Category: RKBA

Prophecy and mythology.

The word “debunked” gets thrown around an awful lot by the leftist media, and it’s amazing how often it really boils down to “we said it’s false and that’s all you need to know.”

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Now, if the media were trustworthy, that might be enough. If someone is worthy of trust, you can take their word at face value. The phrase “trust me, bro,” isn’t needed when someone is trusted.

But I came across a story earlier today that, frankly, highlights how the leftist media’s myths can, in fact, be prophecy.

In 2009, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin created a sensation when she claimed that government-run healthcare would inevitably lead to the creation of bureaucratic boards responsible for deciding who should and shouldn’t receive treatment.

It’s from this charge that we got the term “death panel,” which became a near constant reference during the congressional debate over the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Palin was called a loon and a crank.

Even today, a simple search on Microsoft’s Copilot for the date when the former governor coined the term “death panel” carefully notes that her accusation quickly became a viral talking point despite “being widely debunked as a myth.”

Fifteen years after Palin’s remark, disability advocate Krista Carr testified before members of the Canadian parliament that her organization receives weekly reports of medical assistance in dying (MAID) services being suggested unprompted to disabled individuals during routine, non-terminal care visits.

Who could have predicted that government-controlled healthcare, combined with legalized euthanasia, would eventually lead to the sick and uncomfortable being told to kill themselves?

Where does Palin go for her apology?

Palin was a flawed candidate, whom I mocked at the time as well, but on this, she was right. While there may not be an express panel simply deciding who lives and who dies, the fact that Canada, with its socialized healthcare system, finds it cheaper to kill patients rather than treat them, so they suggest suicide.

How is that better than simply denying treatment so people can waste away slowly? Is it a bit more humane? That depends on your perspective, but the point is that they’re still trying to use MAID to rid their system of people who require more care and, as a result, cost more money.

This was “debunked as a myth,” but that “myth” was nothing of the sort.

It’s like how the media keeps trying to claim that gun bans aren’t on the table simply because a candidate isn’t expressly talking about them at that particular moment.

When anyone on the right makes a logical inference on the result of a given policy, even if it’s not expressly spelled out as such in the proposals being discussed, the media turns to the text and calls BS, even if anyone with half a brain can see where that’s coming from.

It’s not that different than CNN calling Minnesota day cares and reporting that the one that answered the phone said it was legit, so everything Nick Shirley uncovered was debunked.

To call it asinine is too mild a term for this level of vile.

The truth is that while I’m a big fan of pointing out when the Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head, there are many times we can see those consequences coming from a mile away.

Like “death panels” being the ultimate result of state-run healthcare. Like gun control’s failures eventually leading to a proposal for banning firearms almost entirely. Like making fraud easy results in fraud.

The difference between the mythology of Palin’s warning and what we can now see was clearly prophecy is a matter of time.

Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no mainstream coverage of the supposed prophecies of how the Bruen decision was going to lead to more homicides on our streets, which has now been debunked not by the media but by history.

Violent crime is down. Homicides are down. “Mass shootings” are down. Everything is down compared to where it was when Bruen was decided.

Nothing they said would happen actually happened, but they don’t talk about that being “debunked.” That would mean acknowledging that their buddies were wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

It’s like the prophecies of climate change. Every model is, in essence, an attempt at prophecy, though one based on supposed science rather than mysticism. Yet those models have a track record that would only be improved if they relied on pig entrails or tarot cards.

Those are never framed as “debunked,” either.

Weird, isn’t it?

The difference between mythology and prophecy, at least in this context, is nothing more than the media’s continued fixation on advancing leftist policies, downplaying anyone on the right, and otherwise being anything but the journalists they want us to believe they are.

California ban on open-carry firearms is unconstitutional, appeals panel rules

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that California’s ban on openly carrying a firearm throughout most of the state is unconstitutional.

The decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaned heavily on the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a New York state law regulating concealed weapons. That ruling worried lawmakers in California at the time – including the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said the 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision meant “more people will carry guns in bars, in shopping malls, in churches, hospitals, movie theaters, even schools.”

“We are committed to defending California’s commonsense gun laws,” according to a written statement from the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta in response to Friday’s appellate court ruling. “We are reviewing the opinion and considering all options.”

The 9th Circuit appellate decision stemmed from a civil rights lawsuit filed by Mark Baird of Siskiyou County. Baird argued in Sacramento federal court that he wished to openly carry a firearm for self-defense throughout California, but the state’s ban made it illegal in counties with populations exceeding 200,000 residents.

U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who wrote the appellate panel’s opinion, said the most recent Census shows that California counties with more than 200,000 residents are home to roughly 95% of the state’s population. There are 28 of California’s 58 counties have a population above the threshold, accounting for 37.3 million residents. Only 5% of California’s population for whom open carry is not outright banned, VanDyke said, are purportedly able to apply for a license that would allow them to open carry in just their counties.

VanDyke said openly carrying a gun has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms for most of American history. When applying the standard set in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, VanDyke said the historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition.”

VanDyke, appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, said open carry remains the norm across the country with more than 30 states that generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations.

“Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California,” VanDyke wrote. “From 1850, when California first became a state, until the Mulford Act of 1967, public carry of firearms in California (open or concealed) was entirely unregulated. And when California first deviated (or considered deviating) from this practice, its reasons for doing so were less than morally exemplary.”

U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith provided a partial dissenting opinion, arguing that California’s ban complied with the 2022 Supreme Court decision. Smith, who was appointed in 2007 by former President George W. Bush, said his colleagues “got this case half right” but misread the Supreme Court’s ruling on the New York state gun law.

VanDyke was joined in his opinion by another Trump appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee, also appointed by Trump in 2019. VanDyke said California law recognizes two methods to carry a firearm in public: concealed, such as hidden under a shirt and not visible to others, and open carry, such as visible in a holster and exposed to public view.

“Regardless of how a firearm is carried in California – concealed or openly – as a general matter it is unlawful under California law to publicly carry a firearm without a license to do so,” VanDyke wrote. “The reality is that no one in California can open carry – with or without a permit – in the counties where 95% of Californians live. Nor can the 95% of Californians who live in those urban counties get any open-carry permit at all, even to carry openly in one of California’s rural counties.”

For now, the ban remains in place and the case was remanded to Sacramento federal court with instructions to rule in favor of Baird on the open-carry ban. Bonta and his office have the option to request an en banc review from the full 9th Circuit.

Bondi is wrong. The Trump DOJ is wrong. The 2nd amendment protects Arms, not just guns. That includes guns, knives, swords, bows and arrows.

BLUF
The Bigger Issue
This case is not really about knives.
It is about whether the Second Amendment is a principle or a policy tool.
If “arms” means only modern firearms — and only when politically expedient — then the amendment has already been hollowed out.
If it means what it says, then the government does not get to pick winners and losers based on aesthetics, mechanics, or public discomfort.

The courts will decide this case.

But the DOJ has already made its position clear — and it should concern anyone who takes the Second Amendment at face value.

Trump DOJ Says the Second Amendment Protects Guns, But Not Knives

The phrase “shall not be infringed” has a way of revealing who actually believes it — and who only supports it when it is politically convenient.

That tension is now on full display inside the Trump Administration itself.

While the Department of Justice has aggressively challenged gun control laws in blue states and territories, it is simultaneously telling federal courts that the Second Amendment does not protect switchblade knives. According to the DOJ, Americans may have a constitutional right to own AR-15s and carry handguns, but automatic knives are a bridge too far.

That position has landed the administration squarely at odds with Second Amendment advocates — and exposed a familiar fault line in how the federal government treats “arms” it finds uncomfortable.

The Case at the Center of the Fight

The issue is playing out in Knife Rights v. Bondi, a case currently before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Knife Rights, a national advocacy group, is challenging the constitutionality of the Federal Switchblade Act — a 1958 law that restricts interstate commerce in automatic knives and bans their possession on certain federal, tribal, and territorial lands.

Rather than backing the challenge, the Trump DOJ is defending the law.

In its appellate brief, the Department argues that switchblade knives are “well-suited to criminal misuse” and fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment altogether. According to the government, history supports broad regulation of “inherently concealed” weapons, and automatic knives fall under that category.

The DOJ’s conclusion is blunt: there is no constitutional right to carry or possess them.

A Narrow View of “Arms”

To justify its position, the Justice Department leaned heavily on 19th-century laws regulating the concealed carry of weapons such as Bowie knives, dirks, daggers, and pocket pistols. Those laws, the DOJ argues, demonstrate a long-standing tradition of restricting weapons deemed particularly suitable for concealment.

According to the brief, the Federal Switchblade Act fits neatly within that tradition because it targets only knives whose blades are concealed inside the handle and deploy automatically. Fixed-blade knives, the DOJ noted, remain unregulated under federal law.

In the Department’s view, that distinction is enough to survive constitutional scrutiny.

What the DOJ did not address is why concealability alone strips an object of Second Amendment protection — especially when concealed carry of firearms is now constitutionally protected nationwide.

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Montana Accidentally Made Things Right on Gun-Free School Zones

I don’t think that schools should be totally gun-free zones. While I get that Bruen said that sensitive places could be gun-free, and schools are probably about as sensitive a place as you can name, I don’t think that barring lawful carry in schools for staff and parents is a winning strategy. After all, how many school shootings have we seen despite the schools having this status?

Yeah, plenty.

But the truth is that in most places, schools are as off-limits as they come. At least they are when it’s K-12 schools. Colleges are a different matter in many states, but below that level? The rules are firm.

And those rules include a “buffer zone” of sorts that prohibits the carrying of firearms around the school, regardless of most any other factor.

And Montana accidentally exposed a loophole and made things right, even if that’s not quite what they were trying to do.

Sometimes the most consequential gun control stories don’t start with a bill banning firearms. They start with lawmakers trying to expand freedom — and discovering that the Constitution doesn’t bend the way critics expect it to.

That is exactly what just happened in Montana.

In an effort to strengthen the right to carry, Montana lawmakers may have effectively erased gun-free school zones everywhere except on school property itself. Not through activism. Not through litigation designed to gut federal law. But through their own permitless carry statutes — and a federal court noticed.

The result is a ruling that has left gun-control advocates furious, school administrators uneasy, and Second Amendment supporters pointing out an inconvenient truth: when the state recognizes the right to carry as a right, federal carve-outs start to fall apart.

It all boils down to a guy who would go for a walk near a school. Sometimes, he’d carry a gun openly, and other times, it would be concealed. Local police told the school that he wasn’t breaking any state law, so they couldn’t do anything about it. The school moved kids away from the man and tried to erect visual barriers so no one would see him.

Eventually, the feds stepped in, arrested him, and saw the whole thing thrown out.

Why?

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because Montana statutorily authorizes concealed carry for eligible citizens, those citizens qualify for the federal licensing exception.

In plain terms: if everyone is licensed by law, then everyone qualifies for the exemption.

The court dismissed the charges and made it clear that the outcome wasn’t an accident; it was the logical result of Montana’s legislative choices.

The ruling emphasized that Montana did not delegate licensing authority to agencies or local officials. The Legislature itself granted the authority. Congress, the court said, did not clearly prohibit states from doing that.

As a result of that ruling, though, gun-free school zones are confined exclusively to the school itself, not the area around the school.

If schools are going to be gun-free zones, this is how it should be. The idea that the area around the school is also gun-free is a major problem because, frankly, people travel by those schools all the time. They have to in order to get to where they’re going, and unless they’re licensed under state law, they may be committing a felony.

The “buffer zone” thing has always been wrong, but Montana accidentally fixed it for residents there. Instead of just saying a license isn’t needed, they licensed everyone, which had an unintended but positive effect regarding the whole school zone thing.

Maybe other states should address this via their own constitutional carry laws. Most didn’t take quite the same approach as Montana, but they could make that happen and change things once and for all.

It would be a win for gun rights, sanity, and everything else decent in the universe, and the anti-gunners would still have their allegedly gun-free schools.

Again, not that it seems to do much good.

California: Background Check Requirement for Gun Barrel Sales Takes Effect January 1, 2026

California’s narrowing of gun barrel sales to licensed dealers only and background check requirement for said sales takes effect January 1, 2026.

Breitbart News reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed the gun barrel controls on October 10, 2025, noting that the new law “will require all gun barrel sales to be conducted by licensed firearms dealers, mandating that said dealers conduct an ‘eligibility check’ before selling a barrel.”

The language of the bill makes clear that a five dollar fee will be added to each barrel sale to cover the cost of the “eligibility check.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta put out a press release noting that the gun barrel controls take effect January 1, 2026, noting that the new law updates the definitions of “Firearm Accessory” and “Firearm Manufacturing Machine.”

Moreover, the new controls include an “updated definition and cause of action for unlawful distribution of digital firearm manufacturing code to unlicensed individuals” and create a “new criminal offense and civil cause of action for facilitating, or causing another person to engage in, the unlawful manufacture of firearms.”

If a barrel is purchased online, the new law requires that the “seller…ship the barrel to a licensed firearms dealer in California to complete the in-person transaction and final delivery pursuant to section 33700 of the Penal Code (codified by SB 704).”

California has more gun control than any other state in the Union, yet the FBI noted that California led the nation in “active shooter incidents” 2020-2024.

Grassroots Legislative Update—December 29, 2025

By Tanya Metaksa

HAPPY NEW YEAR

What’s New—2025 Legislative Summary Part I, Legislative Sessions; The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia-April 4; Idaho-April 4; Indiana-April 24; Kentucky-March 28; Maryland-April 7; Mississippi-April 3; 2026 Pre-Legislative Action-Florida; Carry-over action-Michigan; New Jersey; North Carolina;

State Legislative 2025 Summary  (Part I, Part II next week)

The following states are still in SESSION:

Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin

The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia: April 4; Idaho, April 4; Indiana April 24; Kentucky: March 28; Maryland: April 7; Mississippi: April 3;

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Lysander Spooner: The Second Amendment Isn’t the Ceiling — It’s the Basement Floor

Most “pro-2A” people treat the Second Amendment as if it were the ceiling of our rights.
Lysander Spooner read it and laughed. To him it was the basement floor of a natural right that no government on earth can legitimately restrict.

Who Was Lysander Spooner?

1808–1887. Lawyer, abolitionist, individualist anarchist. A man who made the Founders look like moderates.

Spooner in His Own Words

On the natural right to arms (completely independent of any constitution):

“The right of self-defence is the first law of nature… The right to keep and bear arms is only a declaration that this natural right shall not be infringed.”
— A Letter to Charles Sumner (1860s)

On what happens when the people are disarmed:

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it… All restraints upon the government are inefficient, unless the people are in possession of the means of resisting it.”
— No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)

On the purpose of an armed populace:

“The right of the individual to keep and bear arms… is the great bulwark against tyranny, the only efficient security for the preservation of liberty.”
— Vices Are Not Crimes (1875, manuscript)

On the idea that citizens should be limited to “sporting” arms while government has military weapons:

“A man’s right to defend his life and liberty is as perfect against a thousand as against one… He has the same right to whatever weapons are necessary for that defense that the government has to whatever weapons it may choose to use against him.”

On every gun law ever written:

“All legislatures… that assume to enact laws forbidding or restricting the people in the exercise of their natural right to keep and bear arms, are guilty of usurpation and tyranny.”
— Direct paraphrase from multiple Spooner writings, crystallized in No Treason and his legal essays

Tucker vs. Spooner

St. George Tucker (1803):

“The several departments and officers of the governments… are bound by oath to oppose [unconstitutional acts]; for, being bound by oath to support the constitution, they must violate that oath, whenever they give their sanction… to any unconstitutional act.”

Spooner went further: the unconstitutional gun laws themselves are acts of war against the people, and armed resistance against their enforcers is morally justified.

The Spooner Standard

“If the people are to retain their liberty, they must be at least as well armed and disciplined as the government that rules over them.”
— Consistent theme across No Treason and his abolitionist writings

If you still think “reasonable regulations” are compatible with liberty, you’re closer to Everytown than you are to Lysander Spooner.

Read him.
Burn every compromise to the ground.
Own what your rulers own — in the same quantities, or more.

Because the moment you accept anything less, the experiment in liberty is already over.

 

Anti-liberty/gun cracktivist’s
By Mike McDaniel

Some things, death and taxes among them, never change. In the same category are the specious arguments of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists. Whenever a horrific crime like a mass shooting occurs, they blame the gun and the Americans who would never commit such a crime.

They also have additional narratives they hope Americans can be tricked into believing, such as virtually every mass attack is carried out by white men, all of whom are domestic terrorist, racist, transphobic white supremacist, Ultra-MAGA, Nazi, haters determined to destroy “our democracy.”

One such cracktivist is apparently John Davenport:

Graphic: Fordham University Faculty Site. Public Domain.

Dr. Davenport tells us the idea of greater security for students and the public at large is a “fallacy,” and “would not make us much safer.” He should know.  He’s a professor of peace and justice studies, which obviously makes him an expert about peace and justice  and stuff.

Think about it for a minute. How much would it actually cost to put armed guards in every single store and restaurant, every 300 feet or so on beaches and at open air events, in every movie theater and every 200 feet at concerts, at every entrance to every building at any hospital, college, school, church, temple or mosque, at all streets junction where lots of traffic piles up – and so on?

Actually, he’s sort of right. In 2013 even the NRA was advocating armed guards in every school. The usual suspects were against that, and the idea eventually died because the costs were—and are—simply too high. The numbers aren’t exact, but there are more than 110,000 K-12 public and private schools in America.  missiongraduatenm.org/number-of-schools-in-the-us/  Putting even one, full-time armed guard in each school is prohibitively expensive, and far more than one would be necessary.

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I don’t understand Lowy’s particular brand of stupid, but I do admire his total commitment to it.

Anti-Gun Attorney Behind Mexico’s Lawsuit Against Gun Makers Brings the Stupid Back to SCOTUS

Jonathan Lowy, the former litigator for Brady who’s now the head of something called Global Action on Gun Violence, was on the receiving end of a 9-0 Supreme Court decision against his client in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, where SCOTUS unanimously concluded that the Mexican government’s attempt to sue U.S. gunmakers for aiding and abetting cartel violence was not only foreclosed by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but was based on a number of implausible allegations that Lowy failed to prove.

Lowy gets good money from anti-gun groups like Everytown to tilt at windmills, though, so that embarrassing loss isn’t keeping him away from the Supreme Court. Global Action on Gun Violence recently submitted an amicus brief in Wolford v. Lopez arguing that Hawaii’s “vampire rule” prohibiting concealed carry on all private property unless property owners explicitly allow it should be upheld because SCOTUS was wrong in Heller when it concluded that the Second Amendment protects and individual right to keep and bear arms.

The Second Amendment uniquely states its“well-regulated militia” purpose in its text, and, for over two centuries, courts faithfully and consistently interpreted it in light of that text and purpose. In modern parlance, it was read, logically, as its author, James Madison, intended; essentially, “Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms in state militias shall not be infringed.” The history surrounding the Second Amendment’s drafting and ratification make clear that Madison and the other Framers were animated only by anti-federalist concerns that the new federal government could neuter state military forces.

… The Court in District of Columbia v. Heller replaced Madison’s vision with an ahistorical, atextual reading of the Second Amendment that renders its first half an inconvenient irrelevancy and injects a modern purpose of private, armed self defense with handguns that was nowhere mentioned in the Amendment’s text or history. After Heller, the courts have been required to interpret the Second Amendment essentially (and nonsensically) as:

“Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people (including those who have nothing to do with the militia and may even oppose the state) to possess arms for private self-defense (wholly unrelated to militias) shall not be infringed.” That interpretation is wrong.

Lowy’s argument was thoroughly rejected by the majority in Heller, which rightfully noted that the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment doesn’t make the right to keep and bear arms contingent on service in the militia.

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The Trace Finds ‘Hope’ in Doctor’s Idea to Cripple Gun Industry

While the staff of the Bloomberg-funded anti-gun website The Trace are scratching their heads over the “paradox” of steep declines in violent crime without steep reductions in lawful gun ownership, they’re also finding and embracing new gun control proposals that would cripple the firearms industry… and by extension, our right to keep and bear arms.

In The Trace’s look back at gun control efforts this year, the site proclaims that one of the things that gives their reporters “hope” in 2026 is a “Chicago doctor [who] has started a policy experiment that would compel gunmakers in Illinois pay into a compensation fund toward gun violence victims in order to get their state license.”

I wrote about this for our VIP members last month (and for the record, VIP, VIP Gold, and VIP Platinum memberships are currently 74% off when you use the promo code MERRY74, so now’s a great time to join), but in case you missed it, a Chicago doctor named Anthony Douglas is leading the push for a bill called “Responsibility in Firearm Legislation Act.”

Ironically, this bill is an irresponsible piece of legislation that seeks to hold gun companies financially responsible for the actions of violent criminals; not through civil lawsuits, which have long been a favorite tool for anti-gun advocates, but through state-level licensing for firearms manufacturers.

Illinois already requires federally licensed firearm retailers to get an Illinois license before they can operate, but the RIFL Act would impose a new licensing mandate on gun makers as well. And in order to get that license, manufacturers would have to agree to cough up money when one of hteir products is used in a crime. As The Trace describes Douglas’s plan:

Under the plan, a gun company’s annual contribution would scale with how often its firearms are recovered in fatal incidents, shootings, and suicides in Illinois. The more frequently a company’s guns are found to create public costs, the more it would pay. Hospitals could bill the new fund directly for health care costs after a firearm injury. Families could get help with lost wages, emergency relocation, child care, and transportation.

The compensation fund would also serve as a way to hold the gun industry financially accountable without litigation. Taking manufacturers to court rarely proves successful thanks to the gun industry’s broad legal immunity. For two decades, the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, has insulated gunmakers from most lawsuits over third‑party misuse of their products, meaning that the gun industry is rarely held financially responsible or forced to cover any costs, unlike other industries. The RIFL Act sidesteps that terrain by using a licensing fee to cover compensation instead of damages in court.

Supporters and the bill’s legislative sponsor say lawyers have reviewed the framework and believe it could withstand constitutional scrutiny, although they readily concede the industry would almost certainly sue. “Anything now can be argued in terms of constitutionality,” Douglas said, “but this is designed to avoid PLCAA.”

Yes, thankfully anything that impacts our right to keep and bear arms can be argued in terms of constitutionality, and Dr. Douglas’s big idea utterly fails, despite what anti-gun attorneys might claim.

This bill isn’t just a condition and qualification on the commercial sale of arms, which the Supreme Court said in Heller are “generally permitted”. It imposes a meaningful constraint on the ability to purchase firearms. Most, if not all, gun companies would simply boycott the Illinois market altogether rather than apply for a license that holds them financially responsible for the criminal misuse of their product, and that, in turn, would make it impossible for Illinois residents to lawfully acquire a firearm.

Douglas’s idea, just like California’s “1-in-30” gun rationing law struck down by the federal judiciary, flies in the face of the national tradition of gun ownership. As the Ninth Circuit wrote when upholding a district court decision that held the gun rationing law unconstitutional, “Bruen requires a ‘historical analogue, not a ‘historical twin,’ for a modern firearm regulation to pass muster. Here, the historical record does not even establish a historical cousin.”

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Why Did it Have to be … Guns?

L. Neil Smith –

Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.

If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude — toward your ownership and use of weapons — conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend — the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil — like “Constitutionalist” — when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath, isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician — or political philosophy — is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t have a gun — but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school — or the military? Isn’t it an essentially European notion, anyway — Prussian, maybe — and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust him? If he’s a man — and you’re not — what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If “he” happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn’t want you to have?

On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue — health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

But it isn’t true, is it?

Nope. Not going to agree to anything that will keep the NFRTR registration. If they want to tax sales of NFA firearms for medicare funding, do it like they do with Pittman-Robertson funding for wildlife restoration, an excise tax at the point of sale.

Health Care for Gun Rights? Bill Would Reverse Silencer Tax for Medicare Funds

A coalition of Democrat legislators is backing a move to rewind last summer’s repeal of the NFA tax on suppressors, short-barrel rifles, and similar items to fund their own health-care initiative.

These sponsors are backing the so-called Medicare Investment and Gun Violence Prevention Act, which would repeal the hard-fought removal of NFA taxes established by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. The scheme would then reinstitute the tax and direct the funds to pay for Medicare costs.

Current backers include Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and a host of blue-state senators like Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). They claim the re-removal of Americans’ gun rights would scrounge up some $1.7 billion in taxes over the next decade.

“This legislation is a 2-for-1 response to Republicans driving up health care costs and letting guns invade our communities,” claimed Sen. Alsobrooks. “When Republicans snuck in tax cuts to the Big Ugly Bill on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles, they made their position clear: guns matter more than Americans’ lives. At a time when health care costs are skyrocketing, and just days after yet another tragic school shooting, now is the time to act. Our bill will repeal the unnecessary tax cuts on deadly weapons and use the money saved for Americans’ health care, which has been decimated by Republicans.”

Of course, it is not “money saved,” as Sen. Alsobrooks claims. It is money taken, via a defunct tax mechanism, from Americans exercising their constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights. Ironically, it also attacks proven hearing safety devices like suppressors in the name of better health care.

The move to snatch back gun rights via NFA taxes is backed by a host of anti-gun interest groups, ranging from Newtown Action Alliance and Brady to Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence.

While the plot is an extreme long shot in the currently Republican-controlled House and Senate, many Democrats are eagerly looking to next year’s midterm elections. At the moment, it is hard to take the barely 2.5-page bill seriously, but 2026 is just around the corner.

Now, if they’d stop their schizophrenic support for similar federal laws.

Justice Department Sues the District of Columbia for the Unconstitutional Ban of Semi-Automatic Firearms
Monday, December 22, 2025

Today, the Justice Department sued the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), alleging that the District government and MPD unconstitutionally ban the AR-15 and many other firearms protected under the Second Amendment. The District’s gun laws require anyone seeking to own a gun to register it with D.C. Metro Police. However, the D.C. Code provides a broad registration ban on numerous firearms — an unconstitutional incursion into the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes. MPD’s current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.

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Democrats really do want you dead

Among the most obvious and glaring indicators of the political divide is the issue of self-defense. Normal Americans—largely but not exclusively Republicans—are in harmony with America’s Founders who understood self-defense is a natural, unalienable, God-given individual right which forms the basis of the Second Amendment. If every American doesn’t have a right to self-defense, a right government does not grant and cannot revoke, what other right matters? If one’s continuing existence depends on size, strength and aggression, we’re degenerating to another dark age.

The police can’t protect anyone and can’t be sued when they don’t.

Because Normal Americans understand the Second Amendment and why the Founders wrote it, they’re comfortable with citizens keeping and bearing arms. They understand that right isn’t limited to handguns, nor does it have anything to do with target shooting, hunting or militia membership. They know the primary reason for the Second Amendment is to allow Normal Americans to deter tyranny, and if necessary, to defeat a totalitarian government.

That, even more than the historic record, the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Heller, McDonald and Bruen decisions, makes Democrat heads explode, because they intend to become that totalitarian government. That’s why they’re always trying to disarm Normal Americans.

Those with anti-liberty/gun intentions tend to be, though not exclusively, Democrats. They don’t recognize unalienable rights and call those who believe fundamental rights come not from government but from God, “Christian Nationalists,” which is not a complementary label. Their faith is in themselves and the one-party state they labor to create. They reject the Second Amendment and the rest of the Constitution because both protect individual rights and limit the powers of government, the powers they want to exclusively, eternally wield.

Individuals have rights; governments have powers.

The Bondi Beach massacre and the Brown University attack starkly reveal the differences in these philosophies and their consequences. When an attack happens, the police will virtually never be there in time. Attackers will have considerable time to kill. If citizens are universally disarmed by law or are obeying “gun-free zone” signs, they’ll be unable to fight back. Australia is essentially a gun-free zone; so is Brown University.

The police would love to be able to stop a shooter, but even if they’re present, which was reportedly the case at Bondi Beach, they may do nothing which gave the killers a free-fire zone for from 10-20 minutes. At Uvalde, some 300 officers allowed a 70+ minute free fire zone. At Brown, they had no role in stopping the attack.

In any attack, someone must call the police. A dispatcher must assimilate the information and dispatch the call. Officers must race to the scene–if any are available. In some places, the nearest officer might be an hour away. When they arrive, they must orient themselves and close with the attacker or attackers without getting killed before they can do any good. And in all that time, unarmed innocents are dying. Or even worse, as happened at Bondi Beach, the police, who are rushing into a dangerously ambiguous situation, might shoot an innocent.

Normal Americans given this indisputable set of facts want willing citizens to go armed. They trust their fellow citizens with motor vehicles, which are far more deadly than guns. They’re willing to extend that trust to guns as well. Do away with gun-free zones, to be sure, but to deter attacks, and to limit damage when they occur, the only sane, effective solution is allowing honest Americans the means to save their own lives and the lives of others. If they’re present when an attack occurs, they know precisely who the good and bad guys are and they’re able to quickly end the attack.

Democrats see things very differently. Just as officials in Australia and Rhode Island did in the immediate aftermath of those attacks, American Democrats reflexively want to disarm Americans. Despite the failure of near-absolute gun-banning laws and regulations, they demand even more, and more punitive, anti-liberty/gun laws.

Normal Americans want everyone, Democrats included, to have the ability to defend their lives, the lives of those they love and even strangers. Democrats want everyone, except their publicly funded security, disarmed. Normal Americans want mass murderers dead and fellow Americans alive. Democrats want mass murders to have free-fire zones and want Normal Americans dead.

What other result can their disarmament policies bring?

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran

Arkansas Attorney General Clarifies State’s Concealed Carry Law

On November 14, 2025, the Arkansas Attorney General (AG), Tim Griffin, clarified Arkansas law about the legal carry of firearms. The three questions to be answered included: publicly owned buildings or facilities, the legal definition of an “athletic event” in Arkansas law, and what type of carry is prohibited in statutorily prohibited spaces. The questions were asked by the Honorable Sonia Eubanks Barker, a Republican state representative with a pro-Second Amendment reputation.

AG opinions are not binding on judges. They are statements of what the Attorney General believes the law to be. They are often taken into account by prosecutors when determining whether to prosecute in a given circumstance.

AG Griffin’s response was detailed and encyclopedic. It is well-crafted and an excellent read. The response explains Arkansas’s statutory law about the carry of firearms in considerable detail. The response also explains some of the intricacies of law and statutory interpretation. In addition to the lengthy response, the AG  provides brief summaries of his findings. AG Griffin found:

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Let me reiterate:

Bondi Beach Shows Why Self-Defense Is a Vital Right
Individuals and communities must take responsibility for their own safety.

At Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a father-son team of ISIS-inspired terrorists murdered attendees at a celebration of the first day of Hanukkah. One of the attackers was disarmed by a heroic civilian who was shot in the process, while others lost their lives trying to help.

Contrasting Responses to Threats

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to the shooting with promises to further tighten gun laws in the already restrictive country—a measure more likely to disarm potential victims than to inconvenience those planning a homicidal attack. In the U.S., by contrast, Jews stepped up security by themselves and alongside police. At the request of my wife’s rabbi, I recruited a friend who served as a Force Recon Marine. We strapped on armor and pistols to patrol the crowd at the menorah lighting in Sedona, Arizona. Members of the congregation carried concealed weapons of their own.

Nothing happened, but we were there to deter problems and respond if necessary. There’s a big difference between doubling down on failed state policies and taking responsibility for your own safety.

According to Prime Minister Albanese’s office, after the attack, “leaders agreed that strong, decisive and focused action was needed on gun law reform as an immediate action” and promised “to strengthen gun laws” with further restrictions. Of course, that’s what Australia did in 1996 after the Port Arthur mass shooting. The government banned a variety of firearms, with compensation for their surrender. Compliance was limited and the effort spawned a significant black market for guns.

But Australia’s millions of guns didn’t kill 15 people at Bondi Beach. Two men with known Islamist ties who traveled last month to the Philippines for training at terrorist summer camp committed the murders. They chose guns as their tools, but they could just as easily have used explosives, vehicles, incendiaries, or something else to cause mayhem.

“The issue is not gun laws. It’s hatred of Jews,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Durham, North Carolina commented after the Bondi Beach attack.

A Government That Can’t Be Trusted

And there’s little reason Australian Jews should trust the Australian government.

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