Category: RKBA

Supreme Court Lets SAF 2A Victory Stand in Pennsylvania Case

By Dave Workman

Editor-in-Chief

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Is Why Some Want Your Guns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supreme Court takes up challenges to AR-15 bans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wolford Reaffirms The Plain Text Test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gun control orgs organizations

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

No more. Welcome Gun Rights Insights.

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

Anti-Gun Billionaire Michael Bloomberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Soros Family and Foreign Money

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

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

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

Alexander Soros
Alexander Soros (Image: Open Society Foundations)

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

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

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

By Larry Keane

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

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

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

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

The ‘New’ News

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

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Good! As it should be!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FPC Moves Forward in Lawsuit to Strike Down National Firearms Act

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

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

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

The brief was filed on June 24, 2026.

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

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

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

BLUF:
The Court’s reading of the Commerce Clause since Wickard has had wide-ranging consequences for Americans’ liberty and the powers the Constitution reserves to the states. Much federal overreach is accomplished in the name of this Clause, a provision that virtually no one, not even the Antifederalists, objected to at the time of the ratification debates. It’s well past time for the Court to reassert the Clause’s original meaning. Justice Thomas is leading the way.

Twenty-One Years Later, Justice Thomas Is Still Right About the Commerce Clause.

Marijuana stinks, enervates malaise into America’s youth, and even has a tendency to induce panic attacks. But let it not be said that marijuana has no benefits. After all, thanks to marijuana, or more accurately, Congress’s regulation of it, Justice Clarence Thomas has written opinions reminding Americans, and his fellow Justices, that Congress’s powers are not unlimited.

In a recently decided Supreme Court case called United States v. Hemani, the Court reversed a conviction of a man who had been prosecuted under a federal statute that prohibits anyone who uses a controlled substance from owning a firearm. The government prosecuted Ali Hemani under the statute because, while owning a firearm, he used marijuana.

The majority opinion in Hemani asked whether Hemani’s prosecution violated his Second Amendment rights and found that it did. Justice Thomas agreed with that conclusion but wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he asked the more fundamental question: Did Congress have the authority to pass this law in the first place?

The Constitution vests in Congress certain powers, and Congress has no power not vested in it by the Constitution. When Congress passes a law, it must be able to point to a specific power enumerated in the Constitution that allows it to do so. When a representative introduces a bill, he must point to the specific section of the Constitution that permits him to do so, called a Constitutional Authority Statement. Although the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, does place further limits on those congressional powers, the Bill of Rights is irrelevant where Congress lacks the power to pass a law in the first place.

As Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion explains, Congress likely lacked authority to pass the law at issue in the Hemani case.

The Commerce Clause empowers Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” As scholarship has made clear, and as Advancing American Freedom has argued several times in amicus briefs, at the time of the founding, the word “commerce” simply meant the trade of goods and “among the several states” meant — well — among the several states.

In other words, the Commerce Clause allows Congress, as Justice Thomas put it, “to regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines.” By the time Hemani owned his firearm, it was no longer in interstate commerce — it was not being bought or sold across state lines. As such, Congress had no power to regulate it under the Commerce Clause.

Nor is this the first time Justice Thomas has had an opportunity to remind Americans about the Commerce Clause in a case involving marijuana. In a 2005 case called Gonzales v. Raich, federal officials, acting under a statute enacted by Congress supposedly under its Commerce Clause power, seized marijuana plants that individuals were growing in their backyards for personal medical use.

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Doubling Down on Wrongness: Anti-Gun Jurisdictions Don’t Let Little Things Like the Bruen Decision Get In Their Way.

Why is it that, after being told their gun laws are unconstitutional, so many areas that are run by anti-gun extremists seem to respond with something along the lines of, “Oh yeah? Watch what we do next!” We saw this type of response after the landmark NYSRPA v. Bruen decision that affirmed law-abiding gun owners have a right to carry firearms for self-defense away from the home.

Like spoiled children who run to their room when told they can’t do something by their parents, anti-gun extremists ran to anti-gun legislatures to ram through more anti-gun laws that seek to circumvent the Bruen decision. We saw several states, including Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York, quickly pass and enact new laws to restrict the lawful carry of firearms.

The laws in both New Jersey and New York—based on expanding so-called “sensitive places” where carry is prohibited to the point where virtually nowhere is deemed suitable for lawful carry—have suffered losses in court, while Hawaii’s may soon be dealt a crushing blow to its anti-self-defense regime by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In apparent preparation for a loss, anti-gun extremists ran to the Hawaii legislature shortly after the Supreme Court heard the challenge to its unconstitutional law, filing yet another feeble attempt to potentially circumvent a ruling by the Court.

Meanwhile, Bearing Arms recently reported the U.S. Virgin Islands, has adopted “a massive gun control bill,” even as the U.S. territory is already facing a lawsuit challenging existing policy relating to the issuance of their gun permits.

In December of last year, the Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ announced its intent to sue the Virgin Islands Police Department for “an unconstitutional permitting process” in the V.I. As part of that announcement, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who’s in charge of the Civil Rights Division and created its Second Amendment Section, was quoted in a release, stating . . .

The newly-established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to bring the Virgin Islands Police Department back into legal compliance by ensuring that applicants receive timely decisions without unconstitutional obstruction.

So, similar to other anti-gun jurisdictions, the most virulently anti-gun operators in the V.I. responded to being told they were doing something wrong…by doubling down on the wrongness.

Bearing Arms describes the VI effort as an attempt to moot the lawsuit challenging the permit issuing process, a procedure Hawaii should have probably considered in light of the hard questions its counsel faced during the Supreme Court hearing on its initial attempt to circumvent Bruen.

But along with the apparent attempt to moot the suit regarding carry permit issuing in the island territory, Bearing Arms reports there’s also language seeking to impose bans on popular semi-automatic firearms and magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds, as well as adding restrictions on where permit holders may lawfully carry firearms for self-defense—the so-called “sensitive place” restrictions on carry that jurisdictions like New Jersey and New York implemented that led to their laws being challenged in court.

Similarly, semi-auto and magazine bans are also being challenged by Harmeet Dhillon’s team of attorneys, most notably in Denver, Colo., and Washington, D.C.

So, as with others, the V.I. appears to be thumbing its nose at the Second Amendment and the Trump administration by doubling down on anti-gun efforts when told they are already doing something unconstitutional. Disappointing, but hardly surprising.

We will be sure to continue to post updates on these cases, as well as what we presume will be other cases coming out of other anti-gun government agencies at the state, local, or territorial level.

Like All Gun Control Measures, 3D Censorware Mandates Are Doomed to Fail.

The Assn. of 3D Printing supports the legislation in New York and California, but “it’s not going to work,” [Chairman Bill] Decker said. “It’s more of a political statement than anything else.”

Criminals still will come up with ways to make guns from 3-D printers, either by altering their designs or taking their printing projects elsewhere, Decker said.

The more aggressive the technology becomes, the more likely that it also blocks unintended items, said Rory Mir, director of open access and technology community engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. Some harmless pipes might look like gun parts, or an S-shaped wall hanger might resemble an auto sear trigger used to modify a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun.

“These sort of censorship algorithms don’t work, and they wind up capturing and blocking a lot of lawful speech,” Mir said.

If print instructions are submitted for a cloud-based artificial intelligence search, it also risks the privacy of people’s artistic and proprietary creations, Mir said.

— David A. Lieb in In California and New York, a push to take aim at guns made with 3-D printers

Justice Thomas Questions Congress’s Power to Regulate Gun Possession Across State Lines
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas answers questions during a visit to t

AP Photo/Eric Gay

In a concurring opinion for Hemani, Justice Clarence Thomas focused on another aspect of the federal statute on which the case centered and suggested Congress lacks the power to regulate gun possession across state lines.

Breitbart News reported the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the Hemani decision on Thursday, June 18, 2026. All nine justices stood against federal statute §922(g)(3), the statute under which Ali Hemani was arrested and prosecuted as “unlawful user” of marijuana in possession of a gun.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote SCOTUS’s majority opinion and Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, looking at another aspect of §922(g)(3) wherein he believes Congress exceeds its authority.

Thomas opened his opinion: “I agree with the Court that §922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment as applied to respondent Ali Hemani, and I join its opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to another issue: As a matter of both original meaning and this Court’s precedents, §922(g)(3) appears to exceed Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce.”

He narrowed his focus to Section 922(g), writing that it “appears to exceed Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause.”

Thomas continued: “Congress has the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.”

However, he added, “As a matter of both original meaning and this Court’s precedents, Congress lacks the power to regulate the possession of firearms solely on the ground that they crossed state lines at some point in the past.”

Thomas opined, “Because §922(g) criminalizes possession of firearms apart from any purchase or sale of goods and services across state lines, I doubt that it could be an exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers as an original matter.”

Although he stressed that this was not an issue in the Hemani case, he encouraged SCOTUS “and lower courts” to “revisit the constitutionality” of Congress regulation of firearm possession across state lines.

Well, from the responses by other Justices to her an Sotomayor’s dissents in other cases, it’s pretty clear both of them are stupid, agenda driven hacks who, like all other leftists, don’t like the idea of their political rivals having the means to make telling them “No” a real decisive statement.

Jackson’s Concurring Opinion in Hemani Case Makes Laughable Argument Against Bruen

The Supreme Court decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen is probably the most important ruling the Court has made on the Second Amendment in history. While Heller and McDonald are critical as well, the Bruen test is a simple, straightforward test that can and should be easily applied to gun control laws. Did something like that exist at the time of the nation’s founding? Was there something like it during the time of incorporation? No, then knock it off.

But while the Hemani decision was ultimately unanimous, Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring opinion, along with Justice Sonya Sotomayor, arguing that the Bruen decision needs to be revisited.

Along with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson is advising the court to review its 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Jackson and Sotomayor said the 2022 decision is “unworkable” and that the court may need to “retire the failed Bruen experiment.” That test, according to Jackson, is based on centuries-old evidence that may not be relevant to today’s legal questions.

“It imposes on judges the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of sifting through centuries-old evidence in order to answer ‘contested historical questions,’ and ‘applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems,’” Jackson said in her opinion, per Law & Crime.

“Given those challenges, it is unsurprising that Bruen’s test is vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence and reach divergent assessments of the same laws.”

I find it interesting that Jackson and Sotomayor seem to think that applying history to whether something would align with the Founding Fathers’ intentions is problematic for “contemporary problems.” Never mind that we still look at their intentions on, say, the Fourth Amendment as it relates to your cell phone data or what’s on your laptop. The historic norms were that your person and your property were largely off limits without a warrant. While frisking was one thing–the things in your pocket, for example–it was easy for the Court to decide that your cell phone was a different thing.

Why is it that guns are a different matter? Is it because the history doesn’t align with what these two justices really wanted?

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Another Day, Another Reason ‘Public Safety’ Arguments for Gun Control Fall Flat

As Cam noted earlier this week, the Second Amendment Foundation is suing the sheriff in Contra Costa, California, over some rather bizarre concealed carry rules.

In particular, he will not issue a permit for any firearm that has a red dot sight or a flashlight, as well as any single-action only firearm. While I vehemently disagree with his position on SAO firearms, one can almost see the argument there. After all, single-action handguns have to be carried cocked and locked, which makes a lot of people nervous. It’s a non-issue, though, but I also understand many people don’t realize it. Still, we don’t base our rights around what makes other people scared, so it’s still a non-starter.

But the other things are a big issue in and of themselves, and it’s part of something I’ve noticed for a while with anti-gunners. Despite their claims about wanting to keep the public safe, they actively attack things that help keep the public safe.

Even if you think gun control works, most anti-gunners will still say the right to self-defense exists. They can’t afford not to, granted, but that right is there, has been affirmed by the courts numerous times, and that means we have a right to use a firearm in self-defense.

Now, let’s think about the sheriff in Contra Costa for a moment.

Red dot sights make it faster for someone to get a weapon on target and help to increase accuracy, particularly during high-stress situations. That means the rounds go where they’re meant to go, preferably into the bad guy and not someone standing off to the side who isn’t part of anything except, maybe, trying to be a good witness on your behalf.

Flashlights on a weapon are beneficial for properly identifying your target in a dark alley or parking lot. They help people make sure there’s actually a threat to their life by helping them identify the weapon as, you know, an actual weapon. They help to make sure the person you’re pointing the gun at is someone who needs a gun pointed at them, rather than someone else who popped up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Both of these things are almost as common as oxygen in this day and age, and many firearms are built around them being added rather easily, and that’s assuming the gun didn’t come with the red dot from the factory. Moreover, they help make sure the good guys don’t shoot someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, we’ve got New Jersey.

For all the state’s many sins against the Second Amendment, the one that stands out for our purposes here is its ban on hollow-point ammo. While it’s sometimes framed as expanding so as to cause more damage to the person being shot, the reality is that hollow points are in my gun because they have less of a chance of overpenetrating my target and hitting someone or something else that doesn’t need shooting.

Yes, I should pay attention to both my target and what’s beyond it, but if lives are on the line, I can’t guarantee I’m going to get everything right. Police departments use hollow points for the same reason I do, so that officers don’t end up shooting through bad guys and into bystanders.

New Jersey, though, has banned them and is very strict on the subject, even prosecuting people who came in from out of state with them in their firearms.

From red dots to hollow points, the items that make it so the general public is safer in self-defense situations are treated like they’re somehow making guns less safe for that public. There’s no evidence of any of it, but they scare someone somewhere, so screw our rights because it makes someone nervous.

Why, if I were more cynical, I’d swear that the reason they do this is because they want innocent people to get shot, all so they can demonize self-defense even more than they already have.

But they wouldn’t do that, now, would they?