Category: RKBA

Gun Owners for Harris Highlight Lie of ‘Second Amendment Democrats’

“We can prevent gun violence while also supporting the Second Amendment,” a Giffords-sponsored “sportsmen’s” effort lies. “Gun Owners for Safety unites hunters, sport shooters, and collectors who want commonsense gun laws.”

Giffords, of course, along with all the other major gun prohibitionist groups, has endorsed Kamala Harris, who will sign whatever anti-gun legislation the Democrats succeed in passing and go for what they can’t through executive action. And then she’ll reshape the Supreme Court. That’s some “commonsense support.”

It’s never hard to find “Fudds” who are enthusiastic about voting for citizen disarmament pushing politicians and throwing fellow gun owners under the bus. A prime example is Harris’ Vice President pick, Tim Walz, once “A” rated and endorsed by the NRA. But while low information voters are being gaslit into thinking the Second Amendment can be ‘respected’ while it’s being eviscerated, a striking inequity is being revealed.

There is no parallel “pro-Second Amendment Democrat” movement happening. That’s because there’s no such thing as one.

Where are Second Amendment Democrats for Trump?

Experience shows they prioritize other issues above the right to keep and bear arms, meaning they really don’t understand it to be a right at all. This was unequivocally proven years ago, when I conversed with the head of the Second Amendment Democrats.

After all kinds of weasel-wording and Molon Labe-ing, he finally could not deny the one truth that ultimately defines them:

Under no circumstances will Amendment II Democrats support Republican candidates who run against anti-RKBA Democrats. We are, after all, Democrats.

I don’t know (or care) whatever happened to them, but do note there is a Facebook group that goes by that name, a group you can join with all of 19 members that doesn’t look like it’s been active for years. They offer further confirmation that there’s no such thing as what they claim to be:

Hello everyone. Who do we all think will be best on the 2nd Amendment of the current field? My guess is Bernie Sanders, though I suppose Amy Klobuchar has represented the most constituents with guns.

I agree that Bernie is the best bet. Not sure if Buttegeig would prioritize gun control like Booker or Warren.

Personally I feel like Buttigieg is the best candidate for president and to run against Trump, but not sure how I feel about any of their stances on gun control. There are so many issues.

It’s not my top priority either…

Obviously.

It’s not for the Giffords Fudds, either:

The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900
Restrictions on carry, minors, and misuse were the norm — not bans

Controversial arms are nothing new in the United States. During the 19th century, there were widespread concerns about criminal use of arms such a Bowie knives, slungshots, blackjacks, and brass knuckles. The full history of state, territorial, and colonial laws about controversial arms is detailed in my recent article for Notre Dame’s Journal of Legislation, The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900, coauthored with Joseph Greenlee.

Because the article is thorough, it is enormous: 163 pages of text, and 1,563 footnotes. The student staff for volume 50 of the Journal of Legislation was spectacular. Not every law journal has staff who could handle such a megillah, let alone a staff that whose meticulous cite-check would improve the article.

The mainstream American approach to controls of the above arms were: 1. bans on concealed carry; 2. limits on sales to minors, such as requiring parental permission; and 3. extra penalties for misuse in a crime. Sales bans were the minority approach, and possession bans very rare.

From 1607 through 1899, sales bans for nonfirearm arms were:

  • Bowie knife. Sales bans in Georgia, Tennessee, and later in Arkansas. Georgia ban held to violate the Second Amendment. Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243 (1846).
  • Prohibitive transfer or occupational vendor taxes in Alabama and Florida, which were repealed. Personal property taxes at levels high enough to discourage possession by poor people in Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina.
  • Dirk (a type of fighting knife). Georgia (1837) (held to violate Second Amendment); Arkansas (1881).
  • Sword cane (a sword concealed in a walking stick). Georgia (1837), held to violate the Second Amendment. Arkansas (1881).
  • Slungshot or “colt” (most typically, a lead weight held in the tip of a flexible bludgeon). Sales bans in nine states or territories. The Kentucky ban was later repealed. Illinois also banned possession.
  • Sand club or blackjack. New York (1881), (1884), (1889), (1899).
  • Billy. New York (1881), (1884), (1889), (1899).
  • Metallic knuckles. Sales bans in eight states, later repealed in Kentucky. Illinois also banned possession.
  • Cannons. No bans. Restrictions on discharge without permission in a variety of municipalities.

American bans on possession or sale to adults of particular types of firearms were:

  • Georgia (1837), all handguns except horse pistols. Held unconstitutional in Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243 (1846).
  • Tennessee (1879) and Arkansas (1881). Bans on sales of concealable handguns. Based on militia-centric interpretations of the state constitutions, the laws did not ban the largest and most powerful revolvers, namely those like the Army or Navy models.
  • Florida (1893). Discretionary licensing and an exorbitant licensing fee for carry of repeating rifles. Extended to handguns in 1901. The law was “never intended to be applied to the white population” and “conceded to be in contravention of the Constitution and non-enforceable if contested.” Watson v. Stone, 148 Fla. 516 (1941) (Buford, J., concurring).

Earlier this month, the en banc Fourth Circuit, by a 10-5 vote, upheld Maryland’s ban on common rifles dubbed “assault weapons.” Judge Wilkinson’s majority opinion cited the article 16 times, and Judge Richardson’s dissent cited it 9 times. Bianchi v. Brown, 2024 WL 3666180 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc).

The article has also been cited in three U.S. District Court opinions supporting the claims of Second Amendment plaintiffs. Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. v. Platkin, 2024 WL 3585580 (D.N.J. July 30, 2024); Miller v. Bonta, 699 F.Supp.3d 956, 981 n.86, 987 n.107 (S.D. Cal. 2023); Duncan v. Bonta, 695 F.Supp.3d 1206, 1242 n.177 (S.D. Cal. 2023). And in a Third Circuit dissent disagreeing with Second Amendment claims. Lara v. Commissioner Pennsylvania State Police, 91 F.4th 122, 144-45, 147 (3d Cir. 2024) (Restrepo, J., dissenting).

As the cites indicate, judges can disagree about how strictly or broadly to draw historical analogies, and about what sorts of laws create an established tradition at a given level of generality. It is at least helpful, I hope, that judges can have access to a common set of facts about the historical regulation of controversial arms.

TN Sec. of State Withholds Approval of Memphis Gun Ballot Issue

The Memphis Commercial Appeal is reporting that Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett has declined to approve a gun control measure to be placed on the Memphis ballot for November.

The action came after the Fox News affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee reported that top Republicans in the state are “taking action” against Memphis and Shelby County if officials there “circumvent state law by politicized ballot measures or ordinances.”

The Memphis City Council reportedly voted last month “to allow voters to decide” on local gun control. According to WHBQ-TV, the local Fox News affiliate, Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally issued the following statement: “The Tennessee Constitution clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities of the state and local governments. Shelby County needs to understand that despite their hopes and wishes to the contrary, they are constrained by these explicit constitutional guardrails.”

McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton—both are Republicans—have promised the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, “will not tolerate attempts to go rogue…”

The Memphis Commercial Appeal is reporting that three ballot measures the council wants on the ballot are ostensibly aimed at allowing local voters to “signify support for safer gun handling policies.”

WANT News is reporting on the ballot measure, which asks, “Shall the Charter of the City of Memphis be amended to read:

  • No person shall be allowed to carry a handgun in the City of Memphis without possessing a valid handgun carry permit.
  • No person shall be allowed to carry, store, or travel with a handgun in a vehicle in the City of Memphis without possessing a valid handgun permit.
  • It shall be unlawful for a person to store a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, or firearm ammunition, in a motor vehicle or boat while the person is not in the motor vehicle or boat unless the firearm or firearm ammunition is kept from ordinary observation and locked within the trunk, utility or glove box, or a locked container securely affixed to the motor vehicle or boat.”

That’s more than promoting “safe gun handling” critics contend.

Tennessee is a “constitutional carry” state, also known as permitless carry. Tennessee also has a state preemption statute which says, in part:

“Except as otherwise provided by state law or as specifically provided in subsection (b), the general assembly preempts the whole field of the regulation of firearms, ammunition, or components of firearms or ammunition, or combinations thereof including, but not limited to, the use, purchase, transfer, taxation, manufacture, ownership, possession, carrying, sale, acquisition, gift, devise, licensing, registration, storage, and transportation thereof, to the exclusion of all county, city, town, municipality, or metropolitan government law, ordinances, resolutions, enactments or regulation. No county, city, town, municipality, or metropolitan government nor any local agency, department, or official shall occupy any part of the field regulation of firearms, ammunition or components of firearms or ammunition, or combinations thereof.”

Massachusetts Supreme Court: Switchblade Carry Ban Violates Second Amendment

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the state’s ban on carrying switchblade knives violates the Second Amendment.

The case is Commonwealth v. David E. Canjura.

Canjura was arrested on July 3, 2020, and a search of his person uncovered a knife “with a spring-assisted blade.” He was charged with “carrying a dangerous weapon,” among other charges, but challenged the constitutionality of the switchblade carry ban “in a pretrial motion to dismiss.”

He “argued that because a switchblade is an ‘arm,’ [the] prohibition on carrying a switchblade violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court weighed Canjura’s motion via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller (2008) and Bruen (2022) decisions, noting, “The central component’ of the Second Amendment is the ‘inherent right of self-defense,’ which “guarantee[s] to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions.”

They observed, “While both Heller and Bruen involved handguns, Second Amendment protections subsume more than just firearms.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court then focused specifically on Bruen’s “two part test” and found “the Commonwealth does not identify any laws regulating bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

They subsequently observed that the Commonwealth “has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives…”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court wrote: “In this case, we are asked to decide whether…[the] prohibition against carrying a switchblade knife violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, considering…Bruen. We conclude it does.”

Analysis: The First Crack Forms in Federal Machinegun Ban

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled the Second Amendment protects civilian machinegun possession.

On Wednesday, US District Judge John W. Broomes dismissed charges against a Kansas man for possessing a fully automatic .300 blackout AR-15 and Glock 33 handgun. He ruled that the federal ban on possessing or transferring machineguns (with limited exceptions) was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant.

“To summarize, in this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Judge Broomes wrote in US v. Morgan.

In many ways, the decision is the epitome of what some gun-rights advocates hoped the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision and the new test it laid down would bring to bear on America’s gun laws. The 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), which marked the first time the federal government regulated machineguns by requiring registration and a $200 tax stamp, has rankled a vocal section of activists. The same is true of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, a provision of which known as the Hughes Amendment—18 USC § 922(o)—functionally banned civilian ownership of automatic weapons manufactured after its enactment.

Those activists view the federal regulations, enacted for the first time more than 140 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, as incompatible with the Bruen standard because it prioritizes Founding-era approaches to weapons regulation when evaluating modern regulations. They see the ultimate liberalization of machinegun, suppressor, and short-barreled rifle regulations as the natural apotheosis of courts faithfully applying the Bruen test to America’s modern gun-control regime.

But court after court to address the question in recent years has rejected the idea the Second Amendment protects machineguns, largely based on the Supreme Court’s own words. Most often, they cite a section of the majority opinion in DC v. Heller that discusses the idea that fully automatic M-16s, which are functionally identical to the rifle at issue in Morgan, “may be banned.”

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in Heller. “Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”

Broomes interrogated this reliance on Heller’s brief discussion of M-16 rifles and reached a different conclusion on how much it binds courts confronting an explicit challenge to the federal ban on new machineguns.

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David Codrea’s take on the overeducated moron.

Gun Prohibitionist’s Ultimatum Warrants Appropriate Gun Owner Response

“I would personally suggest the gun control groups develop a BATNA to help induce more good-faith negotiating,” Tom H. Hastings, Director of the Peace and Nonviolence Studies, Conflict Resolution graduate program at Portland State University and Secretary for the Oregon Peace Studies Consortium writes in the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.

“BATNA?” Hastings asks rhetorically (“Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement”).  “It simply means that, if you are trying to negotiate with anyone, it’s important to not only think about ‘what if these negotiations fail,’ but to let the others know what you will be forced to do in that case.”

What does Hastings believe he’s “negotiating,” with whom, and what will he feel compelled to do if his demands aren’t met?

“My choice of BATNA would be, ‘Look gun rights people, we want to negotiate common sense regulations with you,” Hastings explains. “However, literally every time we pass such measures at the local or state level, you work to overcome the will of the people by challenging those commonsense measures in court, with your lawsuits, and it’s all based on the Second Amendment.”

“So we have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” Hastings imagines. “Our BATNA is that we are going to stop all other gun control work and focus all our resources on a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment.”

No carrot, just the stick? Give us everything we demand or we’re going to take even more? Hastings’ use of the term “negotiating” invokes nothing so much as Inigo Montoya’s famous “You keep using that word” line from The Princess Bride.

Here’s a counter-BATNA, Mr. Hastings: No. Your move.

I can’t speak for all gun owners the way you presume to speak for all gun-grabbers, but for, say three percent of them (which would still be millions of us), the only response you’ll get is “We will not disarm.”

We’re not interested in negotiating our rights that you and your fellow travelers have no claim to. Come and take them.

We’re not going to surrender the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever devised by men a lot smarter than you so that useful idiots can ensure the state has an unchallengeable monopoly of violence. Besides, we know from experience that no concession will ever be enough (that’s why they call them “totalitarians”), and we know from nature that if you throw a scrap of flesh to a circling pack of jackals, rather than go away sated they will be emboldened to move in closer.

It’s not like your idea is anything new or original. Google “Repeal Second Amendment,” and you’ll see no shortage of egghead dolts who, like you, believe they’re smart but haven’t thought things through about what demanding the same unconditional surrender from an armed populace will result in. The latest rumblings that come to mind are from California Governor Gavin Newsom going full Orwell with his offensive and absurd 28th Amendment.

I see you were proposing the same subversive, reality-denying nonsense back in 2022, when you even showed you were aware of the potential of “Civil War 2.0. With approximately 400 million guns floating around U.S. society and an armed MAGA-driven polarization met by an increasingly armed leftist radical wing, along with evermore virulent rhetoric and escalating numbers walking around open-carrying war weaponry in public…”

To give yourself some semblance of gravitas, you begin your piece by citing Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who like you, called for repeal of the Second Amendment. But here’s the thing: Never meant to be an easy task, even if you could get the numbers needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution, repealing 2A would still not remove the right to arms. As the Heller majority noted when citing an earlier decision:

“The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed…’”

And it shall not be—some of us will see to that.

So now it’s back to you, Mr. Hastings. Your silly and offensive BATNA is rejected, we’re not interested. Now do your worst. But do one other thing first: If they ever do pass your sick little fantasy, flesh out how you think those enforcing it (certainly not you or your fellow gun-grabbers by proxy!) are going to make it all happen. And since there hasn’t been much original thought offered from your side so far, don’t forget to threaten using F-15s and nukes!

With “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day. So it figures an aging, grinning academic wearing a stupid peace symbol earring is proposing unleashing the bloody horrors of civil war on the people of the Republic, and doing it in the name of non-violence and democracy.

The Fourth Circuit ignores Bruen again

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision held, with crystal clarity, the Second Amendment is an individual right, which extends to keeping and bearing arms not only in one’s home or on one’s property, but in public, with some limited exceptions. Not only did Bruen reaffirm the Second Amendment as a fundamental unalienable right–no second-class right—it established strict scrutiny, the highest level of judicial analysis, for Second Amendment cases. Equally important was this holding:

When the  Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the  Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

In other words, anti-liberty/gun schemes are only constitutional if there was a clear historical analogue at the time of the founding.  As one might suspect, some states—Like Maryland—are determined to ignore the Second Amendment and Bruen.

Under current Maryland law,  no one may own, rent, or even touch a firearm without a 16-hour class which includes live fire. There is an 8-hour class required for each permit renewal. Only upon passing the 16-hour course, can one apply for a permit, and the State Police have 30 days to approve or deny applications. So while Maryland is, at least ostensibly, a “shall-issue” state the state puts as many barriers as possible in the path of gun owners, including a seven day waiting period for purchase, and gun registration.

In 2023 a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals took up a challenge to the licensing law and struck it down in consonance with Bruen:

“The challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one.”

On would reasonably think that would have been the end of it. No historical analogue, presumptively unconstitutional. Then the entire Court got into the act (decision available here):

We conclude that the Supreme Court in Bruen foreclosed the plaintiffs’ “temporary deprivation” argument by stating that, despite some delay occasioned by “shall-issue” permit processes, this type of licensing law is presumptively constitutional because it operates merely to ensure that individuals seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights are “law-abiding” persons.

We hold that the plaintiffs have failed to rebut this presumption of constitutionality afforded to “shall-issue” licensing laws like the handgun qualification statute. So the plaintiffs’ challenge to the HQL statute fails, and we affirm the district court’s award of summary judgment to the state of Maryland.

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‘In Common Use’ Can Ultimately be Used to Make the Second Amendment a Moot Point

Far-fetched? Who knows what will be available to the military and law enforcement in 100 years, and what it means to “the people” of the Second Amendment if the government can deny future technology because it’s “dangerous and unusual,” and not “in common use”?

“The Second Amendment Allows a Ban on the AR-15,” Harvard University Professor of Law Noah Feldman once declared in a Bloomberg/Washington Post “opinion” piece.

That it’s an “opinion” is the one truthful admission in this otherwise absurd act of academic gaslighting. Harvard, Bloomberg, and WaPo are all for eviscerating the right of the people to keep and bear arms and routinely spread whatever lies they can get away with (despite the disingenuous caveat that “This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.”)

“Under current law, the Second Amendment extends only to weapons that are not ‘unusual’ and are ‘in common use’ by law-abiding citizens,” Feldman asserts. “Whether that includes AR-15s is a question the Supreme Court has not yet resolved, although the justices have recently been asked to weigh in. A key question today — though not when the Bill of Rights was ratified — is whether a weapon is ordinarily used for self-defense.”

“To give you a sense of how different things were with respect to gun issues 84 years ago, the court held unanimously that the Second Amendment didn’t protect [short barreled shotguns],” Feldman misstates, citing the case of U.S. v. Miller. That’s actually not what they said at all. In the opinion for that case, Justice McReynolds noted:

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

They didn’t have evidence because the case wasn’t argued in front of them. Had it been, the military utility of such weapons could have been decisively established, starting with the flintlock blunderbuss:

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The Misinformation Antidote: Protect Yourself, Your Country, and Your Planet

The constant barrage of conflicting truths from various factions contributes to soaring levels of anxiety and depression. Enter “The Misinformation Antidote,” a groundbreaking book that unveils the solution to this pervasive problem.

The book’s positive impact extends beyond its primary mission of combating misinformation. A beneficial side effect emerges—an unveiling of a reality that is more captivating, positive, and diverse than commonly understood. Contrary to the gloomy narratives, the world isn’t as dire as portrayed. As misinformation is neutralized, people from diverse backgrounds can come together to solve previously deemed intractable problems. The antidote creates an environment where individuals prosper and lead enjoyable lives collectively.

In essence, “The Misinformation Antidote” is more than just a book; it’s a guide to navigating the turbulent sea of information, offering a transformative experience that empowers individuals to reshape their perspectives. By embracing this antidote, readers not only fortify themselves against the harmful effects of misinformation but also discover a newfound appreciation for the richness and potential of the world around them. It’s a beacon of hope in a world often clouded by conflicting narratives and a roadmap towards a more informed, positive, and united future.

Author Offers Unique Insights on Fascism, Second Amendment, and More

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When Academics Tell The Truth

We’ve seen the state of gun research in this country. It’s an absolute laughingstock, or it would be if there was an ounce of intellectual integrity anywhere in the science community.

Social science research is always going to be a little bit wonky, in part because experiments are difficult to impossible to conduct. However, that just makes it that much more important to get what research options that remain open to you right. Yet with gun research, not only does that not happen, but those who screw it up are celebrated.

Meanwhile, one researcher got a finding that his field disagreed with and he’s being crucified.

For example, William English, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, has been subpoenaed, attacked in The New York Times and accused of all sorts of breaches of professional conduct because he had the temerity to administer a huge survey on defensive gun use that was honest.

They are persecuting English in order to, as he put it in The Wall Street Journal, “warn off other academics thinking of doing similar research, and to influence courts where states are losing on the merits.”

English supervised the 2021 National Firearms Survey. Data from this survey of 54,000 American adults estimated that citizens use their guns defensively about 1.67 million times annually; indeed, the survey found that “in most defensive incidents (81.9%) no shot was fired.”

To gun-control activists in politics and the media, this finding had to be marginalized. They don’t want people to know that law-abiding Americans need their freedom.

English said that the “attorneys general of Illinois and Washington started issuing subpoenas” for his “documents and communications.” Meanwhile, members of the media contacted him “armed with politicized talking points identical to those used by the state attorneys general in their subpoenas.”

That is legitimately troubling.

I’ve seen some of the attacks against English, ironically coming from people whose “research” wouldn’t have been deemed acceptable for a middle school science project, and they’re ugly. They claim there are issues with his methodology, and that his research was flawed from the start.

This is funny considering this:

The media, however, could not find any actual problems with the research. English’s survey questions had been peer reviewed. He used a professional survey firm that is also “used by researchers at such institutions as Stanford, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

“My survey results are hard to refute because they line up with other independent surveys from Pew and Gallup at the national level,” said English.

In other words, he did everything the way his field demanded and came up with an answer they didn’t approve of, but rather than self-censor like so many others, he published them.

And for that, he’s being attacked by the anti-gun political establishment, the anti-gun media, and his colleagues who share the same sentiment.

It’s like they say, if you’re taking flak, you must be over the target.

English has most definitely been over the target because the truth is an enemy of the anti-gun agenda. We know criminals get guns from illegal sources, and those illegal sources obtain them through some degree of theft. Either they steal them personally or get them from someone who does. That doesn’t make it in the news reports despite that coming directly from the ATF. That’s the truth, but it undermines gun control, so it doesn’t get the headlines that some ridiculous study that claims hunting leads to shootings.

In showing what he did, English broke the cardinal rule of gun research: Thou Must Advance Gun Control

SAF SCORES VICTORY IN CALIFORNIA NON-RESIDENT CARRY CASE

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners, in a challenge of California’s ban on non-resident concealed carry, won a victory when a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in the case.

U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett, a 2022 Joe Biden appointee, granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction. The state has 21 days to file a response, and within 30 days plaintiffs must “meet and confer” with the state and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department “to submit a proposed order entering the preliminary injunction consistent with the specific findings” made by the court order.

SAF is joined by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California and seven private citizens. The LA County Sheriff’s Office is the main defendant, along with Attorney General Rob Bonta and the La Verne Police Department.

In her decision, Judge Garnett observed, “the State bears the burden of showing whether California’s residency requirements for a CCW license is ‘consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” A few pages later, she notes, “the State has not carried its burden at this stage to show that the limitation of CCW licenses to California residents is part of a historical tradition of this Nation.”

“Americans do not leave their Second Amendment right to bear arms at the California border,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “California is behind the curve in recognizing that the Second Amendment was incorporated to the states via the 14th Amendment since SAF’s Supreme Court victory in the 2010 McDonald ruling.”

“The writing is clearly on the wall,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, “when Judge Garnett noted the Court already found that we are likely to succeed on the merits of our argument that California’s residency requirement for CCW applications is unconstitutional. We are confident our challenge will continue to prevail.”

FED. COURT DENIES REHEARING IN CASE AGAINST MINN. YOUNG ADULT CARRY BAN

BELLEVUE, WA – The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a petition for a rehearing in a Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) case which found Minnesota’s ban on carry permits for young adults ages 18-20 is unconstitutional.

The case is known as Worth v. Harrington, and it was filed in June 2021. Joining SAF in this case are the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens, Austin Dye, Axel
Anderson and Kristin Worth, for whom the case is known. They are represented by attorneys Blair W. Nelson of Bemidji, Minn., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and William V. Bergstrom at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.

In its order, the Eighth Circuit also denied a request for an en banc panel hearing. U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Menendez, a 2021 Joe Biden appointee, ruled in March 2023 that Minnesota’s permitting age restriction is unconstitutional. The case was appealed to the Eighth Circuit, which upheld Judge Menendez decision.

“Clearly, Judge Menendez made the right call in the first place,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “As we contended all along, the right of the people mentioned in the Second Amendment was not limited to those over a certain age. Certainly young adults fall within the definition of ‘the people’ ever since they’ve been allowed to vote, and generations before that when they were considered part of the militia, and have been accepted into the military.”

“We expected to prevail at trial and again at the appeals court level,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We are gratified by the Eight Circuit’s decision, and now we will see whether Minnesota submits a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court. For the time being, we have notched another victory in our ongoing effort to win firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time.”

Imagine What President Kamala Harris Could Do to Guns If She Has Price Control Power

Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out the first of her policy positions and they seem eerily familiar. The Democratic nominee for president wants to attack runaway rising food prices by inserting government to set the prices grocery stores could charge at the checkout counter. That’s not what happens in a free-market society. That’s what happened in the Soviet Union and other failed communist and socialist states, like Cuba and Venezuela.

But what does that mean for gun sales? It could mean everything. If Vice President Harris were to get Congress to go along with her big government price controlling schemes, it’s not a stretch that she could use those same authorities to demand that firearm prices are artificially high and beyond the reach for all but the ultra-rich.

It would be a policy of “If you like your Second Amendment, you can keep your Second Amendment…if you can afford it.”

And recall that we recently discussed the growing trend of courts ruling you don’t have a Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm. Would a Second Amendment challenge to government price fixing succeed?

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SAF PETITIONS SUPREME COURT FOR CERTIORARI IN MARYLAND RIFLE BAN

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has filed a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in its continuing challenge of a ban on modern semiautomatic rifles in the state of Maryland, arguing that high court review is necessary to ensure the Second Amendment is “not truncated into a limited right.”

SAF is joined by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Firearms Policy
Coalition, and a private citizen, David Snope. They are represented by attorneys David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, Nicole J. Moss and John D. Ohlendorf at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.; Raymond M. DiGuiseppe at DiGuiseppe Law Firm in Southport, N.C. The case is known as Bianchi v. Frosh.

The petition was filed after the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that modern semiautomatic
rifles — commonly misidentified as “assault weapons” — are not protected by the Second Amendment because they are “too similar” to a fully-automatic military rifle known as the M16. SAF and its partners contend this reasoning “is becoming a commonplace misapplication” of Supreme Court precedents established by the 2008 Heller ruling, 2010 McDonald decision and 2022 Bruen ruling.

“The Fourth Circuit, as well as other federal courts, are attempting to flip the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling on its head,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “They are essentially arguing the arms protected by the Second Amendment are limited only to certain state-approved firearms, which would make it no right at all, but a government-regulated privilege. This is the third time we have petitioned the high court in this case.”

“Certiorari is required in this case,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, “to correct an increasingly
widespread misunderstanding of the Supreme Court precedent, and the Second Amendment, itself. The specific type of firearm in question is commonly owned across the country, placing it well within the scope of the Second Amendment.”

Rosen: Surgeon General misleads on gun violence

In a July speech advocating for more stringent gun control, President Biden claimed that “More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.” That’s surely an alarming and tragic statistic but a very misleading one.  The use of the word “children” is deceptive, emotionally bringing to mind infants, toddlers and kindergartners. Legally, a “child” can be as old as 17, or even 20 in some states, including those with felony convictions and gangbangers in inner cities, like Chicago.

According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, “In 2022, Black children and teens were 20 times as likely to die from firearm homicides compared to their white counterparts.”  And the great majority of those deaths are black on black shootings by teenage gangsters, not little kids. And statistically, the kinds of diseases that fatally afflict the elderly in great numbers are rare among youngsters, skewing the causes of death toward guns.

Recently, Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, issued a public declaration that our country is experiencing a “gun violence crisis.”  Conversely, according to the FBI, nationwide homicides decreased by 13% in 2023 despite public perception to the contrary as reflected in a November 2023 Gallup poll that found 77% of Americans believed crime was increasing.

That apparent discrepancy can be explained by terminology, definitions and spin, especially skewing the impact of suicide, which the Surgeon General conveniently includes in his definition of gun violence.  Suicides with the use of a gun account for 56% of all gun deaths. But an act of violence is something you inflict on someone else, not on yourself. Let’s say you’re suffering from severe depression or unbearable pain from a terminal illness, and you rationally chose to end your life, this could be viewed as an act of self-compassion.  It’s not gun violence. If you hanged yourself, instead, would that be “rope violence?”

The disconnect between the overwhelming public perception of rampant crime in the U.S. today and misleading statistics to the contrary are tied to the definition of crime.  It’s true that the homicide rate per 100,000 population has gone down over the past 30 years.  But suicide is not the same as homicide and the public perception of rampant crime goes way beyond “homicides.” It covers pervasive crimes like car thefts, vandalism, rioting, burglaries, muggings, squatting, or flash mobs looting retail stores with impunity.

Even worse are the cybercrimes bilking the elderly of their life savings.  To say nothing of the hordes of illegal aliens criminally crossing our southern border — who then compound the felony by not showing up for their court dates with the forbearance of the president of the United States and his secretary of Homeland Security.

When prosecutors in Democrat-controlled states refuse to charge trespassers, rioters, petty criminals, and radical insurrectionists who construct illegal encampments and occupy buildings on college campuses their crimes go unrecorded in the crime stats.  The political activists who harassed and besieged the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices whose rulings they disagreed with violated federal law, but they were allowed to persist by politically-motivated Democrat officials in Washington.

The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for whatever reason he or she desires.  While the number of guns in this country has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the decrease in the homicide rate over that period indicates that law-abiding Americans intend those guns for justifiable personal defense or deterrence, as well as for hunting or sport shooting. These days, you’re taking on undue risk by not owning one.  Those intent on crime will legally or illegally obtain guns regardless of gun control laws that unreasonably burden the rest of us.

Although he wears a quasi-naval uniform and carries the three-star rank of Vice Admiral, the Surgeon General of the United States is not a sea-going admiral.  As the “Nation’s Doctor,” he’s an administrator not a practitioner (and he doesn’t make house calls).  He’s a bureaucrat who commands more than 6,000 public health officers of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and his purview is the physical and mental health of all Americans.

His diagnosis of “gun violence,” which inflates the numbers by including suicide, and his prescription to ban legal so-called “assault weapons” are outside his expertise and authority.  In the immortal words of a real Admiral, David Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

Uvalde Police Timid, Bungling During School Shooting, New Records Reveal
If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes protecting family, friends, and neighbors.

Perhaps the greatest rebuttal to calls for confidence in police is the conduct of law enforcement officers at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, on May 24, 2022, almost 400 cops not only stood around while a lunatic murdered children and teachers, but they prevented parents from stepping in to do what those in uniform wouldn’t. Now, new reporting gives greater insight into the depths of the officers’ inaction that day, and just how unwise it is to rely on them for protection.
Documented Police Failures

The failures of police officers in Uvalde aren’t open to dispute.

“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” concluded a report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting.

A U.S. Justice Department review similarly found “failures in leadership, command, and coordination.”

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