Category: RKBA

What becoming an American taught me about liberty

Growing up in Australia, I lived in what most people would call a “free” society. But it wasn’t until I moved to the United States and embraced the U.S. Constitution that my entire worldview transformed. I realized that back home, freedom was treated as a privilege carefully defined by the government. In America, the Second Amendment taught me a profound truth: we are born free.

Today, as a firearms instructor and the Northeast Regional Director — and former New Hampshire State Director — of Women for Gun Rights, I live by a simple creed proudly stamped on my adopted home state’s license plates: Live Free or Die.

To me, the motto means embracing personal responsibility and never surrendering the agency that belongs to free people. The U.S. Constitution, which is now my Constitution, does not create those rights — it recognizes them and establishes a government whose powers are limited so those rights may endure.

I am now one of millions of American women who choose to live prepared, not scared. Many of us volunteer our time to defend this civil right. Yet for years, well-funded gun control organizations have tried to convince the public — and women in particular — that passing more restrictions is the only way to keep our children and communities safe.

These groups often claim to speak for all women and all families. But those of us working alongside women in our communities know the rhetoric does not match reality.

Now, hard data has finally caught up to what we’ve known all along.

A national survey commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center and conducted this year validates what Second Amendment advocates have long argued: the public rejects the gun control premise. When asked what would do the most to reduce violent crime, voters overwhelmingly favored holding criminals accountable over passing new restrictions.

Thirty-one percent of respondents chose enforcing existing laws as the best way to lower crime rates, while more than 30% favored arresting and prosecuting violent and repeat offenders. Only 30% supported passing new firearm-related legislation. Combined, enforcement-focused solutions outperformed new gun-control measures by more than 30 percentage points.

The message from the American people to their legislators is remarkably simple: hold violent criminals accountable, stop treating law-abiding citizens like the problem, and trust ordinary people pursuing their own happiness.

Crucially, the Center’s survey shatters the myth that women universally support disarmament. Substantial numbers of female voters favored enforcing existing laws over passing new restrictions.

Among women, the data highlights a growing trend. Instead of looking to politicians or an unreliable government for a false sense of security, women are increasingly choosing self-reliance. Nationally, concealed carry continues to grow among women, reflecting a profound cultural shift.

According to the survey, 20% of voters report possessing a concealed carry permit, and nearly 30% report carrying a firearm at least occasionally. More importantly, the number of Americans carrying concealed firearms increased by more than 5% in just over a year. Carrying a firearm for protection is no longer exceptional — it has become part of the American mainstream.

In New Hampshire, we understand the value of removing unnecessary obstacles to liberty. We are consistently recognized as one of the safest states in the nation while respecting the right of law-abiding citizens to carry without first asking government permission. A culture that values
So what concerns me in the Live Free or Die state is not death itself, but the slow erosion of personal agency — the quiet cultural shift that teaches us to look first to the government, rather than to ourselves, for our safety, our well-being and ultimately our freedom.

The right to self-defense is not a bureaucratic luxury. It is an inherent human right.

Coming from a country that chose a different path, I can tell you that restrictions do not deter violent offenders. They only disarm the vulnerable. Australia continues to grapple with violence against women and violent home invasions despite some of the world’s strictest firearms laws. While these challenges are not unique to Australia, America remains exceptional in one important respect: it trusts ordinary, law-abiding citizens with access to an equalizing force.

That is true empowerment.

The Center’s survey suggests Americans are waking up to this reality. They don’t want more laws that turn peaceful citizens into criminals. They want safety, accountability and the freedom to protect what they love. They want to live free.

When I first arrived in America, I thought freedom was something carefully defined by the government. Becoming an American taught me something far more profound: we are born free. Liberty is our birthright. The Constitution did not give us that birthright — it recognizes it and establishes a government whose powers are limited so that liberty may endure.

Yet liberty is more than a birthright. It comes with a solemn civic responsibility. As a naturalized American citizen, I swore an oath to honor and defend it. That responsibility belongs to all of us: not only to preserve liberty for ourselves, but to pass it intact to the Americans who will one day inherit it.

BLUF
Nearly two decades after recognizing a constitutional right to arms, the Supreme Court is beginning to address lingering questions about its contours. Control-happy politicians probably will not like the answers.

Supreme Court Begins Answering Lingering Questions About Constitutional Constraints on Gun Control

After upholding the Second Amendment rights of drug users and carry permit holders, the justices will address the constitutionality of “assault weapon” bans.

Over the course of 12 days last month, the Supreme Court upheld the gun rights of cannabis consumers, rejected Hawaii’s default rule against firearms on private property open to the public, and agreed to address the constitutionality of “assault weapon” bans. That flurry of Second Amendment activity underlines the point that supposedly sensible gun regulations are not necessarily consistent with the right to arms as it was historically understood.

When Congress enacted the Gun Control Act in 1968, legislators took it for granted that an “unlawful user” of marijuana, depressants, stimulants, or narcotics should not be allowed to own a gun. They reaffirmed that judgment in 1986, changing the wording to encompass unlawful users of “any controlled substance.”

Although the latter law was dubbed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, it obviously did not protect gun owners with a taste for politically disfavored intoxicants, or even gun owners who dared to use medications prescribed for friends or relatives. It treated all those people as felons.

That policy, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled on June 18, is unconstitutional unless there is evidence that a particular drug user’s gun possession would pose a danger to himself or others. It rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to prosecute a Texas cannabis consumer who owned a pistol, saying the government may not strip people of their Second Amendment rights simply because they are marijuana users.

The justices reached that conclusion based on “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the lodestar of the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Applying the same test a week later, six justices said Hawaii had violated the Second Amendment by making it illegal for carry-permit holders to bring guns into a private business without the owner’s explicit permission.

As Hawaii presented it, that presumptive gun ban merely aimed to protect preexisting property rights. But as Justice Samuel Alito noted in the majority opinion, Hawaii’s law “departs sharply from the standard common-law rule on access to private property held open to the public.”

Under that rule, “everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited from doing so,” Alito wrote. “By contrast, under the new Hawaii law, no one carrying a firearm may enter without the property owner’s express authorization.”

That switch, Alito noted, imposed “severe restrictions on the daily activities” of residents with carry permits. Nor was that effect incidental, since Hawaii was attempting an end run around the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision recognizing a constitutional right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.

Five days after it overturned Hawaii’s law, the Court agreed to hear a pair of cases involving bans on widely owned rifles that politicians tendentiously describe as “assault weapons.” A dozen states, beginning with California in 1989, have enacted such laws, which hinge on arbitrarily prohibited features such as folding stocks, pistol grips, and barrel shrouds.

The rifles targeted by these laws are rarely used by criminals but commonly used by law-abiding Americans, who own more than 30 million of them. The latter point is constitutionally relevant because the Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment applies to “bearable arms” that are “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.”

The long-simmering question posed by these cases is whether the Second Amendment guarantees “the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.” If so, other restrictions on the arms Americans are allowed to buy, such as magazine limits and California’s handgun specifications, may be vulnerable to constitutional challenges.

The decided cases also have potentially broad implications. If drug use, by itself, does not justify disarming someone, what about a nonviolent felony conviction? And if Hawaii’s broad restriction on public gun possession was unconstitutional, the far-reaching, location-specific bans imposed by states such as California and New York likewise seem legally dubious.

Nearly two decades after recognizing a constitutional right to arms, the Supreme Court is beginning to address lingering questions about its contours. Control-happy politicians probably will not like the answers.

No Other Constitutional Right Is Policed Like the Second Amendment

The Bill of Rights protects speech, religion, the press, assembly, due process, privacy, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Only one of those rights has an entire federal agency built around regulating, restricting, investigating, and prosecuting the tools necessary to exercise it.

The Second Amendment.

That agency is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
There is no federal Bureau of Speech.
No federal Bureau of Religion.
No federal Bureau of Press and Assembly.

No federal agency licenses newspapers before they publish, inspects churches for recordkeeping violations, registers printing presses, or forces Americans to pay a tax before exercising a First Amendment right.

But when it comes to the Second Amendment, Washington has built exactly that kind of bureaucracy.

Other Rights Are Abused by Bureaucrats. The Second Amendment Is Policed by Them.  

Federal agencies have abused power against other constitutional rights, too.

The FBI and DOJ have targeted speech, political activity, and religious Americans.

The NSA has raised Fourth Amendment concerns through surveillance.

DHS and TSA have expanded federal search power in the name of security.

The IRS has been accused of politically selective enforcement.

Those abuses are real.

But they are not the same as having an entire agency whose firearms mission is aimed directly at the people, businesses, products, paperwork, and transactions tied to one constitutional right.

The ATF does not merely investigate violent criminals who misuse firearms.

It regulates firearm dealers.
It inspects Federal Firearms Licensees.
It polices paperwork.
It interprets federal gun laws.
It issues rules affecting lawful gun owners.
It decides whether products used by peaceable Americans are legal today and criminal tomorrow.

Other agencies violate constitutional rights when they overreach, but the ATF’s firearms mission is overreach by design.

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Why We Need National Reciprocity, At a Minimum

National reciprocity legislation is now something we know the Trump administration is working on. While it’s not the ideal situation–national constitutional carry would be so much better–it’s far better than the status quo. As it stands, a permit in one state might be recognized in another, or it might not. You have to navigate the insane patchwork of laws, all to exercise a constitutionally protected right.

But if you have a driver’s license in Minnesota, you can drive anywhere in the United States. Your license is accepted everywhere, even though driving is considered a privilege and the right to keep and bear arms is a right.

Yeah, someone try to make that make sense.

Writing at Real Clear Politics, John Lott makes the case for national reciprocity.

Much of the gun-control debate centers on hypothetical risks. With reciprocity, however, we don’t have to speculate. With 21.5 million concealed handgun permit holders in the United States, we already know how they behave. In addition, most Americans already benefit from reciprocity. The average state recognizes permits from 30 other states, allowing permit holders to travel legally with their firearms.

Last year, when House Judiciary Committee passed national reciprocity along party lines, Democrats also opposed legislation that would allow current and retired law enforcement officers with at least ten years of service to carry firearms in facilities open to the public – including schools – while traveling across the country. Given their fear that allowing experienced current or retired law enforcement officers to carry would endanger public safety, it comes as no surprise that they also oppose allowing civilians to carry across state lines.

Congressional opponents of reciprocity warned that permit holders would commit crimes but cited no evidence to support that claim. The facts point in the opposite direction. Concealed handgun permit holders are extraordinarily law-abiding. States revoke their permits for firearm-related violations at rates measured in thousandths – or even ten-thousandths – of one percent. Police officers rarely commit firearm crimes, yet permit holders lose their permits for firearm offenses at only about one-twelfth the rate that police are convicted of firearm related crimes.

This is the typical anti-gun playbook. They treat unlawful gun carriers and permit holders as the exact same, even while pretending they understand the difference.

In their mind, the paranoia they accuse us of takes hold and rather than differentiate between good guys and bad guys, they see us all as bad guys in waiting.. They claim to be able to tell the difference, but this is a case of “deeds not words” applying. Their deeds tell a different story.

Permit holders are the most law-abiding people in the country. That’s been shown by years of data, also. It’s not some flash in the pan, but a trend that dates back a ways, likely to the day the first carry permit was issued.

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United States v. Rose: A Second Amendment Skeptic Embraces the Present-Danger Rule

“Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan-appointed federal appeals judge, with a long record of ruling against the Second Amendment has just ruled favorably for 2A. By applying the Supreme Court’s present-physical danger rule to an individual facing a lifetime gun ban due to a long-ago mental illness, Judge Easterbrook has broadened the scope of 2A protections. This decision is proof that Second Amendment jurisprudence is taking hold even among its skeptics. United States v. Rose is the latest stop on the incremental march restoring the right to keep and bear arms to anyone who is not, right now, a genuine threat of physical violence to themselves or to others.” – Professor Mark W. Smith, Four Boxes Diner host

A prominent federal appeals judge with a long record of ruling against Second Amendment claims has reached a legal conclusion that the gun-rights community has waited years to hear.

In United States v. Rose, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Frank Easterbrook, held that the lifetime firearms disability in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) — which bars anyone ever committed to a mental institution — may be constitutionally invalid as applied to someone no longer mentally ill or physically dangerous. The court vacated the dismissal of the charges against Jonathan Rose and remanded for further fact-finding.

The Facts Behind United States v. Rose

In September 2009, Jonathan Rose was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in Indiana; the record does not identify his diagnosis. He was released in January 2010 and was never recommitted. In 2022, Rose purchased several firearms from licensed dealers; other attempted purchases were denied after a database match flagged his 2009 commitment.

In 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Rose under § 922(g)(4) for possessing firearms after a mental-health commitment, and under § 922(a)(6) for lying on ATF Form 4473 by denying in writing the commitment ever occurred. The district court, applying Bruen’s “text first, historical-tradition second,” test dismissed the § 922(g)(4) count for lack of any evidence Rose is a present danger. The § 922(a)(6) counts survived; circuit precedent already treated a false statement to a dealer as compatible with the Second Amendment. The Biden DOJ then appealed on behalf of the federal government.

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Lawsuit challenges Denver, state over gun & magazine bans.

DENVER–A Colorado gun rights groups and three Denver-area gun owners on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging Denver’s decades-old ban on so-called “assault weapons,” as well as Colorado’s statewide prohibition on standard-capacity ammunition magazines, arguing both laws violate the Second Amendment.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court by the Colorado State Shooting Association (CSSA), the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and individual plaintiffs Ray Elliott, Trevor Alley and Michael Vitco, all Denver residents.

CSSA is the Colorado state affiliate of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

At issue is Denver’s 1989 ordinance banning the sale, manufacture and possession of firearms the city labels “assault weapons,” and Colorado’s 2013 law banning magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. The complaint argues both laws are, in practice, magazine restrictions as Denver’s ordinance defines a banned “assault weapon” chiefly by whether it accepts a magazine over 15 rounds.

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Gun Owners Have Even More Than Usual to Celebrate This Independence Day.

Following two significant Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment, and the Court’s announcement it will finally consider the constitutionality of state and local gun bans, American gun owners have a lot to celebrate this July 4th as the nation reaches its milestone 250th anniversary of independence, according to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

“We live in a nation founded on the concepts of freedom and individual liberty,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “and the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, the guideposts by which we have made our way through history, is the Second Amendment, protecting the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. This would not have happened without the dedication of our sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, which has been on the front lines of this battle. Both cases which have been granted high court review are SAF cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, and we are proud to have been part of those efforts.

“Look at the record,” he observed. “Since the 2022 Bruen ruling, court cases made possible by SAF’s victory in the 2010 McDonald case—with our state affiliate organization, the Illinois State Rifle Association as a co-plaintiff—including those involving the CCRKBA, have invalidated at least 78 restrictive gun control laws and regulations around the country. Now, with the 6-3 ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, the score has risen to 79, and could go as high as 83 as it applies to similar restrictive laws in California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Fighting back with history and the Constitution on our side has resulted in a string of losses to the gun prohibition movement.

“Even before that,” Gottlieb recalled, “we were beginning to set the record straight starting with the 2008 Heller ruling. The McDonald ruling, incorporating the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment, opened the flood gates for several successful legal challenges by SAF, CCRKBA and others, to unconstitutional gun control laws across the country

“And now, the Supreme Court’s long-awaited announcement that it will scrutinize bans on modern semiautomatic sport-utility rifles when it convenes in October came as a vindication of our decades-long fight to restore the Second Amendment to its original stature,” he continued. “It is the proverbial icing on the cake, along with the Court’s decision to let the SAF victory in the Third Circuit stand by denying Pennsylvania’s certiorari petition, which tried to deny full gun rights to young adults in the 18- to 20-year age group.

“We are especially proud of our state affiliate, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), and its leader, Holly Sullivan, who coincidentally serves on the CCRKBA Board of Directors,” Gottlieb added. “Because CCDL is a plaintiff in the Grant case challenging Connecticut’s rifle ban, it essentially puts the Committee on the playing field. Frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

“For the first time in recent history, we have a Justice Department willing to enforce the Second Amendment, rather than sit on the sidelines as private organizations defend the Constitution,” Gottlieb noted. “It is gratifying at this special time in our nation’s history to have allies so willing to step forward and join us in this great cause.

“We wish everyone an incredible July Fourth,” he concluded, “as we celebrate America’s 250th birthday. We renew our commitment to protect and defend the Constitution, and especially the Second Amendment. We have come a long way, and we still have farther to go, but with strong allies, we will get this job done.”

Evidence-Free: How the Gun Control Industry Justifies Red Flag Gun Confiscations.

According to a recent editorial by an anti-gun spokesman, Florida’s version of a “red flag” law—also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order law—is a “success” simply because it’s being used. By that standard, perhaps he would consider constitutional carry laws a similar success because millions of Americans lawfully carry in the 29 states where such laws exist.

We’ll just have to wait for that particular editorial, but we won’t hold our breath.

The author, Christopher Carita, is a retired law enforcement officer who serves as an “advisor” to the anti-gun organization called 97Percent—a name derived from a long discredited poll that tried to claim that 97% of gun owners support so-called “universal background checks.” Besides working in law enforcement, Carita was also indoctrinated at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg (yes, that Bloomberg) School of Public Health, where he was a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow.

That “Constitutional Carry Success” editorial is seeming less likely all the time.

Florida’s “red flag” law, which Carita refers to as a Risk Protection Order law, is a little different than what many anti-gun states have implemented. Most “red flag” laws allow virtually anyone to allege a gun owner represents a danger to themselves or others, which could compel the removal of the individual’s firearms as a sufficient resolution to the perceived risk of threat or harm. Most of these laws allow for the suspension of due process, including the right of the accused to face their accuser.

In Florida, however, petitioning for an ERPO must be instigated by law enforcement. While that doesn’t negate the threat of the law being abused and the rights of law-abiding gun owners being infringed upon, some argue that’s a type of safeguard.

As for the “success” touted by Carita, the only “evidence” of this success he mentions is that “[n]early 4,700 RPO petitions were filed in the first two years” of the law. He also mentions that, after the state trained officers in working with the law, “RPO filings increased roughly 58%.”

But the success of a law shouldn’t be measured by how often police officers try to enforce it. Laws are intended to spell out what behavior is prohibited, with the actual goal being that people will obey the law and refrain from doing that which is prohibited. Police, after all, aren’t expected to be everywhere at all times to thwart the commission of a crime.

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The Black Codes Are a Cautionary Tale, Not a Useful Precedent

It has not been a great few months for Neal Katyal. As Charlie Cooke has detailed, Katyal and Hawaii got trounced, and properly so, in Wolford v. Lopez, which sought to masquerade a state law by which the government criminalizes having a gun on any private property as merely private conduct, because it allows the property owner to explicitly permit guns to be carried. Nobody in the 6–3 majority was fooled.

The really contemptible thing in this case was Katyal trolling the Court’s consideration of history and tradition in gun regulation by arguing that Hawaii was just following in the path of Southern states that adopted strict “Black Codes” during Reconstruction that limited the right of freedmen to carry guns. As I explained after the argument in January, this is the worst possible use of history:

It was left to Justice Thomas to ask the obvious rejoinder: “If you’re going to cite the Louisiana black codes of 1865, don’t you also have to cite the subsequent adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment that was in part generated because of laws like that?”

Thomas is right. It’s not just that the Black Codes were later found to be unconstitutional; it’s that the people who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment were specifically responding to those laws. . . .

The history of the Black Codes [should be read] not as proof of our history and tradition, but as proof of what defenders of that history and tradition were aiming to abolish by enacting the 14th Amendment.

. . . Reading the Black Codes into the 14th Amendment is like reading the law of slavery into the 13th Amendment or reading bans on black voting into the 15th. It has the whole point of the amendment precisely backward.

Alito dismissed Katyal’s troll with the scathing contempt it deserved, saying that it “cannot be taken seriously” given the actual history. But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was taken with the argument, and as has happened several times of late when Jackson decides to promote some nonsense about the methodology of the Court’s work, Justice Amy Coney Barrett felt compelled to respond.

Jackson — joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor but, pointedly, not by Justice Elena Kagan  — leaped at the analogy to the Black Codes as a club to wield in her continuing campaign against the use of history and tradition in reading the Second Amendment. That’s why Katyal was offering her the argument — not because he seriously believed that anybody applying the Court’s existing tests in good faith would fall for this hackish fallacy, but so that the Court’s test itself could be attacked. That’s also why commentators such as Mark Joseph Stern like the argument: “Virtually all of the laws that SCOTUS credits as relevant to the Bruen analysis were written by racist white men . . . by and for heterosexual white males.” Here’s Jackson:

As I see it, there are two potential reasons to use—or exclude—the Black Codes in Bruen’s history-and-tradition test. First, it could be that the Black Codes regulated guns consistent with the Second Amendment but States chose to exercise their regulatory authority in a discriminatory fashion. . . . Under this framing, those gun regulations are not examples of an unconstitutional abridgment of the right to bear arms, but rather exemplify a violation of a different constitutional Amendment—the Fourteenth.

Alternatively, it could be that States did not have the constitutional authority under the Second Amendment to enact such regulations but did so anyway for discriminatory reasons. Under that framing, not only did the States violate the Constitution by acting on the basis of race; they also violated the right to bear arms. Only the second set of circumstances justifies removing these laws (and the experiences of those they targeted) from the body of evidence that determines the historical reach of the Second Amendment under Bruen.

Jackson writes this as if she is completely oblivious to both the cause-and-effect relationship between the Black Codes and the enactment of the 14th Amendment and the fact that states could violate the Second Amendment with impunity before 1868 because until then it only bound the federal government. (Of course, nearly all such states had their own state constitutional guarantees, but Jackson just blows past the distinction.)

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Ohio: 116 School Districts Now Allow Armed Employees

Four years after Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed legislation allowing school boards to choose to allow teachers and other employees to be armed, 116 school districts have chosen to allow armed employees for classroom defense.

WOWO reported that the figure of “116 school districts” is derived from state data “as of June 17.”

The Ohio Capital Journal noted that the 116 districts include “more than 70 Ohio school districts and 15 Christian schools…[with] staff members who are authorized to carry weapons on school grounds.”

Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper criticized the training requirements for the growing number of armed school employees, saying, “It’s not a sufficient amount of training. We’re talking about highly intense situations that require a lot of not only tactical training on how to use weapons, but how to deal with making split-second decisions.”

She did not provide an instance where an armed teacher or employee has harmed someone since the law was signed by DeWine.

Antwerp district superintendent Marty Miller explained that his district chose to arm teachers and employees because they are in a rural setting with a longer police response time.

He said, “It’s just letting the public know that your children are protected.”

Supreme Court Lets SAF 2A Victory Stand in Pennsylvania Case

By Dave Workman

Editor-in-Chief

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals which found young adults ages 18-20 are members of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment, handing another victory to gun rights advocates in a case brought by the Second Amendment Foundation.

The high court declined to review a case known as Bivens v. SAF (formerly known as Lara v. Paris), in which the Third Circuit had twice ruled in SAF’s favor.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told TGM via telephone that this year’s court rulings, combined with Tuesday’s announcement that two SAF cases challenging bans on modern semiautomatic firearms in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois have been granted certiorari translate to a winning year so far. Topping it off was the decision to let the Third Circuit ruling stand.

In a prepared statement, SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut observed, “While a cert grant on this case could have meant an opportunity for the Supreme Court to take our win in the Third Circuit and apply it nationally, we are still content that our victory in this case is now permanent and final. Adults under 21 enjoy all the same constitutional rights as their older adult counterparts, and the rights protected by Second Amendment are no different. This victory serves as a major stepping stone to striking down additional unconstitutional portions of Pennsylvania state law and those like it around the country.”

The original lawsuit dates back to October 2020, so it has been litigated for almost six years. This is not unusual for Second Amendment cases, which seem to cause many district courts to shift into low gear. Likewise, anti-gun-rights losers tend to file appeals on whatever grounds they can find, while occasionally asking for delays, which stretches out the calendar even more.

“The Third Circuit ruled not once, but twice, that 18-20-year-olds have the same rights as their peers older than 21,” noted Gottlieb. “Those over 18 in this country can buy property, join the military and get married just like those over 21-years-old. Why then should they be forced to wait to enjoy their Second Amendment rights? There is no reason – they are adults under the law and should therefore be afforded their full constitutional rights.”

This Is Why Some Want Your Guns

In 2023, Jason Aldean made waves with “Try That in a Small Town.” The song and accompanying video made it pretty clear that much of the lawlessness we see in American cities, particularly the political sort, such as riots, wouldn’t fly in small-town America. In fairness, it’s a good way to get your butt handed to you.

Whether or not you’re left alive to learn from your mistakes would directly depend on how stupid you were.

Of course, a lot of people on the left got very butthurt over it, claiming that the song was endorsing political violence, racism, and everything else they deem horrible in society…unless it’s them doing it.

The point, though, was that small towns didn’t play around, and since people are far more likely to be armed, their refusal to play around would not make them attractive places to try such shenanigans.

Well, someone on Reddit seemed to not get the memo, and it’s actually kind of funny.

It seems that the author hasn’t realized that rural Americans don’t rely on the police to protect them. If “The Revolution” were to start in small towns, what you’re going to see is something that will make the Battle of Athens look like a thumb-wrestling convention.

Sure, rural communities only have a couple of cops–my father, when he was chief in Leary, Georgia, had three officers at the department’s largest, and by the end, he was flying solo–but that’s because a lot of the time, the police are just there to draw the chalk line around the bad guy’s body.

What we need to understand, though, is that while this is just one rando on Reddit, where anyone can post anything, it represents what a lot of people would like to do.

Is it any wonder that these same people want to inflict gun control on the rest of the country? See, while right now, small-town America can generally handle itself just fine from a rampaging mob, the reason most people won’t bring up a “suggestion” like this is that the rural communities have the guns to fight back, even in states like California or New York.

Removing the guns from the equation is critical, especially as most people live in the cities, so even if they’re not part of this so-called revolution, they’re not going to be the ones impacted directly. They think that guns lead to the crime they see in their communities, so they support gun control with the misperception that it is a benefit to society.

The truth is that while not every gun control advocate is an authoritarian, every authoritarian favors gun control. Removing a civil liberty, though, is an inherently authoritarian act, and it can’t be successfully framed otherwise. Many try, but it fails simply because they can’t get away from the fact that it impacts the innocent far more than the guilty.

And, for those inclined to incite some communist “revolution” on the rest of the country, their masses must meet unarmed opposition. Guns are equalizers, and they can’t have that.

For now, it really is “Try That in a Small Town.”

If they get their way, though, make no mistake, they will. The fact that so many Democrats are swooning over “Democratic Socialists”–which are still just commies, but commies with sprinkles–suggests that more of them want to do this than we might otherwise suspect.

Luckily, Antifa is now officially a terrorist organization, and a group of them got a few centuries in prison for being lefty terrorists, which means anyone trying to do this is going to have a problem even before they get to Mayberry.

But if they make it there, the Second Amendment makes damn sure we can start stacking them before they can be offended by the fact.

Supreme Court takes up challenges to AR-15 bans

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will consider whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to have AR-15-style rifles.

In a brief order, the high court agreed to take up a pair of cases challenging local and state laws outlawing AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles. One involves an ordinance in Cook County, Illinois, and the other centers on Connecticut’s law.

The justices will hear arguments in the cases in its next term, which begins in October.

The cases are the first in which the high court will weigh the legality of laws restricting access to certain types of firearms. In a landmark 2022 decision, the Supreme Court recognized for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry a gun in public for self defense. But the justices had — until now — declined to take up challenges involving bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles in Illinois and Maryland, leaving the laws in place.

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Supreme Court’s Wolford Decision Could Blow A Hole In New Jersey’s AR-15 Ban Defense

The Supreme Court’s decision in Wolford v. Lopez was about Hawaii’s attempt to turn most private property open to the public into gun-free zones by default. But the ruling may have just handed gun owners in New Jersey a powerful new weapon in the fight against the state’s ban on so-called “assault firearms.”

On June 26, attorneys for the Cheeseman plaintiffs in Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General notified the Third Circuit that Wolford directly affects the pending challenge to New Jersey’s semiautomatic firearm ban.

Their point is simple: New Jersey cannot force gun owners to prove at the starting line that banned firearms are “in common use” before the Second Amendment even applies. Under Wolford, the first question is much more basic.

Does the law regulate “Arms”? If yes, the Constitution is already in play.

 

Wolford Reaffirms The Plain Text Test

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the Court in Wolford, explained that Bruen’s first step asks whether the law falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text. That includes whether the law concerns “Arms,” meaning weapons “customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes,” according to the Court.

Phrasing matters. The Second Amendment does not protect only whatever gun a state lawyer is willing to admit is useful for home defense. It does not protect only handguns. It does not protect only muskets. It protects “Arms.” And Wolford confirms that the category includes weapons customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes. That is a problem for New Jersey.

That matters in Cheeseman because New Jersey’s ban plainly regulates firearms. Not accessories. Not conduct divorced from arms. Firearms.

The Cheeseman letter seizes on that language, telling the Third Circuit that “the only predicate question” is whether the law concerns “Arms.” The plaintiffs argue that the answer is “beyond dispute,” meaning the Second Amendment presumptively protects possession of the banned firearms. From there, the burden shifts to New Jersey.

That is the part anti-gun states hate. They want gun owners trapped in a never-ending preliminary debate over whether AR-15s, modern semiautomatic rifles, and similar arms are common enough, useful enough, or favored enough by judges to count. Wolford makes that harder.

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We Won’t Let Anti-Gun Billionaires Who Finance Civilian Disarmament Live in the Shadows Anymore.

For far too long, anti-gun groups have been nothing more than snake oil salesmen. They claim to speak for a vast army of grassroots citizens, but the reality is these groups are astroturf. They aren’t rooted in anything more than anti-gun animus. They’re also not nearly as down-to-earth with the people they claim to represent.

They’re a high-price, but cheap knockoff of the real thing. It’s fugazi grassroots.

NSSF has called them out in the past for their bought-and-paid-for activism and it’s time to do it again. Pull back the curtain and it’s easy to see that the antigun movement isn’t much more than a few billionaires and activist foundations pouring cash into their pet gun control projects…to the tune of over $400 million every year.

gun control orgs organizations

It’s also a willing media that goes right along with them, parroting half-truths and twisting narratives to demonize American gun owners and the firearm industry that serves them.

No more. Welcome Gun Rights Insights.

Gun Rights Insights is a new outreach initiative, including periodic videos, to pull back the veil that these anti-gun billionaires creep around telling America to give up their Second Amendment rights while they enjoy paid armed security. The “rules-for-thee, not-for-me” era must come to an end. That’s why NSSF’s Gun Rights Insights will be taking note of the gun control hypocrisy.

Anti-Gun Billionaire Michael Bloomberg

Take for instance, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City Mayor has made it his life’s goal to eliminate Second Amendment rights across the nation, spending over $50 million to attack lawful firearm ownership. While mayor, he organized Mayors Against Illegal Guns. That group was discredited when they “honored” the terrorist and Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a “gun violence victim” in 2013. Add to that, several MAIG members have, ironically, been charged with firearms-related offenses.

Bloomberg, of course, is the financier of Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and funds their anti-gun media mouthpiece The Trace.

Michael Bloomberg Angry
Michael Bloomberg (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

The Trace was seeded with funding tied to the gun control movement. The Trace claims to be “editorially independent,” but when a newsroom is funded by and built around a single political issue with the backing of major gun control activists, it’s fair — necessary, even — to scrutinize how it frames the facts.

After all, The Trace is headed by John Feinblatt, who also heads Everytown for Gun Safety and once served as a senior advisor to Bloomberg when he was mayor. Feinblatt is the principal officer listed on tax filings for The Trace. Everytown, of course, is a gun control organization that wants to see lawful firearm ownership eliminated in America.

john feinblatt president of everytown for gun safety
John Feinblatt (Image: NBC News)

To top it all off, The Trace admits that it has “more than a thousand readers who have stepped up to support financially.” The Trace reported they received over $6.3 million in 2024, according to the watchdog group InfluenceWatch. That means to make its budget work, each of those readers would have had to donated over $6,300.

That’s not likely. The Trace’s own website states they make public all donors who give over $1,000 or more per year. The Trace lists over 60 donors and donating foundations that reads like a veritable “who’s who” of gun control supporters.

The Soros Family and Foreign Money

George Soros, and now his son Alex, are another source of deep pockets for anti-gun efforts. George Soros’s entities spent $9 million for lobbying efforts to attack Second Amendment rights, including fighting to allow frivolous lawsuits to clog the courts and attempt to bankrupt the firearm industry through their “legislation-through-litigation” strategy.

By World Economic Forum – Flickr: George Soros CC BY-SA 2.0, 

Soros even worked with the Gun Action on Gun Violence, which assisted in the ill-fated and frivilous $10 billion lawsuit by Mexico against U.S. firearm manufacturers.

Alexander Soros
Alexander Soros (Image: Open Society Foundations)

That doesn’t even take into account the Hollywood celebrities who regularly harangue gun owners and the firearm industry. They do this while making movies and television shows featuring firearms, many times being used in irresponsible and illegal ways. And they do it while enjoying the safety of armed bodyguards.

The time is past due to expose this astroturf effort for what it is. It’s a paper-thin campaign to ostracize lawful firearm ownership, funded by wealthy elites who can afford their own armed security, but want to deny Second Amendment rights to law-abiding Americans. Poking holes into that false narrative is what Gun Rights Insights aims to do. Stay tuned.

Armed Americans: New Public Polling Reveals What the Firearm Industry Has Seen for Years

By Larry Keane

That loud sound you’re hearing is the collective jaws of gun control activists hitting the floor. They’re exasperated and can’t believe years of their antigun propaganda hasn’t worked. They are beside themselves that Americans would choose exercising the constitutional rights to keep and bear arms over backing more gun control restrictions and being lenient and soft on repeat criminals.

The polling also backs up recent reporting from big national media outlets revealing that antigun organizations and politicians have “conceded” that “gun control is no longer their top issue.”

“We know the political realities,” U.S. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) recently told NOTUS. That “political reality” is that Americans don’t want more gun control.

That’s exactly what the firearm industry has seen over the past few years. And polling is now catching up.

The ‘New’ News

So, what’s all the “new” news? Recent survey data conducted in partnership between the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) and the well-respected polling firm The McLaughlin Group revealed Americans are significantly more likely to support and exercise their Second Amendment rights now than they were just 18 months ago. They are less likely to support increased gun control restrictions pushed by antigun activists.

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Good! As it should be!

Legal experts warn that creating new gun control laws just got harder

WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court in a pair of new rulings has further expanded the Constitution’s Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms,” as the justices consider whether to take up additional gun rights cases for their next term.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling on Thursday, powered by its conservative majority, struck down a Hawaii law that required gun owners to get an owner’s permission before bringing a handgun onto private property open to the public, such as most businesses.

The justices decided unanimously last week to limit the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, narrowing a measure that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.

In a nation deeply divided over how to address persistent firearms violence, including frequent mass shootings, these rulings underscored the court’s generally sympathetic approach toward protections enshrined in the Second Amendment.

The decisions, experts said, stiffened an already stringent legal test that gun control measures must clear in order to survive scrutiny under the amendment, ratified in 1791, that states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law professor Jacob Charles said, “The two cases confirm the court’s extreme skepticism about all manner of gun regulations, especially new ones.”

“It has created and elaborated a test that makes it exceedingly difficult for legislatures to create gun laws to protect their citizens,” Charles said of the court.

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“As American leftists become ever more unhinged and violent, their desire to gut the Second Amendment intensifies. Democrats don’t like fair fights, so they prefer that their lawlessness not be hindered by law-abiding citizens who can defend themselves. They blather on about wanting to fight injustice and inequality, but when they gain majority power in a state, the first thing they do is go after legal gun owners. ”

Supreme Court strikes down blue state’s ‘vampire rule’ in major win for gun rights

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law ‘violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Hawaii on Thursday, handing concealed-carry permit holders a major victory in a 6-3 decision.

The Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff in Wolford v. Lopez, who contested Hawaii’s state law requiring a property owner’s explicit permission to allow lawful gun owners to bring firearms into public businesses.

“Hawaii’s law at issue here violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”

The ruling reverses a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had upheld Hawaii’s restrictions after the state enacted them in response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision.

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FPC Moves Forward in Lawsuit to Strike Down National Firearms Act

A reply brief in support of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment was filed in Roberts v. ATF, an FPC-backed challenge to the National Firearms Act of 1934.

Plaintiffs in the case include T.J. Roberts, Zachary Cockrell, Meridian Ordnance, Buckeye Firearms Association, Center for Human Liberty, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, and American Suppressor Association Foundation. The plaintiffs are represented by David Thompson, Peter Patterson, and Nicholas Varone of Cooper & Kirk.

The brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, in Covington.

The brief was filed on June 24, 2026.

The brief responds to the Trump DOJ’s defense of the NFA and explains why the plaintiffs should win on summary judgment. The NFA’s registration scheme can no longer be justified under Congress’s taxing power because the taxes it was designed to help collect no longer exist; even if it could, the scheme still violates the Second Amendment by infringing upon the right to keep and bear suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

“The National Firearms Act is a relic of a darker era and an authoritarian scheme without a constitutional foundation. The federal government cannot use a dead tax scheme as an excuse to maintain a registry and regulatory regime for constitutionally protected arms, period. Our Constitution does not allow the government to put fundamental rights behind a paywall designed to make the instruments of liberty expensive and less accessible to the very people who have a right to them. As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, the Trump Administration should be ashamed for defending an immoral tax-and-control scheme that only King George III would be proud of. FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue Fighting Forward to strike down this unconstitutional gun control regime.” — FPC President Brandon Combs

About Firearms Policy Coalition: Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is a nonprofit membership organization that exists to create a world of maximal individual liberty and eliminate unconstitutional gun control laws. FPC works—and wins—for the People through high-impact strategic litigation, groundbreaking research, legislative and regulatory advocacy, grassroots activism, education, and public engagement. FPC’s legal division, FPC Law, is the nation’s leading initiative dedicated to restoring the right to keep and bear arms across the United States. To learn more about how FPC is working—and winning—for the People, sign up for FPC news alerts at firearmspolicy.org and follow FPC on X, Instagram, and Facebook.