Category: RKBA

SCOTUS Upholds Rahimi Conviction, But Leaves Major Questions Unaddressed

In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Zachey Rahimi’s conviction for possessing a firearm while subject to a domestic violence restraining order, holding that “when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”

The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, appears to open the door not only to bans on gun ownership for those subject to domestic violence restraining orders, but Extreme Risk Protection Orders as well. The Court held that while there was no “historical twin” to the statute in question at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, there are still enough appropriate “analogues” to uphold the statute.

Together, the surety and going armed laws confirm what common sense suggests: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed. Section 922(g)(8) is not identical to these founding-era regimes, but it does not need to be.

Like the surety and going armed laws, Section922(g)(8)(C)(i) applies to individuals found by a court to threaten the physical safety of another. This prohibition is “relevantly similar” to those founding era regimes in both why and how it burdens the Second Amendment right.

Roberts added that “while we do not suggest that the Second Amendment prohibits the enactment of laws banning the possession of guns by categories of persons thought by a legislature to present a special danger of misuse, we note that Section 922(g)(8) applies only once a court has found that the defendant ‘represents a credible threat to the physical safety’ of another.” That at least leaves the door open for those convicted of non-violent felonies or non-violent misdemeanors punishable by more than a year in prison to regain their Second Amendment rights going forward, especially since the Court took note of the “temporary” nature of a restraining order, as opposed to the lifetime ban on possessing firearms that comes post-conviction.

Importantly, the majority opinion did shoot down one argument presented by the DOJ; the Second Amendment only applies to “responsible” citizens.

“Responsible” is a vague term. It is unclear what such a rule would entail. Nor does such a line derive from our case law. In Heller and Bruen, we used the term “responsible” to describe the class of ordinary citizens who undoubtedly enjoy the Second Amendment right. But those decisions did not define the term and said nothing about the status of citizens who were not “responsible.” The question was simply not presented.

In addition to the majority opinion and Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent, there were five concurring opinions released today; one from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and separate concurrence from Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.

Gorsuch’s concurrence notes that today’s decision “necessarily leaves open the question whether the statute might be unconstitutional as applied in “particular circumstances.”

So, for example, we do not decide today whether the government may disarm a person without a judicial finding that he poses a “credible threat” to another’s physical safety. We do not resolve whether the government may disarm an individual permanently. We do not determine whether§922(g)(8) may be constitutionally enforced against a person who uses a firearm in self-defense.

Notably, the surety laws that inform today’s decision allowed even an individual found to pose a threat to another to “obtain an exception if he needed his arms for self-defense.” Nor do we purport to approve in advance other laws denying firearms on a categorical basis to any group of persons a legislature happens to deem, as the government puts it, “not ‘responsible.’”

We’ll be delving more into the concurring opinions and Justice Thomas’s dissent in subsequent posts, but given all of the media speculation that Justice Barrett was about to break with the conservative wing of the Court over the use of “history and tradition” to determine the constitutionality of gun laws, it’s worth pointing out this key bit from her concurrence today.

In Bruen, the Court took history beyond the founding era, considering gun regulations that spanned the 19th century. I expressed reservations about the scope of that inquiry but concluded that the timing question did not matter to Bruen’s holding.

It bears emphasis, however, that my questions were about the time period relevant to discerning the Second Amendment’s original meaning—for instance, what is the post-1791 cutoff for discerning how the Second Amendment was originally understood? My doubts were not about whether “tradition,” standing alone, is dispositive.

While that sounds like a positive stance for Second Amendment advocates, Barrett went on to make it clear that “imposing a test that demands overly specific analogues has serious problems,” which could open the door to modern gun control laws being upheld based on the flimsiest of ties to 18th-century statutes.

As Gorsuch says, many questions regarding who can be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms, for how long, and for what reason remain unresolved by Rahimi. I’m concerned, however, that a majority of justices are ready to give pretty wide latitude to the states and Congress when it comes to answering those questions.

CHICAGO EDITORIAL BOARD: ‘WORRIFYING’ THAT LAW-ABIDING GUN OWNERS ARE DEFENDING THEMSELVES

Last weekend, Chicagoans witnessed a weekend that saw at least 71 people shot. Tragically, nine of the victims died from their injuries. Just two weeks ago, Chicagoans survived a weekend that saw at least 44 people shot. Tragically, at least eight of the victims died from their injuries.

In a city where criminals know they can get away with violence and criminal shootings – even when police are involved – it’s not surprising that law-abiding Chicagoans would consider arming themselves and, God-forbid, having to use their firearm for self-defense or to protect their families.

That’s just too much for The Chicago Tribune editorial board. The media masters there went out and did the most editorial board thing possible and decried such a trend.

“Worryingly, we’re seeing more signs of that phenomenon in Chicago, with three separate episodes over the last weekend in which would-be victims proved to be both armed and willing to fire at their assailants,” the board chose to write.

It must be nice to live in such an Ivory Tower.

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As read on reddit. 

HERE IT IS!

Applying that methodology to this case, Roberts looks at early English and early American gun laws and concludes that they “confirm what common sense suggests: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed.”

When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed.”

That is the opening we were hoping for. This opens up a challenge to allowing non-violent offenders to have their 2A rights! It stands to argue that in that emphasized statement, that if an individual does NOT pose a clear threat of physical violence to another, they may not be disarmed.

Note that is not legally what he is saying, but I believe that a challenge has been opened on those grounds.

This is basically the exact ruling we expected:

  • If you pose a credible threat of violence, you can be disarmed.
  • If you don’t pose a credible threat of violence, well, that’s a case for another day…

A good comment from u/blackhorse15A on the other post:

The court ONLY decided this for people such as Rahimi where the restraining order found explicitly that they were a danger to others. The Supreme Court decision expressly says that it is not considering the constitutionality of part (ii) where it applies to restraining orders that tell people not to engage in physical violence (without finding them a threat) and leave that open to future challenge. It would be better if they just found that part unconstitutional, but I think it indicates strongly that it likely isnt and having an 8-1 deicsion is pretty powerful here for the rest of what it says.

Second good point- at the end – the Supreme Court outright rejects the idea that he government can restrict gun rights of people who are not “responsible”.

“Responsible” is a vague term. It is unclear what such a rule would entail. Nor does such a line derive from our case law. In Heller and Bruen, we used the term “responsible” to describe the class of ordinary citizens who undoubtedly enjoy the Second Amendment right. But those decisions did not define the term and said nothing about the status of citizens who were not “responsible.” The question was simply not presented.

Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Gun Possession for Those Under Domestic Violence Restraining Orders

The Supreme Court ruled today that a federal law prohibiting individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms does not violate the Second Amendment. In an 8-1 decision, the justices upheld the constitutionality of the law that had been challenged by a man charged with discharging a firearm and possessing firearms while under a domestic violence restraining order.

The man, Zackey Rahimi, hoped the Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling in 2022, which places the burden of historical precedent in alignment at the time of the country’s founding to uphold modern-day gun laws, might help him get from under the indictment.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in United States v. Rahimi, emphasized that the Second Amendment does not prohibit all forms of gun regulation.

“When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed,” Roberts wrote, aligning the current regulation with historical precedents. He noted that if the Second Amendment rights include weapons that did not exist at the time the Constitution was written, then logically it also permits more regulation than when it was written .

The case originated from Rahimi, a Texas resident, who was involved in multiple shootings and subjected to a domestic violence restraining order after assaulting his girlfriend. The protective order specifically barred him from possessing firearms. When police found firearms in his home while investigating subsequent shootings, Rahimi was charged under the federal law that prohibits gun possession for individuals under such restraining orders. According to News Nation, Rahimi had been involved in five shootings over a two-month period overlapping 2020 and 2021.

Rahimi argued that the law infringed upon his Second Amendment rights, a position initially supported by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which found that the government failed to provide a historical analogue to justify the restriction. However, the Supreme Court reversed this decision, with Roberts asserting that “firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms” since the founding of the United States.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissenter, contended that the federal government had not demonstrated that the ban is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. He argued that the early laws cited by the majority were too different from the current ban to serve as a historical analogue. Thomas expressed concern that the law strips individuals of their Second Amendment rights without due process and could be applied to those not convicted of a crime.

The ruling comes in the wake of Bruen, which expanded gun rights by affirming the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. That decision has led to numerous legal challenges against existing gun restrictions. The Rahimi decision, however, marks a significant moment where the Court, typically divided on such issues, voted in an overwhelming majority to uphold a restriction aimed at reducing gun violence, particularly in domestic settings.

Domestic violence advocacy groups are welcoming the decision, highlighting the heightened risks victims face when abusers have access to firearms, News Nation reports. Studies show that victims of intimate partner violence are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has access to a gun. Guns were involved in 57% of domestic killings in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still No TRACE of the Truth

In our first installment of a critical analysis of an anti-gun propaganda podcast series from The Trace, we covered the lies, misinformation, and deceptive emotional arguments made in the first four episodes. Here, we will delve into the fifth episode, which continues the previous format, but adds embarrassing incidents where The Trace contradicts itself in an attempt to push its anti-gun messaging.

The intro to the transcript of the 5th installment of the podcast, which is titled “How a SCOTUS Decision Led to an Unprecedented Gun Sales Boom,” kicks off with the completely discredited claim popular among the anti-2A crowd;

“For most of American history, gun ownership was understood to be a collective right tied to militia membership. But that changed in 2008, when The U.S. Supreme Court established for the first time that gun ownership is an individual right.”

In fact, American history—judicial and otherwise—is replete with proof that our Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment to protect an individual right to arms that is in no way dependent on citizens being affiliated with a militia.

While there have not been many rulings on the Second Amendment from our highest court since the Founding Era, in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894) and U.S. v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court recognized that the amendment protects an individual right. It has never taken a different position.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that anti-gun fanatics would ignore history and court precedent to further their desire to disarm as many law-abiding Americans as possible. But the rewriting of history is something we’ve begun to see as a weirdly-common trope with those who oppose the Second Amendment.

The Trace, seemingly fixated on the Heller decision and the year 2008, implies the ruling led to that “unprecedented gun sales boom” mentioned in the title of its fifth episode of the propaganda podcast series. One of the “journalists” is so vested in this new “gun sales boom” connection to Heller that she forgets that last year she seemed to attribute the 2008 “boom” in the manufacture and importation of firearms in the U.S. to the election of Barrack Obama. In that earlier piece, she went with the term “surge” instead of “boom,” and attributed another “surge” between 2011 and 2012 to Obama’s reelection, then attributed another “surge” from 2015 to 2016 to the election of Donald Trump, and finally noted the “biggest year-over-year jump on record” was between 2019 and 2020. That “surge” she attributes to the pandemic.

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One Million Gun Sales for 58 Months Straight.

May marked the 58th month in a row that the number of firearms sold—as reflected by the volume of National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) requests processed by the FBI—exceeded one million. The news wasn’t all good, though. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) estimates, based on NICS figures, that sales decreased by 7.2 percent when compared to purchases made in May of 2023.

The total number of firearms sold last month nationwide came in at roughly 1,089,117, according to NSSF’s figures. During the same reporting period in 2023 the total was 1,174,142.

Declines in demand are frequent this year as a new normalcy returns after the pandemic buying boom. Comparing April’s 2024 and 2023 figures, for example, the drop was more significant at 11.2 percent, according to NSSF’s calculations. Volumes were estimated at 1,442,061, respectively. In February, however, decline was only .01 percent.

It’s important to keep in mind 24 states currently have at least one qualified alternative permit, which under the Brady Act allows the permit-holder—who has undergone a background check to obtain the permit—to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer without a separate additional background check for that transfer. The number of NICS checks in these states does not include these legal transfers based on qualifying permits and NSSF does not adjust for these transfers.

The adjusted NICS data were derived by subtracting NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks, as well as checks on active CCW permit databases. Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions. In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions for sales or transfers of new or used firearms.

With a contentious Presidential election on the horizon, enthusiasts can expect to see an increase in foot traffic through the doors of their favorite FFLs as sales rebound toward November.

misconstrue:
verb
To interpret erroneously…

erroneously:
adverb
In a way that is wrong or false…

Nothing out of the ordinary for demoncraps

Critics Fundamentally Misconstrue the Supreme Court’s Bump Stock Ruling

After the Supreme Court overturned the Trump administration’s bump stock ban last week, critics complained that the justices had interpreted the Second Amendment in a way that rules out perfectly reasonable gun regulations.

That was an odd complaint, because the case did not involve the Second Amendment.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) saw last week’s decision as a sign that the Supreme Court plans to “fundamentally rewrite the Second Amendment,” which will “make it very hard for Congress or state legislatures to be able to regulate guns.” MSNBC commentator Joyce Vance had a similar objection: “Does the history & tradition of our country really suggest the Founding Fathers meant for the 2nd Amendment to arm Americans with guns that fire 400 to 800 rounds per minute?”

Although Murphy is a lawyer and Vance is a law professor, they completely misconstrued what this case was about. The Supreme Court ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its statutory authority when it tried to ban bump stocks.

The products the ATF targeted are designed to assist bump firing, which involves pushing a rifle forward to activate the trigger by bumping it against a stationary finger, then allowing recoil energy to push the rifle backward, resetting the trigger. As long as the shooter maintains the requisite amount of forward pressure and keeps their finger in place, the rifle will fire repeatedly.

The “interpretive rule” at issue in this case, which was published in Dec. 2018 and took effect three months later, banned stock replacements that facilitate this rapid-firing technique by allowing the rifle’s receiver to slide back and forth. The ATF did that by classifying rifles equipped with bump stocks as machine guns, which contradicted the statutory definition and the agency’s long-standing interpretation of it.

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Even CDC Admits Latest Anti-gun Report is Misleading and Full of Holes

SAF Investigative Journalism Project

Three teenage girls were alone in their Lawrence County, Kentucky home one hot summer day in 2019.

Suddenly, a white car pulled up and two men got out. One man started kicking in the front door. The second suspect circled around to the backyard and began breaking out a window with a shovel. The youngest of the girls, who was 14-years old at the time, found and loaded the family’s 9mm pistol and fired a round at one of the suspects, who both quickly left.

In 2021, a 12-year-old boy armed himself after two masked home invaders broke into his grandmother’s home demanding money. One of the suspects shot the 73-year-old woman, which prompted the youth to return fire in self-defense. Police later found one of the suspects curled up on his side in an intersection near the home. He was transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The grandmother survived her wounds.

In February, a 14-year-old Houston-area teen fired six rounds at an intruder who was trying to break into his home through the front door. Police found the suspect, who was wearing gloves and carrying a backpack, in the front yard where he was pronounced dead.

None of these defensive gun usages or any others were even mentioned in a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which purported to examine firearm storage data behaviors. Defensive gun usages weren’t the only data set omitted from the report. The CDC needed so many disclosures and disclaimers to tell readers what other data was missing from its research that it’s a miracle the report even was published.

The report, titled “Firearm Storage Behaviors — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Eight States, 2021–2022,” was based on telephone interviews. The researchers called the respondents using a “random-digit–dialed landline and mobile telephone survey.” However, the authors immediately encountered four significant problems that limited the validity of their work:

  1. They were unable to determine whether firearms were stored loaded or unloaded during the phone interviews.
  2. They were only able to obtain data from the eight states, which is statistically meaningless.
  3. Some respondents did not want to disclose whether they had a firearm in their home.
  4. All of the data was self-reported to the researchers, and therefore “subject to social desirability and recall biases.”

As a result, the findings were statistical gibberish. In the handful of states that participated, the authors concluded, “18.4% – 50.6% of respondents reported the presence of a firearm in or around their home, and 19.5% – 43.8% of those with a firearm reported that at least one firearm was stored loaded.”

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6-3 with the 3 dissenters being exactly who you think they’d be.

Bump Stock Ban Tossed Out by Supreme Court in Gun-Rights Win

A divided US Supreme Court dealt a fresh blow to firearm-regulation efforts by throwing out the federal ban on bump stocks, the attachments that let a semiautomatic rifle fire at speeds rivaling a machine gun.

On a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, the justices voided a criminal prohibition put in place by the Trump administration after the 2017 Las Vegas concert massacre, when a man using bump stocks killed 60 people. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The case is one of two firearms disputes the court is considering in its 2023-24 term, along with a constitutional clash over the federal gun ban for people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders. The bump-stock fight concerned the reach of a federal statute rather than the Second Amendment, the constitutional provision the court has used to expand gun rights in recent years.

A 1986 law bars most people from owning fully automatic machine guns or parts designed to convert weapons into machine guns. The issue was whether bump stocks meet the law’s definition of machine guns as weapons that can “automatically” discharge more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court majority.

Bump stocks replace the standard stock on a rifle — the part that rests against the shooter’s shoulder — with a plastic casing that lets the weapon slide forward and backward. The device harnesses the recoil energy when a shot is fired, causing the gun to slide backward and separate from the trigger finger. The separation lets the firing mechanism reset.

By applying constant forward pressure with the non-trigger hand, the shooter can then force the rifle forward so that it “bumps” the trigger finger, even without moving the finger.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter,” Sotomayor wrote for the group. She took the unusual step of reading a summary of her dissent from the bench for emphasis.

The case is Garland v. Cargill, 22-976.

 

Federal Judge Vacates ATF Rule on Pistol Braces

We’re still waiting to see what the Supreme Court does in Rahimi and Cargill, but gun owners did get some very good news from the federal courts on Thursday. A U.S. District Judge in Texas has vacated the ATF’s rule treating pistols equipped with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles; granting relief not only for the named plaintiffs involved in the litigation, but for every gun owner across the country who owns a brace.

In his decision, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the ATF’s rule treating most pistol braces as accessories that turn pistols into SBRs violated the Administrative Procedures Act in a number of ways.

For close to a decade, the ATF concluded that “attaching the brace to a firearm does not alter the classification of the firearm or subject the firearm to NFA control.” The ATF changed course on this position for the first time in 2023, when it issued the Final Rule reversing the agency’s otherwise long-standing policy.

“When an agency changes course, as [the ATF] did here, it must ‘be cognizant that longstanding policies may have engendered serious reliance interests that must be taken into account.’” Dep’t of Homeland Sec. v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal., 591 U.S. 1, 30 (2020) (quoting Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 579 U. S. 211, 222 (2016)). “It would be arbitrary and capricious to ignore such matters” Id. But this is exactly what Defendants did when they inexplicably and fundamentally switched their position on stabilizing braces without providing sufficient explanations and notice.

Under the Final Rule, the ATF estimated about 99% of pistols with stabilizing braces would be reclassified as NFA rifles. The ATF contemporaneously issued approximately sixty adjudications pursuant to the Final Rule that reclassified different configurations of firearms with stabilizing braces as NFA rifles.

The ATF provided no explanations for how the agency came to these classifications and there is no “meaningful clarity about what constitutes an impermissible stabilizing brace.” Mock, 75 F.4th at 585 (5th Cir. 2023). In fact, the Fifth Circuit “[could not] find a single given example of a pistol with a stabilizing brace that would constitute an NFA exempt braced pistol.” Id. at 575. Such “‘unexplained’ and ‘inconsistent’ positions” are arbitrary and capricious. R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. v. FDA, 65 F.4th 182, 191 (5th Cir. 2023) (quoting Encino Motorcars, 579 U.S. at 222).

The Defendants’ disregard for the principles of fair notice and consideration of reliance interests is further exacerbated by its failure to follow the APA’s procedural requirements for public notice and comment. As discussed above, Defendants failed to follow proper notice-and comment procedures because the Proposed Rule and the Final Rule differed in immense ways.

O’Connor also held that the ATF’s final rule on stabilizing braces was “impermissibly vague”, noting that while the ATF developed a worksheet that ostensibly allows gun owners to see if their brace-equipped pistol falls under the rule, the ATF itself still has “complete discretion to use a subjective balancing test to weigh six opaque factors on an invisible scale” to determine the legality of a brace-equipped pistol.

Consequently, the Court finds that the Final Rule’s six factor test is so impermissibly vague that it “provides no meaningful clarity about what constitutes an impermissible stabilizing brace,” and, thus, that “it is nigh impossible for a regular citizen to determine what constitutes a braced pistol” that “requires NFA registration.” Id. at 584–85. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED and Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED as to this issue.

This is a big win for the Firearms Policy Coalition and their co-plaintiffs in the case, and it should provide some meaningful protection for the immediate future. The DOJ will almost certainly appeal O’Connor’s decision, but Merrick Garland and company aren’t likely to find a lot of allies in support of the rule at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which would be the next stop for the case. Garland could try to appeal directly to the Supreme Court on the issue, but SCOTUS has been reluctant to hear interlocutory appeals from gun owners in the two years since Bruen, and there’s no guarantee the Court would take up Mock v. Garland before the Fifth Circuit has a chance to weigh in on O’Connor’s decision.

For the time being, the rule is dead. And depending on what the Supreme Court does with the Cargill case, it might not be the only ATF rule to succumb to court scrutiny this week. SCOTUS is scheduled to release more decisions from this term on Friday, and the challenge to the bump stock ban could be among the cases that are decided this week.

U.S. VIOLENT CRIME DROPS AS GUN OWNERSHIP CLIMBS, NOTES CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – New FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 shows violent crime dropped by more than 15 percent from the same period last year, at a time when U.S. gun ownership has continued to rise, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says this is more evidence widespread gun ownership is not the cause of crime.

“More guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens is probably a deterrent,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Recent data shows a 6.7 percent increase in gun ownership between 2017 and 2023, and during that period, gun ownership among women went up 13.6 percent.”

According to an FBI announcement, “A comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.”

“This is a significant report,” Gottlieb stated, “because it literally destroys a myth that has been perpetuated for years by the gun prohibition lobby, that more guns results in more violent crime. Today, 29 states have passed laws eliminating the need for permits to carry firearms for personal protection, yet crime is down. More than 21 million Americans are licensed to carry, according to the most recent available data, suggesting they aren’t a problem, but might be part of the solution.”

The data covers the months of January through March. Attorney General Merrick Garland noted this new data on the decline in homicide “does not represent abstract statistics.” The declines in violent and property crime have been seen in every region of the country.

“What this report shows is that blaming lawful gun ownership for violent crime is a non-starter, and it always has been,” Gottlieb said.

MA: Carry Permit Case Derived from Bruen Resolved in Favor of Plantiff

The Second Amendment case of Morin v Lyver, granted certiorai, vacated, and remanded back to the First Circuit, has been decided in favor of the plaintiff, Alfred Morin.

In June of 2022, the Supreme Court published clarification of how the Second Amendment should be treated by the Courts, in the Bruen decision. Bruen gave clear guidance on how Heller should be applied. This was necessary because the Circuit courts had created a complicated two step process which was used to side step the Heller decision. In Bruen, the court said the two step process was one too many. The Court laid out a simple process to judge Second Amendment cases. As a result of Bruen four pending cases were granted certiorari, vacated, and remanded back to their circuits for rehearing using the Bruen process. Morin v Lyver was one of the four cases. It was remanded back to the First Circuit on October 3, 2022.

Morin was severely victimized as an honest man attempting to follow the law. He suffered significant legal damage for the attempt. Morin had been issued a Massachusetts license to carry in 1985. He had grown accustomed to legally go about armed. He visited the District of Columbia, and was about to enter the Museum of Natural History when he noticed he was not allowed to carry firearms in the Museum. From casetext.com:

The Commonwealth issued Plaintiff a Class A license to carry firearms in 1985. His Class A license allowed him to carry a concealed firearm in public, and he had a habit of always carrying a loaded pistol on his person. In October 2004, Plaintiff drove from Massachusetts to Washington, DC, to visit his daughter.

Unaware that the District of Columbia would not recognize his Massachusetts license, he carried his pistol with him. While visiting the American Museum of Natural History during his trip, Plaintiff noticed a sign banning firearms. He approached a guard at the museum and asked to check his weapon. The guard contacted the police, who arrested Plaintiff and charged him with carrying a pistol without a license, possession of an unregistered firearm, and unlawful possession of ammunition.

Plaintiff pled guilty to attempting to carry a pistol without a license, in violation of D.C. Code § 22-3204(a)(1) (2004), and possession of an unregistered firearm, in violation of D.C. Code § 6-2376 (2004). (Docket No. 21-3). The court sentenced him to sixty days in prison on each count, to run concurrently, as well as three months of supervised probation and twenty hours of community service.

His prison sentence was suspended.

When Morin applied to have his carry permit renewed in 2008, he was denied because of the D.C. conviction. Morin appealed this decision all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Morin’s case became part of the legacy of the Bruen decision. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit sent the case back to the Massachusetts District Court.

Rather than re-hear the case, the Plaintiff (Alfred Morin) and the defendants (Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Police Chief William Lyber) agreed to a joint motion for judgement and proposed judgement. Plaintiff Morin would be issued a permit to purchase. The judgment was filed on March 3, 2023. From the Joint Motion for Judgement:

The parties agree that the Court should enter the following order of judgment in favor of Plaintiff:

Under the specific facts of this case and applicable law, including but not limited to New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), the limitations contained in G.L. c.140, § 131A to the extent it incorporates G.L. c. 140, § 131(d)(ii)(D), cannot properly be applied to Plaintiff, and Defendants should accordingly issue Plaintiff a permit to purchase pursuant to G.L. c.140, §131A.

Morin is the second  of the four cases which were granted certiorari, vacated, and remanded back to their circuits to reach a final judgement after Bruen.  Young v Hawaii  reached a settlement on December 15, 2022.  Duncan v Bonta is still in play in the Ninth Circuit. Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Inc v Grewal is ongoing in the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

 

The new Minutemen buy guns

As we approach 60 consecutive months of more than a million gun sales, it’s time to review the state of gun ownership in America, and enjoy the tears of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists.

According to a report by the National Sports Shooting Foundation (NSSF), the number of people who became first-time gun owners since 2020 has reportedly grown to over 22.3 million people, or the population of Florida.

Keep in mind every federal background check prior to purchase, can account for more than one gun. Why would so many Americans become new gun owners? In a word: Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) policies:

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Private school founder destroys every argument against arming teachers
Florida’s Inspiration Academy has had armed staff for more than a decade.

When Eddie and Claire Speir founded Inspiration Academy 11 years ago, not arming teachers wasn’t even a consideration.

“It was because of Columbine. We were in a spiritual war — we still are — and some people were crazy. We knew it was our duty to protect our students. Columbine changed a lot of things for educators,” Speir told the Second Amendment Foundation Tuesday.

Speir and his wife retired and moved to Florida in 2013 after selling their Colorado-based software firm. “But God had other plans,” Speir said. The couple — with no formal background in education — launched Inspiration Academy, which began with just one paid employee.

Today, Speir has more than 200 students and dozens of teachers, coaches and other professionals. His staff is armed and dedicated to protecting their students.

“We, by God’s grace, look for and develop teachers with high character who would be honored and are prepared to give their lives for our students,” Speir said. “It’s shameful that every superintendent doesn’t feel the same way and develop a culture that reflects this attitude.”

The gun-ban industry has strong opinions about armed teachers, but they have no facts or data to support their arguments and certainly no actual experience. Speir has worked with an armed teaching staff for more than a decade, which makes him one of the country’s leading subject matter experts.

Inspiration Academy’s sprawling 30-acre campus, which is located in Manatee County, Florida, includes state-of-the-art classrooms and elite sports facilities. (Photo courtesy Inspiration Academy).

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Why It’s Never Just About the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. They were ratified when the ink was only just dried, in part because the Founding Fathers recognized that absent certain protections, some rights would be tempting to infringe upon.

The First Amendment protects pretty much every form of speech and keeps the government from having a state religion, which would arguably be another way to control speech.

The Second Amendment is the insurance policy that makes sure we can protect all the other rights from a tyrannical government. After all, a document isn’t going to be sufficient to deter a tyrant, as we well know.

And that brings me to the recent win before the Supreme Court by the NRA. While the matter is far from settled, it’s clear that the justices were less than pleased by the attack on free speech by a New York state official.

In the process, we can see how rights complement one another, which is why they all need protection.

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Number Of First-Time Gun Owners Since 2020 Now Equals Population Of Florida

There has been a drastic surge in the number of Americans becoming first-time gun owners over the past four years according to a press release.

The National Sports Shooting Foundation (NSSF) pointed to data showing a major trend in gun ownership. The number of people who became first-time gun owners since 2020 has reportedly grown to over 22.3 million people, which is equal to the population of Florida.

The impetus behind the rapid increase in first-time gun ownership is attributed to numerous factors, including COVID-era lockdown measures, soft-on-crime prosecutors and skyrocketing violent crime rates, according to the NSSF.

The report highlights Chris Cheng, a competitive shooting champion who testified before Congress about the rise in gun ownership.

“The past year-and-a-half or so with COVID-19 has been a pressure cooker … When you couple that with calls to defund the police and taking law enforcement officers off the street … it makes citizens like me less safe,” Cheng said during his testimony, according to the report. “If I can’t have law enforcement there, then it is a rational conclusion that individual citizens like myself would opt to utilize my Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm and use that firearm in lawful and legal self-defense.”

More than 52% of American voters indicated that they or someone in their home owns a firearm, according to an NBC News national poll released in November 2023. Researchers also found that 48% of firearm owners were concerned that the government would not take enough action to restrict access to firearms while 47% worried that the state would go too far in regulating guns.

SCOTUS asked to hear challenge to New York’s concealed carry law

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to hear a legal challenge to New York’s sweeping 2022 gun control law, which sets limits on who can get concealed carry permits.

A lawsuit filed by a New York gun owner challenges the state’s new restrictions barring gun owners from carrying weapons in parks, bars and other “sensitive” locations and requiring them to demonstrate “good moral character” to get a gun permit.

In December, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower federal court decision that had gutted the law, which set a list of public areas where firearms are not permitted. The three-judge panel lifted that order, saying most of the gun law’s restrictions were consistent with the country’s history of regulating firearms in public areas.

But the plaintiff in the new legal challenge ripped the 2nd Circuit’s decision, arguing in the 38-page complaint that it was based on flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment’s requirements.

Arkansas Supreme Court sanctions Pulaski County circuit judge over ruling on guns in courthouses.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Friday rebuked Pulaski County Circuit Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch for violating rules of the Code of Judicial Conduct that require judges to promote confidence in the judiciary, demonstrate impartiality and act without bias.

The written admonishment comes in the form of an unsigned order that requires Welch to take a six-week online judicial ethics course by the end of July plus complete another three hours of ethics training before October. . . .

“Labeling and referring to an opinion by the Supreme Court of Arkansas as ‘LOCO’ erodes public confidence. His written opinion stating that the Supreme Court’s opinion ‘creates a new class of unlicensed, heretofore untrained, armed lawyers in courthouses of the State’ also erodes public confidence. To suggest that this court created a class of armed lawyers is dangerous, and it undermines the public’s understanding of the judiciary’s role,” the order states. “We interpret laws, we do not make them, and Judge Welch’s suggestion to the contrary damages the public’s view of the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary.”

The LOCO label was found to be a violation of Rule 2.3, a prohibition against showing bias or prejudice. The order invokes a ban on negative stereotyping while noting his duties include conducting commitment hearings in mental-health court.

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See for Yourself if Guns Cause Murder

Gun prohibitionists say that gun-control works. They say gun-control laws reduce the number of guns possessed by law-abiding gun owners. They say that is good because guns cause crime. In particular, they say that guns cause extremely violent crimes like murder. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that we can find out. Countries have different cultures and different rules about owning guns. That leads to different rates of gun ownership. Different countries also have different murder rates. Put them together and we can see if guns cause crime.

The data isn’t as good as we’d like it to be. The last comprehensive international data on gun ownership was from the Small Arms Survey of 2017. People can update their estimates based on trends. That isn’t the same as real survey data taken in the last few years. The other data on murder is from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Study on Homicide. About half the countries are missing when we look at the data on murder rates. Japan and France are glaring examples. I asked a demographer/sociologist about that missing data. She said that many countries do a poor job of sorting out murder, suicide, and defensive homicide. In a perfect study, we’d have worldwide survey data taken in the same year. We don’t have that. It turns out that those small errors don’t matter in the slightest.

Let’s look at the original claims by gun prohibitionists. They said that guns cause crime. More guns cause more crime and fewer guns cause less crime. A simplified version of that data would look like this. Here is what the murder rate would look like when we plot it against the rate of gun-ownership.

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That isn’t what we see when we look at real data. To be fair, we wouldn’t expect real data to look like that. Many factors influence the murder rate. The most obvious is that we’ve been killing each other long before guns were invented. There is a baseline rate of murder even if there were no guns to be found. Sociologists have looked at rates of crime to find that income, upward income mobility, marriage rate, age of family formation, and rule of law are a few of the most significant factors. We find that other factors dominate the effect of gun ownership when we look at the 70 countries for which we have data.

Here is the plot of the gun ownership rate versus the murder rate. (Guns per 100 people versus the number of murders per 100k people)

We get a slight negative correlation with gun ownership in fact. That is probably an income effect. You need to be relatively affluent to own lots of guns. That wealth comes with high rates of employment and the rule of law. That doesn’t look significant to me.

Say what you will, the gun-ownership effect on murder isn’t there. We also see countries with very low rates of gun-ownership and frighteningly high murder rates. Violent crime has many causes. More importantly, we see countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates. Those examples show that firearms ownership is not a significant cause of murder. The obvious question is what that means.

I’m a retired engineer rather than a PhD criminologist. I spent an hour putting the data together. If I figured out that guns ownership has an insignificant effect on the murder rate then so did the researchers paid for by anti-gun billionaires. This data means that they knew. It means they lied to please the people who paid them.

Hack through enough datasets and you can find the effect you want. Shame on them. Also, shame on us for giving them any attention and not checking for ourselves.

Please evaluate the data on your own if you think that I’m wrong. Here are the datasets I used. How hard did you need to torture the data to show that guns cause crime?

Sources-

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
(2022)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country
(2024)