Category: RKBA

Missouri: Self-Defense Bill Eligible for Senate Floor

Yesterday,[Monday] the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and Fiscal Oversight voted to advance House Bill 1462, to reduce areas where law-abiding citizens are left defenseless. It is now eligible for debate on the Senate floor. Please contact your state senator and ask them to SUPPORT HB 1462.

House Bill 1462 repeals arbitrary “gun-free zones” that do nothing to hinder criminals, while leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless. It removes the prohibition on law-abiding citizens carrying firearms for self-defense on public transit property and in vehicles. This ensures that citizens with varying commutes throughout their day, and of various economic means, are able to exercise their Second Amendment rights and defend themselves.

The bill also repeals the prohibition in state law against carrying firearms for self-defense in places of worship. This empowers private property owners to make such decisions regarding security on their own, rather than the government mandating a one-size-fits-all solution.

Again, please contact your state senator and ask them to SUPPORT HB 1462.

The Right of the People – Why Elites Hate the Second Amendment

Money lets you buy what you want. Now that many of our Deep Blue cities have defunded the police and crime has exploded, people with money are buying off-duty police officers to stop crime in their neighborhoods. Though recently covered in the news, the use of private security is an expansion of a long-term trend. What should make news are the billionaires trying to disarm the rest of us.

Rich people live in gated communities and walled compounds. They have their own security force. Some wealthy families have their own private security detail that lives with the owners inside their walled compound. It may have fancy flower beds on the outside, but it remains a castle in disguise.

Watch the progression as the elites worked to disarm us and protect themselves.

  • First, the elites buy armed security officers for trips or special events in public.
  • They buy armed security details for their homes, offices, and for their vacation homes.
  • They pay for legislation that let them travel with their own armed officers.
  • They make “campaign donations” so legislators disarm the common man who the elites see as a threat. We need to show “proper cause” to be issued a carry permit. The elites buy retired law enforcement officers for their security detail. Perhaps a banker can get a permit because he handles money. Perhaps a jeweler can get a permit because he has valuables in his store. In contrast, we are denied a permit because we want to defend our children. Our treasure is deemed less important than theirs.. unless we first make a significant campaign donation.
  • The elites pressed for legislation outlawing inexpensive firearms. That started after the civil war to prevent recently freed black men and women from having firearms to resist armed gangs like the Klu Klux Klan and the Night Riders. Even then, honest citizens were disarmed yet political gangs had no trouble getting guns. That is true today as well.

Today, the gun-prohibitions have become more subtle. Today the elites impose time-consuming training requirements and expensive licensing requirements before the common man can own a gun. Some legislative proposals demand that we are re-licensed every six months, far more often than most police officers.

Today, we’ve seen the elites buy academic and media organizations to promote civilian disarmament. The familiar adage that if it bleeds, it leads is neither true nor adequate to describe today’s reporting on armed defense. The hired media emphasizes the thousands of times we see a criminal use a gun. The same news media ignores the millions of times that honest citizens use a firearm for legal self-defensive. The media bias is glaring once you know the truth.

Today, the elites pay for multimillion-dollar political and legal campaigns to pass laws that disarm the common man.

Of course, everyone has the right to armed defense. Just buy your own police force as I did for my family. See how simple?

Thanks, and I’ll be sure to follow you for more personal safety tips, but that doesn’t work for us and ours.

We don’t have our own motorcade and security detail. We have to go out at in public at all times of the day and night. We and our families are far more likely than the elites to encounter a criminal. The victims of crime are disproportionally poor and minorities who are live, work, and travel in high-crime areas. Unfortunately, the gun-control laws are written to serve the elites, rather than to serve us.

The elites are wrong. The rich are never safe when criminals flourish by victimizing the poor. Time and again, it is the ordinary citizen who is the first responder to stop violent crime. We use a firearm to make us equal to the task of defending our family. The elites want the use of arms reserved to themselves. Rather than being a problem for society, the armed citizen is the defense that protects our communities. We know that because we live there. We see what happens outside the walled compounds.

The common armed citizen is the moral elites of our society. We are more law abiding than the police. We protect our family and our neighborhoods. Now, we have to carefully watch what our politicians are doing as legislators too often try to disarm us.

It is the right of the people to go armed, not the right of the elites.

A deeper look at Boulder’s gun control measures.

Boulder, as part of a coordinated regional effort, is looking at a half-dozen new laws aimed at curbing gun violence. A final vote is scheduled for June 7; three hours have been set aside for a public hearing.

City council earlier this year first discussed the idea of bringing back a 2018 ban on assault weapons, struck down by a court in March 2021, just days before the King Soopers shooting. A change in state law now allows local measures to surpass Colorado restrictions “in certain cases.”

“The primary change enacted to comport with state law is the removal of language providing that lack of knowledge of the illegal characteristics of a firearm is not a defense,” staff explained in notes to council. Colorado law now states that local ordinances on the sale, purchase or possession of guns “may only impose a criminal penalty for a violation upon a person who knew or reasonably should have known that the person’s conduct was prohibited.”

Boulder’s proposed ordinances were released Thursday evening. Very little changed from council’s February discussion. The assault weapons ban is there, along with a 10-day waiting period to purchase firearms, a ban on open carry in public places and restrictions on concealed carry in “sensitive places” such as city facilities, protests, churches, preschools, etc. (Find a full explanation of proposed laws below)

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America increasingly is not just gun country but permitless concealed carry country

Second Amendment advocates scored a string of victories in recent years to expand to 25 states the right to carry a concealed handgun without a permit, or what is known as “constitutional carry.”

The trend is poised to continue and tip the balance to more than half the U.S., with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, pledging to get a constitutional carry law through the Republican-run Legislature.

Gun control activists and some law enforcement view the trend as a threat to public safety because it enables people to carry concealed firearms without background checks or other requirements such as firearms training.

Gun rights advocates say background checks and other safeguards are applied nationwide for handgun purchases.

Except for Vermont, which has never regulated carrying guns, states only recently adopted permitless carry. A wave of Republican-run states began passing constitutional carry laws in 2010 after a concerted lobbying effort by the National Rifle Association.

Iowa, Montana, Texas, Utah and Tennessee adopted constitutional carry laws last year. In 2019, Kentucky, South Dakota and Oklahoma approved permitless concealed carry. From 2010 to 2017, laws went into effect in Arizona, Wyoming, Arkansas, Maine, Kansas, Idaho, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Missouri.

Alaska was early to permitless concealed carry, making it state law in 2003.

The popularity of constitutional carry, Bearing Arms Editor Cam Edwards said, is that the constitutional right to bear arms “shouldn’t require a permission slip.”

He said the success of constitutional carry is a continuation of the right-to-carry movement that began in the mid-1980s.

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I don’t use it, I’ve never used it, I have no plans to use it. The lawsuit by Fried is a political stunt to gain votes from stupid people. The prohibition is under Federal laws and that’s the job of Congress to change that, not some bunch of bureaucraps

Marijuana, Guns, and Federal law

Federally, the use of marijuana is prohibited. Despite that, many states have legalized it and some even allowed people to even use it recreationally.

You see, the states can legalize it all they want, but the federal prohibition means that, technically, you can’t use it and lawfully own a firearm.

A lawsuit is trying to change all of that.

While California lawmakers are looking to further curb people’s access to guns, an effort by a Florida official to loosen federal regulations may have an impact for gun owners in California and across the nation, especially those who rely on medical marijuana.

A lawsuit has been filed against the federal government over its policies that bar medical marijuana patients from owning a gun.

Leafly Senior Editor David Downs, who calls the U.S government’s cannabis regulations unconstitutional, breaks it down.…

Does the lawsuit even have a chance when cannabis is a Schedule 1 drug?

What it does is raise pressure and temperature in Washington, D.C. with regard to a fix for this major conflict. In California there are an estimated 4.2 million gun owners, and a quarter of California adults have a gun in their home. Meanwhile, we have about 3.9 million cannabis users in California.

Could this legal case be a stunt?

It’s certainly keeping up with politicians carrying the banner of their constituents and raising around what they think are salient issues to consumers.

We see marijuana policy being very much bipartisan, and Florida is kind of the perfect place you’d see someone try to assert not only their gun rights but their medical marijuana rights on top of it. Fried is essentially saying guns are legal, cannabis is legal, and people shouldn’t have to choose.

Obviously, this is part of a longer interview.

As for whether this is a stunt, I think it kind of is and isn’t. The lawsuit in question is the one filed by Nikki Fried, which we’ve covered previously. Fried is trailing in the Democratic primary for governor and is desperate to accomplish something she can hang her hat on.

Yet Fried has also been pretty pro-marijuana for some time, so this is actually consistent with her beliefs in that regard.

Of course, she’s also been fairly anti-gun as well, so…

Regardless, it’s past time that the federal government adjusts its thinking on marijuana.

You see, a schedule 1 drug is one that has no medical benefit. That simply doesn’t apply to pot. While I don’t consider it the miracle drug many do, it does have medicinal uses, which means it belongs in schedule 2 at a minimum.

Especially because some of those medicinal uses could be of profound benefit to gun owners. For example, it’s good for anxiety and depression. That may translate into fewer suicides–roughly two-thirds of what are termed “gun deaths” every year–and may even translate into lower violent crime rates.

All in all, this is something that needs to happen.

May it fall on them like a ton – or three – of bricks

Everytown’s shouting that the sky’s falling

Nearly every colleague I have, whether here at Bearing Arms, over at AmmoLand News, or the numerous content creators I know all over the web, everyone seems to agree the anti-freedom caucus is coming unglued just thinking about NYSRPA v. Bruen. Now I certainly don’t want this to turn into a A League of Their Own kind of moment and say “We’re gonna win!” only to have our star player drop the ball, but I really do think we’re going to win. Based off an email a friend and tipster sent me, the gun grabbing anti-civil rights crowd thinks the same. In preparations for what’s likely to be an upset to the ilk of Nanny Bloomberg and the rest, Everytown for Gun Safety sent out the following e-blast begging for money:

In the next few weeks, we expect the Supreme Court to decide on a key New York state gun law in NYSRPA v. Bruen. If the Court sides with the gun lobby’s agenda, the future of critical gun safety laws could be at risk across the country.

We MUST be ready to elect Gun Sense Candidates and turn out the vote in the midterms. Just this week, several Gun Sense Candidates (including former Moms Demand Action volunteers!) won elections up and down the ballot in their primaries.

We need to get to work now if we’re going to show up for Gun Sense Candidates and secure victory at the ballot box in the midterm elections. The future of our gun safety laws depends on it.

Donate now to the Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund so we have the resources we need to support Gun Sense Candidates across the country before this year’s crucial midterm elections.

If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately by clicking one of the dollar amounts:

The likes of all the progressives that hate freedom are collectively grabbing at their chests telling Elizabeth that they’re on their way in their best Fred Sanford impersonation. But what we’re seeing in this email is just another disgusting manipulation of the facts. “If the Court sides with the gun lobby’s agenda…” Really? “…the future of critical gun safety laws could be at risk across the country.” I don’t think they could get much more hyperbolic than that.

The reality is the Court, should it rule to answer NYSRPA’s prayer for relief, is not “siding” with any lobby. The Court would be siding with having to reiterate something that’s plainly written in simple English in the Bill of Rights, and further expanded on in several Supreme Court Opinions; notably Heller, McDonald, and Caetano. The court has already surmised that at the time of founding “bear” meant to “wear” or “carry” a firearm. As if they really should have needed to do so.

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Jack Carr Rips Politicians Trying To Restrict The Second Amendment, Reminds People It’s A ‘Natural Right’ To ‘Defend The Gift Life’

Jack Carr isn’t a fan of people trying to restrict the Second Amendment.

I sat down with the legendary author and former SEAL to discuss a variety of topics, and I asked him what his thoughts were on politicians applauding arming people in other countries while at the same time supporting gun control in the USA. His answer didn’t disappoint!

“You can’t make this stuff up. It’s insane to me that the hypocrisy, I’m sure there’s hypocrisy all through politics, but particularly on this issue on the left wanting to restrict your rights to own a firearm, to defend the gift of life, something that is explicitly written down as the Second Amendment, and it’s a natural right. You know, it’s not given to us by the government. It’s just written down so that the government can’t restrict it. That’s a natural right,” Carr explained when talking about the Second Amendment and hypocritical politicians.

You can listen to his full comments below.

While I don’t agree with the premise that possession stats should be publicized, the fact that ‘more guns’ means ‘more safety’ is undeniable.

More guns, more safety

Late in 2008, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, a leading Tennessee newspaper, unleashed a whirlwind of controversy when it decided to publish a database of all state residents with permits to carry handguns. The information was already available through the Tennessee Department of Safety, but the state website wasn’t especially user-friendly.

With the publication of the newspaper database, however, it became easy to search for people with gun-carry permits by name, ZIP code, or city. For a while, the database was the most viewed item on the newspaper’s website, with more than 65,000 page views per day.

Firearms owners and their advocates were furious, as WMC-TV reported at the time:

Some Mid-South gun owners are outraged over a website that lists handgun carry permits, claiming the site gives away too much personal information.

Tom Givens, who runs the Range Master pistol range, said the database, published by the Commercial Appeal, has many of his clients upset.

“First, it’s an invasion of privacy,” Givens said.

Using the database, a visitor to the website can look up the name of anyone who has a permit to carry a hand gun in the state of Tennessee.  Information listed includes the owner’s year of birth, along with his or her city, state, and ZIP code of residence.

Givens said his phone has been ringing off the hook from clients upset about their personal information being so accessible.

“By publishing this database your employers, your co-workers, church members, even relatives that may not know you have a permit, now know that you’ve got one,” he said.

On gun owners’ message boards, complaints abounded. A common concern was that residents with carry permits would be put at particular risk, since the paper’s database enabled any would-be thief looking for a gun to steal to know exactly where to find them. “I’m not happy about it at all,” fumed one resident on the City-Data web forum:

I’m not a criminal — just a law-biding citizen who has a clean background and has undergone background checks in order to exercise my right to protect myself from all the thugs in this world. I could see the database used to “shop” for homeowners to rob who probably have guns in the house. I see no legitimate reason to have this information online other than to demonize permit holders in some way.

The National Rifle Association’s CEO and executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, denounced the Commercial Appeal for engaging in what he called a “hateful, shameful form of public irresponsibility.” Added another NRA official: “What they’ve done is give criminals a lighted pathway to [burglarize] the homes of gun owners.”

But the paper’s editor, Chris Peck, argued that newspapers should be a comprehensive source for community information, and that it was neither illegal nor unethical for the Commercial Appeal to make public records more accessible to the public. In fact, he pointed out in a lengthy column, the Commercial Appeal eliminated street addresses and birth dates from the Department of Safety data it published. That meant that the “posted list of permit holders for concealed weapons has less information about individuals than the phone book, your voter registration form, or the credit card you use to buy dinner at a restaurant.”

As for the potential danger to gun owners from burglars looking for weapons to steal, Peck turned that argument on its head:

Think about it for a minute. Many, if not most, households in Memphis possess a firearm. So you don’t really need a list to find a house with a gun.

And, if criminals were checking the permit-to-carry list before picking a target, would they likely choose a house where they know the owner could be carrying a gun, or would they more likely steer away from that house to avoid a possible confrontation?

Neither logic nor common sense is carrying the day on this issue. It’s emotion.

Peck went on to explain why, in his view, there was “a powerful case to be made both for a permitting process to carry concealed weapons and for keeping that permitting process public.” The Commercial Appeal, he insisted, “isn’t anti-gun” but “pro-news and -information.”

I thought it was a good column, though I doubt it changed the minds of LaPierre and the gun owners who were certain the Commercial Appeal’s reasons for publishing the database weren’t benign. I’d guess, too, that they didn’t buy Peck’s contention that, far from endangering them, the database would lead criminals to avoid their homes.

But now we know: He was right.

After Memphis-area gun permit data was published, districts where more residents were licensed to carry saw a decrease in crime.

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FPC responds to Duke Center for Firearms Law article on test courts should use on Second Amendment cases

A rebuttal in response to criticism of a scholarly paper authored by FPC Action Foundation director of constitutional studies, Joseph Greenlee, was published today by the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In its April 27 article, “Ghost Guns, History, and the Second Amendment,” the Duke Center called into question an argument Greenlee makes in “The American Tradition of Self-made Arms” defending the test of text as informed by history and tradition (THT) as being the correct methodology for Second Amendment jurisprudence.

The Duke Center criticizes THT for “transform[ing] nonregulation into a right,” suggesting that history is only useful in Second Amendment analyses if it proves that “a past practice was protected as a right, not simply that it existed without regulation.” This loose constructionist’s view of the Constitution’s explicit placement of limits on governmental power has it backwards. The People don’t need to prove their enumerated Constitutional rights are protected; it is incumbent on the government to prove it has the authority to regulate or restrict the rights of the People. This is why history and tradition matter.

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Text, History, and Tradition: A Workable Test that Stays True to the Constitution

Last week Professor Charles highlighted the burgeoning legal controversies involving “ghost guns” (homemade firearms that have no serial numbers) to illustrate what he perceives to be problems with a judicial test based on text, history, and tradition (THT). As an advocate of the THT Test, I offered a response, which Professor Charles graciously accepted. I thank him for presenting my opposing view.

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Ghost Guns, History, and the Second Amendment

The Biden Administration recently pushed out a new rule to restrict “ghost guns”—firearms without a serial number. The rule would require that kits for homemade do-it-yourself firearms are manufactured only by federal firearm licensees (FFLs) and that the kit’s frame or receiver be marked with a serial number. It also requires that any FFLs or gunsmiths who come into possession of an unserialized firearm  affix a serial number before selling it. As the administration notes, “[t]his requirement will apply regardless of how the firearm was made, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts, kits, or by 3D-printers.” The rule is almost certain to be challenged by gun-rights advocates and, whatever other arguments there may be against the rule (such as the administrative law challenges that have been raised against the bump stock regulation), the Second Amendment is likely to take center stage. And if the Supreme Court in Bruen declares text, history, and tradition to be the guiding methodology for evaluating Second Amendment claims, courts are going to face serious challenges in evaluating the ghost gun rule.

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Just how many defensive gun uses are there each year?

Gun control will be a hot topic for a very long time. However, one area that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough is the total number of defensive gun uses.

While the media spends a lot of time talking about how many people die from gunshots each and every year–typically conflating suicides with homicides–in an effort to advance a gun control agenda, they ignore the many times law-abiding citizens use firearms defensively every year.

But just how many defensive gun uses are there?

How often are firearms used defensively in the United States? According to the most-recent study, about 1.6 million times annually. Over a lifetime, about a third of gun owners will use a firearm defensively at least once. This recent data is broadly consistent with decades of social-science research.

The first pollster to ask about defensive gun use (DGU) was the Field Poll in California in 1976. Over the subsequent 18 years, polling companies such as Gallup, Hart and Tarrance, as well as scholars and media, conducted their own surveys of DGU. They reported results as low as 764,000 annually (Tarrance, 1994) and as high as 3.6 million (Los Angeles Times, 1994).

In 1993, Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck conducted a survey that was much more methodologically sophisticated than all the above polls. Kleck included safeguards designed to weed out respondents who might misdescribe a DGU story. Kleck and his coauthor Marc Gertz found a midpoint estimate of 2.5 million DGUs annually, with a possible range of 2 to 3 million. Their study is described in the Kleck and Gertz article, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun,” in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (1995), which is available on the web, and is further described in Kleck’s 1997 book Targeting Guns. The book and the article also examine all previous surveys.

Oh, but some claim, Kleck’s work has been debunked.

Has it, though?

The same journal issue that published the Kleck & Gertz study also published a response by Marvin Wolfgang. He had long been the most-influential criminologist in the English-speaking world, and he was past president of the American Society of Criminology. Wolfgang wrote: “I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country … . I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns … .

Nonetheless, the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear … . The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.”

Wolfgang isn’t exactly an NRA supporter.

Of course, most of us have long known these numbers. We knew how many millions of defensive gun uses there are each year. It well outstrips the number of lives claimed by gunshot wounds, that’s for sure.

However, it’s interesting how even the smallest estimates for defensive gun use outstrip those numbers as well. Literally no credible study shows otherwise. Even the more heavily biased studies that put defensive gun uses at 100,000 each year still argue there are twice as many lives saved by guns than taken.

Why is the media ignoring this reality?

We all know why. They can claim they are simply neutral parties in the debate all they want, but they always seem to miss this. Even if they report the studies themselves, they never seem to make it into later stories about guns and gun control.

But the number of gun deaths always does.

Funny how that shakes out, isn’t it?

Politics vs. Reality: Iron Sharpening Iron ~ or Not

There’s nothing ambiguous or convoluted about it, and it hasn’t been re-written or redefined by “the gun lobby” in recent years, as our opponents like to suggest. Writers going all the way back to the founding have supported our interpretation that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” means what it says and is enforceable against the states as a fundamental right.

I think we can all agree on this, so where’s the problem?

Just because we agree on the basics, doesn’t mean we all agree on the details. Some will loudly proclaim that the right to arms is absolute and limitless. They advocate for no limits whatsoever on any sort of armament whatsoever, from machine guns to missiles, to nukes. If it’s an armament, they say, then it’s covered by the Second Amendment. Others draw a line at typical, man-portable arms commonly found in an Infantry squad, while others draw a wavering line at the typical arms of an average, individual Infantry soldier, sometimes excluding “crew-served” weapons systems or man-portable missiles.

It used to be pretty common to run into “gunnies” who would argue against civilian possession of any full-auto or other NFA items, and some who would defend laws against those “ugly, black guns.” Thankfully most of those folks have now realized their error, but there are still folks who see themselves as on our side, who draw lines and/or limits that you and I would strongly disagree with.

That doesn’t make them evil. It just makes them wrong, misinformed, ignorant, or even possibly, more thoughtful and better educated than you and me. We can’t rule out that possibility until we’ve thoroughly studied their position and their rationale for holding that position. Then there’s the Supreme Court’s tortured definition of the right applying only to arms that are “in common use” among the populace while failing to account for future innovations and the decades of restrictions that kept certain arms and accessories out of “common use.”

Beyond the debate over how far, or not, the Second Amendment extends, there are debates within the community over whether certain, specific policy proposals are justifiable under the Second Amendment, or whether the “obvious good” (as some people see things) of certain policies might outweigh the constraints of the amendment. Then there’s the issue of incrementalism. Some among us will argue that repealing or reforming a portion of a bad law, is still supporting the erroneous foundation the law was originally based upon. For example, under this argument, support for legislation to remove suppressors from the NFA and treat them as firearms under the GCA, would be a traitorous compromise, because, they say, it is unconstitutional to regulate suppressors at all. This sort of “principled opposition” represents a minority, but it’s enough to throw a monkey wrench into efforts to undo restrictions piece-by-piece, the way most of those restrictions came about.

The point is, there are a wide variety of beliefs and opinions among, even very dedicated Second Amendment advocates, and disagreements are unavoidable.

The critical question though, is how do we handle those disagreements?

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Hmm. I’ve never been ‘reasonable’, and I’ve never been sorry about that either.

Sorry, but gun owners are done being “reasonable”

As gun owners, we often find ourselves as something of a political football. We’re the group that has the most at stake when it comes to many gun control laws.

By and large, we don’t support them. After all, we know that it’s not as easy to buy a gun as it’s often portrayed in the media and we know how criminals actually get their guns.

Many people know that we don’t support these laws. That doesn’t stop them from thinking we should.

I’m not even sure why this is an issue that continues to be debated, argued and defended. Background checks and time limits are not taking away anyone’s rights. To own muskets and flintlock pistols is your right. Even a dueling pistol could be tucked away should the need arise to awaken at dawn for a meeting with your wife’s lover in a field. This event would need to be planned and witnessed, with the winner going to prison of course.

I can’t imagine gun owners not being appalled by what has occurred repeatedly at the hands of the irresponsible few. It seems to me the responsible gun owners would support stricter controls knowing that, if the gun violence continues to play out, severe gun laws will be inevitable for all.

Taking guns out of the hands of unstable and violent shooters would save some of the 38,000 Americans who die from gun violence every year in the United States. That’s worth more than a thought and a prayer.

And yet, how would you take guns “out of the hands of unstable and violent shooters” universally? We already have numerous laws on the books at both the federal level and state level that are meant to do just that, and yet, nothing.

But then again, the author can’t imagine gun owners not being appalled at what happens. Well, we are appalled. No rational human being could look at something like a murder and not be appalled.

Where she goes off the rails is the idea that we should somehow support stricter gun control because of it.

The truth is that we were reasonable in 1934 and in 1968. We set aside our rights for the greater good and gun owners watched as the gun they bought at a hardware store in 1930 become a heavily restricted weapon that they had to get permission to buy. They saw laws passed in 1968 not only not reduce violent crime but seemingly encouraged it to skyrocket.

Time and time again, we played nice. We gave a little ground so that we would seem reasonable. Now we have background checks when we go to buy a gun and we’re told that simply isn’t enough.

Well, you know what? We’re done being “reasonable.”

We’re finished with it because none of this is reasonable. No one wants to stamp out advocacy for communism, despite all the unmitigated evil that philosophy has illustrated and the untold suffering it has dropped on the human race, all because free speech matters. Yet we’re supposed to step aside and allow our right to keep and bear arms to be ripped to shreds in the name of appearing reasonable?

This from someone who still equates the Second Amendment to muskets?

And where’s the fact that none of this stuff has actually worked? We watched gun control be passed at state levels for decades as violent crime soared, yet when gun laws started being liberalized, we saw the rates decline. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, the truth is that if the lack of gun laws caused crime to increase, we should have seen the opposite.

We didn’t.

The truth is that this demand that gun owners acquiesce to every demand by gun control advocates is what is truly unreasonable and we’re done. We’ve long been finished.

Well, Whaddya Know… Stats Validate What Gun Owners Have Been Saying For Years

A common narrative from anti-gun activists asserts that more guns equal more crime. But those of us who own guns have known this storyline to be false all along. It never made sense, and now we have data to prove it.

According to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there is a direct correlation between gun ownership and crime, but that correlation doesn’t align with the storyline from the “guns are bad” crowd. In fact, shocker… it shows just the opposite.

The NBER analysis used Tennessee’s database for handgun carry permit holders, and then cross-referenced that data with crime statistics in those zip codes. It was determined that once information from the database was publicized, in areas where gun ownership was highest, burglaries were correspondingly lower. Conversely, in areas with relatively low gun ownership, burglaries were considerably higher:

“Our analysis suggests a post-publicization relative decrease – both in absolute and in percentage terms – in burglaries in zip codes with higher numbers of gun permits, relative to zip codes with median numbers of permits, and a post-publicization relative increase in zip codes with fewer gun permits: our estimates suggest an 18% relative decrease of burglaries in those zip codes with the largest number of gun permits.”

Well, who could have guessed such a sharp contrast? Anyone with half a brain, that’s who.

If a criminal is considering what areas and homes they want to target, there are a few factors they will weigh. Certainly, a burglar is going to want to focus on a residence that will have valuable belongings which they can take, but the first thing they’re going to assess is their own well-being. It’s human nature.

A house or apartment with a big Rottweiler or Dobermann Pincer? That could certainly deter a burglar. The same can be said regarding a residence with a sophisticated security system. Burglars certainly want to avoid getting bitten by a big dog or having police arrive at the scene of a burglary while it’s in progress. But as much as criminals dislike dog bites and jail time, what deters them most is the prospect of getting their heads blown off in an attempted burglary.

Responsible gun ownership is a good thing. Gun owners give criminals a serious reason to reconsider burglarizing someone’s home. Government officials thinking of becoming overly tyrannical must remember that they have an armed populace; and in some cases, that populace is heavily armed. Even foreign adversaries can be deterred by America’s gun-toting public, as was the case with both the Japanese in World War II and the Soviet Union years later.

It turns out that bad guys avoid messing with good guys who have guns.

By Jordan Case

Sen. Rick Brattin Amends Bill to Exempt Firearms and Ammunition from Sales Tax

JEFFERSON CITY —This week, State Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, successfully added language to House Bill 1606 exempting all purchases of firearms and ammunition from state and local sales tax in Missouri.

“Across our nation, there is a movement by anti-gun forces to tax guns out of existence,” said Sen. Brattin.  “We have to fight back against this and one way we can do that is stopping the unconstitutional taxing of our guns and ammunition. The Second Amendment is a basic constitutional right and there’s no reason any government should be taxing that right or putting up deliberate barriers to keep Missourians from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.”

Senator Brattin was elected to the Missouri Senate in 2020 after previously serving four terms in the Missouri House of Representatives and two years as Cass County Auditor. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Education Committee and also serves on General Laws; Local Government and Elections; the Joint Committee on Government Accountability; and Seniors, Families, Veterans and Military Affairs. Senator Brattin lives in Harrisonville with his wife, Athena, and five children. They are members of Abundant Life Church in Lee’s Summit.

Gov. DeSantis predicts Florida will pass constitutional carry
The governor is sure the bill will pass, but he did not say when.

At a press conference Friday morning in Williston, Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted the legislature will pass constitutional carry, but he didn’t say when.

“Well, the one thing I wanted the Legislature to do, and I think we will do it — I can’t tell you exactly when — but I’m pretty confident I will be able to sign a constitutional carry into law in the State of Florida,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis said it is just a matter of time, and he took a swipe at Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who oversees Florida’s Concealed Weapon and Firearm Licensing program and is running to replace him as governor.

“We used to be a leader on the Second Amendment — there’s like 25 states that have already done it, and I think if you look now, you have a situation where the official in charge of these permits doesn’t support Second Amendment rights. So why would you want to subcontract your constitutional rights to a public official who rejects the very existence of those rights?” he said. “So, the Legislature will get it done. I can’t tell you if it’ll be next week, six months, but I can tell you that before I am done as governor, we will have a signature on that bill.”

There are several options DeSantis could use to prompt the legislature to consider a constitutional carry bill.

During the special session next month, which will address home insurance issues, he could issue a “communication from the governor” — a formal message to House and Senate leadership, telling them to consider constitutional carry during the special session.

After the special session ends, DeSantis could issue another proclamation calling the legislature back for another special session for the “sole and exclusive purpose” of considering constitutional carry.