Category: RKBA

Court upholds Florida gun law that bars people under 21 from buying rifles
Friday’s ruling by the full Atlanta-based appeals court upheld a three-judge panel’s decision and outlined the history of the nation’s gun laws, from its founding to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions setting guidelines for determining how to apply the Second Amendment.

Saying the restriction is “consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation,” a federal appeals court on Friday upheld the constitutionality of a Florida law that raised the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 18 to 21. [really? What ‘historical tradition?]

The 8-4 ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came after seven years of legal wrangling in the National Rifle Association’s challenge to a 2018 law passed after a mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students and faculty members.

Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 at the time, used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down the victims at his former school. The NRA filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the gun-age restriction shortly after the law passed.

Friday’s ruling by the full Atlanta-based appeals court upheld a three-judge panel’s decision and outlined the history of the nation’s gun laws, from its founding to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions setting guidelines for determining how to apply the Second Amendment. While the law barred people under 21 from buying rifles and long guns, they still can receive them, for example, as gifts from family members.

“From this history emerges a straightforward conclusion: the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition in why and how it burdens the right of minors to keep and bear arms,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote. “Because minors have yet to reach the age of reason, the Florida law prohibits them from purchasing firearms, yet it allows them to receive firearms from their parents or another responsible adult.”

Judges Adalberto Jordan, Robin Rosenbaum, Jill Pryor, Kevin Newsom, Britt Grant, Nancy Abudu and Charles Wilson joined the majority opinion. Judge Andrew Brasher wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Judges Elizabeth Branch, Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck.

Should firearms background check system be abolished?

To some people, firearm background checks are accepted and considered a way to prevent bad guys from getting guns. They’re completely wrong, and here’s why.

The background check system, otherwise known as the “government hijacking of a God-given right and selling it back to you as a government-issued privilege,” is unconstitutional and dangerous to law-abiding citizens.

As we inch our way toward state-to-state reciprocity with constitutional carry in our major cities, we recognize that many states not only require a government-issued permission slip to carry a gun but also make it almost impossible to obtain that permit. Even if you can make it through the rat maze of training, fees, background checks, storage requirements, magazine capacity limitations, and a list of other constitution-violating requirements, most of society is off limits to you and your firearm because many state gun laws have deemed public and even private places, gun free zones.

The idea of undergoing and passing background checks as a prerequisite to exercising the 2nd Amendment should have never been a thought even in the darkest corners of the most communist minds of the most radical left-wing ideologues, not only because it violates the rights of American citizens, but also because it puts undeserving Americans in legal jeopardy and in physical danger.

According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2017, the NICS background check system denied 112,090 people the right to purchase a firearm. Of those 112,090 denials, only 12,710 were investigated. We have to ask ourselves: If over 112,000 people were denied but only 12,710 Investigations took place, wouldn’t that be clear evidence that the system is failing and falsely denying good people their right to keep and bear?

It gets worse. That same year, and from that group of 112,090 denials, there were only 12 prosecutions for the crime of attempting to purchase a firearm. Now the anti-gun crowd says, “See, we stopped 12 mass shootings!” Well, there are problems with that argument.

First of all, do we have no regard for the 112,078 people who were caught up in the poorly run background check system? What happens to those people? Well, the anti-gun crowd couldn’t care less about the people who are falsely denied their 2nd Amendment rights. As well as being falsely labeled a criminal and refused the ability to purchase a gun, good folks who are denied must also jump through hoops, make appeals, and wait.

Then, they have to wait some more because we know how efficient government agencies operate. By some estimates, approximately 80% of the NICS denials are never even appealed, often because the person denied is unable to navigate the appeals process or is unable to afford a lawyer to help them. In the meantime, good people are rendered unarmed and helpless by an unconstitutional process that should never have existed in the first place.

What about the 12 prosecutions in 2017? Were they mass murderers? And if they were, why weren’t they in jail? The background check system is created under the guise of stopping violent criminals from purchasing firearms, but if a person has done something so heinous that they lose their rights, wouldn’t that crime be enough to keep them in jail? And if not, why not? Why are they able to walk among us? It would seem the problem has less to do with guns and more to do with a criminal justice system that works to keep a violent element on our streets. The background check system, however, has been much more effective at preventing law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms than criminals, and we can see that by simply looking at the numbers.

Now, you might remember the anti-gun crowd cheering in the media that the number of firearm purchase denials reached the highest number yet in the year 2021. That year, there were approximately 300,000 background check denials. This was great news to the gun grabbers because all they really care about is disarming their political opposition, but did the percentage of false denials change?

With a huge increase in firearm purchases after the left-wing riots of 2020, the FBI claims that its denial rate is 99.8% accurate. Mysteriously, the Government Accountability Office has still not posted their findings for 2022, but you’re supposed to believe that the FBI went from a .01% success rate to a 99.8% success rate, and you are now safe from false denials. John Lott from the Crime Prevention Research Center has claimed that the exact opposite is true, and approximately 99% of firearm purchase denials are false positives, meaning good people are being denied their rights for no reason.

After watching the NICS system deny thousands of good people over the years, you’re supposed to believe that now, magically, the firearm background check system is functioning as it should. Well, we’re not buying it for a minute. We know the system is falsely denying good people their right to own firearms, and the system needs to be abolished.

Our Founding Fathers didn’t say, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed… as long as you go through a background check system designed by people who don’t want you to have a gun.”

 

BLUF
Heroic citizens stopping bad guys would be just as interesting to watch as police stopping crimes, but permit holders are rarely portrayed that way on television. This reluctance to show normal good guys with guns endangers public safety by fostering a false perception that armed civilians are more of a threat than a solution.

If we truly care about public safety, we should acknowledge the proven role that responsible gun owners play in stopping violent attacks — rather than avoiding the truth for the sake of an anti-gun agenda.

Study: Concealed Carriers Do A Better Job Of Stopping Active Shooters Than Police

You’d never know it from watching television, but civilians stop more active shooters than police and do so with fewer mistakes, according to new research from the Crime Prevention Research Center, where I serve as president. In non-gun-free zones, where civilians are legally able to carry guns, concealed carry permit holders stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings, compared to 44.6 percent stopped by police, CPRC found in a deep dive into active shooter scenarios between 2014 and 2023.

Not only do permit holders succeed in stopping active shooters at a higher rate, but law enforcement officers face significantly greater risks when intervening. Our research found police were nearly six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.

Those numbers paint a fuller picture than the FBI’s crime statistics, which fail to include many of the defensive gun uses my organization has cataloged. But the problem with the FBI’s crime statistics isn’t just the errors in their reported data — they also fail to address useful questions, like how concealed handgun permit holders compare to law enforcement. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino face a major challenge in reforming how the data is collected and reported at the FBI.

What We Found

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SCOTUS is going to have to do something about this and slap these silly lower courts down, or things aren’t going to be pretty

Seventh Circuit Panel: SBRs Aren’t ‘Arms’ Protected by the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms. That should mean any weapon used for offensive or defensive acts. The reason was very clear. It was intended for us to be able to maintain a militia that could defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

But the Seventh Circuit has decided that short-barreled rifles, or SBRs, aren’t arms covered by the amendment.

(I had to use a screenshot that I linked since X is having issues with the embed codes)

Now, this is a problem for a lot of reasons.

First, let’s talk a bit about the Miller decision. Yes, it’s a Supreme Court decision that lower courts have had to contend with for ages now. However, Miller dealt with a sawed-off shotgun. The Court in that decision said that such a weapon had no militia use, thus it wasn’t covered by the Second Amendment. That was wrong, of course, because that ruling was issued in 1934, so after shotguns had been used so effectively in World War I that the Germans tried to get using them considered a war crime.

Further, Miller himself was dead, so there wasn’t really another side arguing one way or the other in that case.

Still, when you look at Bruen, it doesn’t say anything about how you can just decide something isn’t an arm simply because you don’t think it’s useful for warfare.

Of course, then there’s the fact that if SBRs aren’t useful for warfare as a tool of the militia, then why is the standard issue weapon for the United States Army technically an SBR? The M4 has a barrel length of 14.5 inches, which is an inch and a half shorter than what is necessary for a rifle to not be considered an SBR. If SBRs aren’t useful for militia use, then why is it issued to every one of our combat troops and was used in pretty much every firefight out troops saw in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Now, let’s talk about the “step two in our Bruen” thing that’s cut off.

We turn to step two in our Bruen analysis in the interest of completeness. As discussed below, even if short-barreled rifles were “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, historical tradition likely supports regulating them.

The court goes on to argue that Rahimi permits similar but more modern laws can be considered.

Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. When the historical laws “address[ed] particular problems” there is a good chance “contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons” are also permissible. Id. The laws do not need to “precisely match”—the contemporary one must only “comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment….” Id.

Now, I’m not an attorney, but this sure looks like the Rahimi decision seems to suggest that contemporary laws can be applied when the historical laws addressed either that problem or similar ones. In other words, if the Founding Fathers were trying to address drunk people carrying guns, as they did, a more contemporary law seeking to address a similar problem would apply.

Instead, the Seventh Circuit judges just decided to accept contemporary laws as good enough simply because they don’t like the idea of SBRs.

That’s not even getting into the possibility that these judges’ nominations might not even be valid since everything Biden signed looks to have been the result of an autopen and we can’t be sure Biden even knew what was happening in the first place.

New Mexico Semi-Auto Ban Bill Advances

Unfortunately, anti-gunners are capable of learning.

Most assault weapon bans that have gone on the books have been about cosmetic features. You can have only so many “evil features” before it’s prohibited. California’s, for example, does this in such a way that makes it difficult to find a way to have something like an AR-style rifle at all.

By focusing on features, though, companies can find a way to comply with the law while still giving people what they want, more or less.

But with the GOSAFER Act that was dropped in Congress during the Biden administration, the focus started to shift. That bill banned gas-operated semi-automatic firearms, which account for most semi-auto rifles.

That bill didn’t get much traction despite a significant push by the media, but that doesn’t mean the idea is dead. New Mexico has a proposal that would do the same thing there.

And the bill just advanced out of committee on Friday.

There’s still a long enough road for this bill, to be sure, but this is still bad news.

First, there’s just the fact that this won’t accomplish anything so far as addressing New Mexico’s violent crime issues. So-called assault weapons aren’t the preferred murder weapon for pretty much any group out there, in part because they’re too obvious.

Second, even if they were, they’ll just traffic them in from other states or from across the Mexican border. Yeah, I know guns usually go the other direction, but if the cartels see a way to make a profit, do you really think they won’t find a way to get into the illicit gun trade?

Please.

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Senators Send Letter Urging Repeal of Biden-era Rule Damaging the Firearms Industry

On March 5th U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging him to rescind an interim final rule (IFR) that the Biden Administration promulgated in an effort to hamstring the domestic firearms industry.

In October 2023, President Biden ordered a 90 day “pause” on firearm exports licenses issued by the Department of Commerce.

This order was in lock-step with other actions taken by the Biden Administration to hinder the U.S. domestic firearms industry in any way possible. And unsurprisingly, at the end of this “pause” the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued an IFR in April 2024. This IFR placed much tighter restrictions on semi-automatic firearms exports, listed dozens of countries as “high risk” countries which would be subject to a “presumption of denial” for export permits, removed a “presumption of approval” for licenses to many countries that had helped to expedite the process previously, and a number of other restrictions. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an organization that represents firearms manufacturers, stated that this decision would cost the industry nearly $500 million annually.

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U.S. House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on ‘The Right to Self Defense’

The U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, under the leadership of Chairman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), held a committee hearing focused on the right of law-abiding Americans to protect themselves.

It’s a critical moment for Second Amendment rights as President Donald Trump campaigned on restoring community safety and vowing to protect the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. That priority resonated with voters, including more than 26.2 million law-abiding Americans persuaded by crime and threats of violence in their communities to purchase a firearm for the first time over the past five years.

This priority also aligns with the House Republicans as they are committed to standing up for those Second Amendment rights and ensuring American communities are safe from criminal violence after historic surges in crime during the Biden-Harris administration.

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Trump Skips Guns in First Congressional Speech of Second Term

President Donald Trump did not mention gun policy once in what turned out to be the longest address to a joint session of Congress in history.

On Tuesday, Trump gave an hour-and-45-minute speech to the House and Senate. While he covered a myriad of topics during the marathon session, he did not make even a passing mention of gun policy.

That continues a trend of Trump downplaying guns in favor of other issues during his campaign and the early months of his second term.

The lack of attention to firearms during his congressional address, despite its length, mirrors Trump’s hour-and-a-half-long RNC keynote speech, where he also ducked the issue. It also follows him skipping out on gun executive orders during his day-one push to jumpstart his agenda. The White House then left gun rights off its literal priority list.

Trump had promised to enact a series of pro-gun reforms during his first week in office but failed to deliver on that timeline.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office,” Trump said during a speech to NRA members last February.

However, Trump does have a concrete move he could have highlighted in the speech. He followed up those early moves by ordering a review of the executive branch’s approach to gun policy, especially federal rules established during the Biden Administration. So, he may still fulfill his promise to NRA members in the long run.

“The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty,” the executive order said. “It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation. Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”

While the order only tells Attorney General Pam Bondi to review policies, it lays out most priority areas the gun-rights movement has focused on for years. It has the potential to uproot most of the restrictions the Biden Administration imposed through executive actions and transform the federal government’s legal position in gun cases.

Bondi, who has faced criticism from gun-rights advocates over her history of backing some gun restrictions, will have some say over which policies to change. How big the administration decides to go on reforming those policies could determine whether gun-rights advocates remain on board with Trump’s presidency.

Thomas Jefferson had some things to say about goobermint gone tyrant:

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.

When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

and last, but not in anyway least:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,

Rep. Jamie Rankin Beclowned Himself in Opening Remarks at Gun Hearing

Rep. Jamie Rankin isn’t going to be on the Christmas card list of any gun rights group you care to name. He’s a vehement anti-gunner and that’s where his bread is buttered. That’s not going to change.

Which is fine, I suppose. He’s in the minority right now, so all he can do is bloviate and then sit there and be impotent in his gun rights animosity.

But bloviate he shall, and he did.

In opening remarks in a subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, Rankin decided to display his burning stupid for the entire world to see, then sent out a press release with his remarks.

Awfully swell of him, really.

The problem is that my Republican colleagues have completely deformed the Second Amendment. They say it gives you the right to overthrow the government. Our former colleague, Matt Gaetz often claimed that the Second Amendment “is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary.”

This purported right to overthrow the government means that the people must enjoy access to munitions equivalent to that of the government’s arsenal. As our colleague, Representative Chip Roy, argues, the Second Amendment was “designed purposefully to empower the people to resist the force of tyranny used against them.” And my friend Representative Lauren Boebert says that the Second Amendment has “nothing to do with hunting, unless you’re talking about hunting tyrants, maybe.”

Despite all of this pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric about how the Constitution provides a right of civil insurrection, the actual Constitution, in a half-dozen different places, treats “insurrection” and “rebellion” not as protected rights but as serious and dangerous offenses against our government and our people.

And yet, our Founding Fathers also made it very clear that when the government became tyrannical, it was the duty of the people to throw off the chains of oppression and fight back, not just with words but with weapons.

I mean, they’d just engaged in their own rebellion, their own insurrection, and thrown off those precise chains. They knew that no government could be created that couldn’t, in time, come to oppress the people. They wanted to prevent that, which includes the right to keep and bear arms.

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No movement on the ‘Assault Weapon’ (Snopes) or ‘Large Capacity’ Magazine (Ocean State) cases as of March 3rd Morning Orders.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/030325zor_apl1.pdf

Well what does this mean? We get to wait more.

It more than likely means that SCOTUS will not take the case this term. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but the longer the wait, the more likely it becomes.

This will be the fourth relisting whenever it next goes to conference. Generally speaking the more relists after two, the less likely they take it. HOWEVER, NYSRPA v. Bruen was relisted four times. Dobbs v. Jackson, the abortion case that did away with Roe v. Wade, was relisted TWELVE times.

That we did not get a denial is good. This order was full of denials. That we did not get granted cert is bad. Nothing has happened.

Thomas (and others) have had plenty of time to write a denial. If they were going to deny it, my view is they would have by now. But we simply do not know.

Kostas Moros

Moms demand recently published a defense of AB 1333, saying its “right wing extremists” attacking it. Wrong. No rational person wants some antigun prosecutor second-guessing whether you “could have run away” when you are attacked by some criminal and are forced to shoot.
If I am out with my toddler and a lunatic comes at us with a knife or other imminent deadly threat, I should not have to waste several moments (while under an adrenaline rush) calculating if I have a chance to escape before shooting to defend my little girl and myself.
That’s what “duty to retreat” does. It is outright evil. California has always had a Stand Your Ground defense and it’s never been a problem. California’s Stand Your Ground jury instruction already doesn’t allow for a viable self-defense claim if you provoked the attack. The antigunner’s claimed fear is not a thing. They just hate the right to bear arms and hate that more people in California can now exercise it thanks to Bruen.
@Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur have the decency to scrap this monstrous bill. Haven’t California’s voters made it clear they are done with you catering to criminals? If this passes, I say we get a proposition submitted to enshrine SYG into the CA constitution. I think that would pass even in this blue state.
This is already true under current law! SYG still requires that you reasonably bellieve you are facing an imminent deadly threat. All the legal elements of self-defense must still be there, or its criminal homicide. It just makes it so you arent obligated to try and flee first. And again, you don’t want Soros-backed prosecutors second-guessing what was “truly necessary”.
Read all of the Moms Demand’s nonsense here if you want. 

With due respect to friend Hobie, from the years I spent living at Newport News, I regard Virginia a good place to be from.

It’s Up To Gov. Youngkin To Rescue Virginians—Again.

If there’s a state that better exemplifies the phrase “elections matter” than Virginia, I don’t know which state it would be.

While Democrats maintain control of Virginia’s General Assembly, pro-gun efforts helped propel Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin into office in January 2022. Since then, he has been the primary barrier between commonwealth gun owners and numerous highly punitive gun ban schemes.

Last March, Youngkin vetoed nearly 30 anti-gun bills that Democrats had pushed through the assembly, including a so-called “assault weapons” ban and a five-day waiting period for firearm purchases after a purchaser has passed the federal background check. Now, Youngkin is once again the final hope to avert disaster, as Democrats have sent another two dozen anti-gun measures to his desk before the legislative session adjourned on February 21.

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the worst measures.

SB 848 would raise the purchase age for certain semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols to 21. Under federal law, adults aged 18 to 20 can legally buy long guns (rifles and shotguns), so this measure would directly infringe upon their freedom.

SB 880 would prohibit carrying certain semi-automatic centerfire rifles or shotguns on any public street, road, alley, sidewalk, public right-of-way, or in any public park or other places open to the public. Such bans on carrying in specific areas often infringe on freedom, and if enacted, they are typically expanded to include more types of guns and additional areas.

SB 891 and its House companion HB1607 These proposals are rehashes of the waiting period bill passed last year but vetoed by Gov. Youngkin. They would impose an arbitrary five-day delay before a law-abiding citizen may take possession of a legally purchased firearm. As we’ve mentioned many times in the past, there is no evidence that waiting periods reduce suicides, homicides, or mass shootings. In fact, no studies identifying causal effects have been recognized by any of the independent literature reviews conducted since 2004.

SB 1134 would require firearms and ammunition to be stored in a locked container, compartment, or cabinet. While safe gun storage is an important part of responsible gun ownership, the freedom to choose how to store a self-defense firearm should always be left up to the owner.

Like SB 848, SB 1181 would prohibit law-abiding adults and individuals under the age of 21 from owning specific semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Additionally, it would expand this prohibition to include firearms magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Lastly, SB 1450 and its House companion measure HB 1608 would introduce new ambiguous laws and restrictions in an effort to undermine the already heavily regulated firearms industry. It would also empower the attorney general or a district attorney to sue a member of the firearm industry by alleging violations and even potential violations of these laws, allowing individuals “likely to be harmed” to seek equitable relief from a court, which could cost gunmakers millions in legal fees.

Most Virginians understand how close they are to legislative disaster, and hopefully, Gov. Youngkin will come through for them again with another mass veto. However, at some point, they will need to figure out how to regain Republican control of the General Assembly. If they don’t and a Democrat is elected governor, there won’t be much left to stop all the anti-gun schemes from steamrolling commonwealth gun owners.

Republican Hints at Using Appropriations Bills to Target Federal Gun Laws

The GOP may have majorities in both the House and Senate, but thanks to the filibuster in the upper chamber, Republicans are still going to struggle to get the 60 votes necessary to roll back federal gun laws using standalone bills. If, however, the GOP is serious about undoing current infringements as well as strengthening the Second Amendment, they could always try to attach those measures to appropriation bills, which only require simple majorities in both chambers before they’re adopted.

That strategy is likely to be deployed in the near future, according to one House member who recently spoke to Roll Call.

Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, R-Ala., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said former President Joe Biden was not going to sign an appropriations bill with certain language that went after his own administration’s gun rules.

“We don’t have that issue this time,” Aderholt said. “I think it’s very ripe that we can get some of that language this time.”

The Trump administration is angling for change on its own. An executive order from Trump this month stated that the Second Amendment “is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty” and ordered the attorney general to examine all orders and regulations of executive departments to “assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.” The order also instructed the attorney general to present a “proposed plan of action.”

Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Wisconsin Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he sees a role for Congress in going after Biden regulations.

“I don’t think we should make the administration do all the heavy lifting here,” he said, mentioning the Congressional Review Act, a tool that allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules.

The problem with using the Congressional Review Act to repeal federal rules is this: while the CRA only requires simple majorities, Congress only has sixty legislative days to disapprove of any given rule after the rule has been published in the Federal Register. The Biden administration’s rules on unfinished frames and receivers, pistol stabilizing braces, and who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms have already passed that threshold, so the CRA really isn’t a viable option to repeal those regulations.

Appropriations, on the other hand, are fair game for lawmakers, who could try to attach measures like the SHUSH Act or national Right to Carry reciprocity measures to budget bills.

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Wyoming Bill Targeting “Gun-Free Zones” Becomes Law Without Governor’s Signature

A bill scrapping many of Wyoming’s “sensitive places” is now law, but Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon isn’t too happy about it. Though Gordon allowed the law to take effect without his signature, avoiding a veto override fight with the legislature, he had some choice words for the overwhelming number of lawmakers who voted in favor of HB 172.

In an open letter to House Speaker Chip Nieman, Gordon said he was “tempted” to veto the bill, just as he did with a similar measure in the 2024 session.

In my veto message, I noted my major concerns with the disregard shown to local jurisdictions and the infringement of our state Constitution’s intrinsic separation of powers. Importantly, my message also included a call to action for school districts and colleges around the state to review their gun free zone policies while my administration pursued reviewing the State’s.

Reflecting this legislature’s lackadaisical effort to openly debate and work on this legislation before sending it to my desk, it is tempting to copy and return my same veto letter.

Compare that effort to the work done locally from the time of my veto letter, when only four school districts had firearm carry policies, to today, when 60% of school districts (according to the Wyoming Association of School Administrators), every single community college, and the University of Wyoming heeded my call to action and took up the debate.

This exercise in local governance was noticed by a handful of legislators, who attempted to pass amendments to HB0172 recognizing that local process and grandfathering in those local decisions. Such lack of regard for the principle of “government closest to the people” so fundamental to our Republic is stunning.

It’s true that many of these educational institutions debated rescinding their gun-free policies over the past year, but many of them (including the University of Wyoming) chose to keep their prohibitions in place. Gordon might be okay with that, but a “government closest to the people” doesn’t always act in the people’s best interest or with the Constitution in mind (looking at you, Jim Crow).

I stated in my veto letter last year that I support the repeal of gun free zones. I also respect local self-government.

My actions underscore my passion for both, which is not diminished. I am left to imagine this legislative session was never about “self-defense” or a common sense effort to extend carry rights. More to the point, it was always about the legislature grabbing power.

I find it interesting that this legislature’s vote was not so much about the sanctity of Second Amendment rights as it was who got to control them. Gun free zones are not repealed – they are now determined exclusively by the legislature.

Well, yes. Does Gordon take issue with firearm preemption laws that establish a statewide policy rather than a patchwork quilt of local ordinances that vary from town to town? It sure sounds like it. And despite the governor’s contention that HB 172 is nothing more than a legislative power grab, the bill still contains a major carveout for political subdivisions, which still have the authority to prohibit “the open carry, display or wearing of a firearm in its facilities or on its campus”.

In fact, that language may prove to demonstrate the weakness of HB 172 if, say, the University of Wyoming interprets that language as giving the Board of Regents the authority to prohibit concealed carry… which is, generally speaking, the “wearing” of a firearm”.

States chafe at having the Federal Government tell us what we can and cannot do. So I understand why local governments would harbor that same attitude for an “all-knowing” Cheyenne. To wit, the ability to debate nuances and advance wise, considered policy is not a strength the people of Wyoming have witnessed during this legislative session.

Honestly, if Gordon truly feels that lawmakers made a massive mistake in adopting HB 172, the courageous thing for him to do would have been to veto the bill and let the legislature override his decision. That, however, would have demonstrated Gordon’s political weakness, so instead he chose to let the bill become law alongside a heaping helping of snarkiness directed at the representatives and senators who voted for it. That’s not a good look for the governor, but at least his pouting won’t be standing in the way of Wyoming residents exercising their Second Amendment rights in more publicly accessible places once the law officially takes effect on July 1, 2025.