Category: RKBA

BLUF:
It’s time for the U.S. to quit the Programme of Action. And while we’re at it, we should quit the U.N. ammo group and make it clear that, no matter what the U.N. does about bullets, we won’t try to apply its foolish ideas here.

UN Gun Control Program Runs Amok Again

More than two decades ago, the United Nations created a program to curb the trafficking of small arms. It’s done nothing but fire blanks. So now, the U.N. wants to control bullets.

In 2001, the United Nations started the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. Its next meeting will be held in New York from June 27 to July 1.

The Programme isn’t a treaty. It’s a political gathering that’s meant to encourage voluntary cooperation. It meets every other year to produce an outcome document that’s politically (but not legally) binding.

It’s supposed to work by unanimous consent.

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The Programme has achieved very little, if anything. That’s not just my view. The U.N. secretary-general said so in 2008. New Zealand said so in 2012. Its supporters said it was “firing blanks” in 2014. In 2018, the Red Cross said that governments in the Programme talk a lot, but do nothing.

In practice, that suits most of the U.N. fine: All the nations get credit for participating in the Programme while actually doing nothing, while the Programme focuses on peripheral issues, such as 3D-printed guns.

This year, the rumor is that the Programme’s president wants it to focus on banning toy guns. (No more water pistols for your kids, says the U.N.)

If the nations in the Programme genuinely wanted to help control the illicit trade in small arms, it could in theory be modestly useful.

For example, it could seek to eliminate the “Chinese exemption,” under which Beijing is exempt from the requirement to put serial numbers on its firearms, which makes Chinese guns difficult to trace.

But instead, the Programme focuses on irrelevant distractions—and on breaking its own promises.

In 2018, the Programme broke its rule of unanimity to approve an outcome document that added ammo over U.S. protests. The Programme wasn’t supposed to include ammunition. And adding it serves no useful purpose.

The idea of putting numbers on, and trying to trace, individual rounds of ammunition is nonsensical. The resulting database would have trillions of entries.

Most of the Programme’s member nations can’t and don’t even meet their existing commitments. But that didn’t stop the United Nations from adding ammo.

The U.S. does most of the work of running traces on firearms, providing expertise, and giving aid to upgrade foreign recordkeeping through the Programme.

But if the U.S. is going to do most of the work and simultaneously going to have the Programme’s rules broken against it, there’s no reason for us to continue to participate in it.

There are now more good reasons than ever to quit. When the Programme voted to include ammo in 2018, it lined itself up with a U.N. working group. That group’s report came out late last year, and it’s a bureaucrat’s fantasy.

It calls for the negotiation of “a set of political commitments” to “concentrate on through-life ammunition management.” In other words, an entirely new Programme of Action, focused just on ammo.

“Through-life” ammo management may sound innocuous, but isn’t. Here’s what it means, in the U.N.’s own words:

States would reduce security risks by encouraging ammunition producers, where feasible, practicable and consistent with national legislation, to maintain effective accounting and record-keeping systems that permit the retrieval (by serial, batch, or lot number) of detailed sales and transfer records. Ideally, such records should be digital, easily retrievable, and held for as long as feasible.

Translation: The U.N. wants manufacturers of ammo to number their bullets. Then the U.N. wants to track where and to whom every bullet in the world is sold or sent. The U.N. also wants to track who sells to whom. And it wants all those records digitized, easily accessed, and kept forever.

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Once again, just like Finestein’s ‘Assault Weapon’ ban.

Congressional Democrats introduce gun licensing bill

The state of Illinois requires every lawful gun owner to get a Firearm Owner Identification Card. You can’t have a gun without out and you have to jump through the hoops to lawfully get one.

They also have the city of Chicago, where violent crime is rampant. It seems gun licensing doesn’t actually help as some want to believe.

In fact, two Illinois Democrats believe it so hard that they want to make it federal law.

May 11, 2022 Press Release WASHINGTON — U.S. Representative Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act, today, to help reduce firearm violence in Illinois and across the country. This legislation would prohibit unlicensed firearm ownership and the transfer of firearms without a valid firearms license, as well as direct the U.S. Attorney General to establish and maintain a federal record of sale system and conduct fingerprint-based nationwide criminal background checks — which could have prevented the gunman who killed five people in Aurora, IL in 2019 from acquiring the firearm he used in the shooting.

Of course, it should be remembered that as I noted previously, it hasn’t done jack to stop the violence in Chicago.

Further, the shooter in the Aurora, IL case was a convicted felon who actually passed the FOID background check and NICS check

Whoops.

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Senators Threaten Court-Packing – Again – As Americans Embrace Their Second Amendment Rights

The unauthorized leak of a draft abortion opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court has Democrats up in arms (again) about packing the U.S. Supreme Court. This isn’t a new argument and one gun control advocates publicly pitched before.

Senators are openly calling for court-packing again and that’s before the Supreme Court has rendered a final opinion on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen or finalized the opinion of the leaked abortion draft decision. Even before the nine justices heard arguments on the New York case challenging the states arbitrary and restrictive “may issue” concealed carry permit criteria, there were calls for court-packing.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) filed an amicus brief in NYSRPA v. New York supporting restrictive gun control but took arguments beyond supporting the law with threats to upend the court’s structure. That case was ultimately declared “moot” by the Supreme Court after New York City altered the law to avoid the Court striking down the law.

“Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal,” Sen. Whitehouse wrote.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) led a 2019 letter excoriating court-packing threats and urged the justices to render opinions based on Constitutional interpretations, not public opinion polls. The letter was signed by 53 Republican senators.

“It’s one thing for politicians to peddle these ideas in Tweets or on the stump,” Sen. McConnell wrote. “But the Democrats’ amicus brief demonstrates that their court-packing plans are more than mere pandering. They are a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary and the rights of all Americans.”

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Vermont: Suppressor Hunting Bill Passes Legislature

Read more: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/05/vermont-suppressor-hunting-bill-passes-legislature/#ixzz7T5bejBWa
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

[Yesterday] morning, the Vermont State Senate passed an amended version of S. 281 – legislation that includes a provision to make The Green Mountain State the 41st state to allow the use of suppressors while hunting. The suppressor hunting language, which was championed by Representatives Pat Brennan (R-Chittenden-9-2) and George Till (D-Chittenden-3), was added to S. 281 during the floor debate in the House of Representatives and subsequently passed on May 10th. The bill now heads to Governor Phil Scott (R-VT) for his signature. Once enacted, the new law will take effect on July 1st.

“It is my pleasure to announce that with today’s passage of S. 281, the legislature has taken a tremendous step forward towards expanding the right of hunters to use suppressors in the field,” said Rep. Brennan, Co-Chair of the Vermont Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus. “For the past seven years, law abiding citizens in Vermont have enjoyed suppressor ownership, but their use has been restricted to sport shooting at ranges only. With the passage of S. 281, Vermont outdoorsmen and women finally have the ability to protect their hearing and the hearing of the youth hunting community as well. This bill was a long time in the works, but it has finally come to fruition thanks to the cooperation of many, most especially the Department of Fish and Wildlife and its Commissioner.”

The American Suppressor Association has been fighting for suppressor rights in Vermont for a decade. Over the years we have helped draft legislation, provided written and verbal testimony, and hosted multiple live-fire suppressor demonstrations for legislators, law enforcement officers, and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. In 2015, legislation introduced by Rep. Brennan legalized the ownership of suppressors in the state, but not their use in the field. Today’s passage of S. 281 brings us one step closer to full suppressor legalization nationwide.

“What Representatives Brennan and Till have accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Knox Williams, President and Executive Director of the American Suppressor Association. “It highlights the value of hard work, persistence, and bipartisanship. There should be nothing controversial about protecting hearing. We could not have asked for better partners in the fight for your suppressor rights.”

Comment O’ The Day
The gun-buying spree was a RESULT of the murder spike and a reaction to the demonstrated knowledge that if mostly peaceful pink-haired Antifa Zombies came crawling through your window, the police would not only be unable to help, but would refuse to do so if the opportunity arose.

The New York Times Uses a CDC Report on Homicides As an Excuse To Attack Private Gun Ownership

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday issued a report on the recent surge in the U.S. gun homicide rate, which rose by a third between 2019 and 2020, from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 residents. The article, which was published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, notes that “several explanations have been proposed,” including “increased stressors (e.g., economic, social, and psychological) and disruptions in health, social, and emergency services during the COVID-19 pandemic; strains in law enforcement-community relations reflected in protests over law enforcement use of lethal force; increases in firearm purchases; and intimate partner violence.”

The New York Times predictably plays up that passing reference to “increases in firearm purchases.” The rise in gun homicides, the Times says, “corresponded to accelerated sales of firearms as the pandemic spread and lockdowns became the norm.” The Times explains that “Americans went on a gun-buying spree in 2020 that continued into 2021,” although sales have since returned to their usual level. It cites an estimate by gun violence researcher Garen Wintemute that “there remain roughly 15 million more guns in circulation than there would be without the pandemic.”

In 2017, according to the Small Arms Survey, American civilians owned more than 393 million firearms. Purchases in 2018 and 2019 added an estimated 27 million guns to that stock of weapons. If sales in 2020 had been similar to sales in the two previous years, they would have added another 13 million or so. Assuming Wintemute’s estimate is in the right ballpark, the “gun-buying spree” that worries the Times amounted to a further increase of about 3.5 percent. Although Times reporters Roni Caryn Rabin and Tim Arango seem to think that’s a plausible explanation for a 33 percent increase in the gun homicide rate, it’s not clear why.

It is demonstrably not true that more guns in circulation automatically results in more homicides. The number of guns owned by Americans rose steadily throughout the period, beginning in the early 1990s, when the U.S. homicide rate fell precipitously, a downward trend that has only recently abated. As the CDC notes, the reasons for the 2020 jump are unclear, although it is widely assumed that the massive disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic had something to do with it.

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The Trace is pushing to create a database of all gun owners nationwide.
For ‘gun violence’ research…yeah right

The NRA Knows It’s Impeding Gun Research

AS WELL IT SHOULD FOR THIS TYPE OF RESEARCH INTIMIDATION!

A year before gun rights groups sued to stop California from collecting information on firearms ownership, the NRA’s chief researcher acknowledged that its advocacy prevents accurate studies.

This story was published in partnership with the Los Angeles Times.

NICE OF THEM TO PROVIDE POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION FOR FUTURE USE

California has long played a pivotal role in the study of gun violence, maintaining a unique repository of detailed information on gun owners that it shares with researchers.
The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups have filed lawsuits challenging that established practice. The lawsuits come as researchers confront an uptick in gun-related deaths, driven by a surge in homicides. They were filed a year after the NRA’s research director acknowledged at a private meeting that the group’s opposition to gathering such data has severely hampered gun violence research in the United States.
With narrow exceptions, all firearms transactions in California must go through licensed dealers, who relay information on purchasers that includes name, address, and date of birth to the California Department of Justice.
For over 30 years, the DOJ has shared this data with public health researchers, who have used it to try to untangle the connections between gun ownership and homicides, suicides, and other violence. They say this baseline information is key to understanding the risks and benefits of having a gun and, ultimately, to reducing injuries and deaths.
“California is special,” said David Studdert, a professor and gun researcher at Stanford Law School who focuses on the intersection of law and public health. “It’s not possible to do this kind of work elsewhere in the country. You need to be at the individual and household level to make the connection between the gun and a violent outcome. You can’t measure what you can’t see.”

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE IS STANDARD OPERATIONAL ANTI-GUN/ANTI CIVIL RIGHTS BS AND DOESN’T MERIT THE RESPECT TO POST IT.

Washington “ghost gun” arrest kills narrative

he state of Washington has passed a “ghost gun” law that will go into effect later this year. We’re told it will stop criminals from building their own firearms and keep guns out of the hands of bad people.

However, the arrest of a Vancouver man raises some serious questions on that front.

A man living in Vancouver, Washington was charged with illegal firearm possession on Monday. Authorities say they seized at least five ‘ghost guns.’

According to the FBI Seattle Division, 46-year-old Joao Ricardo DeBorba, a Brazilian National with multiple convictions for domestic violence assault, was arrested Friday on eight counts of illegal possession of firearms. He is being held at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac pending further court proceedings.

Authorities say last week, law enforcement served a search warrant at DeBorba’s residence and seized five firearms that did not have serial numbers or manufacturers’ marks. Three of the so-called “ghost guns” were AR-15 style rifles and the other two were handguns, all believed to have been purchased online. In addition to the guns, authorities found a large amount of ammunition, a workbench with firearms parts and tools, firearm silencers, magazines and gun cases.

Now, that last sentence is important.

You see, we’re told we need laws against so-called ghost guns so people like DeBorba can’t get firearms. It’s why Washington state passed its law against homemade firearms.

But this guy had suppressors.

Suppressors, aka “silencers,” are heavily restricted under federal law. You can’t just walk into a gun store and purchase them lawfully. You have to jump through all the hoops you’d have to in order to buy a machine gun.

And yet, he had suppressors just laying around, apparently. Suppressors. Plural.

That means he skirted federal law not just once but multiple times.

Now, if he’s willing and able to do that for something like a suppressor, do you really think that keeping him from lawfully buying ghost guns is really going to stop him from trying to get firearms? Do you think it’ll stop anyone?

Of course it won’t. It never has and it never will.

Criminals, by their very nature, do what is illegal. They might be, at most, inconvenienced by the law, but they’re almost never stopped by it. The only people stopped are the law-abiding folks who don’t represent a problem in the first place.

Washington state is banning “ghost guns,” but they couldn’t even stop suppressors from being obtained. Those aren’t legal off the shelf anywhere in the US, but they can stop kits and 3D printed parts from being obtained across state lines?

Seriously?

This just reinforces the idea that gun control is really just a willful self-delusion that allows people to believe they can stop criminals with just one more law. This despite the fact that it has literally never happened in the whole of human history.

At best, you drive it underground. Then, criminals get to profit from it. You get more violent crime from it. You create new criminals from it.

But you never, ever actually stop it. It’s time some lawmakers learn that lesson.

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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