Category: RKBA

Bloombutt may never go broke, but at least making him use his own cash instead of ours is better.

After Trump Cuts BSCA Funds to Anti-Gun Orgs, Bloomberg’s Everytown Steps in to Fill the Void.

Washington’s swamp never runs out of ways to waste your money. But this time, for once, a major artery of anti-gun spending has been cut off — and gun owners have reason to breathe a little easier.

The Trump Administration has officially ended millions in federal grants created under John Cornyn’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — a law that gun owners across the country warned from day one would become a backdoor gun-control slush fund.

The cuts hit the so-called Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, a DOJ program Cornyn helped create with Biden in 2022. CVIPI’s stated mission sounds harmless enough — “supporting community-based solutions to reduce gun violence.” But in practice, it became a pipeline of taxpayer cash flowing straight into organizations that push red flag gun confiscation, “ghost gun” bans, and gun tracing programs that amount to backdoor registration.

The CVIPI Problem

When Cornyn and his Democrat allies rammed through the BSCA, they sold it to gun owners as “fundamentally important to the country.” In reality, it pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Washington bureaucracies and “community-based organizations” with political ties to the gun control lobby, much like a domestic USAID-style money laundering scheme.

These were the same groups working hand-in-hand with anti-gun legislators in blue states to advance red flag laws, promote so-called “untraceable gun” bans, and build databases of firearm ownership under the guise of “tracing.” In other words, the federal government was bankrolling the civilian disarmament industrial complex.

That’s why Texas Gun Rights fought Cornyn’s BSCA from day one. We warned that once the money started flowing, it would end up in the pockets of the same radical organizations that hate the Second Amendment. And we were right.

Cui Bono?

Recipients of Cornyn’s CVIPI funds included groups openly advocating for gun-control frameworks. Organizations like Youth ALIVE! and others in California publicly promote red flag laws and tracing mandates. Others, like Cure Violence Global and Chicago CRED, work hand-in-hand with state officials to support “public health” approaches to gun ownership that treat the Second Amendment as a disease.

Now, the Trump Administration has finally put an end to this taxpayer-funded nonsense, slashing off millions that were funneled into these anti-gun operations.

Enter Everytown, Bloomberg’s Cash Machine

Of course, billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety couldn’t stand to see their allies lose funding. Within weeks of the cuts, Everytown announced they were funneling over $2 million into “community organizations” that lost their CVIPI money.

Let that sink in. The same organization that’s spent years lobbying for gun bans, “red flag” confiscation laws, and national gun registration is now handpicking and financing the exact same groups that had been feasting on your tax dollars.

So when the DOJ says CVIPI is about “violence prevention,” it’s worth asking: if Bloomberg’s Everytown is funding the same recipients, what kind of “prevention” are we really talking about?

Why It Matters

Gun owners know what “red flag” laws mean — confiscation without due process. We know what “ghost gun” bans mean — criminalizing home-built firearms and hobbyists. And we know what “gun tracing” means — a federal backdoor registry waiting to happen.

All of it is unconstitutional. All of it is dangerous. And all of it was made possible by John Cornyn’s partnership with Joe Biden on the BSCA. The same BSCA that gave the ATF its “engaged in the business” rule — a sweeping new power that treats ordinary Americans as gun dealers, forcing them into a de facto universal gun registration scheme.

Fighting Back

Thankfully, there are fighters ready to undo Cornyn’s damage. Congressman Wesley Hunt has announced plans to file legislation repealing every shred of gun control from the BSCA. And Attorney General Ken Paxton is in the trenches suing the ATF to shut down its unconstitutional “engaged in the business” rule.

That rule never passed Congress. It was enabled by the BSCA, and it’s being wielded to destroy the private sale of firearms in America. Meanwhile, Cornyn is dodging the cameras and pretending none of this ever happened, as if Texans have forgotten that he gave Biden his biggest gun control win in 30 years.

We haven’t.

The No-Compromise Truth

This is why Texas Gun Rights exists — not to please politicians, but to hold them accountable when they betray gun owners. We don’t compromise with gun control. We expose it, dismantle it, and fight it tooth and nail. Whether it comes from Biden, Bloomberg, or a “Republican” senator from Texas — the result is the same: our freedoms are under attack.

And we’ll never stop fighting to defend them. Because at the end of the day, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your safety or your rights to satisfy the swamp. Not in Texas. Not anywhere.

 

Chris McNutt is president of Texas Gun Rights.

How Richmond Is Rewriting the Story of Gun Violence — One Student at a Time

““There is no public safety without guns. If guns didn’t exist, yes,” said Ra-Twoine Fields. “But we live in America, where there are more guns than people. So no, there is no public safety without guns. What we can do is learn how to manage it, how to live with it responsibly.”

Fields, a firearms instructor, armed security guard, and PhD student at Saybrook University is also the founder of The Holistic Agency and Crenius, two initiatives linking creative expression, public safety, and community healing. Crenius channels art into civic engagement; The Holistic Agency takes a culturally informed approach to defensive, medical, and mental-health training, treating self-protection and wellness as parts of the same system.

He doesn’t speak for shock value. This is the foundation of his work: teaching young people not to fear the world they live in, but to survive it safely.

Fields helps lead Control the Narrative, his philosophy for harm reduction and violence prevention in Richmond. The approach is rooted in community-violence intervention (CVI) meeting those most at risk where they are, interrupting retaliation, and connecting them to counseling, job training, and other supports. He’s adapted those principles locally through The Holistic Agency’s Weapons Program, a five-week course for teens in Henrico County and Richmond who have already encountered the justice system.

The goal isn’t punishment. It’s understanding why they carry and helping them imagine a life where they don’t have to.

 

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SCOTUS Slates Several More 2A Cases for Consideration in Conference

The Supreme Court has already granted cert to two separate cases dealing with Second Amendment issues, and I think there’s a strong possibility the justices will agree to hear at least one more 2A-related challenge this term.

So far the Court has decided to address the constitutionality of Hawaii’s “vampire rule” prohibiting concealed carry on private property unless expressly allowed by the property owner and the federal law barring unlawful users of drugs from possessing firearms, but next week the justices will also consider four cases in conference that all have to do with the Second Amendment rights of 18-to-20-year-olds.

The lawsuits involve challenges to the federal prohibition on handgun sales to adults under 21, Florida’s law banning all gun sales to under-21s, and Pennsylvania’s ban on concealed carry for under-21s (which turns into a total prohibition on carry for young adults when the state’s open carry law is suspended during a state of emergency).

Given the circuit court splits on the issue, I believe there’s a real possibility the Court will hear one or more of these cases. But there are other live issues pending before Court, and the November 21 conference will feature almost a half-dozen of them.

Four of the cases slated for the November 21 conference are prohibited persons cases; not challenges to Section 922(g)(3) and its ban on unlawful drug users owning guns, but taking on 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on gun ownership for anyone who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by more than one year’s imprisonment; and 922(g)(5)(A), which bars unlawful aliens from possessing firearms.

In addition, the Court has scheduled Duncan v. Bonta for its November 21 conference. That’s the challenge to California’s ban on so-called “large capacity” magazines. The Ninth Circuit has upheld the law, including the provision requiring existing owners to destroy their magazines, turn them over to law enforcement, permanently modify them to comply with California’s 10-round limit, or remove them from the state.

The appeals court, though, has stayed enforcement of that portion of the law. If the Supreme Court denies cert, it’s almost guaranteed that the Ninth Circuit would lift that stay and California could start prosecuting anyone found in possession of “large capacity” magazines, even if they lawfully purchased them.

I’d love for the Court to hear each and every one of these cases, but that’s not a realistic possibility. The Court could end up holding on to one or more of these cases pending the outcome in Wolford v. Lopez and U.S. v. Hemani, though I don’t know that either of those cases would have much of an impact on the constitutionality of California’s mag ban.

In one final bit of SCOTUS news, the lead attorney challenging Hawaii’s “vampire rule” in Wolford v. Lopez is asking for help from gun owners in order to “pay for historians, documents, affidavits, and the mountain of legal costs” associated with a Supreme Court challenge. If you’d like to help attorney Alan Beck and the plaintiffs in Wolford, you can contribute to a GiveSendGo campaign. As of Wednesday afternoon Beck had raised nearly $40,000 of his $65,000 goal, and more than 400 patriots have contributed to the cause. Hopefully we can add to the number of donors and fully fund the campaign so that Beck can deliver the strongest arguments possible in the upcoming round of briefing and oral arguments next year.

Trump Cuts Off Tax Money Pipeline to Gun Control Groups

There’s little that is as upsetting as seeing your tax dollars spent on something you are morally opposed to with every fiber of your being. It’s especially upsetting when that something is an attack on one of our basic civil liberties that’s expressly protected by the United States Constitution.

However, as we found out earlier this year, our tax money was ending up in the bank accounts of various gun control groups, thus we were being forced to fund the effort to strip us of our God-given right to keep and bear arms.

Much of that funding was cut off already, but not all of it.

As the NRA-ILA notes, though, President Trump has cut off even more.

The loss of funding resulted in a lawsuit against the Trump administration brought by five non-profit entities, lead by the progressive Vera Institute of Justice, alleging the cuts were unconstitutional, illegal, and arbitrary and capricious. In July, an Obama-appointed judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia denied injunctive relief and granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show the court had jurisdiction over their arbitrary and capricious claim and failed “to demonstrate a violation of any constitutional right or protection.”

The other shoe on these grants has just dropped.

The Trump administration has reportedly retooled the eligibility criteria and focus for these grants going forward. Eligibility to apply for an estimated $34 million in grant money has changed to exclude community-based organizations and non-profit applicants.

The focus is more explicitly on “supporting law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime and improv[ing] police-community relations” through law enforcement officer and related personnel hiring, equipment purchases that specifically support violence prevention and intervention, youth violence intervention programs, and generally by “increasing the capacity of local government, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system to coordinate comprehensive crime reduction strategies.”…

A look through the archived list of past federal grant recipients (FY 2022 and FY 2023) shows that many of the previous CVIPI grantees have also been funded by Everytown Support Fund’s Community Safety Fund. A very cursory examination of the archived list also reveals a few grant recipients with clear anti-Second Amendment, pro-gun control elements.

Let’s understand that no matter what a program accomplishes with regard to reducing violent crime, if they don’t support gun control, Everytown isn’t backing them. I don’t care what they might claim in that regard; that’s just the simple truth. They’re an anti-Second Amendment organization, and they only support their fellow travelers.

But by changing the criteria like they did, the DOJ has cut off funding that might not explicitly go toward gun control, but would free up other revenue for those purposes. Something else I don’t care about is the claim that the money wasn’t for anti-gun activities, because money is fungible and a dollar in is a dollar in. They only promise not to use X amount for anti-gun efforts.

While gun control organizations are trying to frame this as killing efforts to prevent so-called gun violence, the reality is that there’s little evidence these efforts did a damn thing. Plus, if Everytown and its buddies are that bothered, they’re free to issue their own grants. I’m sure Michael Bloomberg has a spare $34 million lying around.

Why should we, the American people, be on the hook for something that doesn’t seem to do much?

The Hidden Question for SCOTUS in Its Newest 2A Case

On the surface, the Hemani case the Supreme Court recently agreed to take up is about one thing: whether Section 922(g)(3) is constitutional as it applies to Ali Danial Hemani, who was convicted of possessing guns as an “unlawful” user of marijuana.

In answering that question, though, the justices are almost certainly going to have to answer another: whether the DOJ’s proposed rule allowing prohibited persons to apply to the Attorney General to have their Second Amendment rights resolved should bar prohibited persons from using the courts to regain their right to keep and bear arms.

Solicitor General D. John Saeur made the case for the Court to throw out the Hemani case on those grounds in his cert petition to the Supreme Court, and if the court adopts Sauer’s flawed reasoning it would have a impact well beyond Ali Danial Hemani’s conviction.

To the extent Section 922(g)(3) raises constitutional concerns in marginal cases, 18 U.S.C. 925(c) provides the appropriate mechanism for addressing those concerns. Under that statute, a person may apply to the Attorney General for relief from federal firearms disabilities. The Attorney General may grant relief if the applicant shows that “the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety” and if “the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”  If the Attorney General denies relief, the applicant may seek judicial review in district court.

That program was effectively disabled from 1992 until 2025 because the authority to grant relief had been delegated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and appropriations statutes have included provisos barring ATF from using funds to act on Section 925(c) applications. Recognizing that the appropriations bar applies only to ATF, however, the Attorney General recently withdrew the delegation of authority to ATF and revitalized the Section 925(c) process. An individual who seeks an exception to one of Section922(g)’s categorical restrictions could invoke that process and, if the Attorney General denies his application, seek judicial review. That process provides a more workable mechanism for granting exceptions than a court-administered regime of as-applied challenges brought by those engaged in criminal conduct.

Section 925(c), to be sure, was not operative at the time of respondent’s offense conduct. But respondent has not argued that he would have satisfied Section925(c)’s standard—i.e., that his record and reputation show that he is unlikely to “act in a manner dangerous to public safety” and that granting relief “would not be contrary to the public interest.” 18 U.S.C. 925(c). Nor did respondent file a civil suit seeking “protection from prosecution under [Section 922(g)(3)] for any future possession of a firearm.” He instead “violated the law in secret,” “tried to avoid detection, ”and raised an as-applied challenge as a defense to a criminal charge after he was caught. Section 922(g)(3) raises no constitutional concerns as applied to him.

The biggest problem with Sauer’s argument is that Section 925(c) is still not operative and available to Hemani. If you look up “federal firearms rights restoration Attorney General” you’ll find this DOJ page that says “The Department is developing a 925(c) program web-based application for those seeking to restore their federal firearms rights” and “An initial version of the application will be available online soon after the final rule is released”.

There is, however, no way for Mr. Hemani or anyone else to actually start the application process. That could change by the time oral arguments are held, but the fact that this supposed remedy has been unavailable to anyone for more than 30 years should give the justices enough reason to reject the DOJ’s position.

Another huge issue with Sauer’s suggestion is that Ali Hemani isn’t just appealing the loss of his gun rights. He’s appealing his conviction for violating a law that the Fifth Circuit has said is unconstitutional as it applies to him. Relief from firearm disabilities is one thing, but Hemani is also trying to void the conviction that led to the loss of his right to keep and bear arms in the first place, and Section 925(c) doesn’t help him in the slightest.

If the Supreme Court agrees with Sauer, then Section 922(g)(3) will still be actively enforced against all “unlawful” drug users; not only guys like Ali Hemani, but the grandmother in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma eating a THC gummy to help with the effects of chemotherapy, or the former district attorney in Pennsylvania who can’t buy or possess a gun because he uses medical cannabis.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad the DOJ is restarting the 925(c) process after more than 30 years. It does nothing, though, to address the constitutionality of these statutes and whether or not people should be charged and convicted for violating them going forward. That’s why it’s so disappointing, and frankly disturbing, to see Sauer’s disingenuous argument deployed here, and SCOTUS will hopefully make it clear that they reject his flawed reasoning when oral arguments take place.

BLUF
To a casual observer in the early 21st century it might seem that the “militia-uses-only” view of the Second Amendment had always been predominant, and the Heller and McDonald decisions involved dramatic legal change. In full historical context, however, it becomes apparent that those decisions recognize the individual rights understanding that had prevailed from the Framing onward. The militia-uses-only approach rejected in Heller and McDonald was in fact a very recent creation of the lower federal courts, utterly ahistoric, and which had been subject to scholarly challenge almost from its outset.

The Rise and Demise of the Collective Right Interpretation of the Second Amendment

Printer Panic: Everytown 3D Gun Summit Targets Technological Advancement

Recently, Everytown for Gun Safety hosted a 3D Printed Firearms Summit in New York City with the goal being to “build cross-sector collaboration and chart actionable strategies to stem the tide of 3D-printed firearm (3DPF) related violence.”  The gathering of gloom is seemingly a leftover from the Biden-Harris administration, which convened similar confabs of gun control absolutists. One positive note is that these kinds of anti-gun “summits” must now be funded with Everytown’s own money rather than by taxpayers through Biden’s defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Media hype ahead of the summit warned, “We’re at the start of a new public safety crisis and there is no time to waste,” and “3D-printed firearms are the new frontier in the fight against gun violence.” Everytown is apparently measuring this crisis by “recovery data from twenty U.S. cities submitted exclusively to Everytown” according to their Facebook post. Exclusive crime-related data given just to Everytown may raise its own kinds of red-flags to consider.

While 3D printing is a newer and developing technology, homemade firearms, or PMFs — privately made firearms — are not. Since the birth of our nation, citizens have enjoyed the right to create their own privately made firearms. A review of the basic facts on PMFs would have made for a helpful presentation at the summit.

As far as federal law is concerned, individuals can legally make firearms for personal use without a license as long as the person isn’t prohibited from possession of firearms, the firearm is detectable, and the firearm isn’t made or sold for profit. Firearms and related items that are illegal under federal and/or state law, however, are still illegal. Items that are already regulated by federal and/or state law are still regulated.

Firearms continue to be heavily regulated regardless of how they are manufactured. Articles referring to 3D printed firearms are a mishmash of terms interchanging 3D printed firearms with “ghost guns” and undetectable firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, to name just a few, continue to govern firearms produced by 3D printing.

The mere absence of a serial number does not make a gun undetectable and if 3D printers were capable of producing undetectable firearms, such guns would already be illegal to manufacture and possess anywhere in the country.

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Self-Proclaimed ‘Human Rights Defenders’ Attack Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Self-defense is a human right. In fact, I’d argue it’s the most fundamental of all our inherent rights. Without that right to protect our lives, what does it matter if we have the right to think or say what’s on our mind, or to worship (or not) as we choose?

So, anytime I see a self-described human rights activist talking about the right to keep and bear arms, I’m always curious to see if they’ll actually embrace the human right of self-defense, or pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Sadly, it seems that the group Mindbridge Center falls into the latter category. In a new post at Psychology today, the self-described human rights defenders argue that only by denormalizing gun ownership and adopting laws that make it harder, if not impossible, for people to defend themselves, can we build a safer America.

While many Americans believe gun ownership is widespread and normalized, the truth is more nuanced. Only about 30 percent of Americans own a gun, and among men, 60 percent do not own a firearm (Pew Research Center, 2024). Yet, public perception often overestimates gun prevalence due to cultural portrayals and media emphasis.

If 1-in-3 people engage in a particular activity, I’d say that’s a pretty normal activity, wouldn’t you? More importantly, the Mindbridge Center itself says on its website that human rights defenders are those “advocating for minoritized groups such as racial minorities, Indigenous people, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, or the disabled community.”

So here’s my question to Mindbridge; if advocating for minoritized groups is defending human rights, and “only” 30% of Americans own guns, then why isn’t advocating for gun owners a defense of human rights?

And a followup: if members of these minoritized groups face threats of physical violence because of who they are, do the folks at Mindbridge really believe that they’re better off disarmed and defenseless? Shouldn’t they have the ability to protect themselves from those who would do them harm? Don’t they have the right to protect their lives?

The most obvious answer is that the folks at Mindbridge don’t think so. After all, it’s clear they want to denormalize and stigmatize gun owners. As they write in their call to action::

You don’t need to be a policymaker to help shift the culture. Start by challenging the myths: Most men don’t own guns, and most Americans support regulations like background checks. Share this truth in conversations, on social media, and in community spaces. Campaigns that highlight these facts, such as billboards or digital media stating “60% of American men don’t own a gun,” can help redefine what responsible citizenship looks like.

Got that? For Mindbridge, being a “responsible citizen” means not owning a gun. Which brings up another question: why bother pushing for things like “universal” background checks if they think that gun ownership itself is a problem?

The fundamental premise of their mindset is that, unless “both structural change and cultural transformation” surrounding gun ownership takes place, it’s impossible to “build a safer future.” That ignores the fact that violent crime is dropping at record levels at the moment, and 2025 is on pace for the lowest homicide rate in more than 60 years.

We are building a safer future (and a safer present as well), and we’re doing so while robustly exercising our right to bear arms… as well as our human right to self-defense.

Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation Successful in Overturning Virginia’s Universal Background Check Law; Judge Halts Enforcement

Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation Successful in Overturning Virginia’s Universal Background Check Law; Judge Halts Enforcement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 30, 2025

LYNCHBURG, VA – In a landmark decision affirming Second Amendment protections, a Virginia circuit court struck down the state’s universal background check law for private firearm sales, granting a permanent injunction that bars the law’s enforcement statewide. The ruling in Wilson, et al. v. Colonel Matthew D. Hanley, highlights fatal constitutional flaws in the statute, rendering it completely unenforceable.

The Court declared Virginia Code § 18.2-308.2:5 unconstitutional, particularly due to its discriminatory impact on law-abiding adults aged 18-20. The Court then granted our request to enjoin the administration and enforcement of the law across the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.

Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, issued the following statement:

“This decision vindicates the rights of all Virginians to engage in lawful private firearm transfers without unconstitutional barriers. The Act’s enforcement mechanism was fatally flawed from the start—criminalizing everyday citizens while ignoring basic constitutional principles. We’re grateful the court recognized that patchwork fixes can’t save a broken law.”

John Velleco, Executive Vice President of Gun Owners Foundation, issued the following statement:

“We are thrilled the judge struck down Virginia’s universal background check law because it was unconstitutionally blocking young adults from exercising their Second Amendment rights. This ruling upholds the true meaning of the Constitution by ensuring all law-abiding citizens can acquire firearms without arbitrary government barriers.”

The Virginia Citizens Defense League was also a plaintiff in this lawsuit, along with GOA and GOF.

GOA spokesmen are available for interviews. Gun Owners of America is a nonprofit grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. GOA represents over two million members and activists. For more information, visit GOA’s Press Center.

-GOA-

I’ve got a phone number for them: 1-800-CRY-BABY

Giffords: Increase in Defensive Gun Uses ‘Must Be Stopped’

When I covered the WSJ’s hit piece on Stand Your Ground laws on Wednesday, I wondered if the reporters had any behind-the-scenes help from gun control activists.

It’s not proof of anything, but since the story appeared online only one gun control group has promoted the story on X or Bluesky.

The premise of the WSJ story is that Stand Your Ground laws have led to a 59% increase in the number of justifiable homicides in some states between 2019 and 2024, and that the law is allowing some folks to literally get away with murder.

As we discussed yesterday, though, none of the anecdotal cases cited by WSJ in support of that premise are slam dunk examples of murders that were deemed justified as a result of SYG laws. The data set used by the paper is also suspect, since it did not include the significant number of states where Stand Your Ground exists in common law but not specifically in statute.

There are only 11 states that impose a general duty to retreat before acting in self-defense. The vast majority of states don’t require you to present your back as a target to your attacker while you try to run away; instead, they allow you to act in self-defense so long as you have a reasonable belief of imminent death or great bodily harm.

Stand Your Ground laws also aren’t really a new thing. Florida’s statute, for instance, has been in place for two decades. If the law automatically led to more unjustified shootings being deemed justifiable homicides by the courts, we would have expected to see that phenomenon occur long before 2020, but there’s no evidence that’s the case.

We saw a huge spike in violent crime in 2020, along with a big spike in new gun owners. That’s the most likely reason for an increase in justifiable homicides since then; with more crimes being committed and more people carrying for self-defense, there are more occasions when legally armed citizens will use a firearm to defend themselves. That doesn’t mean, however, that people are getting away with murder just because they tell police that they were in fear for their lives. Every time a life is taken a police investigation is going to take place, and charges may very well be filed even when there’s evidence of self-defense.

Even using the WSJ’s own flawed dataset, the percentage of homicides deemed justified in SYG states has climbed from about 2.8% in 2019 to 3.8% in 2024. We don’t know how many self-defense claims were raised in the 96.2% of homicides that were deemed murder, but we know the number isn’t “zero.” Stand Your Ground laws aren’t a “get-out-of-jail free” card for armed citizens, despite the slanted reporting from the WSJ and Gifffords’ wild suggestion that many or all of these justifiable homicides are actually murder.

Take this recent case from Stand Your Ground-Wyoming. Back on June 24 of this year a man named Kevin Hefley was shot and killed. It wasn’t until this week that the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office and the local D.A. officially deemed the shooting justified, with the sheriff’s office declaring it had “meticulously” investigated the case over the past several months despite what appears to be pretty clear evidence that the armed citizen had reason to believe his life was in danger.

Deputies responded at 4:22 p.m. that afternoon to a “disturbance” involving a shooting, says the sheriff’s office’s statement.

Earlier that day, Christine Hefley moved horses from the property she and Kevin shared to Patrick Gross’s property, “upsetting Kevin,” the statement says.

The two men had a recent history of conflict.

The sheriff’s office reports that on the morning of the shooting, Kevin Kefley threatened Gross via text message, saying, “I shoulda kicked your ass right in your own home.”

Later while Gross was parked in his own driveway, Kevin Hefley drove rapidly towards him, reportedly.

“Just prior to being rammed by Hefley, Gross shot Hefley’s radiator in an attempt to stop the vehicle,” says the statement, adding that later crash reconstruction indicated that Kevin Hefley hit Gross’s truck at 60 mph, “constituting the threat of deadly force.”

Kevin Hefley got out of his vehicle, approached Gross who was in hiw own truck, and punched him multiple times.

During the altercation, Gross shot Kevin Hefley, the statement says.

Though shot, Kevin Hefley kept attacking Gross while clinging to the driver’s door of Gross’s truck as Gross tried to drive away, the sheriff’s office reports.

Kevin Hefley kept attacking until he died of his injuries, the statement adds.

The sheriff’s office says investigators examined the scene “meticulously,” built advanced crash reconstruction analysis and analyzed evidence from phones and social media.

Kevin Hefley’s blood alcohol content was 0.143%, nearly twice the legal limit to drive, says the statement.

The statement says the Laramie County District Attorney’s Office has concluded that Gross acted in self-defense.

This is an example of the “legally sanctioned killings” that Giffords says must be stopped, which begs the question: would they have uttered a word if Hefley had managed to kill Gross by ramming into his truck at 60 mph, or by beating him to death afterwards?

Of course not. No gun would have been used, so there would be no reason for the gun control group to offer any kind of comment. It’s defensive gun uses like Gross’s they think must be stopped, not the actions of violent criminals that lead lawful gun owners to act in self-defense. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising coming from a group whose founder is working for a future with “no more guns,” but it’s a position that puts Giffords at odds with both the Constitution and common sense.

ATF Drops CLEO Notification from Form 1 NFA Applications

The ATF just previewed a batch of housekeeping changes to Form 1 (ATF 5320.1)—the form gun owners use to make and register NFA items like SBRs and suppressors. Buried in the Federal Register notice is the big one: the agency plans to remove the Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) notification requirement for NFA registration.

The ATF’s filing also modernizes items in preparation for the upcoming changes to the NFA’s tax structure, as it will no longer collect a tax on SBRs and suppressors. It clarifies how you can pay the $200 tax for “machinegun(s) or destructive device” or $0 for “other types of firearms,” such as SBRs and suppressors.

There is also an update to accept additional types of digital signatures and let applicants attach a passport-style photo or ID copy instead of using a fixed photo box on the form. There’s also a cleanup of wording and new instructions for married couples registering as an “other legal entity.” All of that is in service of making the form easier to complete and aligning it with incoming tax changes.

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TPTB in Massachusetts need their faces rubbed in McDonald v Chicago where the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd amendment was incorporated to also be a restriction on State’s powers via the 14th amendment.

Massachusetts Says Its ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban Immune to Federal Challenge

Back in August, the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners Action League filed a lawsuit challenging the new “Assault Style Firearms” law adopted as part of the broader gun control package known as Chapter 135. Though the state has banned so-called assault weapons for several decades now, the new law offers a new opportunity to challenge the ban of commonly-owned arms.

Now the state of Masschusetts has responded to the complaint filed in Hanlon v. Campbell, and as GOAL reports, the state is making the audacious argument that its gun laws are essentially immune to challenge in federal court.

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The Future of the Second Amendment: A Nation Divided, Armed, and at a Crossroads

The assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has once again thrust the Second Amendment into the national spotlight. In the aftermath, media outlets and politicians are already seizing on the tragedy to rehash the same tired talking points about “common sense gun reform.”

But before we rush to legislate away rights, it’s worth revisiting what the Second Amendment actually says, and what it means.

“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.”

That single sentence, just 27 words, has done more to preserve freedom, individual autonomy, and resistance to tyranny than perhaps any other in human history.

The Real Debate Isn’t About Repeal

Despite what some pundits might imply, there’s no realistic effort underway to repeal the Second Amendment. Both sides know it’s a constitutional cornerstone, one that would require near-impossible political consensus to remove.

Instead, the modern debate focuses on how far the right to keep and bear arms should extend. Should “arms” include semi-automatic rifles? High-capacity magazines? Concealed handguns? To many Americans, Charlie Kirk among them, the answer is simple: freedom comes with inherent risk.

As Kirk once said, “It’s worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

He understood a truth that too many forget: that liberty isn’t free, and disarming citizens doesn’t make evil disappear.

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OR High Court to Finally Hear Measure 114 Arguments Nov. 6

By Dave Workman

Almost exactly three years after Oregon voters narrowly adopted gun control Measure 114, which bans so-called “large-capacity magazines” and requires permits-to-purchase firearms from police, the Oregon State Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging the measure’s constitutionality next week.

The hearing is scheduled Thursday, Nov. 6, just two days short of the third anniversary of the controversial initiative’s passage in November 2022. The measure squeaked by with 50.65 percent approval and 49.35 percent opposed, just 1.3 percent different on a gun control question which attracted 1,926,753 votes.

But before anyone gets too excited, the Oregon Capital Chronicle is reporting the three-year battle “may not be over.”

Measure 114 was supported by gun prohibitionists and many in the faith community, while opposition involved virtually every Second Amendment organization in the country including the National Rifle Association, Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Oregon Firearms Federation, Oregon State Shooting Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition. Lawsuits were filed in both state and federal courts, with U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut ultimately ruling against the federal plaintiffs, while Harney County Circuit Judge Robert Raschio ruled the measure violates the Oregon State Constitution. Both rulings were appealed by opposing parties, and it is the state case which will now come before the Oregon court, after the state appeals court reversed Raschio’s ruling.

Much has happened in the interim, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen setting the tone. Some, including the Capital Chronicle, assert the Supreme Court has been “expanding” gun rights. By contrast, gun advocates argue the high court is restoring Second Amendment rights that have been eroded over the course of decades.

Much is riding on this case, particularly whether the Oregon justices rule permits-to-purchase mandates violate the constitutional right to bear arms.

Second Amendment advocates maintain that citizens do not need permission from law enforcement to exercise a constitutionally-protected right.

Article I, Section 27 of the Oregon Constitution states, “The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence (sic) of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power[.]”

This case has the potential of winding up before the U.S. Supreme Court, some gun rights advocates have suggested.

BLUF:
As with the Ad Council, the federal funding these Agree to Agree “funding partners” enjoy isn’t gun control specific. However, taxpayers should be aware that organizations that receive significant federal resources are involved in propaganda to undermine their fundamental rights.

Why are Tax Dollars Funding a Civilian Disarmament Industry Anti-Gun Agitprop TV Ad Campaign?

The idiot box has been living up to the nickname.

In recent months television viewers have been subjected to a series of anti-gun propaganda pieces produced by the Ad Council. Dubbed the Agree to Agree campaign, the ads typically feature a misleading talking point about “children” and firearms followed by an invitation to go to the Ad Council effort’s website where visitors are bombarded with further gun control agitprop. The website even invites visitors to learn about how to secure red flag gun confiscation orders.

The name might suggest an effort to bridge political disagreements, but the campaign’s list of “stakeholder partners” shows it’s a gun control effort through and through. So-called “stakeholder partners” include: Brady: United Against Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.); Giffords (formerly Americans for Responsibly Solutions and the Second Amendment-denying Legal Community Against Violence); Everytown for Gun Safety; and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Bloomberg School of Public Health (named for billionaire gun control financier Michael Bloomberg). Handgun prohibition organization Violence Policy Center is not listed, although their longtime benefactor the Joyce Foundation was involved.

The campaign’s headline factoid is the following: “Gun injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and teens ages 1‑17, surpassing car crashes for the first time in two decades.” To justify the claim, the Ad Council cites a report from the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For decades, gun control advocates and their allies in “public health” have pushed misleading talking points about children and firearms and NRA-ILA has repeatedly called them out for it.

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The ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban That SCOTUS Could Strike Down This Term

Last June, when the Supreme Court denied cert to a lawsuit challenging Maryland’s ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines called Snope v. Brown, Justice Brett Kavanaugh predicted that the court would take up the issue “in a term or two.” There are pending decisions in the Third and Seventh Circuits addressing similar bans in Illinois and New Jersey, but by the time the opinions are released and cert petitions are filed, it’s almost impossible that SCOTUS could accept either case and issue a decision before their summer recess in June, 2026.

There is, however, a challenge to California’s magazine ban that is already pending review by the Supreme Court. Duncan v. Bonta is slated to be considered in the Court’s November 21 conference, so that would be one vehicle for the justices to address these bans sooner rather than later. And, waiting in the wings, there’s another case out of the Seventh Circuit dealing with bans on “assault weapons” that the Court could also take this term.

Viramontes v. Cook County is a Firearms Policy Coalition/Second Amendment Foundation challenge to Cook County, Illinois’ ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms, and it’s been fully briefed and decided on the merits at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the ban in question. FPC and SAF filed its cert petition with the Supreme Court in late August, and Cook County’s reply is due on Wednesday, October 29.

The plaintiffs will have to file a reply brief, but that shouldn’t take too long, and it’s entirely possible that the Court could start its debate over granting cert before the end of year. If they accept the case, oral arguments would take place in the spring, and a decision could come down by the end of this term.

In their cert petition, the plaintiffs argue that SCOTUS “has frequently been solicitous of circuit court judges who are in apparent need of help in parsing this Court’s precedents,” noting that last term the Court granted cert to a case called Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, in response to “calls for clarification” and concern from circuit judges that they “continued to lack the guidance” to implement this Court’s precedents regarding the enforceability of certain federal statutes.

Lower courts, the plaintiffs contend, are equally in need of clarification on what constitutes “arms in common use for lawful purposes” and “dangerous and unusual” weapons that fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections.

After this Court repudiated the courts of appeals’ interest-balancing regime in Bruen, courts, like the Seventh Circuit here, have expressed confusion and consternation at “what exactly falls within the scope of ‘bearable’ Arms” as a matter of plain text.

The Seventh Circuit’s reading of the Amendment to exclude arms that the court judges “can be dedicated exclusively to military use” from the scope of the term “arms” at all is just one manifestation of the confusion.

The Second Circuit very recently joined the chorus. In fact, it declined to decide whether “assault weapons” were “arms” at all, “prefer[ring] not to venture into an area in which such uncertainty abounds” when, it concluded, it could resolve the case (it thought) through application of the historical analysis.

The scope of that “uncertainty” for the Second Circuit was remarkable. It noted that it viewed “common use” as part of the plain text analysis, but it complained “the Supreme Court has not made clear how and at what point in the analysis we are to consider whether weapons are unusually dangerous.

Nor has the Court clarified how we are to evaluate a weapon’s‘ common use.’” In its view, “[t]he Court’s opinions may reasonably be read” in contradictory ways, and this “lack of clarity has led to disagreement among the parties in this case and confusion among courts generally.”

The plaintiffs go on to argue that under the Seventh Circuit’s opinion, the Second Amendment permits “anything short of a complete ban on all firearms,” except for the handguns that the Court explicitly stated are protected in Heller.

The Seventh Circuit’s test is even more toothless in this regard than the old interest balancing regime. Before Bruen, courts would at least purport to scrutinize modern laws to ensure there was some relationship between a ban and the aims of public safety. Not so here.

Under the decision below—and the circuit precedent on which it relies—“the plaintiffs” in a Second Amendment case, “have the burden of showing that the weapons addressed in the pertinent legislation are Arms that ordinary people would keep at home for purposes of self-defense, not weapons that are exclusively or predominantly useful in military service, or weapons that are not possessed for lawful purposes.” If they cannot make that showing—perhaps because precisely what is “predominantly useful in military service” is a malleable and ill-defined standard—then the restriction challenged gets no scrutiny whatsoever.

Now, I have no idea if the Court will grant cert to Duncan and Viramontes  or pass them over while the justices wait for other gun and magazine ban cases to reach their doorstep. There’s anticipation that the Third Circuit will strike down New Jersey’s ban on “assault weapons,” which would create a circuit court split that, theoretically anyway, would make the issue more compelling to SCOTUS. But the justices don’t have to wait until there’s split to take up an issue, and if the Court grants cert to both Duncan and Viramontes it can address both semi-auto and magazine bans this term instead of kicking the can down the road for another term or two.

17 Anti-Gun AGs Side With Hawaii On Purchase Permits, Inspection Requirement

A coalition of anti-gun attorneys general from 17 states has filed an amicus brief with the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of two restrictive Hawaii laws being challenged as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit revolves around two provisions of Hawaii’s permitting regime— a 30-day time limit to purchase a firearm after receiving a permit and a requirement that police inspect legally purchased firearms within five days.

The brief argues that not only do the laws directly violate the Second Amendment, but they also lack historical support and impose undue burdens on law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional rights. In March, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court struck down the two provisions, but the state government appealed to the full 9th Circuit.

However, the brief from the 17 anti-gun AGs urges the 9th Circuit’s en banc panel to reverse the decision striking down the provisions. The brief claims that states’ interests in implementing “appropriate, reasonable regulations tailored to their specific circumstances” is more important than the protections afforded by the Second Amendment.

Heading up the AGs’ efforts is California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the most anti-gun attorney generals in the country.

Gov’t. Grant Money for ‘Gun Violence Prevention’ Withheld from Non-Profits

By Dave Workman

The Guardian is reporting that the Trump administration is this year cutting off government grants for so-called “gun violence prevention” programs to certain non-profit groups which the grants were reportedly built around.

While the news agency didn’t specifically say so, there have been concerns within the Second Amendment community that public funds were being utilized by some groups to push a gun control agenda. Essentially, gun owners—as taxpayers—were helping to fund efforts which ultimately were aimed at eroding their Second Amendment rights. At least, that’s the concern.

According to The Guardian, “The Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI), was created in 2022, to support groups working in rural and urban communities struggling to address violence and fund research studying the programs’ efficacy.”

But following Donald Trunmp’s return to the White House, these “community-based organizations” were allowed to apply for grant funds. Now, those monies are limited to city, county and tribal governments, and the new goal of the program is to “support law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime and improve police-community relations.”

As noted by The Guardian, when Trump returned to office in January, he immediately dismantled Joe Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was a thinly-veiled “in-house” gun control effort. Instead, Trump nominated Pam Bondi to the office of Attorney General, and she has subsequently led the Justice Department in a full 180-degree shift from gun control to Second Amendment protection. The DOJ, with Harmeet Dhillon as U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights essentially leading the charge, has gone after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for dragging its feet in the issuance of carry permits, holding up the process for up to two years.

Dhillon has also argued against the semi-auto ban in Illinois before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Earlier this year, the Guardian noted that the Justice Department cut more than $800 million in grants that would have gone to “organizations that prevent and respond to gun violence, sexual assault and hate crimes” and other groups.