Category: RKBA

Governor Bill Lee (Tennessee) pushes for permit-less gun carry bill ahead of legislative discussion.

A once-sidelined bill is back in the Tennessee legislature again. If passed, anyone over the age of 21 could legally carry a gun without a permit.

A bill could get rid of the state’s gun permit requirements. It’s going before the House and Senate starting Tuesday.

If made into law, anyone over the age of 21 could carry a firearm if they meet the requirements.

Lawmakers first introduced the bill in 2020,  but it was delayed, in part, because of the pandemic……..

Below The Radar – LEAD Act

Attacks on our right to keep and bear arms don’t just take the form of gun bans or universal background checks. If anything, anti-Second Amendment extremists have always been scheming to find ways to make it harder to exercise our rights, and some of them are quite diabolical in the way many Second Amendment supporters do not see them coming.

One such bill is HR 405, the LEAD Act, introduced by Ted Lieu, a congressman from California (no surprise, a Democrat). In this case LEAD stands for Lead Endangers Animals Daily, and it bans the use of traditional ammunition on lands that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has jurisdiction over. For a first offense, there is a $500 fine, with additional offenses leading to fines from $1,000 to $5,000.

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We Now Know the First Gun Control Move Congressional Democrats Are Making

Democrats have had a few legislative priorities since they took control of both Congress and the White House. Their number one focus has been on the “American Rescue Plan,” President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. But their next policy focus is shifting towards imposing stricter gun control laws.

According to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), Democrats are planning to pursue “enhanced background checks” as early as next week.

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New House Bill Would Expand List of ‘Prohibited Persons’

Not all gun control attempts are as blatant as Democrat Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s manifold (and yearly) insanity.

Indeed, most look positively reasonable — at least if you only read the title.

Such is H.R. 882, the “Keeping Guns from High-Risk Individuals Act” introduced by Rep. Robin L. Kelly, (D-Illinois).

Introduced in early February, text of the bill was just released, and is hair-raising, particularly if one digs a bit deeper, than the simple language.

In short, Kelly’s bill is a huge expansion of the criteria used to prohibit persons from legally owning a firearm under federal law, which right now includes those convicted of a felony or a domestic violence misdemeanor, and those adjudicated as mentally ill.

H.R. 882 would amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to include anyone who:

… in the most recent 10-year period, has been convicted in any court (emphasis added) of a crime of violence (as defined in section 16);

“(11) has not attained 25 years of age, (emphasis added) and has been adjudicated by any court as having committed an offense that would have been a crime of violence (as defined in section 16) if committed by an adult;

“(12) in any period of 3 consecutive years in the most recent 10-year period, has been convicted in any court, on 2 separate occasions, of an offense that has, as an element, the possession or distribution of, or the intent to possess or distribute, alcohol or a controlled substance (as so defined); or

“(13) has been convicted in any court (emphasis added) of stalking.”

Now 18 U.S. Code section 16 is disturbingly vague, and simply defines a “crime of violence” as:

(a)an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or prop­erty of another, (emphasis added) or

(b)any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.

Clearly, no one could argue against keeping guns out of the hands of violent criminals right?

Much will be dependent — should this pass — on how Section 16 is interpreted, and on the relevant case law, but as written if you got in a bar fight when you were 21, and were charged with simple battery (generally a misdemeanor) or even threatened violence (assault in many jurisdictions, also a misdemeanor) — or were a young idiot and did a little vandalism —  you would suddenly be ineligible to own a firearm for the rest of your life.

Note too, this says “any court,” not just federal court.

Kelly’s legislation would create an entirely new class of federally-prohibited persons — those who have been “convicted of a crime of violence,” even if no violence actually took place.

Look, no one wants firearms in the hands of violent felons, but this bill doesn’t prevent that. Anyone convicted of a felony is already a prohibited person.

This expands the list of “prohibited persons” to include those convicted of misdemeanors, not just felonies.

It’s clear that the goal of Kelly’s legislation isn’t about reducing gun violence (not that any of these proposed bills are), it’s all about reducing the number of people who can legally own a firearm.

Requiring Training Before Owning A Gun is a Threat To The Second Amendment

A question I get a lot is do I believe everyone should be required by law to get some form of firearm training before they can own a gun?

I deeply believe that anyone who owns a gun or plans to buy a gun should to some degree get some training on how to use and operate the gun not only safely but more effectively.

But the question still remains, do I agree with government mandated training before owning a gun? Absolutely NOT and here is why.

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Banning whole categories of popular guns will lose in Supreme Court

On Feb. 14, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the deadly shooting incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with an announcement that he is calling on Congress to enact “common sense gun law reforms.”

As always, the details matter. The president defined “common sense” as a requirement for background checks on all gun sales, a ban on “assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” and an end to “immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.”

The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, that the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” is an individual right that is not contingent on service in “a well-regulated militia.” That means the U.S. Constitution limits the federal government’s power to pass laws restricting that right.

Exactly where are the limits? That’s always a matter of interpretation. The Heller opinion, written by the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, held that the District’s law prohibiting the possession of handguns was over the line, as was its law requiring residents to keep their lawfully owned, registered long guns “unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless the guns were located in a place of business or in use for lawful recreational activities.

Scalia wrote that the handgun ban “amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society” for the “lawful purpose” of “the inherent right of self-defense.” Under any standard that the court has used, he wrote, “banning from the home ‘the most preferred firearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of one’s home and family,’ would fail constitutional muster.”

So if the president’s definition of “assault weapon” and “weapons of war” includes commonly owned firearms and magazines, it’s likely that new laws banning these or seeking to create new legal liability for their manufacturers will be found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, should these laws be challenged.

And there’s no doubt that such laws would be challenged. After Biden’s statement was released, the Firearms Policy Coalition responded, denouncing what it called “unconstitutional and immoral policies including bans on common semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines.” A number of lawsuits over various state laws related to firearms ownership are already working their way toward the high court.

The Heller decision was 5-4, with Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer in the minority.

Former President Donald Trump campaigned as a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, and it would not be surprising, to say the least, if the three justices he appointed to the high court share that view to some extent. Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett likely have created a solid majority to strike down broad bans on semiautomatic weapons and laws that flatly prohibit law-abiding citizens from exercising the right to carry a gun. In Scalia’s words, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.”

That won’t stop the Democratic majorities in Congress, together with the president, from enacting doomed laws, or from sending fundraising letters attacking their opponents. It’s always about the next election. It remains a fact that constitutional rights cannot be overridden by a majority vote, except on the Supreme Court.

 

Iowa Permitless Carry Self Defense Package Bill Introduced

House Study Bill 254 allows a law-abiding adult to carry a concealed firearm, without first needing to obtain government permission. This ensures that citizens have their right to self-defense without government red tape or delays. In addition, it also adds the option for law-abiding citizens to pass a federal background check to acquire a handgun without obtaining a Permit to Acquire, ensures that public housing cannot deny Second Amendment rights to tenants, ensures that local governments cannot restrict lawful carrying of firearms, expands the types of training accepted for a Permit to Carry Weapons, and other Second Amendment provisions.

AKA the “Beat-O Robert O’Rourke Needs A Job” Act.

House Demoncraps Push Biden to Create ‘National Gun Violence’ Director

Several House Democrats on Friday called on President Joe Biden to appoint a “national gun violence” director, coming after the White House pushed Congress to try and pass more gun-control measures including one that would limit liability shields for gun manufacturers.

“Currently, federal efforts to combat gun violence, including research on the impacts and causes of gun violence and law enforcement efforts to combat it, are siloed across agencies,” a letter from Reps. Joe Neguse (D-Calo.) and Lucy McBath (D-Texas) read (pdf). “Appointing a National Director of Gun Violence to promote coordination of federal agencies will ensure these agencies are working collaboratively, including via the dissemination of critical data and coordination of shared goals, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The director role, they said, should reduce firearms deaths and injuries by at least 50 percent for the next ten years.

However, the appetite for gun control among the American public might be diminishing. In the past year, gun sales exploded as about 8.5 million people purchased firearms for the first time, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The FBI also said it processed nearly 40 million gun background checks.

Jurgen Braue, the chief economist at Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting, told Business Insider that “wave upon wave of uncertainty and concern [are] driving firearm demand” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and riots last year.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The St. Louis couple accused of confronting protestors with their guns this summer took center stage at a Second Amendment rally at the state capitol Wednesday morning.

Patricia and Mark McCloskey spoke for about 10 minutes in the Capitol rotunda.

“Be free to live your life without being afraid of the government,” Mark McCloskey said. “Maybe we should make the government a little afraid of us because that’s where it’s supposed to be.”

The rally featured guest speakers like Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, State Rep. Jered Taylor, and State Sen. Eric Burlison.

Arizona House Passes Bill to End State Enforcement of Federal Gun Control

PHOENIX, Ariz. (Feb. 24, 2021) – Today, the Arizona House passed a bill to ban state and local enforcement of federal gun control; past, present and future. Passage into law would represent an important first step towards bringing those measures to an end within the state.

Rep. Leo Biasiucci (R) introduced House Bill 2111 (HB2111) along with 16 cosponsors on Jan. 24. With an amendment proposed by cosponsor Rep. Bret M. Roberts last week,  the legislation bans the state and all political subdivisions of the state from “using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the United States government that is inconsistent with any law” of the state of Arizona regarding the regulation of firearms.

On Feb. 10, the House Government and Elections Committee passed HB2111 by a vote of 7-6. Five days later, the House Rules Committee passed it with a vote of 5-3. Today, the full House passed the bill with a vote of 31-29.

The legislation is similar to a bill pending consideration in the Texas House and the West Virginia Senate.

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Home Defense Firearms: A Newly Relevant Blast from the Past.

Well, it’s started. The new administration (hack. spit) is calling for yet more “gun control”, leading the charge for an “assault weapon” ban, magazine size limits, universal background checks (which requires a complete gun registry to be enforceable), and so on.

Today I’m bringing forward a post addressing that so-called “assault weapon” issue. The definition of “assault weapon” is slippery. It mimics the term “assault rifle” but doesn’t meet the definition of one (an assault rifle is a rifle of intermediate power with “select fire”, meaning that it has a full-auto or “burst” capability–that is one trigger operation fires the rifle multiple times). Generally, “assault weapon is a semi-automatic (fires once for each trigger operation) rifle or carbine (overall length being the main difference there, or intermediate power (not the uber-high-power that the media would have you believe), and some various ergonomic and cosmetic features. It is this definition that I address in the post below.

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Data show gun control doesn’t reduce US violent crime
By James Meagher

Certain that yet another round of gun control laws are needed to reduce violent crime in the U.S., activists have forgotten two fundamental issues.  The first is that people who murder, rape, rob, or assault pay little attention to our laws.  Perpetrators of violent crime will not be stopped by anything but an opposing force.  The second issue is that gun control laws have never been shown to be effective.  Gun control advocates are adamant that the pages and pages of anti-2nd Amendment legislation are effective and the country needs more.  No proof is needed; they just know it.  The reality is that impartial data show that these activists are completely wrong.

While those passionately supportive of gun control have convinced the gullible that severe restrictions on firearms will eliminate violent crime in the U.S., this is just not true.  As we have been urged to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, we must examine the data, follow the science, and do the math on gun control and violent crime.  To accomplish this, consider the most recent full year of data from the FBI publication “Crime in the US, 2019” and a legal expert’s rating on the relative severity of gun control in each state from the Traveler’s Guide to the Firearm Laws of the Fifty States.  Data from these sources is graphed for each state and presented in Figure 1.  The blue dots indicate the crime rate per 100,000 state residents.  The higher the blue dot is on the graph, the greater the violent crime rate for that state.  Crime rate values are displayed on the right-hand vertical axis.  The relative firearm freedom in each state is indicated with a red bar.  A short red bar indicates that a state has very restrictive firearm laws.  A tall red bar indicates a relatively high acceptance of residents’ 2nd Amendment rights.  The relative firearm freedom rating, from 0 for total prohibition to 100 for total freedom, is displayed on the left-hand vertical axis.

With the states arranged in order of decreasing violent crime rate from left to right, all it takes is a glance at the figure, and it is obvious that there is no discernible relationship between the two data sets.  This means that there is no link between the rate of violent crime in a state and a state’s firearm freedom.  The only valid conclusion is that gun control does not have a predictable outcome regarding violent crime.

Is it any wonder that the volumes of state and federal gun control legislation do not have much impact on our violent crime rates?  Yet year after year, our legislators add more gun control laws to the books, expecting different results each time.

The facts prove conclusively that gun control laws cannot reliably reduce the violent crime rate in our country.  Is there anything that might be effective?  Possibly.  Consider the next figure.  In Figure 2, the FBI data for violent crime are shown again.  The blue dots indicate the crime rate per 100,000 state residents.  The higher the blue dot is on the graph, the greater the violent crime rate for that state.  For the same year, the U.S. Census Bureau’s data for poverty in the states has been added as red triangles.  The higher the red triangle is on the graph, the greater the poverty rate for that state.  Values for the percentage of state residents in poverty are displayed on the left-hand vertical axis.

Just a glance at Figure 2 reveals that there is a recognizable trend for poverty and violent crime.  States with lower poverty rates generally have lower rates of violent crime.  Upon seeing this correlation, it is logical to conclude that anyone genuinely interested in reducing violent crime needs to be fighting poverty.

We can make progress as a nation only when we examine unbiased information and are able to think logically.  Unsupported opinions, willful ignorance of the facts, and emotional objections to the truth are dangerous obstacles to reducing violent crime in our country.  Deliberately promoting the myth that stricter firearm laws will reduce violent crime serves only to steer us away from real solutions.

SMART GUNS? DUMB POLICY

President Joe Biden said he’s figured it all out. Guns can be made safe if the firearm industry would just team up with Silicon Valley to create bio-enabled so-called “smart guns.”

This is according to a long-buried interview with the Las Vegas Sun conducted during the presidential campaign. The information contained in it is just now coming to light and some of the findings might show why. President Biden, as a candidate, was making outlandish pie-in-the-sky claims about theoretical, unproven and unreliable firearm technology.

President Biden claimed, according to this interview, “I also dealt with the folks in Silicon Valley; we have the capacity now to build any weapon where it can only be fired with your biometric marker. And that technology doesn’t violate anyone’s Second Amendment right at all. If you pass the background check, you can purchase a weapon which only you can pull the trigger.”

Smart Gun’s Failing Grade

He’s right on one count. As vice president, he did deal with tech leaders to attempt combining authorized-user, or so-called “smart gun” technology into firearms. It didn’t work. It didn’t get to the point where it could even be properly tested.

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Below The Radar – Gun Safety: Not Sorry Act

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has not been a friend of law-abiding gun owners – or anyone who values the Second Amendment. If anything, she has been very active, and has introduced some of the most onerous proposals we have seen. But like Dianne Feinstein in the last Congress, she is not averse to more modest bills to unjustly punish those who seek to exercise their Second Amendment rights for horrific acts they did not commit.

In this case, her fallback is HR 125, the Gun Safety: Not Sorry Act. Rather than a sweeping licensing and registration scheme that is deeply intrusive, it instead imposes a one-week waiting period for any semiautomatic firearm, many standard magazines (like those for a Glock 17), suppressors, and “armor-piercing ammo.”

Now, we’ve discussed the waiting period scam before. Put your thoughts about the tactics used to limit the damage done by the Brady Act in 1993 aside. Suffice it to say, when the national instant background check system (NICS) is up and running, there is no justification for a waiting period. If a person is not prohibited, they should be able to take their purchase home with them the moment NICS reports it is a legal transaction.

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Some Techgeeks develop a case of the vapors when they discover that the signal can’t be stopped. MwwwHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

YOU CAN NOW 3D PRINT AN ENTIRE SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLE AT HOME.

THE TOTAL COST — INCLUDING THE 3D PRINTER — IS ABOUT $350.

Home Brewing

3D-printed guns, or functional firearms that can be mostly or entirely manufactured at home with a 3D printer, are getting more sophisticated and more dangerous.

For a long time, 3D-printed guns were still quite slapdash. Early homemade handguns would break apart after firing once, and they served as more of a symbolic middle finger to government firearm regulation than a tangible threat. But they’re getting steadily more advanced, Slate reports. Now, a prominent 3D-printed gun community plans to unveil the designs for a functional, upgraded assault rifle early this year.

Deterrence Dispensed

The group, Deterrence Dispensed, has an online community of thousands to which it shares gun blueprints and step-by-step instructions on how to build them, alongside lists of recommended printers and parts. Aside from those flimsy handguns, the group also designed a functional assault rifle called the FGC-9 — that’s an acronym for the crude moniker “fuck gun control 9 mm” — which only costs about $100 to make with the recommended $250 printer, for a total cost starting around $350.

Most chilling? The gun is totally legal. Its barrel is made of metal, meaning it can be spotted by metal detectors, which is the one technicality that prevents the technology from being banned outright, according to Slate. But aside from that, these weapons are untraceable and allow people to circumvent other regulations like background checks — especially in countries with tighter gun control than the United States.

With the upgraded FGC-9 expected within the next few months, it stands to reason that these homemade guns — which Slate reports are favored by neo-Nazis and other extremist groups — will only become more prevalent and more dangerous.

“There is no sign of things stopping,” pseudonymous FGC-9 designer “Ivan” told Slate. “Projects are only getting more ambitious.”

It’s telling that something like this is actually necessary in the U.S.

Minnesota: Constitutional Amendment Protecting Knives Introduced

Minnesota State Senator Paul Utke and Representatives Cal Bahr, Tim Miller, John Poston, Erik Mortensen, Eric Lucero, and Donald Raleigh have introduced, respectively, SF 1026 and HF 824, Constitutional Amendment bills “providing for the right of the people to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms including firearms, knives, or any other weapons and ammunition, components, and accessories for these arms.” Knife Rights appreciates our friends in Minnesota, including knives in this proposed amendment.

Minnesota is one of only six states without specific constitutional protections for the right to bear arms (the others are California, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York).

This is the first such proposed amendment, or strengthening existing protections, that specifically calls out “knives” as being protected. While the commonsense interpretation of constitutional protections for “arms” would seem to generally protect knives (see Knives and the Second Amendment), that hasn’t historically been the result in every relevant state legal case that has been adjudicated. As recent examples, cases in Connecticut and Wisconsin on appeal affirmed that knives were protected; a New Mexico lower court decision that was never appealed said switchblades were not protected (raised as a defense in the case) and suggested other knives wouldn’t be protected either.

The proposed amendment includes much stronger protection of the right to bear arms, including knives than is found in most such constitutional protections. These added protections are designed to counter infringements on the right to bear arms allowed by various courts over the years.

Knife Rights will let you know when it is time to contact your legislators to support these bills. If passed by a simple majority in both houses, voters would vote on the amendment during the 2022 General Election. It must receive “a majority of all the electors voting at the election” to be ratified.