Category: RKBA

Court Rules 2nd Amendment Covers Firearms Parts, Good News for Those Who Build Guns

What used to be a fringe hobby in the firearms world, building or customizing your own guns, is increasingly popular.

So, Wyomingites welcome a ruling by the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, stating that the Second Amendment could apply to the buying, selling and possession of firearms parts without serial numbers.

AR-15 style rifles in particular can be built or customized to owners’ liking, using parts and accessories that can be purchased over-the-counter or ordered online.

“It’s like Barbie dolls for men. It’s all about accessorizing,” firearms enthusiast Nic George of Sheridan told Cowboy State Daily.

Court Rules On Colorado Case

At issue is whether the purchase, exchange and possession of firearms parts without serial numbers fall solely under state commercial regulations, or has Second Amendment implications.

The 10th Circuit Court on April 23 ruled the latter, Casper Attorney Ryan Semerad told Cowboy State Daily.

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Yadda, Yadda, Yadda: Anti-Gunners Warn of a Bloody Apocalypse if Gun Rights are Expanded…Again.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the debate over gun control that anti-gun messaging hasn’t changed much over the years. Once a particular “problem” is invented by anti-gun extremists, they generally settle in on a flawed argument to “correct” it, then just keep hammering away at it.

When Florida started the modern movement to expand the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens for personal protection in 1987, those opposed to the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense immediately began wailing about simple disagreements exploding into shoot-outs on the streets.

They predicted Florida would devolve into Hollywood’s depiction of the Wild West. But that never happened.

As the right to carry movement spread across the country, extremists still screeched about those impending Wild West scenarios unfolding in each state, but those predictions proved to be overwrought. In fact, when self-defense options were expanded for law-abiding citizens, states saw either a decline in violent crime or no significant change.

Then came the transition from expanding access to carry permits—or removing unconstitutional restrictions on who may obtain one or what they must do to be granted a permit—to promoting constitutional carry, where law-abiding citizens were simply presumed to remain law-abiding if the government didn’t first require they get a permission slip to carry a firearm for self-defense.

right to carry timeline gif

We now sit at 29 states with some form of Constitutional Carry, and in virtually every state where there has been a legislative push for such a law, those opposed repeated the same doom-and-gloom predictions they rolled out for the push to make carry permits more easily obtained.

“Our state will return to the days of the Wild West!”

“Simple arguments will explode into violent shoot-outs!”

“The streets will become a war zone!”

Again, none of that happened, just like it didn’t happen during the carry permit reforms.

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More Virginia Prosecutors, Sheriffs Say They Won’t Enforce ‘Assault Firearm’ Ban

Multiple lawsuits have been filed in both state and federal court since Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill outlawing the sale, manufacture, and transfers of so-called assault firearms and large capacity magazines, as well as another measure prohibiting the carrying of “assault firearms” in most public spaces. Spanberger is also facing an enforcement challenge in addition to the legal challenges, with a growing number of county sheriffs and Commonwealth Attorneys declaring their intent not to enforce the new laws if they take effect on July 1.

Earlier this week I reported on two prosecutors who’ve publicly stated they have no plans on enforcing the laws against peaceable citizens. That number has grown to at least five Commonwealth Attorneys who serve Spotsylvania County, Smyth County, Powhatan County, Pulaski County, and Scott County.

I reached out to Buckingham County Commonwealth Attorney Kemper Beasley III for comment, and late Thursday night I head back from the prosecutor, who told Bearing Arms:

My responsibility and duty as Commonwealth’s Attorney for Buckingham County is to uphold both the U.S. and Virginia constitutions.

Both documents protect individual’s rights to bear arms, and recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court have helped clarify that right and I anticipate will eventually overturn recent legislation passed in our state.

That definitely sounds like Beasley doesn’t plan on enforcing the law, but I have sent a followup asking him directly if that is, in fact, the case.

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Texas Democrat Prime Example of Why We’re Never Giving Up Our Guns

The purpose of the Second Amendment is the defense of this nation. Our Founding Fathers were generally smart men, and they recognized that defending our nation might mean fighting our government. It’s part of why they were largely distrustful of standing armies in the first place and preferred the militia.

But, as things have chanced in the last 250 years, a lot of people figure that the purpose of the Second Amendment has also changed. They think it’s about hunting or, if they’re feeling charitable, about personal protection, and not anything else. It’s why they want to take certain guns from us–at least, that’s the rationale we get from them now, though we know everything is in their sights.

We’re not giving up jack squat, and a Texas Democrat in the midst of a runoff is a prime example of why.

The top Democrat in a southern Texas House race, sex therapist Maureen Galindo, has called for transforming an immigration facility into a “prison for American Zionists” equipped with a castration center.

Galindo’s campaign made a vile pledge that she will introduce legislation to that effect if she gets elected to Congress after baselessly alleging her Dem runoff foe was “being paid to put Jews and Mexicans in concentration camps via Zionist trafficking networks.”

“When Maureen gets into Congress, she’ll write legislation so that all Zionism and support of Zionism is undoubtedly Anti-Semitic, since it’s Zionism harming the Semites,” her campaign wrote on Instagram last week.
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (lt will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).”

Now, castrating pedophiles is a rare moment of me agreeing with a Democrat on something, but it’s literally every other word she says that’s the problem.

Zionism is simply the idea that Israel has a right to exist as a modern nation. I get that some people disagree with that position, and we’re not here to debate whether it’s the right concept or not. It is what it is, and Galindo is talking about writing legislation to round up everyone who holds a very particular belief, including a whole lot of Jews, and herding all of them into the very camp her party claims are concentration camps.

While she’s not the nominee as of yet–runoff elections are May 26th–the fact that someone this mentally damaged is this close to being the nominee is troubling, especially when you think about Graham Platner in Maine, who is likely to be their nominee for the Senate.

This is a fringe belief, though. I haven’t seen all that many people who agree with Galindo here, and that’s the good news, but I can’t help but acknowledge that I’m also not seeing loud denouncements from party leaders, either.

Regardless, this is someone who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to round people up based on their political opinions. Right now, it’s “Zionism,” but do you really think it would stop there?

Hell. No.

So, I’m going to hold onto my AR-15s. I’m going to hold onto my standard capacity magazines. I’m going to urge everyone to do the same, and to stand up to these state legislatures that seem to think that this fringe belief being expressed by a fairly promenent Democrat isn’t anything to worry about. I’m sure the years of others talking about going after their political opponents or “breaking the spirit” in the coming years is nothing at all to be concerned about and we won’t need our guns to fend off these monsters.

But I’m keeping it ready just the same.

You want me to give up my guns and trust my government? That’s never going to happen, because there are people in this country who support some truly awful people who want to hurt me and mine, and they’re not going away anytime soon.

The Right They Keep Trying to Qualify

The Second Amendment is the most litigated right in the Constitution right now. That’s not because the doctrine is unclear. It’s because several states have decided the Supreme Court’s rulings are inconvenient and have organized their legislative calendars around working past them.

Three decisions settled the questions that mattered. Heller (2008) established an individual right to keep and bear arms. McDonald (2010) applied it to the states. Bruen (2022) replaced the interest-balancing framework lower courts had used to uphold almost every gun restriction with a historical-tradition test: regulations must be consistent with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, and the government bears the burden of proving they are. Those are the holdings. California, New York, and Illinois have spent the years since treating them as starting points for the next workaround.

I’m a Marine Corps OCS graduate with 30 years in institutional investment management. My son graduated from West Point and flies Army aircraft. My brother retired from Army Special Forces as a Green Beret. I’m also a Life Member of the NRA. My family has carried firearms professionally in service to this country. That’s the credential here.

Before Bruen, lower courts evaluated gun restrictions through a two-step interest-balancing test. At step two, courts routinely deferred to the government’s stated public safety interest, and most restrictions survived. Bruen eliminated that deference. Justice Thomas’s 6-3 majority required governments to identify historical analogues to their modern restrictions, regulations from the founding era or Reconstruction period that are relevantly similar in purpose and burden.

The state response wasn’t compliance. California passed new restrictions on carry in expanded ‘sensitive places,’ effectively rebuilding a near-total carry prohibition through categories Bruen had acknowledged as legitimate but hadn’t quantified. New York passed the Concealed Carry Improvement Act days after Bruen was decided, adding dozens of sensitive places and a ‘good moral character’ requirement that functioned as the old discretionary system under a new name. Illinois added similar restrictions. Each law was designed to produce litigation, not to comply.

United States v. Rahimi (2024) gave the states some judicial support. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for an 8-1 majority that Bruen required only a “relevantly similar” historical regulation, not a historical twin. That’s a real qualification that gives regulators more room. It didn’t restore the pre-Bruen deference. The government still has to find historical analogues. Several of the state restrictions enacted after Bruen are still being litigated, and the outcomes aren’t certain.

One gap the Court’s decisions left is the patchwork problem, and it’s one Congress can close directly. A law-abiding gun owner with a valid concealed-carry permit from her home state may find that permit legally worthless the moment she crosses into a state that doesn’t recognize it. The constitutional right doesn’t change at the border. The state’s willingness to honor it does.

The National Constitutional Carry Act (H.R. 645) requires states to recognize valid carry permits issued by other states. The model is driver’s license reciprocity: every state recognizes every other state’s license to drive. No state demands re-licensure when a visitor crosses the border. No constitutional principle places the Second Amendment below the right to drive in the hierarchy of rights that interstate travelers can exercise. H.R. 645 applies the same common sense to a constitutional right that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court three times.

Polling on this question is consistent: support for carry reciprocity routinely exceeds 70% in surveys that cross party lines. The people most burdened by the current patchwork are law-abiding gun owners who travel, precisely the population least likely to be a public safety concern. The argument for H.R. 645 doesn’t require a particular view on gun policy. It requires only recognizing that a constitutional right the Court has repeatedly upheld deserves the same cross-state recognition we give to a driver’s license. We don’t make visitors from other states pass a new driving test. We shouldn’t make them surrender a constitutional right at the border either.

The Founders wrote the Second Amendment for citizens. My brother was a weapons Sergeant in Army Special Forces. My son carries one now as an Army aviator. Both of them took an oath to defend a Constitution that includes the rights they exercised as their profession. The civilian version of that right doesn’t need a cultural argument. Three Supreme Court decisions have supplied the constitutional one.

It’s worth stating clearly: the population most affected by the current patchwork isn’t the population any legislator is actually worried about. Permit holders went through background checks, paid fees, completed whatever training their state required, and carry legally because they’ve done everything asked of them. That population doesn’t become dangerous at a state line, and it wasn’t dangerous before it crossed one. The argument for H.R. 645 doesn’t require defending anyone’s right to break the law. It requires only that Congress treats a constitutionally protected right with the same cross-state respect we give to a driver’s license.

The question is whether the states that disagree with those decisions will eventually accept the answer, or whether they’ll spend the next decade generating litigation designed to look like compliance while achieving the same practical result as defiance.

Protect Minnesota’s Executive Director gave an interview to the Star Tribune.

She had something to say about you.

“People who vote on gun rights are a very, very small percentage of the population, and they’re already aligned with the right side of the electorate.”

She’s not worried about you. She’s not worried about your rights.

In her view, you’re already written off; too small a group to matter, too predictable to bother with.

That’s the mentality behind every gun control bill they pushed this session.

They lost. You won. And we’re going to remind her what a “very, very small percentage” can do in November.

Prove her wrong. Join us at https://gunowners.mn/join

FPC WIN: Second Circuit Strikes Down New York Public Handgun Carry Ban

What: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Firearms Policy Coalition’s (FPC) Christian v. James lawsuit that New York’s ban on firearms at all publicly accessible private property without the express consent of the owner (also known as the “vampire rule”) violates the Second Amendment. The court however also facially upheld the state’s ban on carry in public parks.

Who: FPC is joined in this case by FPC member Brett Christian and the Second Amendment Foundation. The plaintiffs are represented by David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and William V. Bergstrom of Cooper and Kirk, PLLC, along with Nicolas J. Rotsko of Fluet.

When: The Court’s opinion was issued on May 18.2026. The case will now be sent back to the district court, which will issue a final order in this case.

Where: The opinion was issued by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in New York City and covers Connecticut, New York, and Vermont.

New Jersey’s Demand for Gun Store Sales Records is an Unconstitutional Attack on Gun Owner Privacy

The Attorney General of New Jersey has sent subpoenas to gun dealers in the state demanding production of customer records regarding sales of Glock pistols to New Jersey residents for the last ten years. The subpoenas are in connection to its lawsuit against Glock, Inc. under the state’s public nuisance law.

(NOTE: The claims in the state’s frivolous lawfare against Glock are not relevant to this particular article. But for context, the state is claiming the over 40-year-old design of the gun is too easy to illegally convert into a machine gun. Other states have filed similar lawsuits, and some like California have now banned the sale of Glocks, which are the most popular handguns in the country. These efforts are a way to coverup the failures of leadership  in antigun states.) It is not immediately clear why New Jersey needs these records, given the state already maintains a de facto registry for handguns through its pistol permitting system. It could be that the Attorney General wants to make these records public, as under New Jersey law and in a small nod towards respecting privacy, firearm registration records are  exempt from public disclosure  under the state’s laws.

Regardless of the reasoning for the subpoenas, they are an unconstitutional attack on gun owner privacy. This article takes a brief look at this emerging issue in Second Amendment law to show why New Jersey’s actions are unconstitutional. It is adapted from prior amicus briefing the Second Amendment foundation has done on this issue.
Privacy in Firearms Ownership Has Always Been a Fundamental Component of the Second Amendment Right

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NSSF Funds Lawsuit Against Virginia for Unconstitutional Firearm Bans

WASHINGTON, D.C.  — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, is funding a lawsuit filed today against the Commonwealth of Virginia for violating both the U.S. Constitution and the Virginia Constitution. Virginia’s expansive new law, HB 217 / SB 749, bans the sale and transfer of firearms that are expressly protected for private ownership by both the federal and state constitutions.

“Governor Abigail Spanberger, and the Virginia General Assembly, are grossly violating rights held by the citizens of the Commonwealth. The constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia expressly prohibit the government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Further, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that firearms in common use are protected from radical gun control. Denying law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves with the firearms of their choosing does nothing to make Virginia safer. The only thing this unconstitutional law does is surrender the freedoms that the Founding Fathers, including Virginians George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — who authored the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment — so wisely fought for and sought to protect to ensure freedom from tyranny.”

The NSSF-funded complaint, filed by Erick Black, Britton Condon, Clark’s Gun Shop, Inc., Optimus Arms, LLC and Hexmag USA, LLC, in Virginia’s Circuit Court of Fauquier County, details that HB 217 / SB 749 criminalizes not just the sale or transfer of commonly-owned Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard capacity magazines, but also commonly owned handguns and shotguns Virginians regularly use for self-defense and hunting. The overly broad definitions of what is wrongfully defined as an “assault firearm” disenfranchise Virginians of their right to keep and bear arms, which are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment and Article I of the Virginia Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision held that firearms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment. That holding precludes bans on the legal sale of MSRs, which number over 32 million in circulation. Likewise, there are a conservatively estimated nearly 1 billion detachable magazines in private possession and hundreds of millions with a capacity exceeding 15 rounds. Many commonly owned pistols are equipped with 17-round magazines, which HB 217 / SB 749 now criminalizes. The law’s expansive definition of “assault firearm” wraps in many commonly owned semiautomatic shotguns and handguns, which will be unlawful to purchase or bear in Virginia.

Virginia’s HB 217 / SB 749 fails the Supreme Court’s Bruen “history and tradition” test, as there were no analogous laws banning the lawful acquisition or bearing of firearms at the Nation’s founding. In fact, it is well documented that rifles with a capacity greater than 15 rounds were available and possessed by Americans when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791.

Additionally, because HB 217 / SB 749 bans rifles, pistols and shotguns commonly used for hunting, it violates Article XI, Section 4 of the Virginia Constitution.

Letter to the Editor in Connecticut Asks Question No One Seems Interested in Answering

Connecticut passed its Glock ban, which doesn’t just impact Glocks. They did it, as per usual, in the name of public safety, all while failing to ignore the facts that criminals aren’t supposed to have guns in the first place and that the full-auto switches are illegal to buy, own, or possess without very specific licenses that most people will never have.

They passed it just the same.

In Connecticut, though, one letter to the editor took issue with a bit of hate thrown at a state lawmaker because of a simple question that no one seems interested in answering.

I was disappointed to see criticism of Representative Mitch Bolinsky for voting against Connecticut’s proposed Glock ban. Whether someone supports or opposes gun control generally, this particular proposal deserves honest scrutiny.

Connecticut already has a 10-round magazine limit. Supporters of the bill argue the ban improves public safety because certain pistols could theoretically be converted to automatic fire with illegal aftermarket devices. But those conversion devices are already illegal under federal law, and automatic weapons themselves are already heavily prohibited.

The practical question is simple: how much additional safety is actually gained?

With a 10-round limit already in place, the difference in discharging 10 rounds between rapid semiautomatic fire and illegal automatic fire is often only a fraction of a second. Even supporters of the bill acknowledge the focus is largely on the possibility of illegal modification, not on the firearm’s normal lawful operation. Given Brandon Moore’s background as a West Point graduate, Army officer, combat veteran, and Apache pilot, one would expect an understanding of the technical distinction between lawful semiautomatic firearms and illegally converted automatic weapons, which makes the practical effectiveness of this proposal a fair subject for public debate.

Like it or not, the Second Amendment to the Constitution states that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” People may disagree on how that should be interpreted, but constitutional rights are not supposed to be selectively respected only when politically convenient.

The practical question itself is an interesting one, because while we can all make the constitutional arguments in our sleep, most likely, the reality is that many people don’t really seem to understand that “shall not be infringed” means that our rights shall not be infringed at all. So, you need to frame commentary based on where people are, mentally, rather than rely purely on the (completely valid) constitutional arguments.

And here, the letter writer asks a simple question that it seems people are offended by it even being asked.

If Connecticut’s laws work as they are, then how much additional safety would be obtained by banning an entire category of handguns that might be illegally modified with a device that’s already illegal to buy, sell, or own?

If the magazine limits work, does the gun taking a half-second longer to empty a magazine actually matter in any appreciable way?

No? Then why ban the guns at all?

If you argue that the magazine ban isn’t respected by criminals, then I have to ask why you think they won’t get striker-fired handguns to modify just as easily?

Seriously, these bans are probably the most ridiculous bits of gun control I’ve ever seen, especially when Glock has actually tried to modify their design. Some people are just really good at finding ways around stuff like that.

DOJ Targets D.C. AR-15 & Suppressor Bans as Second Amendment Civil Rights Violations

The Trump Justice Department just sharpened its attack on Washington, D.C.’s gun-control regime, and this time the target is bigger than a single bad law.

In a First Amended Complaint filed May 14, 2026, the United States argues that the District of Columbia, its Metropolitan Police Department, and Acting Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll are violating the Second Amendment by enforcing local laws that ban AR-15-style rifles and suppressors. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks a federal judge to declare those bans unconstitutional and block D.C. from enforcing them.

This is not another private citizen begging the courts to recognize what the Constitution already says. This is the United States government suing the District of Columbia and saying, in plain terms, that D.C.’s gun laws deprive Americans of their civil rights.

That is a major shift.

For decades, anti-gun politicians have treated the Second Amendment like a second-class right. They have banned commonly owned rifles, criminalized ordinary gun parts and accessories, buried lawful owners in registration schemes, and then acted shocked when Americans objected. D.C. has long been one of the worst offenders. This amended complaint puts that record directly in the federal government’s crosshairs.

The filing opens with the point gun owners have been making since Heller: the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing right, not a privilege handed out by politicians. DOJ cites Heller, McDonald, and Bruen to argue that law-abiding Americans have the right to possess and use arms that are in common use for lawful purposes.

That is where D.C.’s AR-15 ban runs into trouble. D.C. does not simply say, “AR-15s are banned,” at least not in the clean way some states do. Instead, the District uses its registration scheme to get the same result. Under D.C. law, a person may not possess a firearm unless it is registered with the police. Then D.C. refuses to issue registration certificates for so-called “assault weapons,” a category that includes AR-15-platform rifles.

The result is the same: possess an AR-15 in D.C., and you are treated like a criminal.

The complaint correctly attacks the loaded phrase “assault weapon” for what it is: political language, not a serious firearms term. The AR-15 is not exotic or rare. It is not some strange military artifact sitting outside the American firearms tradition. It is the most popular rifle platform in the country.

DOJ’s amended complaint leans hard into that reality. The complaint cites estimates that Americans own 20 to 30 million AR-15s. It also points to Justice Kagan’s recent observation that the AR-15 is “the most popular rifle in the country.” It then cites Justice Kavanaugh’s statement in Snope v. Brown, where he noted that because millions of Americans own AR-15s and most states allow them, challengers have a strong argument that AR-15s are protected under Heller’s common-use test.

If the Second Amendment protects arms in common use for lawful purposes, then D.C. cannot ban the most popular rifle in America just because anti-gun politicians dislike it. The Constitution does not allow local officials to veto ordinary rifle ownership with scary language and a registration trap.

The complaint also lays out why Americans own AR-style rifles. DOJ cites surveys showing they are used for recreational target shooting, home defense, hunting, defense outside the home, and competition. In other words, the exact kind of lawful purposes the Second Amendment protects.

The filing also undercuts the usual gun-control narrative that AR-15s are uniquely tied to crime. DOJ notes that FBI homicide data from 2019 showed only 364 homicides with rifles of any kind, compared with 6,368 with handguns, 1,476 with knives or cutting instruments, 600 with hands, feet, or other personal weapons, and 397 with blunt objects.

Anti-gun politicians do not want Americans to see those numbers. The numbers wreck the narrative.

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SAF FILES LAWSUIT CHALLENGING NEWLY PASSED ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN IN VIRGINIA

BELLEVUE, Wash. — May 14, 2026 — Following closely on the heels of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signing new gun control legislation into law, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed a lawsuit challenging the commonwealth’s new bans on “assault firearms” and large-capacity magazines.

Gov. Spanberger signed into law a ban on so-called “assault firearms” declaring that “…any person who imports, sells, manufactures, purchases, or transfers an assault firearm is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.” The law further defines an “assault firearm” as a semiautomatic rifle chambered in any caliber besides .22 rimfire or one that contains a litany of common features such as a collapsing stock, pistol grip, threaded barrel or more. The law also bans magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition. The new laws go into effect on July 1.

“It’s wild that lawmakers who each take an oath to uphold the Constitution insist on passing bills purposefully designed to gut it,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The firearms and magazines banned in this law aren’t bizarre and unusual outliers, they’re among the most commonly owned guns and magazines in the country. They’re owned in the tens of millions by peaceable Americans who use them overwhelmingly lawfully. Virginia has now joined the minority of radical states to ban these constitutionally protected firearms, and in so doing, joined the club of states we’re suing over it.”

As noted in the complaint, “The firearms that Virginia bans as ‘assault firearms’ are, in all respects, ordinary semiautomatic firearms. To the extent they are different from other semiautomatic firearms, their distinguishing features make them safer and easier to use. Regardless of any new category of arms created by state lawmakers, they cannot be banned because they are not dangerous and unusual.” SAF is joined in McDonald v. Katz by the National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition and two private citizens.

“Virginia lawmakers lied to their constituents and to themselves when they said these laws weren’t bans,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “A new sales and transfer ban is a ban that’s just one generation removed. On July 1, anyone turning 18 in Virginia will find out that the rights enjoyed by their predecessors don’t apply to them. These bans are an afront to the Constitution and an insult to the intelligence of Virginians who were fed lies and misrepresentations by their elected officials. We’re excited to fast track this case to the Supreme Court.”

Grassroots Judicial Report—May 13, 2026

By Tanya Metaksa

What’s New —SCOTUS—Patrick Tate Adamiak v. United States of America: Docket No. 25‑1190: Current certiorari petition before U.S. Supreme Court; Fourth Circuit’s ruling: The Fourth Circuit issued an unpublished per curiam opinion in United States v. Patrick Adamiak, No. 23‑4451 (4th Cir. 2025): U.S. District Court: Hawaii: Ninth District (United States District Court for the District of Hawaii); Justin Arnold, Bryan Garland, James Grell, Andrew White v. Hawaii County, non-residents can apply for Right-to-Carry permit in Hawaii.

SCOTUS

The U.S. Supreme Court meets on Thursday, May 14, to discuss cases. All 5 Second Amendment cases that have been relisted many times are on the list. Decisions will be announced on Monday, May 18, 2026.

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Don’t Expect the Persistent Mismatch Between Perception and Reality to Affect Gun Policy or Politics.

Semi-automatic long guns, such as the AR-15, have been a hot topic of political rhetoric for decades now. And for those same decades, those same firearms have remained statistically under-represented in violent crime, while remaining wildly mischaracterized in policy debates and lawmaking.

NRA-ILA undoubtedly sounds like a broken record reiterating,  again and again, this non-wavering fact, especially in the face of introduced and re-introduced “assault weapons” bans and reliable demonization of semi-automatic long guns by the media. However, NRA-ILA’s repeated emphasis reflects a critical and consistent assertion of fact, which is that rifles, of all types, account for a very small fraction of homicides nationwide, as once again confirmed by the most recent available data.

Last week, Pew Research Center published their updated research on “[w]hat the data says [sic] about gun deaths in the U.S.” The relevant statistics were collected and synthesized from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), among other sources.

Under the subtitle of: “Which types of firearms are most commonly used in gun murders in the U.S.?” the FBI found that in 2024:

Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” were involved in 3% of these deaths.
Shotguns were involved in 1%.

An important distinction should be noted that of the 3%, semi-automatic firearms such as AR-15s are an even smaller subset of the general term “rifles.” The same goes for “shotguns” that gun control advocates [mis]characterize as “assault weapons;” they are a smaller fraction of the 1%.

There has long been a detrimental mismatch between perception, proportion, and actual data that has distorted firearm policy discussions. Not only has it drawn attention away from clear factors most strongly associated with violent crime, but it has also continued to be a disservice to efforts to craft evidence-based policies meant to keep citizens safe.

Even during the actual ten-year federal “assault weapon” ban signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, two federally funded studies said the exact same thing as we repeat today; then, as now, so-called “assault weapons” were and are rarely used to commit violent crime. A study conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1997 acknowledged, “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.”

A subsequent study done in 2004, also by DOJ, came to a similar conclusion, determining that “AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban,”  and, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

The current circulation and ownership numbers of AR-15s and similar rifles are debated and predictably underreported by the media but may reach over thirty million, according to National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) research. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense, hunting, competitions, and target shooting.

Of course, whenever one of these 30 million guns happens to be used in a highly publicized crime, consumers of mass media will be told that the platform represents a “weapon of war” and the “choice of mass shooters.” In fact, it is neither. The AR-15s available at your local gun shop are not designed for automatic fire, as are military rifles, and they are not even the preeminent firearm used in mass shootings, where handguns still predominate.

High profile incidents will continue to receive intense media coverage creating impressions that AR-15s and similar firearms are somehow a primary driver of everyday violent crime. They simply are not, but media cannot be trusted to “zoom out” to understand proper context and truthfully report. This failure continues to skew not just gun control priorities but also public safety outcomes.

These latest data summaries on gun deaths have more to say on firearm-related mortality than just what sorts of firearms are involved. Indeed, the issue of death by gunfire, including homicide and suicide, is of complex sociological origins that deserve a much more robust analysis than the focus group tested talking points of firearm prohibitionists.

But one fact remains simple and unchanged in the face of the endure and growing popularity of semi-automatic long guns like the AR-15: when it comes to firearm-related homicide, they represent a minuscule fraction of crime guns.