Category: RKBA

Kyle Rittenhouse Launches Foundation Aimed At Fighting Gun Control

Kyle Rittenhouse has launched an anti-gun control nonprofit in Texas, according to a filing with the Texas Secretary of State’s office, which was first reported on by the Texas Tribune—a sign the young man who became a conservative star after being acquitted of killing two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, is ramping up his political activity in Texas.
Rittenhouse Conference

Rittenhouse filed with the Secretary of State on July 23 to create the Rittenhouse Foundation, a nonprofit based in Fort Worth, Texas, which aims to protect “an individual’s inalienable right to bear arms” through “education and legal assistance,” according to the filing.

Rittenhouse is listed as a director alongside Chris McNutt, president of the gun advocacy group Texas Gun Rights and Shelby Griesinger, treasurer of the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which has financed the campaigns of right-wing candidates across the state.

The foundation’s registered agent is the law firm of Tony McDonald, a long-time legal representative of conservative organizations in Texas, including Empower Texans, a now-defunct Tea Party-aligned group that was active from 2006 to 2020 and was described by Texas Monthly in 2013 as “one of the most influential advocacy groups in Austin.”

Defend Texas Liberty and Empower Texans have been given tens of millions of dollars by Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks and Dan Wilks, conservative mega donors who’ve spent decades using their oil wealth to promote their ultraconservative causes, according to the Tribune.

Forbes has attempted to contact Rittenhouse and his foundation via the foundation’s attorney.

KEY BACKGROUND
Rittenhouse first became a household name in August 2020 when he shot three Black Lives Matter protesters, two fatally, during the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Rittenhouse, who was 17 years old at the time, attended a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, armed with an AR-15-style rifle with the stated goal of protecting private businesses from protesters.

After being chased into a parking lot, Rittenhouse fatally shot a man who had grabbed the barrel of his rifle. He then fatally shot another man who struck him with a skateboard, and shot and wounded a third person who subsequently pointed a handgun at him.

The incident was widely condemned by liberals, but many conservatives came to his defense. U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) both offered the then-teenager internships, and then-President Donald Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago estate. In a closely-watched criminal trial in November 2021, a jury acquitted Rittenhouse of murder charges and ruled that his actions were done in self-defense. After the trial, Rittenhouse moved to Texas.

Since moving to Texas, Rittenhouse has become active in conservative politics. He has endorsed right-wing Republican political candidates including Andy Hopper, who attempted to unseat Lynn Stucky for her Denton-based seat in the state House of Representatives, and Brandon Herrera, YouTube star known for supporting gun rights, running against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio). He also worked with Texas Gun Rights in May to oppose a House bill that unsuccessfully tried to raise the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. On social media, he railed against the Texas House impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton and posted messages in support of gun rights.

BLUF
America needs only look to the recent past to see how the federal government handles a “public health crisis.”…  The tendency of the government to assume police-state authorities is enough to warn Americans when their elected officials want to invoke a “public health crisis.”

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS PROPOSES PUBLIC HEALTH GUN CONTROL REMEDY

Vice President Kamala Harris believes gun control is a public health issue, giving Americans more reasons to be wary of gun control efforts.

The problem is, crime isn’t a disease, as much as gun control advocates want to treat it as such. Criminal activity is a behavior and science has yet to bring about a medical remedy that prevents an individual from committing crimes. That’s not stopping Vice President Harris from tossing out debunked data, purposefully confusing suicides with criminal firearm misuse and conveniently glossing over the Biden administration’s failures to address the real problem of crime.

“I — as Vice President of the United States, I am acutely aware of the fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death of the children of America,” Vice President Harris told Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s Annual Gun Sense University Conference in Chicago last week. “It’s — it’s the number one cause of death — not some disease — well, although this is a form of a disease, to be sure.  Gun violence is the leading cause of death of our children.”

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Illinois’ latest gun law is an affront to more than just the Second Amendment

Illinois’ new “Firearms Industry Responsibility Act” isn’t just an attack on our right to keep and bear arms. It’s an assault on our freedom of speech as well. On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation sits down with me to discuss the group’s newly-filed lawsuit challenging HB 218, as well as the impending ATF rule on private sales and transfers of firearms.

The NSSF’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Southern Illinois, challenges the validity of Illinois’ new gun control law on multiple counts, starting with the argument that HB 218 is preempted by the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act. But the NSSF is also raising a First Amendment challenge, asserting that the law discriminates against speech based on its content or viewpoint and arguing that such discrimination should be subject to strict scrutiny by the courts.

The topics and views that Illinois has singled out in HB 218 do not fall into any “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” unprotected by the First Amendment. To be sure, the First Amendment does not preclude imposing liability for false, deceptive, or otherwise “misleading” commercial speech.

But HB 218 does not even purport to target only speech that is false or misleading. It authorizes the imposition of liability for speech about a product—a product expressly protected by the Constitution, no less— even when that speech is truthful and not misleading. Indeed, the words “false,” “misleading,” and “deceptive” appear nowhere in the relevant provisions.

A manufacturer that places online advertisements containing entirely accurate specifications of its products and subsequently sells that product to a distributor, could be liable under HB 218, even if that product is fully lawful in every state in which it is sold, if a Illinois court later deems the product to have been marketed (1) in a way that “contribute[d] to a condition in Illinois that endangers the safety or health of the public,” or (2) encouraged non-servicemembers to use it for “a military-related purpose”.

“They’re trying to squelch the First Amendment rights of firearm manufacturers and retailers,” Oliva explained to me. “If they can eliminate the discussion of safe and responsible firearm ownership to the next generation, they can diminish the desire for ownership and people exercising their Second Amendment rights. So they’re trying to play the long game of eliminating the Second Amendment by eliminating and curtailing the First Amendment. And it’s important to remember that commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment. It is a right for these companies to be able to advertise a constitutionally-protected product.”

In its suit, the NSSF says that the speech code established by HB 218 is so vague that it’s “virtually impossible for regulated parties to tell what speech is and is not permitted, leaving them with no realistic choice but to err on the side of refraining from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

By its terms, HB 218 renders unlawful any marketing of a firearm-related product that “create[s], maintain[s], or contribute[s] to a condition in Illinois that endangers the safety or health of the public” if it is deemed “unreasonable under all circumstances.” This restriction “will provoke uncertainty among speakers,” as such indeterminable and subjective abstractions do not articulate at all—let alone articulate with “narrow specificity”—what kind(s) of speech may later be deemed to have unreasonably contributed to a “condition … that endangers the safety or health of the public.”

Those restrictions are problematic enough, but HB 218 further prohibits marketing “in a manner that reasonably appears to support, recommend, or encourage individuals” who are not in the military “to use a firearm-related product for a military-related purpose.” The problem with this broad prohibition is that Illinois provides no guidance on what qualifies as a “military-related” purpose, leaving industry members to guess whether their marketing materials will later be deemed unlawful.

HB 218 goes on, moreover, to prohibit an industry member from “advertis[ing], market[ing], promot[ing], design[ing], or sell[ing] any firearm related product in a manner that reasonably appears to support, recommend, or encourage persons under 18 years of age to unlawfully purchase or possess or use a firearm-related product.”

A state of course may prohibit speech directly concerning unlawful conduct. But, unless this provision covers nothing more than advertisements that tell minors to buy guns (despite being minors), it is not at all clear what it means. Does any advertisement that shows minors lawfully using firearms (e.g., with a parent while hunting, or at a Boy Scouts shooting event) fall on the wrong side of the line?

What about marketing in a way targeted toward young men, who share many characteristics with those just a few years younger—but are lawfully able to purchase firearms (and serve in the armed forces)? The questions vastly outnumber the answers. And while no statute must preempt all potential complications, when it comes to a prohibition on speech, the lack of clarity is destined to create a massive chilling problem.

If HB 218 is so narrow that it only prohibits advertisements that entice juveniles into breaking the law, then this particular provision is never going to come into play in practice. If, on the other hand, the bill is written broadly enough to target manufacturers like Wee1 Tactical and its JR-15 rimfire rifle, then it’s going to make it virtually impossible to not only market but produce firearms designed for youth shooting. As Oliva says, that’s nothing more than abridging the First Amendment rights of gun makers to curb the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, and a sign of the contempt that Illinois lawmakers have for all of our individual rights.

Check out the entire conversation with Mark Oliva in the video window below, including his initial thoughts on the yet-to-be-introduced ATF rule that seeks to impose a near-universal background check system on gun sales and the dangers it poses to lawful gun owners across the country. Be sure to tune in tomorrow as well, when we’ll be talking with Jim Wallace of the Gun Owners Action League about how gun owners are pushing back on the “Lawful Citizens Imprisonment Act” and what’s happening behind the scenes at the statehouse in Boston.

I respect your second amendment.    
[leaves out the ‘but’ like they always do]

I also respect understanding ways our society works. We need to reform background checks, we need better ID scanning systems to ensure the guns don’t go into the wrong hands.

I’ll protect the American people at all cost, that starts with-
Preventing mass shootings, you don’t need an AK-47 to hunt, defend yourself or your home. You could simply defend yourself with a simple firearm.

I as your president of the United States of America, have no rights to interfere with your private life but I will protect Americans.

Respecting the Second Amendment should stand without further contradicted commentary.

Our society possesses a level of violence, and neither existing nor new gun laws will lead us to a utopian state where laws alone rectify criminal or violent actions.

Background checks have demonstrated limited effectiveness, given the rise in gun-related crimes since their introduction. Numerous mass shooters acquired firearms by providing false information on their 4473 forms (background check applications) and passing due to insufficient government scrutiny of buyers’ backgrounds.

Additionally, some potential mass shooters who harbor intentions of carrying out mass violence might lack a criminal record or documented mental health issues to identify during background checks.

Everyday criminals affiliated with gangs have no concerns about passing a background check to acquire firearms, which they then use for activities such as targeting rival gangs or engaging in various criminal acts.

Criminals frequently steal firearms or obtain them through straw purchases. The access to firearms for individuals should be a straightforward and uncomplicated procedure, without unnecessary restrictions on where they can carry those arms.

Imposing gun restrictions inadvertently empowers criminals while penalizing law-abiding citizens.

Dealing With The Panic
Familiarity with a firearm breeds competency rather than contempt, says Sheriff Jim.

In one of the rare interviews that he gave, Texas Ranger Frank Hamer said, “The one superlative thing you want to achieve is to hit your mark… Really, it is very simple. Just keep cool and take time to aim straight, and that’s all there is to it.”

In line with that, to paraphrase, Col. Jeff Cooper said that, when dealing with a violent attack is unavoidable, we should purge our minds of everything except target acquisition… front sight… press.

For us mere mortals, the real enemy is a combination of panic plus lack of ability. And, while both are serious problems, they can be overcome. We should never be surprised that something like a criminal attack is happening to us. We deal with these things by honing our skills. Continually working to improve our skills builds self-confidence and properly placed self-confidence has won many a fight.

Just about everyone has seen those targets that some folks post on social media. You know the ones, shot at 5 or 7 yards, and the pattern looks like it was shot with a shotgun instead of a handgun. Not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but a really good place to start is the basic handgun marksmanship class from the NRA. You know, just be able to stand on your hind legs and hit a target dead center, not once in a while, but most of the time. The ability to draw quickly and shoot fast has to be built upon a foundation such as this.

In my case, I began roaming the local creek with my Red Ryder BB gun and later my Winchester .22 rifle. Targets of opportunity were everywhere, and I hustled whatever paying jobs I could find to keep stocked up on ammo. In high school I joined the ROTC, not because I was enamored with the military, but because they had a smallbore rifle range in the basement and taught marksmanship. My first police job was with a department that encouraged marksmanship among the officers, and you can bet that I learned a lot there. Even today, I try to take at least one defensive shooting class per year. That commitment to continuing education definitely increased my self-confidence and helped me to deal with some serious issues over the years.

Nothing builds self-confidence like getting a good gun, buying lots of ammunition, and shooting on a regular basis. Take a basic marksmanship class if you’ve never had one or if it’s been a while since the last one. Learn to point a handgun and hit a target dead center at various ranges, not just up close. Once you can do that on a regular basis, you are ready to learn to fight with the handgun and avoid the panic that might defeat you.

Orthodox Jewish camp in Schoharie County sues to keep its guns in place
Administrators at TheZone summer camp have concealed-carry permits and are requesting an injunction to a new state law

GILBOA — New York’s gun rights activists are a diverse lot, ranging from rural hunters and Second Amendment supporters to Black pastors in urban churches who say they want to protect their flocks from armed white supremacists.

Now, the operators of an Orthodox Jewish summer camp have joined the gun rights debate, with a lawsuit seeking an injunction that, despite a contested state law, would let them continue to be armed for self-defense.

Eliyohu Mintz, CEO of TheZone summer camp, and camp Administrator Eric Schwartz cited numerous anti-Semitic threats as a reason they should be allowed to continue to carry concealed weapons despite a recent tightening of state gun control laws.

“New York State’s fabrication of ‘gun free’ zones through the enactment of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act in 2022 calculatedly leaves our most vulnerable people — children — defenseless and at the mercy of violent and predatory evildoers,” reads a legal action seeking an injunction against the new rule.

Mintz and Schwartz, who both have concealed-carry gun licenses, have gone to Federal Northern District Court seeking permission to keep carrying their guns at the summer camp.

In their injunction request, they name Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery; Sheriff Ronald Stevens and Steven Nigrelli, the acting State Police superintendent, as defendants.

Oorah Gun Case by rkarlin on Scribd

Gov. Lee sets parameters for special session on the Second Amendment, public safety

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Gov. Bill Lee’s office released the topics of legislation for a special session that would take on public safety in tandem with Second Amendment rights.

The document lists 18 different topics from mental health resources to juvenile justice reform.

This special session on Aug. 21 follows The Covenant School shooting back in March that claimed lives — including three children.

Critics had hoped the session would focus on guns and what they call sensible gun reform. The governor, however, intends to focus on the state’s broken mental health and juvenile justice systems.

Near the end of the regular session, Gov. Bill Lee proposed a bill that would have allowed extreme risk orders of protection or so-called red flag laws. The bill would have made it easier for a judge to take away someone’s guns if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. But the Republican supermajority killed the bill.

Here are the parameters of the special session this August:

  • mental health resources providers, commitments or services;
  • school safety plans or policies;
  • offenses of committing mass violence or threatening to commit acts of mass violence;
  • reports from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation regarding human trafficking;
  • identification of individuals arrested for felonies;
  • law enforcement’s access to information about individuals who are subject to mental health commitment;
  • information about victims of violent offenses;
  • stalking offenses;
  • measures encouraging the safe storage of firearms, which do include the creation of penalties for failing to safely store firearms;
  • temporary mental health orders of protections, which must be initiated by law enforcement, must require a due process hearing, must require the respondent to undergo an assessment for suicidal or homicidal ideation, must require that an order of protection be reevaluated at least 180 days and must not permit ex parte orders;
  • the transfer of juvenile defendants age 16 and older to courts with criminal jurisdiction, which must include appeal rights for the juveniles and the prosecuting authorities;
  • limiting the circumstances in which juvenile records may be expunged;
  • blended sentencing for juveniles;
  • offenses related to inducing or coercing a minor to commit an offense;
  • the structure of operations of state and local courts
  • making appropriations sufficient to provide funding for any legislation

ILLINOIS 5TH CIRCUIT COURT REVERSES, REMANDS FOID CARD CHALLENGE CASE

BELLEVUE, WA – The Illinois 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has finally reversed and remanded a lower court ruling in a case which could determine whether the Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card requirement is constitutional.

The Second Amendment Foundation notes this will be the third go-round for the case in White County Circuit Court, but it could ultimately end up before the Illinois State Supreme Court, noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. The case was brought and funded by SAF and the Illinois State Rifle Association.

The five-page order was unanimous, with Justices John B. Barberis and Barry L. Vaughan concurring with Justice Thomas M. Welch, who delivered the opinion.

Noting that, “The State has filed a motion for summary relief arguing that the basis of the court’s dismissal—that it was impossible for Brown to comply with the statute—is not one of the bases upon which a charge may be dismissed before trial,” Justice Welch confirmed the defendant, Vivian Claudine Brown “agrees that the cause should be remanded.”

“We’re delighted the courts will finally have an opportunity to hear arguments in the actual case which challenge the constitutionality of the FOID card,” Gottlieb said. “Hopefully, this time around, we won’t see the case bogged down by more procedural issues which have allowed the court to avoid addressing the main issue at hand, which is whether the FOID card requirement actually passes constitutional muster.”

The case dates back to when Brown was originally charged with unlawful possession of a firearm without also possessing a FOID card, in May 2017.

“This case has been bouncing around for six years,” Gottlieb noted, “and it is high time to move forward.”

Federal District Court issues Temporary Restraining Order on Hawaii’s ‘new’ Concealed Carry law.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.hid.165717/gov.uscourts.hid.165717.66.0.pdf

The TRO Motion is GRANTED to the extent that the following
provisions are enjoined:
-the portions of § 134-A(a)(1) that prohibit carrying firearms
in parking areas owned, leased, or used by the State or a
county which share the parking area with non-governmental
entities, are not reserved for State or county employees,
or do not exclusively serve the State or county building;
-the entirety of §§ 134-A(a)(4) and (a)(12);
-the portions of § 134-A(a)(9) prohibiting the carrying of
firearms in beaches, parks, and their adjacent parking
areas; and
-the portion of § 134-E that prohibits carrying firearms on
private properties held open to the public.

 

FPC Files For Injunction Against Washington “Large Capacity” Magazine Ban

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that it has filed a motion for summary judgment in its Sullivan v. Ferguson lawsuit, which challenges Washington’s unconstitutional ban on common firearm magazines. The motion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“There can be no serious dispute that the magazines Washington bans are ‘in common use’—there are hundreds of millions of them [] owned by tens of millions of Americans as private surveys and industry and government data all corroborate,” argues the motion. “Indeed, courts across the country have repeatedly found that these magazines are commonly owned and widely chosen by Americans for self-defense and other lawful purposes. That fact decides this case, and Plaintiffs are entitled to judgment in their favor.”

“There are few things more offensive than politicians arbitrarily preventing people from possessing the tools they deem necessary to protect their lives, loved ones, and communities,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPCAF’s General Counsel and Vice President of Legal, and FPC’s counsel in this case. “The magazines that Washington bans are constitutionally protected and it does not have the power to infringe on the rights of Washingtonians by banning them. We’re hopeful that the Court will see the error of Washington’s ways.”

FPC is joined in this lawsuit by the Second Amendment Foundation.

Federal judge in Colorado blocks law raising age requirement for gun purchases

A federal judge in Colorado on Monday temporarily blocked a state law that raised the legal age requirement for purchasing a firearm to 21.

Chief U.S. District Judge Phillip A. Brimmer ruled in favor of the gun rights group, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, who had filed a lawsuit against Gov. Jared Polis.

The state law, SB23-169, was one of several sweeping gun reform measures approved by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Polis in the spring. It sought to prohibit people under the age of 21 from purchasing a gun, with exceptions for active members of the U.S. armed forces, peace officers, and people certified by the Peace Officer Standards and Training board.

RMGO argued in their lawsuit that law was unconstitutional. The group said if people are allowed to vote when they turn 18, they should be allowed to purchase a gun.

“Since the day this legislation was introduced, we knew it was unconstitutional,” said RMGO executive director Taylor Rhodes in a written statement. “Under the Golden Dome, at the unveiling of this proposal, RMGO warned the bill sponsors this would quickly be struck down by a federal judge. Today, our crystal ball became a reality.”

 

Tennessee GOP committee warns governor on special session

If Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee was hoping to bring his fellow Republicans around on the idea of a special session to pass his version of a “red flag” law and other gun-related legislation before officially calling the session into being, his hopes were dashed this weekend when the state’s Republican Party Executive Committee adopted a resolution instead asking the governor to drop his plans altogether.

According to the Chattanooga Free Press, the resolution’s language was suggested by committee member Tina Bensiker, who says she’s concerned that many of the ideas that have been floated would violate the rights of Tennessee residents, while failing to take a bite out of violent crime.

“I feel at this point a lot of this is really emotion as opposed to rational and reasoned,” Benkiser added. “My concern, and a lot of others’ concerns, is that some of the proposals we’ve heard really violate due process of law. And that is a fundamental concern. And when you start talking about potentially infringing on people’s constitutional rights, that needs to be thought out over a long period of time with people who have thought, debated, looked at the language and fleshed all that out. Not something to be rushed through.”

Benkiser said she hopes Lee will take heed of the GOP action.

“I understand that people sometimes act out of emotion when something horrendous has happened, as happened here in Nashville, but really to friends of his. I understand that, and I think the natural reaction is to want to do something and to want to do something now. But like I said, when you’re talking about constitutional rights, at the end of the day, you need to take the time to think that out.”

Other committee members are concerned that the statehouse could turn into a circus once the special session gets underway, pointing to the protests on the floor of the state House earlier this year that resulted in the expulsion of two Democratic lawmakers. Those legislators recently won special elections in their heavily Democratic districts and are vowing to introduce a host of gun control measures during the special session, and some on the GOP Executive Committee believe the special session would once again inflame tensions and create a flashpoint for anti-gun activists to rally around.

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Study Shows Gun Laws Don’t Matter, Race Does

33 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago. Urban gangland violence like that is what real “mass shootings” look like and finally a Journal of the American Medical Association paper addressed the problem by shifting the blame to something it calls “structural racism”.

The JAMA paper, which was quickly picked up by CNN as “Structural Racism may Contribute to Mass Shootings” and by Bloomberg as “Mass Shootings Disproportionately Victimize Black Americans”, acknowledged what conservatives have been saying about gun violence.

“There was no discernible association noted in this study between gun laws and MSEs [mass shootings] with other studies showing similar findings,” it noted.

The issue wasn’t gun laws, it was race. “The study found that in areas with higher black populations, mass shootings are likelier to occur compared to communities with higher white populations,” CNN reported. “The findings disrupt the nation’s image of mass shootings, which has been shaped by tragedies like the Las Vegas festival shooting and Sandy Hook in which most of the victims were not black,” Bloomberg added.

Faced with an immovable statistical object and the unstoppable force of equity, the JAMA paper blames the whole thing on structural racism. The study correlates urban areas and neighborhoods with high concentrations of single-parent households” to mass shootings. It then demonstrates that “structural racism” must be at fault because of “the percentage of the population that is black.” Black people in the study are interchangeable with racism.

Such is the state of woke medical science which tries to fix racism with more racism. The study never comes up with any plausible explanation of how structural racism causes people to shoot each other. At one point it claims that “racial residential segregation practices are predictive of various types of shootings” in a country where segregation had been abolished since 1964.

The study’s definition of segregation is so senseless that it lists majority black cities like Detroit, a 77% black city, as being 73% segregated, and Baltimore, a 62% black city, as being 64% segregated. A city with a strong black majority and black leaders is racially segregated and its people are suffering from “structural racism”. That’s why there are so many mass shootings.

But if segregation is the issue then why does Atlanta, which had actual segregation, have only 18 mass shootings, while Chicago has 141? Southern cities show up as less segregated and less violent in the paper’s data. A history of segregation is clearly not the issue. This isn’t about the past, whether it’s the historical revisionism of the 1619 Project, or any other.

If segregation were the issue, crime would have been far higher during segregation than after it.

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About those 116 gun deaths per day…

Headlines over “gun deaths” will always draw eyes. Some people will immediately click the link, then share it all over social media, just so they can say, “See! I told you guns are bad!”

There are usually problems with this, though.

For example, these reports rarely provide any context and they also tend to involve a fair bit of sensationalism in presenting all firearm-related fatalities as the same.

Like this one does.

As of Aug. 1, at least 25,198 people have died from gun violence in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive – which is an average of roughly 118 deaths each day.

Of those who died, 879 were teens and 170 were children.

Deaths by suicide have made up the vast majority of gun violence deaths this year. There’s been more than 14,000 deaths by gun suicide this year, an average of about 66 deaths by suicide per day in 2023.

The majority of these deaths have occurred in Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana.

The grim tally of gun violence deaths includes 488 people killed in police officer-involved shootings. Thirty-four police officers have been fatally shot in the line of duty this year.

So about 56 percent of those deaths were suicides and nearly 500 were killed in officer-involved shootings, meaning they were justified homicides.

Now, this is going to be used to push gun control. It’s going to be used to justify more and more restrictions on our basic civil liberties, and they dishonest hacks won’t even pretend there’s a difference in these categories of shootings.

Suicides are awful and tragic, as are homicides, but the two things are very different.

The solutions to suicides aren’t the same as those for homicides. The motivations are completely different, so addressing the underlying causes is going to be completely different.

Gun control doesn’t stop suicides. At best, it shifts people to use another method, but it doesn’t stop suicides. Granted, it doesn’t stop homicides, either.

Yet anti-gun voices in the media love to lump all gun deaths into one big bucket. They want as big of a number as possible to scare people with. You can’t do that with just the homicide numbers. So, suicides it is.

Yes, these are all “gun deaths” if you just want the total of people who were killed due to a gunshot. For many people, though, that’s all that matters.

And it’s telling, because most of these people claim they don’t want to ban gun ownership, but then can’t differentiate between criminals’ acts and someone who took their own life due to their own mental illness.

They want them lumped because the evil, at least in their minds, is the guns themselves. If it was really about saving people’s lives, they’d focus on the underlying conditions at play here. Everything from mental health treatment to job programs would be on the agenda.

The fact that they’re not is telling. It’s just not telling us anything we didn’t already know after decades of watching and listening to the anti-gun agenda.

Words Matter

Americans, for the most part, don’t like to be controlled. It is part of our collective DNA and has been from the time the first English settlers arrived in Jamestown, continuing on through the westward expansion, and through to today. That is why the gun prohibitionists have begun to couch their aims behind innocuous buzzwords.

First it was “gun safety”. I attribute that to Mayor Bloomberg and his PR flacks including the Demanding Mom herself Shannon Watts. They understood that if they couched their desire for control behind the concept of “safety” then there would be less objection. The mainstream media has bought into the terminology wholeheartedly.

Of course, if Bloomberg, Watts, the Biden Administration, and the rest of the gun control industry were truly serious about “gun safety”, they would be insisting upon classes like hunter safety and the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program be taught in every school in America. As it is the Biden Administration through the US Department of Education is withholding funding to schools for archery and hunter safety programs. They are using the so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 as their excuse. So in their pursuit of “gun safety” and “safer communities” they will defund the exact types of programs that actually work for safety.

Now it appears that the successor word to “gun safety” will be “gun responsibility”. This comes from Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey. He, of course, is using the tragedy in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas as the pretense to urge for “gun responsibility.”

McConaughey says there is a difference between control and responsibility in his op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman.

There is a difference between control and responsibility. The first is a mandate that can infringe on our right; the second is a duty that will preserve it. There is no constitutional barrier to gun responsibility. Keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people is not only the responsible thing to do, it is the best way to protect the Second Amendment. We can do both.

That all sounds nice but it is sophistry. As Bishop Robert Barron noted in his commencement address at Hillsdale College:

Their concern is not being truthful or just but rather speaking in such a way that they appear truthful or just and hence become convincing to others. Such sophists were, obviously enough, enormously useful to prospective lawyers and politicians in ancient Greece, and it should be equally obvious that their intellectual descendants are rather thick on the ground today.

McConaughey enumerates four key points for “gun responsibility” in his op-ed.

  • Universal background checks
  • Age 21 to buy an “assault rifle” (sic) unless one is in the military. “Assault rifle” is undefined.
  • “Red Flag Laws should be the law of the land.”
  • National waiting period for the purchase of “assault rifles” (sic).

So in the end, what McConaughey calls “gun responsibility” is just a rehash of many prior “gun control” proposals. They are all, as the gun control industry has said for decades, a “good first step.” A good first step to even more onerous control upon an enumerated right.

The gun control industry and their fellow travelers have to rely upon sophistry and buzzwords. Otherwise they have nothing.

Federal judge bizarrely contends that most firearms can be banned without violating the Second Amendment

Last month, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton tossed out a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s ban on concealed carry in state parks, ruling that the plaintiff in the litigation didn’t have standing to sue because there was no credible threat of him being arrested or prosecuted for violating the ban. That was an exceedingly odd decision, but it kept the ban in place (at least for now), which counts as a win as far as anti-gunners are concerned.

Now Arterton has followed up with another legal doozy, rejecting a preliminary injunction against the state’s newly-expanded ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines by declaring that the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence allows for bans on commonly-owned weapons, and that “only a ban on firearms that are so pervasively used for self-defense that to ban them would ‘infringe,’ or destroy, the right to self-defense” would violate our right to keep and bear arms.

Under Arterton’s interpretation of Heller, McDonald, Caetano, and Bruen everything from bolt-action hunting rifles to single-barreled shotguns could be banned without calling into question the right to keep and bear arms; presumably leaving only some (but likely not all) handguns protected by the Second Amendment’s language.

Unlike the broader category of handguns at issue in Heller and Bruen, the record developed here demonstrates that assault weapons and LCMs are suboptimal for self-defense.

A set of statutes that bans only a subset of each category of firearms that possess new and dangerous characteristics that make them susceptible to abuse by nonlaw abiding citizens wielding them for unlawful purposes imposes a comparable burden to the regulations on Bowie knives, percussion cap pistols, and other dangerous or concealed weapons, particularly when “there remain more than one thousand firearms that Connecticut residents can purchase for responsible and lawful uses like self-defense, home defense, and other lawful purposes such as hunting and sport shooting.”

Well hang on there. If, according to Arterton, only those arms that are “pervasively” used in self-defense cannot be banned, then firearms most commonly used for lawful purposes such as hunting and sport shooting have no protection whatsoever under the Second Amendment, regardless of whether or not the state of Connecticut still allows them to be sold.

You can read Arterton’s lengthy dissertation for yourself here, but I’ll caution you before you start that her opinion reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to W.C. Fields; if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullsh**. Arterton definitely left me scratching my head on multiple occasions, such as her rejection of the use of FBI crime statistics that point to rifles of any kind being rarely used in homicide because the data supposedly “provides limited relevant insight” since they “these statistics do not track what types of firearms are used with enough precision to determine whether they are assault weapons.” Arterton, meanwhile, blithely took the state’s “expert” John Donohue of Stanford University at face value, though Donohue has maintained that the individual right to keep and bear arms was created by the Supreme Court in Heller and was not a pre-existing right protected by the Second Amendment in 1791.

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A Silly Argument: The Second Amendment Insurrectionist Purpose

U.S.A. — One of the silliest arguments about the purposes of the Second Amendment is put forward this way. The newly formed Constitutional government would never have created an amendment with the purpose of destroying the government just created. Here is an example from the far-left eugeneweekly.com:

That newly created narrative included the supposed purpose of arming citizens in order to enable them to rebel against the very constitutional government which the Founders were establishing with its checks and balances. This despite the Founders having defined treason as taking up arms against that very government.

But this glaring contradiction persisted and found a home within the halls of the Supreme Court, whose collective wisdom may have suffered from the influx of unreported gifts by billionaires to a number of justices weighing in on the question.

The writer does not appear to have read the history of the Revolutionary War, the Federalist Papers, the arguments surrounding the Bill of Rights, the rudiments of the political theories the Constitution is based on, or the Constitution itself. Knowledge of any one of these fields provides ample refutation of the argument above.

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Study proves there is NO CORRELATION between gun control laws and mass shootings

A new study by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder has found that there is no correlation between the strength of gun control laws and the number of mass shootings that occur in each state.

The United States has more than 10 times the number of mass shootings than any other developed country in the world. In the study, the researchers looked at 4,011 mass shootings – defined as four or more gun deaths in the same short period, not including the shooter – between Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2022. (Related: RFK Jr.: Seizing lawful firearms will not STOP mass shootings.)

Illinois, with its restrictive gun laws and comparatively low gun ownership of 22 percent, had 414 mass shootings and a per capita rate of 3.6 mass shootings per million people.

Washington, D.C., despite not being a state, was included in the study and the researchers were shocked to find that the district had the highest rate of mass shootings per capita at 10.4 shootings for every one million people. This is despite the fact that the country’s capital has some of the strongest gun control laws in the nation.

For states, Louisiana had the highest rate of mass shootings per capita at 4.3 shootings per million people – less than half the per capita rate in Washington, D.C. despite the lax gun laws and 52 percent gun ownership.

Hawaii and North Dakota had zero mass shootings from 2014 to 2022. They are followed by New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming, which all had one each, Idaho with two and Maine with three.

Environmental and sociocultural factors more likely to lead to mass shootings

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