Category: RKBA

Any questions why I call them bureaucraps?

ATF Takes MI Man’s Guns Despite His Expunged Record

No matter how much you hate the ATF, it’s probably not enough.

Besides the fact that a name like “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives” should be the name of a retail outlet, there’s the fact that they don’t just try to regulate the industry. They actively oppose your right to keep and bear arms.

We’ve seen numerous cases of the bureau trying to infringe on people’s rights, even violating the law in some cases in order to do so.

But their latest stunt is potentially even worse.

The way Jeramy Wilburn sees it, he only messed up once. The poor decision-making of a child shouldn’t determine one’s freedoms for the rest of their life, he argues.

The 34-year-old Allen Park resident was known for making YouTube videos about gun safety. He’s also a fan of sport shooting and until this past November was free to partake.

Then the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency took away his firearms because of a past domestic violence conviction which happened years ago. This, despite having the conviction expunged in 2022.

Wilburn’s conviction was a misdemeanor in 2008. As punishment, the judge put him on probation and ordered him to take a domestic violence class – no jail time. And in February 2022, that one mistake was wiped from his record.

Wilburn’s record was expunged. Legally speaking, it was like his conviction never happened. It was wiped from his record.

Unfortunately for him, though, the ATF seems to feel otherwise.

But, in a federal lawsuit brought by Wilburn and Morris, the two argue that isn’t the case. They argue Wilburn should be allowed to possess a firearm. But the feds say Wilburn could still be convicted of domestic violence again.

“It’s unfair for them to say he should be forever barred, forever prohibited from carrying a firearm just because he potentially could get a second offense,” said Morris.

Honestly, this is a terrifying argument that, if allowed to stand, could eventually set a precedent for all kinds of other problems.

Could Wilburn be convicted of domestic violence again? Hypothetically, sure. The fact that he’s gone 15 years without doing so suggests what happened was isolated and he’s unlikely to do so again, but it’s also largely irrelevant.

We don’t punish people based on what they might do, only what they’ve done in the past.

Had the conviction not been expunged, that would be one thing, but it was. His record was wiped clean. This is essentially him getting his rights restored, only that probably wasn’t an option since he only had a misdemeanor charge.

Yet let’s understand that taking his guns because he might be convicted of domestic violence again isn’t all that different from deciding you or I can’t have guns because we might get convicted for domestic violence at some point in the future.

They don’t have the authority to do this, which is why Wilburn is taking the ATF to court. I’m glad he’s doing so and I pray that he doesn’t have to wait too long to get his guns back. They never should have been taken from him in the first place based on the facts we know.

So no, it’s probably not possible to hate the ATF enough.

Left-wing activists sue to change public policy where their candidates cannot win

EXCLUSIVE — Left-wing activist organizations are at the forefront of shaping public policy through lawsuits in places where their aligned political candidates are unlikely to win.

A new Alliance for Consumers report obtained by the Washington Examiner shows how groups such as the anti-gun Everytown for Gun Safety or climate change activist group EarthRights International sue companies to advance their policy preferences to circumvent the legislative process.

These organizations often represent local governments in “public nuisance” lawsuits, which are used to claim that the public is generally harmed by the existence of something, such as tobacco, in order to obtain favorable public policy outcomes and massive settlements.

“Public nuisance lawsuits have almost nothing to do with helping consumers, but a lot to do with pushing a left-wing agenda,” Alliance for Consumers executive director O.H. Skinner told the Washington Examiner. “There’s been growing attention to the political donations that these lawsuits help drive toward left-wing candidates.

“More attention needs to be paid to the public interest groups and shadowy nonprofit funding networks, like Arabella Advisors, who staff, finance, and promote these cases,” Skinner continued. “That is what we have done with this report, and we think it illustrates clearly what these lawsuits are really about and why they are a threat.”

The report, which Alliance for Consumers sent to every Republican governor in America on Wednesday, highlights several organizations involved with public nuisance claims that are aimed at altering or circumventing the policy decisions made by those elected to decide them.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a group founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to limit gun rights, has been active in trying to change public policy on guns, including by using its Victory Fund to start a “Demand a Seat” initiative to get its trained activists to run for political office. This year, the group boasted that 17 of its candidates won elections in Virginia alone.

The group launched Everytown Law to focus on being “the largest and most experienced team of litigators in the country dedicated to advancing gun safety in the courts and through the civil and criminal justice systems.”

Everytown has been active in filing lawsuits against gun manufacturers for “contributing to the violent crime epidemic,” as it did when representing Kansas City, Missouri, in a public nuisance complaint in 2020 against the Nevada-based Jimenez Arms and other manufacturers and distributors.

It also represented the city of Chicago when it sued an Indiana gun store because its sales of firearms have “created, exacerbated, and sustained a public nuisance that causes harm to the health, safety, and well-being of Chicago residents.”

The legal wing of the activist organization also trains government lawyers on how to defend limitations to the Second Amendment, and it files direct challenges to laws protecting the right to own and use guns, such as Stand Your Ground laws, which offer some protection for the use of lethal force in self-defense.

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Mark McCloskey, Pardoned for Brandishing Guns at Protesters, Can’t Get the Guns Back

From [the 26th’s] Missouri Court of Appeals decision in McCloskey v. State, written by Judge James M. Dowd and joined by Judges John P. Torbitzky and Michael S. Wright:

This appeal arises out of a petition for replevin in which appellant Mark McCloskey sought the return of two firearms that police had seized pursuant to search warrants in connection with a June 28, 2020, incident in which McCloskey and his spouse exhibited the firearms as a group of protesters passed by their home. They were charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon punishable by up to four years in prison. McCloskey and the State reached a plea agreement whereby McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and forfeited ownership and possession in the two firearms in exchange for the State dismissing the felony charge….

Soon after, the governor pardoned McCloskey and he filed against the State, the Sheriff, and the Mayor (Respondents) his underlying petition for replevin of the weapons in which he claimed the governor’s pardon gave him the right to their immediate return….

While we agree that the pardon restored all of his rights forfeited by the conviction and removed any legal disqualification, disadvantage, or impediment, Missouri law is unequivocal that a gubernatorial pardon obliterates the fact of the conviction, not the fact of guilt. Thus, McCloskey’s guilty plea, for which he obtained the benefit of the State dismissing a felony charge punishable by jail time, survived the pardon and importantly, with respect to the issue at hand in this replevin action, triggered the guns’ forfeiture. Therefore, since McCloskey’s guilt remains, it follows that he is not entitled to the return of the weapons….

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With One Week Remaining, 99.4% of Illinois Gun Owners Have Said ‘No Thanks’ To Gun Registration

The Democrats who run Illinois decided long ago to blame gun owners for the results of the woke, soft-on-crime policies that have led to proliferating crime in the state. Instead of targeting the relatively small number of violent gang members who make Chicago live up to its Murder City USA moniker, politicians have instead targeted law-abiding gun owners with gun bans and a new gun registration scheme.

The so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act demanded existing owners of particularly frightening firearms register their magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifles. These include guns best-suited to self-defense including America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15.  The law also bans many semi-auto shotguns and handguns. Then there are the accessories and .50 BMG ammunition that must be registered as well.

With a December 31 deadline fast approaching, the Illinois State Police released their Week 11 compliance update on Wednesday and it’s a doozy. While thousands of Illinois gun owners have dutifully complied, millions have not. Holders of 15,164 Firearms Owner ID cardholders have registered an average of about 3.5 covered items each.

Put another way, 2,400,317 FOID holders have registered…nothing. Running that through some public school math, that yields a 99.4% non-compliance rate.

Why are so few Illinois citizens complying? Aside from the fundamental 2A conflicts, there’s also the leak from the Governor’s inner circle to “close the existing owner loophole” as reported by Guns Save Life.

So what is next?  Following a mass-casualty incident, especially if it happens in the Land of Lincoln, the Governor will announce a plan to “close the existing owner loophole.” Their words, not ours.

Governor Pritzker will back legislation to call for those who have registered guns and accessories to surrender those registered items to the police after 90 days or so.  Failure to do so would result in felony charges.

By mandating the surrender of those registered items, they can determine who has complied and who has not. Those who have not can expect ISP-led “firearm compliance teams” to knock on their doors.

That should surprise no one. Firearm registration has always had only one real purpose…to facilitate confiscation when politicians finally get up the testicular fortitude to press their anti-gun antipathy to that extent. That’s always been clear and it’s why there’s a law prohibiting federal firearm registration.

While achieving a compliance rate of more than one percent might be seen as some kind of psychological milestone of “success” by Governor Pritzker, it’s actually a humiliating public repudiation of Pritzker’s radical left anti-gun politics.

The little people have made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of complying with Illinois politicians’ gun-grabbing schemes. Don’t expect their attitude toward “closing the existing owner loophole” to be any more enthusiastic.

Analysis: A New Twist on the ‘Dangerous and Unusual’ Standard for Gun Bans

A Massachusetts federal judge upheld the commonwealth’s ban on AR-15s and similar rifles this week. His rationale for doing so relied on an idiosyncratic understanding of the rifle’s purported lethality and defensive utility.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV denied a motion for preliminary injunction against Massachusetts’ ban on “assault weapons” and ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. He did so by putting a new twist on an old argument. He determined that modern laws banning AR-15s fit within the country’s historical tradition of regulating “dangerous and unusual” weapons.

“The banned weapons are ‘dangerous,’ because they are unreasonably dangerous for ordinary purposes of self-defense due to their extreme lethality and high potential for collateral harm,” Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in Capen v. Campbell, “and they are ‘unusual,’ because it would be unusual for an ordinary citizen to carry such a weapon on his person on the street for self-defense, or to use it in the home to confront invaders or to protect against personal violence.”

While Saylor is certainly not the first to uphold a hardware ban since the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, his analytical framework for doing so stands out among the rest for its emphasis on the “dangerous and unusual” standard and his understanding of how AR-15s fit in.

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Gun deaths rise along with gun control grade

Gun control advocates should have reason to celebrate. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence upgraded Colorado’s grade on the “annual gun law scorecard” from a C+ in 2021, to a B in 2022 and an A- this year.

As reported in Gazette sister publication Colorado Politics, Colorado earned its A- for imposing waiting periods, banning “ghost” guns, enacting legislation on victims’ legal access, increasing the minimum age to purchase firearms and investing $1 million in community violence intervention.

The grade would deserve accolades — if it correlated with a decrease in gun violence. It does not. The year Colorado moved from a C to a B was the year Colorado’s rate of gun deaths reached a 40-year high. It is also the year Colorado set a record for the most people injured in mass shootings in a single year.

Since the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, Colorado has understandably pursued more gun regulation. The state enacted background checks at gun shows in 2000. It later passed a 15-round limit on bullet magazines. In 2013, Colorado required universal background checks.

From there, the state passed a red flag law in 2019. The next year, it enacted mandatory reporting for lost or stolen firearms and a safe firearm storage law.

Despite a 23-year gun-control effort, gun sales and gun crimes have risen.

Colorado’s gun sales in 2022 were 26% higher than in 2019. Early indicators suggest this year’s Colorado holiday gun sales will set a record.

An A- for gun control — after a significant rise in gun crimes — amounts to accolades for policies that don’t work.

It frustrates Colorado’s political leaders. Gov. Jared Polis and state’s Attorney Gen. Phil Weiser want to spend $600,000 to hire outside lawyers. They would lend the attorneys to the federal government to prosecute gun crimes.

If federal enforcement saves lives, this proposal could pay off. Properly written and enforced, gun regulations should allow guns in the hands of stable, sober, law-abiding adults.

It should keep guns from substance abusers, criminals, domestic abusers, severe mental illness patients, and others given due process and deemed likely to misuse them.

If Colorado subsidizes enforcement of federal gun laws, Polis and Weiser should take similar action regarding federal drug laws.

Colorado has undermined federal drug laws and enforcement for years, even as fentanyl became the number 1 killer of young adults. We legalized recreational pot in 2012. More recently, our state decriminalized fentanyl, heroin, crack cocaine and other deadly street drugs.

Likewise, Colorado has consistently undermined federal immigration laws. The combined chaos of immigration, rising crime, drug deaths, homelessness and needles in parks probably led to escalating gun ownership in Colorado and the rest of the country.

“There are many communities with sustained levels of crime that have not abated,” said National Shooting Sports Foundation spokesperson Mark Oliva, as quoted in Gazette sister publication The National Examiner.

“Those concerns, along with the punishing anti-gun measures by the Biden administration and threats of more gun control promised by the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, cannot be discounted as contributing factors (to rising gun sales).

“Americans have demonstrated month after month and year after year, (that) Second Amendment rights matter, and they are investing their hard-earned dollars to exercise their right to lawfully possess firearms before the right can be further infringed (upon).”

Reducing gun violence means more and better mental health care. It means restoring harsh penalties for crimes. It means controlling the border. It means enforcing drug laws and offering help for addiction. It means more looking out for those who suffer.

Sadly, it seems we don’t save lives by simply churning out gun laws — even if handed a medal for doing so.

The Gazette Editorial Board

No tax on bullets? Why one SC lawmaker wants to eliminate sales tax for some ammunition

If you’re a South Carolina gun owner, there’s a chance you could be able to buy ammunition without a sales tax in the future, if a new proposal becomes a law.

State Rep. Ashley Trantham, R-Greenville, filed a bill ahead of the legislative session that begins in January that would eliminate the sales tax on small arms ammunition. This would include ammunition for any “portable firearm,” which could include “rifles, shotguns, pistols and revolvers with no barrel greater than an internal diameter of .50 caliber or a shotgun of ten gauge or smaller,” the bill reads.

Small arms ammunition is normally what gun owners keep in a purse, by their bedside or in their vehicle, Trantham said. These weapons are used for personal protection, she added, which is why she is pushing to eliminate the sales tax only for for small arms ammunition and not bigger guns used for hunting or other uses.

“We have open borders, and more than ever, we just don’t know who we’re going to come across,” Trantham said. “When we’re out shopping, when we’re even in our homes. I’m seeing cases where there’s home invasions, things like that happening, more rapid than I can remember in the past ever seeing it.”

Trantham said she filed the bill based on a request from a constituent. South Carolina, Trantham said, should “definitely” not pursue gun control laws that she said would make it harder for people to protect themselves.

“This was specifically just to make sure that people that obviously can legally own a firearm have access to it, and it can be a little bit more affordable,” Trantham said. “I honestly don’t believe that we should be taxing a constitutional right.”

The South Carolina state sales tax rate is 6%. Dozens of items are exempted from sales tax in the state, from hearing aids to erectile dysfunction medication to materials used to assemble missiles.

In the past year, another state sales tax exemption was proposed: feminine hygiene products, including menstrual pads and tampons. Advocates for that proposal argued that those items are medical necessities and should not be taxed in South Carolina. That bill passed the House and remains sitting in the hands of the Senate finance committee.

Trantham, who is a S.C. House Freedom Caucus member, said she believes eliminating the tax on small arms ammunition is a “no-brainer,” but it’s not yet clear whether the General Assembly will choose to make the bill a priority.

“I would think that it would be easy,” Trantham said. “But then again, when you have people in Columbia that campaign one way and then vote another, it’s hard to say what they’ll grab a hold on. If the people decide it’s priority, they have the power, which is beautiful. That’s that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

The Wonderful Truth Behind Recent Concealed Carry Statistics

Across the United States, fewer US citizens applied for new concealed carry permits. That is what the numbers say, and it is true from a certain perspective. It is also true that more people are legally carrying concealed firearms than ever before. That may seem like a contradiction, but it is also very good news.

What the headline doesn’t say is that we’ve seen a considerable number of states recently adopt constitutional carry laws. Those laws typically state that you don’t need a license to carry a concealed firearm if as long as you would have qualified to get one. That means you don’t have a criminal record, so you don’t need to get a permission slip from the state to carry concealed in public. Even with Constitutional carry in your state, you’ll often want a carry permit if you often drive to another state and want to carry there.

Back to the report from John Lott, we now have a record number of people legally carrying a personal firearm, but fewer of them had to apply for and pay for a state license in order to do so. That might be good news, and in fact it is fantastic news.

People who don’t have a carry permit often worry that more people are carrying a gun but they don’t have the training that the state previously required. That sounds obvious, but let me show you one flaw in that thinking.

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OhMyGosh a SNIPER RIFLE!™ Aauugghh!

Sen. Susan Collins Pushing Gun Control for U.S. Troops

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is putting together legislation to require the U.S. military to adhere to state-level red and yellow flag laws for troops.

A red flag law allows family, friends, and others, to seek a court order to have guns removed from someone they view as a danger to himself or others. A yellow flag law is more narrow, allowing law enforcement to seek the court order for firearm removal.

Collins bill comes in response to the October 25, 2023, Lewiston, Maine, attacks, which were carried out by a member of the U.S. Army Reserve.

The attacker used a sniper rifle which was legally purchased.

Maine has a yellow flag law, but although police were alerted that the Maine shooter could “snap and commit a mass shooting” in September, according to CNN, no yellow flag action was pursued.

Moreover, Breitbart News noted on October 26, 2023, police in New York took Card to a West Point hospital for an evaluation in mid-July 2023.

Card had caught the attention of military officials after “acting erratically in mid-July” while taking part in training at West Point, the Associated Press reported. Police in New York were called and Card was taken to West Point’s Keller Army Community Hospital.

New York has a red flag law and the involvement of police in the West Point incident raised questions as to why the law did not come into play.

On December 22, 2023, WMTW pointed out that Collins “is working on a bill that would require branches of the military to utilize state-level weapons restriction laws, when appropriate, if they believe a service member poses a threat of harm to themselves or others.”

Incompetent ‘Contagious Disease’ Diagnosis for Guns a Prescription for Tyranny

“New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham held a recent press conference to praise herself for implementing dubious gun control measures,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported. “‘I won’t rest until we don’t have to talk about (gun violence) as an epidemic and a public health emergency,’ the governor said.”

If a prominent politician declares an epidemic and imposes edicts and orders to enforce them, it’s fair to ask, “Where’s the science?”

“Lujan Grisham was born in Los Alamos and graduated from St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe before earning undergraduate and law degrees from the University of New Mexico,” the governor’s official biography states. Neither her education nor her claimed career highlights show her qualified to make such a proclamation on her own, which makes it fair to ask, “Who’s advising her?”

That would be Patrick M. Allen, her New Mexico Health Department Secretary.

“In simple terms, violence, especially gun violence, behaves like a contagious disease,” Allen pontificates in his op-ed, “Tackling Gun Violence: A Public Health Challenge — DOH secretary says rapidly-spreading violence behaves like a contagious disease.”

“Imagine treating violence as if it were an infectious disease. Just as we study diseases’ origins to combat them effectively, we can apply the same approach to violence,” Allen proclaims. “How do we address gun violence as the contagious disease it is? Gun violence is a public health emergency.”

He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? The thing is, like the governor, the secretary in charge of the Land of Enchantment’s public health doesn’t have a qualified medical background, either.

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GIBBON, GUNS AND GOVERNMENT

In the course of writing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon encountered Mohammed, who pursued the Jews with “implacable hatred” to the end of his life. The historian also called out Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth king who invaded Italy in 488 AD and “condescended to disarm the unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons of offence, and excepting only a small knife for domestic use.” Call it an early display of the totalitarian mindset.

Wherever they hold sway, modern totalitarians disarm the people of firearms and ammunition. For details, see Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming Jews and “Enemies of the State,” by Stephen Halbrook. Hitler’s National Socialists used the registration records of the Weimar Republic to identify and disarm gun owners.

As Halbrook shows in Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, the Nazis confiscated all firearms, even antique hunting rifles. That left the people vulnerable to wholesale slaughter. On June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, troops of the 4th SS Panzer Regiment surrounded the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in central France. The attackers killed 245 women and 207 children, including six below the age of six months.

The 196 men killed included seven Jewish refugees from other parts of France. Of the 648 people murdered in the village, only 50 could be identified. The Nazis locked the women and children in the village church, shot indiscriminately, and set the victims on fire. The rest of the village was then looted and set ablaze.

As the late P.J. O’Rourke explained, this is what happens when those with all the power have all the guns. And to paraphrase inspector Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) in The Day of the Jackal, be in no doubt that this is what the Biden Junta wants.

At every mass shooting, the default government response is to blame guns and make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This does not apply, however, to Muslim jihadists like “Soldier of Allah” Maj. Nidal Hasan. At Ford Hood in 2009 Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Hasan wounded more than 30 others, including Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who took seven bullets from the jihadist.

According to the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, this was “workplace violence,” not terrorism or even “gun violence,” and the mass murderer Hasan got better medical treatment than his victims. In 2014, Lunsford sought to explain his plight to the president, who declined to meet with him. The composite character did not proclaim Islamic terrorist attacks in 2015 at San Bernardino (14 dead) and Orlando in 2016, (49 dead) as cases of “gun violence.”

Of all the various forms of government in the world, wrote Gibbon, “an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.” The buffoonish Biden channels Obama, but the Delaware Democrat shapes up worse. On September 1, 2022, backdropped in red light with Marines at the ready, Biden targeted those who want the nation to be great as the primary threat to America. Biden’s FBI openly follows suit and in August the FBI killed Craig Robertson, a 75-year-old woodworker, for threats he had allegedly posted online.

Recall the Ruby Ridge siege of 1992, when the FBI deployed massive military force against a single family, and FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot dead Vicki Weaver as she held her infant daughter. That case prompted Senate hearings, but so far nothing on Robertson. Biden’s FBI shoots first and avoids questions later, so an escalation of deadly violence is not out of the question. Christmas 2023 may well be joyous, but 2024 shapes up as the year of living dangerously.

The Great Legal War Over Your Freedom

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, the lower courts have been either trying to apply, or to resist, its directive to decide the validity of restrictions on the basis of the text of the Second Amendment and historical analogues from the time of the Founding. According to the ruling, an activity is presumed to be protected if it involves keeping and bearing arms by the people. The burden is then on the government to find historical precedents to show that a restriction is part of the nation’s history and tradition.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals applied Bruen to the federal ban on gun possession by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) and found it to violate the Second Amendment. State DVROs are often issued with little pretense of an adversary hearing or are mutually agreed upon in divorces without knowledge that it evokes a federal gun ban.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, U.S. v. Rahimi, and a barrage of amicus briefs have been filed on both sides. Mr. Rahimi faces several state charges involving actual violence, dwarfing the federal possession charge. The amicus brief of the National Rifle Association put it this way: “Rahimi should not only lose his Second Amendment liberties, but he should also lose all of his liberties—if the allegations against him are ultimately proven true with sufficient due process. But constitutional safeguards cannot be set aside to obtain those ends.”

Consider the supposed historical analogues cited by Biden’s Justice Department and its amici—discriminatory laws disarming Catholics, slaves and “tramps”; confiscation of arms by oppressive British monarchs and by our own patriots in the American Revolution (there was a war going on, after all); and wholly irrelevant laws against gun sales to children and intoxicated persons. The Court heard oral arguments in the case on Nov. 7, 2023.

The Third Circuit, in Range v. Merrick Garland, held the federal ban on gun possession by felons to be unconstitutional as applied to a person convicted of a minor, non-violent offense.  Again, no laws in the Founding era disarmed persons who were not dangerous. The government is asking the Supreme Court to hear that case after it decides Rahimi.

When it decided Bruen, the Supreme Court directed the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its upholding of Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Bianchi v. Frosh. That court had held that ordinary AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are not really different from machineguns and are “weapons of war most useful in military service,” even though no military force in the world issues them as service rifles.

The Fourth Circuit got right on it, holding its oral argument on Dec. 6, 2022. A year later, crickets. Still no decision. Is it really so hard to apply Bruen’s simple tests, or would the court not like the result?

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Massachusetts Assault Weapon Ban Ruled Constitutional by Judge

Massachusetts’ law prohibiting the possession and sale of some semiautomatic weapons commonly used in mass shootings is acceptable under a recent change to Second Amendment precedent from the US Supreme Court, a federal judge said Thursday.

The National Association for Gun Rights asked the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts to prevent the state from being able to enforce its law, claiming the weapons are protected under the Second Amendment because they were in common use at the time the Second Amendment was adopted.

The banned weapons “are unreasonably dangerous for ordinary purposes of self-defense due to their extreme lethality and high potential for collateral harm,” Chief Judge Dennis Saylor wrote in an order denying the gun rights group’s request to halt enforcement of the law.

This IS NOT the Bruen Standard.

The US Supreme Court held last year in New York State Rifles & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that state governments must prove a regulation would have been consistent with the nation’s historical regulation of firearms.

Saylor’s decision helps build the jurisprudence for the types of state regulations that remain acceptable under the Second Amendment post-Bruen as many states grapple with challenges to their weapon laws. States like Illinois, California, and Connecticut have also been allowed to move forward enforcing their assault weapon bans.

“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons—specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” the order said, and the current restrictions “pose a minimal burden on the right to self-defense and are comparably justified to historical regulation.”

THIS, is not the Bruen Standard either!

Saylor was not convinced that assault weapons are commonly used for self-defense, finding them “generally unsuitable” for that purpose because of their weight, size, and firepower.

“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.

The case is Capen v. Campbell, D. Mass., No. 1:22-cv-11431, order 12/21/23.

Federal Judge Declines to Temporarily Block Key Portion of Illinois High-Power Semiautomatic Weapons Ban

A federal judge in Illinois has declined to temporarily delay a portion of the state law banning some high-power semiautomatic weapons from going into effect.

U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn on Friday declined a request from several gun rights groups that would have delayed the Jan. 1 deadline for residents of Illinois to register their guns that are under the ban, according to the Chicago Tribune.

According to the report, those who have guns or accessories that are included in the ban are required to file “endorsement affidavits” with the Illinois State Police on their website.

Individuals who fail to register could be charged with a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for any offenses after.

McGlynn wrote in his opinion that a temporary injunction would “create further delays in this litigation when the constitutional rights of the citizens demand an expeditious resolution on the merits.”

President of Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, Dan Eldridge, told the outlet that the issue could end up in the Supreme Court.

“There’s a lot of stuff in motion in here,” Eldridge said.

The ban, signed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January, includes penalties for individuals who, “carries or possesses… manufactures, sells, delivers, imports, or purchases any assault weapon or .50 caliber rifle.”

The law also includes statutory penalties for anyone who, “sells, manufactures, delivers, imports, possesses, or purchases any assault weapon attachment or .50 caliber cartridge.”

Any kit or tools used to increase the fire rate of a semiautomatic weapon are also included in the ban, and the law includes a limit for purchases of certain magazines.

On Dec. 14, the Supreme Court allowed the law to remain in place after the National Association for Gun rights asked for a preliminary injunction.

In November, a 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals panel also refused a request to block the law. In August, the law was upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision.

Barrasso: The Second Amendment is Freedom’s Safeguard

WASHINGTON D.C. — U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, today blocked an attempt by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to ban so-called “assault weapons.” Senator Barrasso spoke on the Senate floor on the need protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

“Almost every single page of this bill adds new restrictions and new burdens on people who follow the law. It tells you what you can buy and what you cannot buy. It bans more than 205 popular rifles, shotguns, and pistols by name. I oppose any policies that jeopardize the Second Amendment rights of the people of Wyoming and across the country,” Sen. John Barrasso Wednesday on Senate Floor.

Excerpts from Sen. Barrasso’s remarks follow:

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Judge Declares Most of California’s New ‘Gun-Free Zones’ Can’t Be Enforced

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez isn’t the only Second Amendment “saint” in California who miraculously adheres to the text, tradition, and history of the right to keep and bear arms. Judge Cormac Carney has delivered a stern rebuke of his own to state lawmakers who imposed a host of new “sensitive places” where lawful concealed carry is forbidden, granting an injunction against their enforcement just a little more than a week before the state’s carry-killer legislation known as SB 2 is set to take effect.

In a 43-page opinion handed down late Wednesday, Carney described SB 2 as “repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.” The law “turns nearly every public place in California into a ‘sensitive place,’” according to Carney, “effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.”

Carney ruled in favor of the gun owners and Second Amendment organizations who brought the May v. Bonta and Carralerro v. Bonta litigation on every one of their challenges; granting an injunction against the following “gun-free zones” established under SB 2:

  • Hospitals, mental health facilities, nursing homes, medical offices, urgent care facilities, and other places where medical services are customarily provided,
  • Public transportation
  • Establishments where “intoxicating liquor” is sold for consumption on the premises
  • Public gatherings and special events
  • Playgrounds and private youth centers
  • Parks and athletic facilities
  • Department of Parks and Recreation and Department of Fish and Wildlife property, except hunting areas,
  • Casinos and gambling establishments
  • Public libraries, zoos, and museums
  • Places of worship
  • Financial institutions
  • Privately-owned businesses open to the public
  • Parking areas (including those adjacent to “sensitive places” not challenged by the plaintiffs)

This is the post-Bruen carry decision that gun owners have been waiting for. Carney didn’t try to play philosophical games or stretch historical analogues to the point of silliness in order to uphold these “gun-free zones.” Instead, he did exactly what the Supreme Court has instructed judges to do: look at the text of the Second Amendment, as well as the history and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms when determining whether a modern gun control restriction fits within that national tradition.

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GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES WONDER WHY NEW YORKERS TURN TO THE SECOND AMENDMENT

More than half of New Yorkers now believe their state is in decline and won’t get better soon. Go figure, crime is listed as the Number 2 reason for the reported despair – behind only the cripplingly high cost of living. Recent events have led to a surge in crime leaving countless New Yorkers feeling susceptible to the violent wills of criminals.

The feelings aren’t political either, as according to a new Siena College poll there’s wide agreement among each party affiliation – Republican, Democrat and Independent – that violent crime remains a serious issue. At least 64 percent of each respective group says so.

“In assessing the severity of problems facing New York, there is, surprisingly, considerable agreement among Democrats, Republicans and independents,” Siena College poster Steven Greenberg said of the findings.

Unfortunately, there’s some bad news-good news, though, for residents of the Empire State who want to exercise their right to defend themselves with a firearm as things are likely getting a lot worse before they get any better.

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Nebraska AG Deems Omaha & Lincoln’s Executive Orders Illegal

On Friday, December 15th, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers issued a formal opinion that the gun-free zone executive orders in Omaha and Lincoln are illegal for outdoor facilities. He deemed that “municipalities lack the authority to regulate the possession of firearms and certain weapons in quintessential public spaces, such as parks, trails, and sidewalks…” and that attempting to do so is an infringement on both the Second Amendment and the Nebraska State Constitution.

Senator Tom Brewer, who championed constitutional carry and statewide preemption bill LB 77, requested an opinion on the executive orders’ constitutionality this fall, specifically pertaining to the outdoor facilities the orders regulated.

This is a significant victory for all Nebraskans, and clarifies that municipalities lack the authority to regulate carry in “quintessential” outdoor spaces. Residents in Lincoln and Omaha should contact their local elected officials to rescind these unconstitutional orders and ordinances using their contact pages. For Lincoln, please contact the city council and Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird. For Omaha, please contact the city council and Mayor Jean Stothert.

In Tennessee, under proposed new law, you will lose your 2A rights if you take any of the medications on this list