisions that regulate child care to regulate knives.

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Spoiler Alert: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban ~ Government Must Prove That Weapons Are NOT In Common Use

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Bianchi v. Brown issued an important order that is likely to backfire on the anti-gunners.

The court directed the parties to submit supplemental briefing addressing the following two questions:

  • (1) does the determination of whether a weapon is “in common use” occur at the first or second step of Bruen’s text-and-history methodology, and
  • (2) who bears the burden of establishing that a weapon is in common use. Heller and Bruen provide explicit answers to the questions posed by the Fourth Circuit, and those answers favor the protection of our Second Amendment rights.

Bianchi challenges the constitutionality of Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban, which seeks to outlaw the AR-15, among other semiautomatic firearms.

Tellingly, the original Fourth Circuit panel in Bianchi seemed poised to issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, but before that occurred, the Fourth Circuit took the case en banc likely to avoid the possibility of such an outcome.

Bruen instructs that the constitutional inquiry starts with the text of the Second Amendment. This means that, at the outset, a lower court must determine whether the object of a firearm’s regulation is an “arm.”

At this first step, Bruen instructs that the burden is on the party challenging the firearms regulation to show that the item being banned is an “arm.” Heller defined “arms” as “weapons of offense or armor of defense.” There is no doubt that AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles subject to the Maryland ban are “arms,” which means that the burden shifts to the government to show that the arms it seeks to ban are not “in common use” by Americans for lawful purposes (or are dangerous and unusual).

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Gun Rights Groups Drawing a Bead on Illinois ‘Assault Weapons’ Law, Taking Issue to Supreme Court

On Monday, the pro-Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America and their affiliate, the Gun Owners Foundation, filed a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court to forward their challenge to Illinois’s restrictive “assault weapons” law.

 The groups, representing Illinois gun owners, argue the law imposes an unconstitutional, sweeping ban on hundreds of commonly owned and lawfully used rifles and ammunition magazines.

“GOA has been at the forefront of this challenge since before the bans even took effect, and while our goal was never to have to end up before the Supreme Court, we were fully prepared to do so,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America.

“We urge the Justices to hear the pleas of millions of Americans in Illinois and several other states nationwide who cannot purchase many of the commonly owned semiautomatic firearms available today because of the unconstitutional laws passed by anti-gun politicians,” Pratt said.

The constitutionality argument is especially interesting, coming as it does after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which is generally regarded as having recognized the original meaning of the Second Amendment and has been the cause of much rewriting of laws around concealed carry. Even before Bruen, concealed-carry laws had been on a liberalization trend for some years, in fact since Florida passed the first “shall-issue” law in 1987.

Illinois, not surprisingly, has one of the most draconian “assault weapons” laws in the United States.

The strict gun control law, signed by Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year, carries penalties for anyone who, “Carries or possesses… Manufactures, sells, delivers, imports, or purchases any assault weapon or .50 caliber rifle.”

Those who legally possess a banned weapon under the law must register it with the Illinois State Police.

The law also includes statutory penalties for anyone who “sells, manufactures, delivers, imports, possesses, or purchases any assault weapon attachment or .50 caliber cartridge.”

The law appears to have sparked considerable non-compliance, and deliberate civil disobedience may be part of that trend.

Of the over 2.4 million Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) cardholders, there have only been 112,350 disclosures filed as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to state police data. Another 29,357 disclosures were in the process of being completed as of Jan. 6.

Gun rights activists previously told Fox News Digital that apparent high rates of noncompliance came from a mix of ignorance of what the law requires and civil disobedience.

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ATF Director Frustrated That Congress, The Courts, and the Public Don’t Want ATF to Make Their Own Gun Control Laws

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steven Dettelbach joined CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan to talk about violent crime committed with firearms and the tools he wants from Congress. The problem is those requests have already been rejected by Congress for good reason. Those tools would violate federal law and would chip away at the rights of those who obey the law without actually addressing the problem of crime.

“I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago with the law enforcement there, and it’s like, almost a 20 percent drop in homicides, but looks to me the caveat is that for many years in this country, we’ve had a very serious gun crime problem,” Director Dettelbach explained. “And we are the outlier among almost all Western modern nations, and not the outlier in a good way.”

He added later, “Well, I look at — look, I mean, data doesn’t lie.”

Juxtapose that with Director Dettelbach repeating the verifiably false claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. That’s just not true.

False Narrative

“The leading cause of death of children in the United States is firearms violence, right,” Director Dettelbach said. “Not cancer, not cars. Guns.”

That’s patently false. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris like to trot out the line in their gun control speeches even though it’s been proven to be false. The Washington Post, hardly a firearm-friendly news agency, admitted the narrative is false. To make the claim, The White House and now Director Dettelbach include people age 18 and 19. The problem is, 18 and 19-year-olds are adults, not children.

“When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades,” The Washington Post reported. “In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports. When all motor vehicle accidents are counted, then motor vehicle deaths continue to exceed firearm deaths for children — defined as people under age 18 — whether or not infants are included.”

NSSF has blasted this twisting of data to arrive at the heated talking point. The claim in question came about as a result of a faulty study published by the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention in April 2022. That study included Americans aged 18 and 19 years old – adults – in the data set as well as manipulated motor vehicle crash data to assert firearms became the “leading cause of death among children and adolescents” in 2020. NSSF debunked the study when it was published in April 2022.

Like Director Dettelbach said in his Face the Nation interview…data doesn’t lie.

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Youngkin Vetoes First of Many Gun Control Bills Across His Desk

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has vetoed the first of a series of proposed gun control bills to land on his desk from the Democrat-led Senate and House. Among the legislation vetoed were two bills aimed at restricting gun rights on people accused of domestic abuse and one masked as firearm safety, but really a move to push anti-gun propaganda through the state’s public school system.

One bill, which sought to enforce stricter regulations on individuals accused or convicted of domestic abuse possessing firearms, was vetoed by Youngkin, not because Youngkin doesn’t agree that domestic abuse victims need to be protected, but in the arbitrary ways the law sought to restrict firearm’s possession by age and on those who were not even subject to a court order, according to the Virginia Mercury. Youngkin emphasized that while it is crucial to address domestic abusers appropriately, the proposed legislation failed to meet its intended goals and needed to be worked on more.

“Make no mistake, Virginia should ensure that domestic abusers are dealt with appropriately, and those who resort to illegal firearm use, especially, should face severe and harsh punishments,” Youngkin said in his veto. “The legislation fails to achieve its intended purpose and is unnecessary.”

Another piece of legislation targeted by Youngkin’s vetoes sought to require school boards to notify parents about gun risks and advocate safe storage laws. It is an echo of a similar recommendation by the Biden Administration earlier this year. The governor, recognizing there are a host of real-life threats the state’s families and young people face, many that the Democrats did not feel the need to be pushed, should be more equitable in what it covers.

The Governor proposed amendments to the bill that would expand the notification to include a broader range of parental “rights” and “responsibilities,” encompassing topics beyond firearms, such as protecting children from sexually explicit material as well as the extreme risks of drug use. These amendments necessitate the bill’s reapproval in 2025 before becoming effective, as reported by WJLA ABC 7.

Youngkin will need to decide on additional anti-gun bills that have been approved by the Senate and House, chief among them an assault weapons ban, restrictions on who can provide training for concealed carry permits and restrictions on carrying a firearm in any establishment that serves alcohol among others.

Youngkin’s actions are indicative of his stance on gun control legislation and suggest potential future vetoes on similar bills. The General Assembly, having concluded its session without addressing the governor’s amendments and vetoes, is set to revisit these issues in a reconvened session on April 17. However, any overrides of Youngkin’s vetoes appear unlikely due to the Democratic majority being too small to achieve the two-thirds vote necessary to counteract the governor’s opposition.

Making sure we don’t? OK by me!


Missouri senator proposes bill blocking red flag gun laws, which Missouri doesn’t have

Less than a month after the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade, a Missouri Senator looks to pass legislation further loosening the state’s gun laws.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, sponsored the “Anti-Red Flag Gun Seizure Act,” which would prohibit the confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. His bill was heard by the Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday.

“I think we all agree we have a right to keep and bear arms,” Hoskins said. “Unfortunately, some anti-Second Amendment groups can weaponize the red flag laws to quiet their opponents. We have the Second Amendment to protect the First Amendment and a right to due process.”

Although Missouri does not currently have any red flag laws in place, along with 30 other states, Hoskins means for his legislation to serve as a preventative measure against their enforcement, should they be enacted.

“We’ve seen the federal government weaponize the Department of Justice against political opponents, so it is happening,” Hoskins said. “We don’t want that to happen in Missouri.”

Speaking in support of the bill was William Bland of Liberty, a board member of the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance. He spoke on behalf of the group to say that they felt red flag laws were unconstitutional and a “bad idea.”

“If a person is believed to be a danger to themselves, or others, taking away their firearms does not remove that danger,” Bland said. “It is easy enough for a suicidal individual to swallow a bottle of Tylenol pills, or harm themselves or others with a kitchen knife or some other weapon.”

He said that red flag laws often deprive some individuals of their firearms because they live with someone who is considered dangerous to themselves or others. In other cases, he worries that red flag laws could be used to take revenge on a person by falsely claiming they are dangerous in order to get their guns taken away, although he offered no evidence of this happening in actuality.

Speaking in opposition to the legislation was Kristin Bowen, a Boone County resident and volunteer for Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for public safety measures relating to gun violence.

“Missouri already has some of the weakest gun laws in the country and our legislature has spent the past decade gutting our common sense public safety laws, while simultaneously resisting attempts to make our communities safer,” Brown said.

Brown cited a report from Everytown Research and Policy that showed Missouri’s rate of gun deaths have increased 59% from 2012 to 2021, compared to a 39% increase nationwide.

“Constant heartbreak cannot and should not be our reality in Missouri,” Brown said. “Instead of taking steps backward, our state needs to be taking steps forward by passing laws that would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and provide our communities with the support that they need to adopt local solutions to gun violence.”

Missouri has few regulations surrounding the sale, ownership or carrying of a firearm. State law also prohibits local officials from superseding its gun laws, although it does allow for cities to create local ordinances requiring permits to carry firearms. [this is incorrect]

In 2021, Missouri lawmakers passed and Gov. Mike Parson signed into law the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” sponsored by now U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison, which attempts to bar federal gun laws from being enforced in the state. Police who try to do so could face a $50,000 fine.

The act is being challenged in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October, and the law remains on hold while the appeal is active.

It is unclear if Hoskin’s bill has any traction this year, as lawmakers near the halfway point of the legislative session. No vote was taken on the bill during Wednesday’s hearing.

The Missouri House decided to stop pursuing the passage of two bills expanding firearms access following the mass shooting in Kansas City last month, including one that would have exempted guns and ammunition from state and local taxes and another that would have allowed guns on public transit and in churches, while also lowering the age to get a concealed carry permit.

Following the shooting, Democrats in the Missouri House of Representatives filed nearly 40 identical resolutions seeking the ability to enact local gun laws that supersede those at the state level.

There are currently initiative petitions filed that seek to accomplish the same goal, though it is unknown where those stand in respect to getting enough signatures to make the ballot this year.

Kennedy secures Second Amendment win for veterans

WASHINGTON – The Senate today passed a bill package including Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-La.) amendment to protect veterans’ Second Amendment rights from bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

“Unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to strip veterans of their Second Amendment rights unilaterally. The Senate did the right thing for veterans and all freedom-loving Americans by passing my amendment today,” said Kennedy.

Current law requires the VA to send a veteran’s name to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) whenever a fiduciary is appointed to help that veteran manage his or her VA benefits. Placement on NICS blocks veterans from purchasing or owning firearms.

Because unelected bureaucrats at the VA ultimately decide—without a court ruling—whether veterans receive help from a fiduciary and therefore end up in NICS, current law denies veterans due process and infringes on veterans’ right to bear arms.

Kennedy’s amendment included in today’s package changes current law to prohibit the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from sending a veteran’s personal information to NICS unless a judge rules that the veteran is a danger to himself or others.