Category: RKBA

Yes, Democrats, Sometimes a ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Does ‘Stop the Bad Guys.’ Here’s Proof.

In a press conference defending the state’s new restrictions on concealed carry permit holders, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, told reporters last month: “This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.”

With all due respect to the governor, she clearly hasn’t actually looked at the data.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the latest report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just this year, a more comprehensive study concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from 2019, 2020, 2021, and so far in 2022.)

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

The examples below represent only a fraction of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in September. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

  • Sept. 1, Detroit: A woman shot and wounded a man who ran onto her porch while fleeing from police after a hit-and-run. The woman told police that she felt threatened by the man and couldn’t tell what was in his hand when he approached her. The man was charged with fleeing police, resisting arrest, and obstructing justice.
  • Sept. 3, Adams Run, South Carolina: Police said a homeowner isn’t expected to face charges after he shot and wounded a man who smashed a window and climbed into his home in the middle of the night. The suspect apparently had been drinking and doing drugs at a nearby party before he broke in. Police said they found a small bag of cocaine in his possession.
  • Sept. 9, Pensacola, Florida: When a would-be robber with a shotgun entered a convenience store, the clerk ran to a back room and grabbed his own firearm, police said. The threat of armed resistance apparently stunned the robber, who told the clerk: “I’m not from around here. … I’m from Chicago, bro,” before fleeing. No shots were fired. Police arrested a suspect several days later.
  • Sept. 9, Channelview, Texas: A woman was home with her three children—a 12-year-old and two 17-year-olds—when four armed and masked men tried to force their way inside, police said. One of the teens grabbed a shotgun and fired several rounds at the intruders, killing two and sending the other two fleeing.
  • Sept. 13, Chicago: Police said that two gunmen randomly opened fire on a family celebrating a grandmother’s birthday, critically injuring a 13-year-old boy who was returning to the party with his uncle after buying a game at a nearby store. The uncle, a concealed carry permit holder, returned fire at the gunmen, and they fled. The wounded teen was expected to survive, but faces a long road to recovery. Police later arrested two men and charged them with attempted murder.
  • Sept. 14, Hyattsville, Maryland: A resident saw a would-be package thief struggling with a Postal Service deliveryman and tried to intervene, police said. The thief then assaulted the resident and chased him into his house. The resident was able to reach his handgun and shot the thief once in the leg, wounding him, police said.
  • Sept. 17, Ridgeland, Mississippi: Police said that the owner of a popcorn store shot and wounded a teenage girl who pulled a gun on him while trying to shoplift. The teen was taken to a hospital for treatment before being charged as an adult with aggravated assault with a weapon.
  • Sept. 19, Tenino, Washington: A homeowner whose property had been burglarized multiple times spotted two suspicious all-terrain vehicles parked near a storage trailer and alerted his brother, who lived nearby, police said. Armed with a rifle, they confronted two burglars who were breaking into the trailer. One burglar immediately fled, but the second charged at the homeowner and his brother. The homeowner shot him once, wounding him. Police later arrested the first burglar.
  • Sept. 23, Collingdale, Pennsylvania: A man was walking to work early in the morning when a car with headlights off stopped in front of him, blocking his path, police said. Three masked individuals exited and approached the man, and one of them appeared to reach for a gun. The man drew his own legally possessed gun and fired, hitting one person in the leg. The three fled. Police later arrested a 15-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man in connection with the attempted robbery. Investigators determined that the vehicle used had been stolen during a carjacking in Philadelphia.
  • Sept. 24, Patterson, California: A woman fatally shot an intoxicated intruder who had assaulted her husband while trying to break into the couple’s home, police said. The husband initially tried to restrain the intruder, but ended up being injured in “a significant fight,” police said. The woman saw her husband struggling, grabbed a handgun that she had legally acquired just one day earlier, and shot the intruder.
  • Sept. 28, Wichita, Kansas: Police credited the actions of an armed bystander with helping to save a motorist’s life during a brutal knife attack. The assailant rammed a man’s car on purpose, smashed out the windows with nunchucks, then began stabbing the driver as he tried to get his two young children out of the car, police said. One witness drove her car at the suspect, stopping his attack. The bystander then held the assailant at gunpoint, allowing others to give first aid to the badly injured man, police said.
  • Sept. 30, Missoula, Montana: A driver was stopped at a traffic light when he saw a machete-wielding man chasing someone down the street, police said. Armed with his handgun, the driver confronted the assailant and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The suspect was charged with three counts of felonious assault with a weapon.

As these recent cases show, the reality of armed citizens defending life, liberty, and property never has been more relevant, or more supported by the available evidence.

Restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans doesn’t make them safer. It just hinders their ability to protect themselves and others, making them even more vulnerable to attacks by criminals who know their victims are defenseless.

A Second Amendment With Teeth
The Court’s Bruen decision actually protects Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Democrat-controlled state governments may finally be starting to realize the precedent problem standing in the way of their gun-control agenda. As I wrote when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in June, the Court declared in that ruling a strong restoration of the Second Amendment: “the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens (“the People”) to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’”

The Court laid out a very strict and specific rule to which gun-control laws must conform in order to avoid being declared unconstitutional. As history shows, there were very few (if any) regulations concerning commonly used weapons at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. Therefore, it stands to reason that there are very few regulations concerning commonly used weapons that will survive Second Amendment analysis post-Bruen.

Of course, that will not stop the left from trying. But perhaps they will finally start to see the pattern. At the end of the 2021-2022 Supreme Court term, the Court issued a series of summary decisions in four cases, including Bianchi v. Frosh, vacating lower-court decisions principally involving “extended” magazines and assault-rifle bans. The Court’s decisions required the lower federal courts to rehear the cases in light of the decision in Bruen.

On October 5, the Supreme Court vacated a lower-court decision in a case called Morin v. Lyver. The lower court upheld the constitutionality of a Massachusetts statute that included strict licensing standards to purchase or possess a pistol. The law included a lifetime ban on licensing to those convicted of certain non-violent offenses involving possession or use of firearms. The Supreme Court used language identical to that in Bianchi v. Frosh and the other cases mentioned above: the case was “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

These results are not surprising. The U.S. Supreme Court takes cases and writes extensive opinions when there are difficult questions of law that have not been answered, when bad precedent needs to be revisited and overwritten, and when different federal circuit courts disagree on interpretation of law. The Court will not waste its time hearing cases that have already been clearly decided—a category that will include most Second Amendment cases post-Bruen.

The Bruen test is clear. If a law restricts the right to keep and bear arms, especially weapons in common use, that law is unconstitutional unless the law is consistent with traditional, historic firearm regulations. Laws that ban or severely regulate weapons in common use are simply not going to survive scrutiny under Bruen. Both handguns and long rifles such as AR-15s are objectively weapons in common use.

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Biden’s move on pot has Second Amendment ramifications

President Joe Biden is no friend of gun owners. What’s more, is that he doesn’t seem interested in even trying to pretend he is, what with his anti-gun rhetoric time and time again.

So if he does something that could potentially benefit the Second Amendment crowd, it’s only by accident.

And that’s likely what’s happening with his latest move, where he announced taking steps toward changing how the government views marijuana.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced executive actions that would pardon thousands of people with prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession.

Biden then called on governors to follow suit with state offenses for simple marijuana possession, saying that “just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”

The president also directed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal law as a Schedule I drug, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most dangerous classification that includes substances like heroin and LSD.

Biden’s executive order to pardon simple possession includes the District of Columbia as well as people convicted in the federal court system.

Now, simple marijuana possession isn’t necessarily something that will preclude anyone from owning a gun. The pardons aren’t likely to make a big difference toward gun ownership.

But the potential reclassification of marijuana is.

As we’ve noted, people who use marijuana in accordance with the laws of their state are still legally prohibited from even owning a gun. It’s what led Florida Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried to file a lawsuit. She’s no friend of gun owners either, but she is very much in the pro-legalization effort, so this ties into that.

Now, understand that what Biden is doing here is a political stunt. Democrats aren’t doing as well in the polls as the president would like, so he’s making a big splash with something that polls pretty well. This is an attempt to garner support for Democrats.

However, that doesn’t mean gun owners won’t benefit.

After all, there’s nothing in the Second Amendment that says gun rights can be removed from someone for getting a prescription. Nothing in that whole “shall not be infringed” thing is followed up with “unless they use this one substance that only makes them a threat to the snack aisle at the nearest curb store.”

Yet federal law actually does. It doesn’t differentiate between heroin or cocaine and marijuana.

Hell, you can still own a gun if you’re prescribed Fentanyl, which is the drug of choice in the whole opioid epidemic, but not pot.

Biden’s move is, for once, welcome.

The problem, however, is that it’s directing people to just look at rescheduling marijuana. It doesn’t actually do anything. Considering how the Department of Justice has tried to defend the prohibition in the Florida lawsuit–which included using blatantly racist laws of the past, it should be noted–I won’t hold out much hope that it will actually happen.

Yet if it does, suddenly an untold number of Americans who would like to own a gun and use the marijuana their doctor prescribed will be able to lawfully do so. They won’t have to worry about being arrested for exercising their Second Amendment rights.

And if Biden is able to deliver this, it’ll be a rare moment of this anti-un White House benefitting gun owners, even if it’s only by accident.

Honestly, considering the way things have gone over the last year at the federal level, I’m willing to take what wins I can get.

Black women are the fastest growing group of gun owners. This instructor has taught 2,000 students how to safely bear arms.

During the pandemic, gun and ammunition sales spiked dramatically in the United States — particularly among Black women, who have become the fastest growing group of gun owners in the country.

“In 2021, we were just coming outta COVID and violence was at an all-time high, riots were at an all-time high and human trafficking is at an all-time high,” licensed gun instructor Robin Evans tells Yahoo Life as a way to explain the rise. “So at that moment, I feel like there was a huge shift in Black people, in general, just wanting to learn how to defend themselves.”

After noticing the increasing reports of violence against women in 2021, Evans founded Chicks with Triggers, a business dedicated to teaching women, and specifically Black women, how to safely use firearms.

“When I got into this, there was no one who looked like me, and so I decided to create that lane for people to come and know that they have a safe space,” says Evans. “When I first started, I didn’t even know women would come. I thought maybe a woman here and there, but man, they came through the gates running. I just hit another milestone of 2,000 people that I have trained since I started in 2021.”

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Obama Judge Denies NY Jews a Temporary Stop of Hochul’s Ban On Guns In Synagogues

In an insulting reiteration of NY Governor Kathy Hochul’s stunning hypocrisy over the rights of people to defend themselves, an Obama-appointed judge has DENIED a requested Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the NY state “sensitive area” gun ban called the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), which went into effect September 1.

As I recently reported, the New York State Jewish Gun Club filed suit on September 29, after members and the group’s legal council recognized the threat of the CCIA – which Hochul signed on July 1, and which represents her leftist NY Assembly’s blitzkrieg response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June “Bruen” gun decision supposedly insuring that the right to keep and bear arms also includes the obvious right to carry a concealed weapon outside the home. The half-hearted Bruen decision left wiggle room for oppressive state politicians to claim that certain “sensitive” public areas were off limits to the right of concealed-carry.

And Hochul’s hypocrisy is so towering that, even as she backed a “legislative package” supposedly honoring Holocaust victims over the summer, she and her pals in the state legislature smacked together a new statute that would ban concealed carry within synagogues and houses or worship — or, as I mentioned, at any of what they ambiguously call places where there is a “religious observance.”

In other words, she is threatening people that she will use gun-grabbing state aggression, and possibly use it against some of the same Holocaust survivors and/or their descendants who were attacked by the gun-grabbing Nazi regime.

Now, the new development. The NY State Jewish Gun Club filing in Federal District Court to temporarily restrain enforcement of Hochul’s gangland CCIA “religious observance” and “house of worship” gun ban has proven fruitless. BearingArms’ Cam Edwards caught the news, right away:

“Their first request was for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state from enforcing that portion of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act; a request that was denied on Monday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick.”

And, guess what? The judge got his tax-funded job thanks to leftist political engineers:

“In his ruling, the Obama-appointed judge (who also has political ties to gun control fans Michael Bloomberg and former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo) found that the plaintiffs had not met the requirements for a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order)…”

Here, observers can see a telling sign of the difference between a person who respects natural, God-given, rights, and a person looking only at material concerns, a person who cannot understand, or will not acknowledge, that the term “injury” does not pertain merely to physical harm, but includes the abstract and perennial realm of principles.

Broderick’s argument stands on the spongy notion that, as he declares:

“…I find that the harm pled is too remote and speculative, and fails to reach the stringent standard of ‘immediate irreparable harm.’”

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How Much are Gun Laws Repressing Exercise of 2A Rights?

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– The states with the most restrictive gun laws are repressing the exercise of Second Amendment rights.  How much damage are they doing?

In the 2022 Bruen decision, released by the Supreme Court on June 22, the court named six states and the District of Columbia as polities where the governments were violating the rights of their residents to keep and bear arms.

Those states were California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.

There are reasonably good measures to compare those states to the rest of the country, where laws restricting the sale, ownership, and carry of arms are less burdensome.

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) tracks retail gun sales in all the states. Gun sales are much closer than NICS background checks alone because NICS checks are done for many other things as well.

Gun sales, measured in the NICS system, give us a strong representation of how many guns were purchased in a given year in each state.

Looking at the restrictive states compared to the non-restrictive states will show if the restrictive state laws are repressing the exercise of the right to keep arms by repressing the number of people who purchase firearms.

The number of people who have permits to carry is not as easily obtained. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CRPC) has worked to determine how many carry permits exist in each state. The numbers reported in 2021 will be used for this comparison.

This is a quick, first-order comparison to see if any obvious disparity exists. If no disparity exists, a more sophisticated analysis may or may not show those laws repress the exercise of Second Amendment rights.

Population figures for the states were taken from the 2020 census. Gun sales and carry permits will be expressed as rates so as to make a state-to-state comparison meaningful. The numbers of gun sales are from two years, 2020 and 2021.

2020 is a particularly useful year, as there was both a significant increase in violent crime and political posturing to restrict firearms sales and possession. The motivation to exercise Second Amendment rights should have been high.

2020 recorded all-time records for gun sales.

Gun sales for the restrictive states and the District of Columbia in 2020, as calculated from the NICS data, were 2.05 million. Per capita firearm sales were .024 firearms per person.

In 2021, for the restrictive states and DC, the numbers were: 1.93 million, and .023 firearms sold per person.

Restrictive states gun sales per capita: 2020 – .024; 2021 – .023.

Gun sales for the rest of the USA in 2020 were 18.6 million, and .075 firearms sold per person. In 2021, there were 16.2 million firearms sold, and .065 firearms sold per person.

Less restrictive states, gun sales per capita: 2020 – .075; 2021 – .065.

This is significant evidence of repressing the exercise of Second Amendment rights.  In 2020 and 2021, the sales of firearms in the restrictive states were only one-third as many per capita as in non-repressive states.

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Federal Judge Blocks Latest New York Gun-Carry Restrictions

New York’s attempt to restrict gun carry after its previous law was struck down by the Supreme Court has failed.

Federal district judge Glenn Suddaby issued a temporary restraining order against the state’s enforcement of most provisions in the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). He found all of the novel policies restricting gun carry by those with valid permits were unconstitutional under the standard set in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, though he also upheld some more common regulations.

“Simply stated, instead of moving toward becoming a shall-issue jurisdiction, New York State has further entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction,” Suddaby wrote. “And, by doing so, it has further reduced a first-class constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense (which, during the 19th and 18th centuries in America, generally came with an assumption that law-abiding responsible citizens were not a danger to themselves or others unless there was specific ground for a contrary finding) into a mere request (which is burdened with a presumption of dangerousness and the need to show ‘good moral character’).”

The ruling represents a further victory for gun-rights advocates who have challenged severe restrictions on gun carry and a further setback for states that have sought to severely limit who can carry a gun and where they can carry it. Judge Suddaby’s decision is also one of the first to apply the Bruen standard to a gun-carry law passed in response to the ruling. It could serve as a guide for other federal courts across the country dealing with challenges to similar laws.

Suddaby ruled the state could not enforce its “good moral character” clause unless there is a preponderance of evidence the applicant is a threat to others with the exception of self-defense. He blocked the requirement that applicants turn over their social media history and information on others who live with them. He also blocked the CCIA’s requirement that applicants meet with permitting officials for an in-person interview,

TPUSA Ambassador Speaks Up for Women’s Rights When It Comes To Firearms

TPUSA Ambassador as well as the CEO and Founder of Alexo Athletica, Amy Robbins, is always on the frontlines to fight for our right to protect ourselves!

Amy was recently on The Chris Salcedo Show on Newsmax, speaking about the frustrating arguments made by the left regarding firearms.

The host, Chris Salcedo, asked Amy, “What makes you pull your hair out, the disingenuous argument from the other side saying you as a women don’t deserve to protect yourself with a firearm. What is the number one argument that just drives you up a wall?”

She replied, “The number one argument that I hear, is that women are weak and incapable of carrying a firearm, and they are more likely to die in the presence of a firearm . . . So instead of encouraging women to go get training, go get armed, learn to be safe and proficient with some kind of self-defense tool.”

“The only thing that we can do, ladies, is stop believing this lie,” Amy added.

I couldn’t agree more — firearms are dubbed “the great equalizer” for a reason, they give women leverage, and the ability to protect themselves against a male aggressor that, in most cases, is going to be both larger and stronger.

It is so empowering to know that you can take your personal safety into your own hands.

The left constantly seeks to demonize firearm owners for gun violence, even though the vast majority of gun crimes have been committed by offenders who did not legally possess the firearm used in the first place. Individuals who have the desire to go through the legal processes to purchase a gun for self-defense and defense of their families should not be discouraged from doing so, or worse, prevented from doing so.

I encourage everyone, but especially females, to pursue training in self-defense specifically with firearms in order to ensure that they have the best means possible to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

Sun Tzu 101: Know the enemy as well as you know yourself. Doctor Yamane is studiously researching the anti-gun movement.

Supreme Court vacates controversial Massachusetts gun control law
The Massachusetts gun control law places strict restrictions on the ability to purchase and possess handguns

The Supreme Court ordered a lower court ruling on a Massachusetts gun control law to be vacated and directed a lower court to reconsider the case.

The case in question, Morin v. Lyver, centers around a controversial Massachusetts law that imposes strict restrictions on the possession and purchase of handguns, including the need for a license in order to purchase or possess a pistol. The law also includes a lifetime ban on purchasing handguns on anyone convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor involving the possession or use of guns.

The U.S. District Court of Massachusetts originally found the law constitutional, but the Supreme Court on Monday ordered that ruling vacated and the case “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

The case, a 6-3 ruling earlier this year, struck down a New York law that required people to demonstrate “proper cause” to obtain a concealed handgun permit.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority at the time. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

The case was considered a landmark ruling by the court, opening up the potential for new challenges to state and local restrictions on guns.

Monday’s order to vacate the lower court ruling and have the case reheard was unsigned by the justices, and there were no dissents.

The Supreme Court began its new term Monday and is expected to make decisions on key cases surrounding voting rights, affirmative action and religious freedom.

CDC Data Shows Constitutional Carry States Have Fewer Total and Gun-Related Homicides

In September of 2021, Texas became the twenty-first state to allow some form of permitless or “constitutional” carry. That means in Texas, if you are at least 21 years old and you are not prohibited from lawfully possessing a firearm under Texas or federal law, you can carry a handgun without a permit either openly or concealed.

Since Texas enacted its law, four other states have done the same, bringing the total of constitutional carry states to 25.

While there are some differences in how these states have implemented constitutional carry (e.g., a couple of them require you to be a resident of the State to carry, while others set an age minimum, etc.) it’s fair to say that overall, half of all states now allow citizens who can legally possess a firearm to carry at least a handgun without a permit. This national wave has been a tremendous victory for gun rights and continues the trend of expanding the right to carry.

Of course, not everyone was pleased that Texas chose to respect the right to keep and bear arms. The news of constitutional carry in the Lone Star State was met with the all of the usual sky-is-falling warnings of doom from all of the usual anti-gun suspects.

For example, Ari Frielich, state policy director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that permitless carry could drastically endanger Texas residents and even law enforcement officials.

The research is clear that flooding public spaces with more hidden loaded guns in more hands makes them less safe. It turns more arguments, road rage incidents, and fistfights into shootings, more injuries into burials, and it can create a civilian arms race in communities most impacted by violence.

Freilich’s talking points are hardly original. Every time a state adopts constitutional carry, anti-gun groups, as well as much of the media (but I repeat myself), warn that every minor dispute will turn into a bloody shootout and the state’s homicide rate will therefore skyrocket. They also claim that the “research is clear” in favor of their arguments.

But is it really?

With so many states now having enacted some form of constitutional carry, this is no longer a hypothetical question. While some states have only recently enacted these laws, most others have had them for several years.

As of 2020, the most recent year for which detailed CDC data is available, 16 states had already embraced constitutional carry. By looking at the homicide rates in those states as well as their gun homicide rates in particular, we can get an idea of whether constitutional carry states actually are more dangerous than the nation as a whole.

If the anti-gun argument is correct, constitutional carry states should be far more violent, especially in the crime-surge year of 2020.

Fortunately, the CDC provides very detailed statistics on public health, including data on underlying causes of death, so we can check. The statistics are reported online through the CDC’s WONDER tool, an acronym which stands for “Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research.” All of the data I am about to discuss can be found through that tool.

The overall US homicide rate was 7.5 per 100,000 in 2020, and the gun-related homicide rate was 5.9 per 100,000. Here is the data for each of the 16 states that were constitutional carry in 2020:

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Appears more people are seeing the light.

IWF hits on one big problem with gun control

With a name like Independent Women’s Forum, one might expect it to not be all that independent and to actually parrot a lot of Democratic talking points. We know that most women tend to vote Democrat, though far from all.

Yet the organization actually takes the term “independent” seriously. I’ve seen far too many good things to come out of the group to think otherwise.

Today was no exception. They do a “two truths and a lie” thing and today, they talked about gun control.

We can all agree that we want to see fewer mass killings and less gun violence. The question is whether stricter gun-control laws will improve the situation or make it worse. Because of the politicized nature of gun policy, it’s essential to get past the rhetoric and sift through the facts to answer that question.  How much do you know about gun control? Can you identify which of the following is the lie?

A. New gun control legislation will reduce crime.

B. More guns in more public places leads to less gun violence.

C. There are far more defensive gun uses than murders in a given year.

Now, your average daily Bearing Arms ready is going to know which are which. However, not everyone does, which is why a format like this works.

So just what did IWF say?

A. FALSE. In short, gun control legislation does not focus on the root causes of human behavior, including violence, crime, and untreated mental illness. At the heart of gun control initiatives is the hope that criminals will obey the law, but, in fact, they rarely do.

Congress, as well as state legislatures, would have us think that just one more gun-control law will magically reduce crime. But they have been saying that for decades, with no evidence of improvement. Then they offer the same legislation again.

Instead of reducing crime, new gun control legislation would:

  • Not change criminal behavior. It only creates a false sense of security.
  • Make law-abiding citizens less safe, especially victims of domestic violence.
  • Turn law-abiding citizens into instant felons for ordinary, safe behavior.
  • Be cost prohibitive for the poorest families to protect themselves.

Now, the other two are obviously true, so I won’t touch on them. Instead, I want to comment on this, which is important.

While “shall not be infringed” will win applause in the Second Amendment community, mostly because it’s accurate, it’s not a winning message with those on the fence in any way. Talking about our rights may be completely accurate, but its reach is limited.

This approach, however, is one that can work.

It also has the benefit of being accurate.

Violent crime is violent crime. No one feels better that they were robbed with a knife as opposed to a gun. No one mourns the loss of a loved one less because they were beaten to death rather than shot. All violent crimes should be looked at similarly because, at the end of the day, it’s the people who are violent.

Focusing on that, on the behavior and how to prevent it, is something that can ultimately convince people that gun control isn’t the answer.

BLUF
Americans who cherish their Second Amendment right are compelled to file yet again, ever again, another round of lawsuits: a tedious, expensive, eternal process. And this will continue if unthinking sorts among the polity continue to vote the same unprincipled rogues and prevaricators into public office.

THE IRONY OF THE HANDGUN TRAINING MANDATE IN NEW YORK’S AMENDED GUN LAW

Anyone who possesses a handgun, or any functional firearm, should be familiar with its operation and, ideally, proficient in its use.

Few gun owners would object to that, and few would argue the responsibility to obtain understanding and proficiency of use rests with the individual, not the “nanny state” to require it.

Yet, a burning question, asked rarely, if ever, but one that needs to be asked and answered is this:

Should the State mandate handgun training when the individual undertakes that responsibility upon himself, where that responsibility properly belongs anyway, and where State handgun training is, then, time-consuming, unduly expensive, and clearly redundant?

In that normative question rests a pressing legal one:

“Does the State have the legal right to require handgun training and, if so, from where does that purported legal right to mandate handgun training derive?”

There is nothing in the natural law right of armed self-defense as codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution that expressly says or alludes to a training requirement as a condition precedent to one exercising the right to bear arms, as a natural law right accruing to the individual. But is this assertion, true? Granted, it requires explication and qualification:

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SCOTUS turns away challenges to Trump-imposed ban on bump stocks

The Trump administration-imposed ban on bump stocks, crafted through ATF regulations instead of actual legislation, will remain in effect for the foreseeable future after the Supreme Court turned away two challenges to the ban that had been winding their way through the courts since shortly after the ban was imposed in 2019.

The Court declined to intervene to stop the administrative action from taking effect several years ago, but Second Amendment activists and gun rights groups continued to challenge the ban in the years since, and last week justices took up the two cases in conference. Monday’s order list didn’t contain the good news that 2A advocates were hoping for. Instead, the Court rejected the challenges without dissent from any of the six justices who voted earlier this year to overturn New York’s “may issue” carry laws in NYSRPA v. Bruen.

The bump stocks challenge, however, did not deal directly with the scope of the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. The challengers instead said the government did not have authority to ban bump stocks under the National Firearms Act, a law enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns. In 1968, the Gun Control Act expanded the definition of machine gun to include accessories “for use in converting a weapon” into a machine gun, and the ATF concluded when it issued the ban that bump stocks meet that definition.

The groups challenging the ban said the legal definition of machine gun has been distorted beyond recognition and argue that courts should not defer to the federal agency’s interpretation.

The court turned away two related appeals, one brought by Clark Aposhian, a Utah gun lobbyist who had purchased a bump stock before the ban took effect, and another led by Gun Owners of America and other gun rights groups. Lower courts upheld the ban, although judges on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were divided in both cases.

To say this is a disappointing result would be putting it mildly, and there most certainly will be consequences to the justices’ refusal to hear either case. The Biden administration has already used the same executive authority that then-President Trump used to direct the ATF to craft its bump stock ban to target unfinished frames and receivers sold in DIY gun-making kits, and the Court’s inaction will only embolden anti-gun officials and the gun control lobby to further abuse the scope of executive branch authority to impose even more gun control laws that don’t have enough support to win congressional approval.

The decision is also very bad news for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lawfully purchased bump stocks before the ATF suddenly reversed course and declared them to be machine guns. Possession of a bump stock is now the same as possessing a machine gun in terms of federal law, which makes any gun owner who still owns one of the devices subject to a $250,000 fine and the possibility of up to a decade in federal prison.

While the Supreme Court will have other opportunities to weigh in on executive branch overreach that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, unfortunately that’s because there are other areas of infringement taking place. Not only are the ATF’s new rules on frames and receivers being challenged in court, but the pending rules that could turn millions of AR-style pistols equipped with shoulder braces into short-barreled rifles subject to the registration provisions of the National Firearms Act are also facing litigation. Still, the gun control lobby and the Biden administration are almost certain to take advantage of today’s inaction by SCOTUS, and with gun control groups already lobbying behind the scenes for the ATF to regulate AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms as if they’re machine guns as well, the ATF could soon take aim at the tens of millions of modern sporting rifles in the hands of gun owners… not to mention the lives and liberties of those gun owners themselves.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Asked About Hurricane Ian Looters, Notes ‘You Loot, We Shoot’ Warnings.

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has his hands full with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. It pretty much trashed southwest Florida and damaged homes all the way across the central part of the state.

As business owners and residents begin the massive cleanup process, he’s stressing law and order. And when discussing those who would take advantage of the destruction, the Governor noted that property owners had written “You loot, we shoot” on the plywood used to board up their buildings.

Florida Politics covered it . . .

As Florida recovers from Hurricane Ian, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a moral plea against looting that appears to have some firepower behind it.

Speaking near Fort Myers in the leveled community of Matlacha on Friday, the Republican Governor relayed one sight he saw in Punta Gorda in neighboring Charlotte County the day prior.

“They boarded up all the businesses, and there are people that wrote on their plywood, ‘you loot, we shoot,’” DeSantis said. “At the end of the day, we are not going to allow lawlessness to take advantage of this situation. We are a law-and-order state, and this is a law-and-order community, so do not think that you’re going to go take advantage of people who’ve suffered misfortune.”

You don’t hear many Governors mention “you loot, we shoot” these days. But DeSantis isn’t like many governors and given the reality on the ground, there’s no reason to play around with vultures who would take advantage of a mass tragedy.

The story continued . . .

The Governor also commented on the grit and resilience of the community and called for “all hands on deck” regarding the rule of law. However, his dispatch was choppy, making the overall statement unclear.

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said he had spoken at length to Attorney General Ashley Moody, who was also on the scene.

 “We are not going to tolerate — and I mean zero tolerance — when we say anyone that thinks they’re going to thrive on the residents of this county or state when we just took a horrific hit, I can guarantee you that is not going to happen,” Marceno said.

Scam artists will likely not get off easy either, judging from the law-and-order tone from the state officials.

 

The snowflakes writing the story to wrung their hands over DeSantis’ choice of words.

“You loot, we shoot,” isn’t even new in the hurricane context, used when Hurricane Harvey struck Houston and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But others see the phrase as stoking violence and division.

Violence and division? The only division will be between looters and law-abiding residents and business owners.