Category: RKBA
SAF Sues to Block Connecticut’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban
From the Second Amendment Foundation . . .
The Second Amendment Foundation today filed suit in federal district court, challenging the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in Connecticut, and asking for declaratory and injunctive relief.
SAF is joined by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and three private citizens, Eddie Grant, Jr., Jennifer Hamilton, and Michael Stiefel. Named as defendants are Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, plus James Rovella, commissioner of the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection; Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin and several other officials. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Doug Dubitsky of North Windham, Conn., Craig C. Fishbein of Wallingford, Conn., and Cameron L. Atkinson of New Haven.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Connecticut’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” dates back to 1993. The state criminalizes the possession, sale or transfer of such firearms—about 160 guns named in four subsections—even though many of these guns are in common use across the country.
“The ban was previously upheld, but that was before the Supreme Court handed down its Bruen ruling earlier this year,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “That landmark decision eliminated the ‘two-part test’ which included an interest-balancing provision that didn’t pass constitutional muster.”
According to the lawsuit, the current ban deprives “responsible citizens of their Second Amendment rights under the guise of providing a panacea for social problems that Connecticut remains unable to solve.”
Gottlieb said there is no historical foundation for such a ban, and the complaint actually details the historical development of firearms including repeating rifles developed and manufactured in Connecticut and elsewhere. The lawsuit also mentions incidents in which modern semiautomatic rifles were used by private citizens to stop violent crimes.
When you let PR people write your lawsuits.
But I guess since they have no actual substantive argument to make, why not. https://t.co/Wpmet6rv83
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) September 29, 2022
Thread reader
“brazen and provocative marketing”
The lawsuit says that AR-15s “are unsuited for home defense, recreation, or casual use and possession.”
The lawsuit says the gun store should have known one of its customers would be a mass shooter because they were “always alone and quiet”:
According to the lawsuit, Daniel Defense’s guns are weapons of war, but their advertisements are misleading because they use military imagery
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles, rapid-fire trigger systems, and high-capacity magazines are used by most often by young adults in mass shootings.”
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles destroy human bodies, limbs, organs, and tissue, pulverize the human body, explode, and cause immediate death.”
• • •
Anti-gun politicians aim for private property gun ban
From Hawaii to New Jersey anti-gun officials are scrambling to adopt sweeping restrictions on the right to carry modeled after New York’s latest infringement on our Second Amendment rights. That includes a de-facto ban on concealed carry on all private property, despite language in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen that made it clear broad and expansive “sensitive places” don’t comport with a general right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.
On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co we’re taking a look at a couple of the latest indigo-blue locales to adopt New York’s model legislation; Hawaii County and the state of New Jersey. Both places have long been hostile to the right to keep and bear arms, and in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the “good cause” requirement that the jurisdictions have used to deny almost every applicant in years past, the goal is to now restrict where folks can carry as much as possible in addition to continuing to impose as many barriers as possible to all those who want to exercise that right.
Hawaii County council member Aaron Chung says Supreme Court “opened the door” for his exhaustive list of places where concealed carry may soon be banned by not explicitly defining the limits of ‘sensitive places”, but he’s ignoring what Justice Clarence Thomas actually had to say about trying to broadly define most places open to the public (including all private property by default) as off-limits to the exercise of our Second Amendment rights; “expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of “sensitive places” far too broadly. Respondents’ argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.”
Forcing all private property owners to positively affirm that the right to carry is welcomed, rather than demanding that private property owners let visitors know that guns are banned on the premise, is a complete reversal of how we typically treat our constitutional rights. Again quoting Thomas in Bruen:
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.”
We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self defense.
I don’t know of any other right that’s de-facto forbidden on private property unless it’s explicitly authorized in writing by the property owner either. I’ve never once encountered a sign on a business that said “Freedom of Speech Welcome Here”. Then again, I’ve also never run across a law charging people with a felony for unlawfully uttering their opinion in someone else’s home without prior permission as New York’s de-facto ban on concealed carry on private property does.
The glaring constitutional issues with this language isn’t worrisome to anti-gun politicians like New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, however. He’s still hellbent on criminalizing the right to carry in almost all circumstances by adopting the New York model.
Murphy issued an executive order shortly after the court ruling, requiring state agencies to review their statutes and regulations and determine whether they could designate gun-free zones. But so far, no legislation barring guns from public spaces in New Jersey has been introduced.
On Tuesday, Murphy said churches, entertainment venues and even private property “unless you the homeowner explicitly says otherwise” would be designated as gun-free areas under a proposed bill.
God willing, the courts will have shut down the expansive list of “sensitive places” by the time New Jersey’s legislature gets to work on its own list of gun-free zones. If that doesn’t happen, then the state will be facing another lawsuit just like New York; one I’m confident it will ultimately lose. We still have plenty of challenges ahead of us, but these anti-gun politicians are on the wrong side of history and the Constitution and we aren’t going to rest until we’ve secured our right to keep and bear arms from their authoritarian power grabs.
Analysis: Federal Judge Charts Path to Upholding Felon Gun Bans
We now have a new framework for how the federal prohibition on felons owning guns could be constitutional.
District Judge David Counts of Western Texas upheld the conviction ban this week. That’s despite the fact that he struck down the federal ban on people indicted for felonies receiving firearms just a few days beforehand. And he did it under the Supreme Court’s Bruen standard, making him among the first to apply it to federal law.
His logic will sound familiar to anyone who followed his opinion in the indictment case. After calling into question the constitutionality of the indictment ban under Bruen’s text-and-tradition standard, he did the same for the conviction ban.
“Whether this Nation has a history of disarming felons is arguably unclear—it certainly isn’t clearly ‘longstanding,’” Counts said in that ruling, dismissing a claim made in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision.
However, he also outlined how he believed the conviction ban could be constitutional under the Bruen test even without a historical gun law as an analogue. Instead of relying on gun laws, Counts argued, it is better to look at how groups have been excluded from the political rights afforded to “the people.” Those historical examples provide a better guide, he said.
And now, just a few days after laying out his hypothetical test for the convicted felon prohibition, he has applied it in practice. He relied on the fact that governments in the early days of the republic prohibited people from voting if they had been convicted of certain crimes and those inciting people to violence could be prohibited from assembling in public.
“Indeed, there was a ‘longstanding’ historical tradition from the time of ratification that those convicted of a crime could be excluded from the right to vote,” Counts wrote. “For example, one year after the Second Amendment’s ratification, Kentucky’s Constitution stated, ‘[l]aws shall be made to exclude from… suffrage those who thereafter be convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Vermont’s Constitution followed one year later, authorizing the removal of voting rights from those engaged in bribery or corruption during elections. As of 2022, only two states and the District of Columbia do not restrict felons’ voting rights.”
This framework is similar in some respects to one used by Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Kanter v. Barr. Barrett argued in her dissent that those convicted of felonies could be prohibited from owning guns (though only if they committed violent felonies) because there was a tradition of barring dangerous groups from gun ownership as evidenced by early republic bans on Native Americans and Catholics owning guns. New York has sought to use the same argument to defend its gun laws in court.
Of course, the main problem with the Barrett approach is it relies exclusively on bigoted gun bans and attempts to generalize and sterilize them as applying to those early Americans considered “dangerous.” But it is highly questionable why the bans presented as evidence for this theory only fell along racial and religious lines. It seems dangerousness was playing a secondary role in those particular bans.
The Counts approach is not as susceptible to that pitfall. Clearly blacks, other minorities, and women were also excluded from protections afforded to “the people” in the founding era. Certainly, they were denied the right to vote in nearly all circumstances, and blacks in particular were denied all of their rights.
In fact, people in the founding era were as likely to be excluded from protections afforded to “the people” as they were to be included in them. So, relying on that approach for justifying modern gun bans has the potential to result in a fairly broad reading of what’s permissible under the Second Amendment.
Still, the Counts approach does at least provide some examples of longstanding rights restrictions that are based on a person’s criminal actions rather than their race or creed. So, it has a bit more to stand on.
Although, there are other weaknesses too. The number of crimes covered under modern felony laws dwarfs the number in the founding era. While the analogue of felons being prohibited from voting seems to fit fairly well with felons being barred from owning guns, the ban on inciting speech isn’t really the same since it isn’t a permanent ban on protesting for the offender.
It’s likely federal courts will refine the Counts approach if they do adopt it as a framework moving forward. His framework isn’t without its problems, and it’s among the first attempt at reconciling federal gun prohibitions with the Bruen standard. But it has the potential to become very influential among Counts’ piers moving forward.
DEMONIZING GUN ADS IS A MISGUIDED WITCH HUNT
Gun control advocates are ready to start grabbing pitchforks and torches in their attempt to drive out firearm manufacturer advertisements. They fear that today’s advertising is running to a tipping point where they need to rally the villagers to chase the monster pieced together by mad gun advertisers out of town.
Today’s gun ads, they claim, are a horrific menagerie of “toxic masculinity,” fearmongering and anti-government militancy. Except none of that is true. Gun control’s efforts are more like a witch hunt, and more like Monty Python’s version of one depicted in the cult classic, “The Holy Grail.”
They’re too busy clanging alarm bells to roust of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to realize that the monster they’re chasing doesn’t exist. The real monsters are the criminals, not the law-abiding gun owners who are lawfully purchasing firearms for self-defense, recreational shooting and hunting.
They want to muzzle and silence our industry so the American heritage and tradition of hunting and the shooting sports is not passed on to the next generation.
Defining Acceptable Ads
Adweek was the latest to weigh in. The advertising trade publication, which regularly highlights efforts by various gun control groups to demonize lawful gun ownership, posted a feature claiming that today’s gun ads are turning America’s children into “extremists.”
The article focuses on an effort by lawmakers to pressure the FTC to abandon their neutrality and deny gun manufacturers the ability to advertise. They say the ads of yesteryear of plaid-clad hunters unwrapping a rifle under the tree are acceptable, but today’s advertising that draws on patriotism and self-reliance is a bridge too far. They want the FTC to burn gun manufacturers at the metaphorical stake and cut out their tongues.
That is a pretty big leap to suggest that Americans – even youth – exposed to firearm ads will poison their minds. Guns have been advertised for decades, even guns offered in youth models. Mechanix Illustrated ran an ad in 1954 for a Remington .22-caliber rifle, featuring a youth holding a rifle he received as a Christmas present. Sears Roebuck listed firearms in their catalog in 1897, featuring a shotgun for $7.95 and would even deliver a revolver to a mailing address.
Clearly, government regulations restricted that years ago. Even toy guns, like Mattel’s #2 M-16 were featured in 1967 with “braap, brra-a-a-a-ap, brap, brap,” sounds were advertised. None of that turned America’s youth into murderers. In fact, recreational shooting, including the scholastic shooting sports, ranks among the safest sporting activities. Golf, walking and tennis report more injuries than hunting and trap and skeet shooting reports just 0.1 percent of injuries.
Intellectually Dishonest
That is because the shooting sports are heavily supervised. Basic foundational safety rules are a must and are drilled into every gun owner. Children are admonished to only handle firearms under the direct supervision of a responsible adult.
Critics of lawful firearm ownership are being intellectually dishonest when they say it is advertising that is causing out-of-control crime rates or horrific murders. They know this is not true. It is not as if these are individuals who are not academically accomplished. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was once a professor at Harvard University. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) was Yale Law School graduate who also served as Connecticut’s attorney general. They are not uneducated. They are just being dishonest.
They do not want to admit that the soft-on-crime policies they espouse are not making our communities safer. They would rather latch onto every gun control notion they can and mispresent to America that the societal ills are the fault of the firearm industry that they have made a career demonizing. It plays well to their voters when they do not have to admit their policies are failing. It is easier to cast blame and malign an industry, tell America that murderers are not individuals with craven hearts who couldn’t care less about the law, much less the value of human life. It is easier to ignore that the responsible firearm industry offers Real Solutions® than admit law-abiding gun owners are invested in safe and responsible ownership.
Do not believe their false and misleading claims that the firearm industry is evil. They are the ones selling pitchforks and torches.
Trial Date Set for Washington’s Ban on High-Capacity Gun Magazine Sales
A federal judge in Seattle has scheduled a trial to start more than a year from now regarding the legal challenge to Washington state’s new restrictions on high-capacity gun magazines.
Judge David Estudillo of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington set Dec. 4, 2023, as the opening day for what is scheduled as an eight-day bench trial regarding the Second Amendment Foundation’s lawsuit against the state’s ban on sales of new large-capacity magazines for handguns and rifles.
The law, which took effect on July 1, prohibits the sale of gun magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, along with the manufacturing, distribution or import of such magazines in Washington.
Any high-capacity magazines owned as of July 1, 2022, are unaffected by the law.
“We’re asking the court to declare Washington’s ban on original capacity magazines to be unconstitutional under the Second and Fourteenth amendments,” Alan M. Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Bellevue-based SAF, said at the time the lawsuit was filed. “We want an injunction against the state because this ban criminalizes something that is common in a majority of states, and also leaves law-abiding Washington citizens more vulnerable to attack by ruthless criminals.”
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms, while the Fourteenth Amendment, in part, reads “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process.”
The complaint alleges the law will negatively impact Washingtonians’ self-defense options.
“The State of Washington has criminalized one of the most common and important means by which its citizens can exercise their fundamental right of self-defense,” the lawsuit reads. “By banning manufacturing, importation, distribution, and sale of standard-capacity firearm magazines that can carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition (‘standard capacity magazines’), the State has barred law-abiding residents from legally acquiring common ammunition magazines and deprived them of an effective means of self-defense.”
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has publicly promised to “vigorously defend” the law.
Scheduling the trial more than a year out could be influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, in which the majority held that Americans have the constitutional right to carry firearms.
That ruling has opened the door for another look at cases against high-capacity magazine bans that previously failed in lower courts.
The nation’s highest court vacated a ruling in a San Diego case that upheld California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets, sending it back to the lower court to reconsider following its Bruen decision.
The court also booted a case challenging New Jersey’s ban on high-capacity magazines back to a lower court for review in light of Bruen.
That means either case could end up being decided before Washington’s case, known as Sullivan v. Ferguson, goes to trial.
According to the schedule, discovery must be completed by next July 10, all motions for dismissal must be filed by next Aug. 7, and a pretrial conference will be held on Nov. 20, 2023.
Judge Issues Time Limits for Briefs in California Magazine Ban Case
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– Judge Benitez found California’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition to be unconstitutional on its face. On March 29, 2017, Judge Benitez issued an injunction preventing the enforcement of the ban. In the week that followed, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of magazines were sold to California residents who had been deprived of their Second Amendment rights.
The week of March 29, 2017, to April 5, 2017, has become known as Freedom week.
The name of the case changed as the name of the California AG changed.
Subsequent court actions reversed the injunction, upheld Judge Benitez’s opinion, reversed the three-judge panel with an en banc hearing, and appealed the en banc hearing to the Supreme Court. On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its decision on the Bruen case. On June 29, the Supreme Court vacated the decision by the Ninth Circuit en banc on Duncan v. Bonta and sent it back to the Ninth Circuit to be re-decided.
The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to Judge Rodger T. Benitez. Judge Benitez is now following proper procedure. He is not allowing delays. On September 26, 2022, Judge Roger T. Benitez of the District Court for the Southern District of California issued an order as to the timing for briefs on the now Duncan v. Bonta case.
From the District Court for the Southern District of California, Judge Roger T. Benitez:
On June 29, 2017, this Court preliminarily enjoined enforcement of California Penal Code § 32310 (c) & (d) requiring persons to dispossess themselves of magazines able to hold more than 10 rounds lawfully acquired and possessed. The preliminary injunction was affirmed on appeal. Duncan v. Becerra, Appeal No. 17-56081 (9th Cir. July 17, 2018). On March 29, 2019, on summary judgment, this Court concluded that California Penal Code § 32310 is unconstitutional. On April 4, 2019, this Court made the preliminary injunction on subsections (c) and (d) permanent but stayed, pending appeal, the injunction of § 32310 (a) & (b).
This Court was again affirmed on appeal. Duncan v. Becerra, Appeal No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2020). The Ninth Circuit granted rehearing en banc, vacated its opinion, and entered an opinion reversing the judgment of this Court.Duncan v. Bonta, Appeal No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. Nov. 30, 2021). The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated the opinion of the Ninth Circuit and remanded for further consideration. Duncan v. Bonta, No. 21-1194, 142 S. Ct. 2895 (June 30, 2022). The Ninth Circuit now remands the case to this Court for further proceedings in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022) and the mandate has issued.
This Court hereby spreads the mandate upon the minutes of this Court.
The Defendant shall file any additional briefing that is necessary to decide this case in light of Bruen within 45 days of this Order. Plaintiffs shall file any responsive briefing within 21 days thereafter. This Court will then decide the case on the briefs and the prior record or schedule additional hearings.
The previously entered preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of California Penal Code § 32310 (c) and (d) for magazines able to hold more than ten rounds shall remain in effect for all those who previously acquired and possessed magazines legally (including those persons and business entities who acquired magazines between March 29, 2019 and April 5, 2019), pending further Order of this Court. Dated: September 26, 2022
The 45 days to file briefs ends on November 10th, by my calculations; the time given for response briefs ends on November 30th.
The Miller v. Bonta case briefs will have been in and responded to about a month earlier, at the end of October.
Miller v. Bonta and Duncan v. Bonta are closely related cases about restoring Second Amendment rights.
FPC Files for Injunction Against New York “Sensitive Location” Handgun Carry Bans
BUFFALO, NY (September 28, 2022) – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in Boron v. Bruen, its lawsuit challenging New York’s “sensitive location” handgun carry bans in public parks, public transportation, and all private property without express consent. The motion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.
“Under S51001, ‘ordinary, law-abiding citizens,’ like and including Plaintiffs, are again prevented from carrying handguns in public for self-defense in almost all corners of the State, except in what Governor Hochul said were, ‘probably some streets,’” argues the motion. “S51001 makes a mockery of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen, which reaffirmed that personal security extends to more than just ‘those . . . who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force,’ but also emphatically extends to include ordinary, law-abiding Americans ‘outside the home.’”
“The New York Legislature appears to think that when the Supreme Court closed the door on New York’s may issue permit regime it opened a window for equally onerous location restrictions,” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “Today’s motion for preliminary injunction is the opportunity for the Court to remind New York lawmakers that those windows are nailed shut by the Constitution.”
Individuals who would like to Join the FPC Grassroots Army and support important pro-rights lawsuits and programs can sign up at JoinFPC.org. Individuals and organizations wanting to support charitable efforts in support of the restoration of Second Amendment and other natural rights can also make a tax-deductible donation to the FPC Action Foundation. For more on FPC’s lawsuits and other pro-Second Amendment initiatives, visit FPCLegal.org and follow FPC on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
Firearms Policy Coalition (firearmspolicy.org), a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, exists to create a world of maximal human liberty, defend constitutionally protected rights, advance individual liberty, and restore freedom. FPC’s efforts are focused on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and adjacent issues including freedom of speech, due process, unlawful searches and seizures, separation of powers, asset forfeitures, privacy, encryption, and limited government. The FPC team are next-generation advocates working to achieve the Organization’s strategic objectives through litigation, research, scholarly publications, amicus briefing, legislative and regulatory action, grassroots activism, education, outreach, and other programs.
FPC Law (FPCLaw.org) is the nation’s first and largest public interest legal team focused on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the leader in the Second Amendment litigation and research space.
New study contradicts “More Guns = More Crime” theory
Do increased gun sales lead to increased crime rates? According to gun control activists, the answer is “yes,” but a new study published in the Journal of Surgical Research finds no connection between firearm purchases and the number of crimes. I’m very pleased that Dr. Mark Hamill, a trauma surgeon and associate professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who was a primary author and researcher for the new study, could join me on today’s Cam & Co to discuss his findings and the current state of “gun violence” research in the medical community.
For this particular study, Hamill and his associates used both national and state-level data on crime rates between 1999 and 2015 as well as NICS reporting data over the same time period as a reasonable proxy for gun sales. Hamill hypothesized beforehand that there would be no correlation between gun sales and crime rates, and as it turns out, that’s exactly what researchers found.
Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period.
Using a naïve national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.
Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.
This study follows on previous research released by Hamill and others back in 2019 that examined concealed carry laws and crime rates; looking to see if changes to a state’s concealed carry laws resulted in more crime overall. Just as in this most recent study, the data found no significant association between “shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators.”
As Hamill says, the results make sense. Most people who legally purchase and lawfully carry firearms are never going to commit a violent crime, so increasing the number of those who are legally exercising their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t result in more violent crime. As for gun sales and crime rates, while the number of firearms sold might vary from year to year, the number of privately-owned firearms in the United States continues to increase. If more guns equated to more crime, then we’d expect to see a steady rise in criminal offenses year after year. Instead, a graph of violent crime rates going back to 1900 shows that crime tends to ebb and flow in waves that can last for decades.
Note, by the way, what happened to the homicide rate in the years after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. While homicide rates had been fairly flat throughout most of the 1960s, there was a sharp increase starting around the time the GCA became law, and a steady decline didn’t begin until more than two decades later in the early 1990s.
That crime decline generally continued until 2020, when shootings and homicides soared in the midst of the COVID-19 shutdowns, disruptions to the criminal justice system, riots, and a pullback from proactive policing strategies. Gun sales also exploded in 2020, but despite the assertions of some gun control activists that the increase in gun purchases must have played a role in the increased violence, there isn’t much evidence that was the case, as even some anti-gun researchers have acknowledged.
Dr. Garen Wintemute of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis investigated a possible relationship between 2020’s gun sales and the increase in crime and found none.
“Instead, [researchers] concluded that unemployment, economic disparity and physical distancing exacerbated by the pandemic were far more potent predictors of increased violence,” the FiveThirtyEight article notes.
Hamill’s study comes at a time of heightened interest in the gun control debate within the medical community, including a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association dedicated to examining “gun violence” and advocating for a host of new gun control laws. Hamill says that unfortunately there does seem to be a bias towards gun control among many researchers, and described how this most recent study was actually rejected by another journal; not because of any issues with the researcher’s methodology, but because the journal’s editor didn’t like the results.
Thankfully this new paper found a home at the Journal of Surgical Research, and I would encourage you to not only read the paper but share its findings far and wide. More guns does not equal more crime, and we’ve got the data to prove it.
BLUF
At this point, after multiple ignored corrections, it’s a stretch to pretend that the president’s misstatements are accidental; he obviously doesn’t care about their truth. What’s important to him and his supporters is achieving their policy goals, even if they have to lie to do so.
President Biden Lies About Guns. Again.
Amidst official hysteria over “misinformation,” the president continues to willfully misrepresent the facts on firearms.
Government lies aren’t new; political fibs have such deep roots in history that you could open a museum of official mendacity and have enough rotating exhibits to keep things fresh. But now, amidst much hysteria over “misinformation,” we see a resident of the White House misrepresent facts in pursuit of restrictions on legal ownership of firearms and ignore corrections. President Biden’s claim that bullets fired from AR-15’s are impossibly speedy is only the latest example of his continuing lies about guns.
“There’s no justification for a weapon of war. None. The speed of that bullet is five times that that comes out of the muzzle of most weapons. It can penetrate your vests,” President Biden huffed last week. “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for?” he added.
This wasn’t the first time the president insisted on the supposed superpowers of so-called “assault weapons” and especially of AR-15s, which are popular among gun owners.
“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun, five times—is lighter—and can pierce Kevlar?” he insisted on August 30 while touting his administration’s “Safer America Plan,” which includes tighter firearms restrictions.
Really? Well, no.
“President Biden’s statement that a bullet shot from an AR-15 travels 5x faster than a bullet shot out of ‘any other gun’ is false,” Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor who focuses on Second Amendment issues, told The Washington Post early in September. As for bullets fired from AR-15s piercing Kevlar, “that is true of almost all centerfire rifle bullets. Body armor protection against rifle bullets require steel, ceramic, or composite plates.”
“Biden was clearly wrong in his statement this week,” the Post‘s Glenn Kessler concluded.
In fact, the 5.56x45mm round most commonly fired by an AR-15 (which can be chambered in multiple calibers) is faster than many rifle rounds with a muzzle velocity of roughly 3,100 feet per second, but slower than others (a few exceed 4,000 fps). And speed only partially measures the lethality and utility of a cartridge. Military types, hunters, and enthusiasts are forever debating the issue. So is Biden.
“A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” the president improbably claimed in May about the popular handgun cartridge, again while touting gun restrictions. Knowledgeable people had fun pointing out that Biden seemed to have confused the round with a cannon. But Biden lies about cannons, too.
“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” Biden insisted with regard to the Second Amendment in February. “You couldn’t buy a cannon in—when the—this—this amendment was passed.”
“As other fact-checkers noted when Biden made versions of this claim at least twice before, nothing in the Second Amendment said that citizens could not own cannons, and there is no evidence that any federal or state laws barred possession of the weapons at the time,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org pointed out.
Biden had been called out on precisely that point the previous year, by The Washington Post, and in 2020 when PolitiFact rated his claims as “false.” So, the fibs appear deliberate, not just slips of the tongue. So are his misstatements about legal protections for the firearms industry.
If the left wants to try stuff on this side of the pond, we’ve got a remedy we’ve retained since we were still colonies.
HOMICIDAL URGES ON THE LEFT
If you have the feeling that liberals would like to kill you, you aren’t paranoid. You are catching on.
Around the world, we are seeing increasingly violent talk from the Left. All too often, that talk has led to violent action. When Congressman and Senate candidate Tim Ryan says “we’ve got to kill and confront” the movement of “extremist Republicans,” you are right if you think he means you.
This liberal outrage comes from the U.K.: a video game in which you try to kill Margaret Thatcher. The game is endorsed by a former leader of the Labour Party:
Jeremy Corbyn has been pictured playing a video game modified to let players kill Margaret Thatcher.
The former Labour leader was pictured playing the Thatcher’s Techbase game on a console at Left-wing political festival The World Transformed (TWT).
***
On Thursday night, Mr Purvis tweeted a photograph of Mr Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North, using the console and posing alongside it, with the caption: “He liked the game.”
I’ll bet he did. Can you imagine the fallout if someone produced a video game where the object was to murder, say, Barack Obama? No, I don’t think you can. But killing conservatives is all the rage.
A description of Thatcher’s Techbase written by Mr Purvis on its release read: “On Sept 24, Margaret Thatcher will rise from her grave. Only you can send her back to hell.
“Faced with the return of one of humanity’s greatest threats, you have no choice but to head to the 10th circle of hell: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher is back from hell, and the lady’s not for returning.”
The cover art for the game pictures Baroness Thatcher, who died in 2013, with devil horns, demon eyes, fangs and a gun for an arm.
Here is Corbyn playing the kill-Thatcher game:
I am afraid that political violence is going to get a great deal worse before it gets better.
Report: China Readying Push Against ‘Global Gun Proliferation’
A report by Global Times, an official Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlet, claims China is readying a focused push against “global gun proliferation.”
The Global Times notes that China’s international gun control push is part of the Firearms Protocol, which was originally introduced at the U.N. General Assembly in 2001. It is a push China is preparing to undertake in earnest now.
“China is fulfilling its domestic legal procedures to ramp up ratifying the Firearms Protocol, a key step in implementing the global security initiative and maintaining international peace and stability amid the global threat of gun proliferation, said Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday,” according to the Global Times,
China is using its internal gun policies as a model in the global push against firearms. The Global Times quoted Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying, “China has become one of the safest countries in the world with the least gun-related violent crimes after years of efforts. And China’s strict management of military exports and earnest fulfilling the international obligations have been widely praised by the international community.”
The Firearms Protocol is part of China’s larger Global Security Initiative.On April 21, 2022, Breitbart News pointed out that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping used a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia to urge the world to join the Global Security Initiative to “oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”
China’s Xinhua News Agency noted Xi used the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine as an example of the kind of conflict that emerges from the continued existence of an incorrect “Cold War mentality.” Xi did not personally condemn Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for having such a mentality but he did make clear that the objective of the “Global Security Initiative” would be in part to prevent such conflicts.
Xi said, “In today’s world, unilateralism and excessive pursuit of self-interest are doomed to fail; so are the practices of decoupling, supply disruption and maximum pressure, so are the attempts to forge ‘small circles’ or to stoke conflict and confrontation along ideological lines.”
On September 24 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China noted:
State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced when addressing the General Debate of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly that China has decided to launch its domestic procedure to ratify the UN’s Firearms Protocol. This is an important step taken by China to actively implement the Global Security Initiative and uphold international and regional peace and stability. It embodies China’s determination to support multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind. China is fulfilling the domestic legal procedure in accordance with relevant provisions and will endeavor to ratify the Protocol at an early date.
The University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org categorizes China’s internal gun policies as “restrictive,” noting, “In China, no civilian (private ownership prohibited, Govt.-issued firearms are allocated to those in genuine need) may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition.”
SAF ASKS COURT TO DECLARE HANDGUN BAN FOR YOUNG ADULTS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in West Virginia, challenging the federal prohibition on handgun sales to young adults ages 18-20, and is asking for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.
Joining SAF in this legal action are the West Virginia Citizens Defense League and two private citizens, Benjamin Weekley and Steven Brown. Defendants are the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and Attorney General Merrick Garland, in their official capacities. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. The case is known as Brown v. ATF.
Weekley and Brown, both being in the affected age group, were unable to purchase handguns from a West Virginia sporting goods store earlier this year. According to the lawsuit, “The Handgun Ban impermissibly infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding, peaceable individuals aged eighteen to twenty,” and further asserts the ban “is flatly unconstitutional under the Second Amendment” and Supreme Court opinions in the 2008 Heller case and 2022 Bruen decision.
“There is no historical evidence supporting an arbitrary prohibition on purchase and ownership of handguns for young adults over the age of 18,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Indeed, history goes the other direction, with young adults considered mature enough for militia service, duty in the armed forces and in today’s world being able to vote, run for public office, start businesses, get married, enter into contracts and enjoy the full protections set down in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments.
“Yet these same young adults are hampered by a politically selected age limit that prohibits them from purchasing handguns from licensed firearms dealers,” he added. “This makes absolutely no sense. This handgun ban for young adults is an unconstitutional infringement of their rights s protected by the Second Amendment.”
An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment
Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.
Editor’s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by NRO editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens’s call to repeal the Second Amendment.
A few hours after yesterday’s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:
The @NRA & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a ******* BOY’S COAT. pic.twitter.com/cKR0Nk4Uwm
— rob Delaney (@robdelaney) August 26, 2015
For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation in full (it’s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.
As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
We should be absolutely clear about what Delaney is arguing here: He is a) agreeing with Jefferson that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,” b) contending that “progress” suggests that the individual right to keep and bear arms is now counterproductive, and c) concluding that it is time therefore to make a “change in law and constitution” — in other words, to repeal the Second Amendment. This, it is true, is not a mainstream position on the American Left — at least, it is not one that is argued openly.
But it is a reasonably popular one on social media, it has strong support within the more leftward-leaning parts of the political commentariat, it is often implied by the casual manner in which progressives such as President Obama refer to “Australia” and other heavily regulated nations, and it enjoys indirect approval from around one quarter of the American public. When the likes of Rob Delaney and Bill Maher and Keith Ellison say that we need to get rid of the Second Amendment, they are not speaking in a vacuum but reflecting the views of a small but vocal portion of the American population. And they mean it.
Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don’t fall back on excuses. Don’t play cheap motte-and-bailey games. And don’t pretend that you’re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you’re just appalled by the Heller decision. You’re not. Heller recognized what was obvious to the amendment’s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That “right of the people” means “right of the people,” as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller “interpretation” wouldn’t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution.
It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take.
This will involve hard work, of course. You can’t just sit online and preen to those who already agree with you. No siree. Instead, you’ll have to go around the states — traveling and preaching until the soles of your shoes are thin as paper. You’ll have to lobby Congress, over and over and over again. You’ll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown in your direction.
You’ll have to tell anybody who will listen to you that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they’re childish and beholden to the “gun lobby”; that they don’t care enough about children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only because their penises are small and they’re not “real men.” And remember, you can’t half-ass it this time. You’re not going out there to tell these people that you want “reform” or that “enough is enough.”
You’re going there to solicit their support for removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake: It’ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he’s not as well endowed as he’d like to be. It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.
And don’t stop there. No, no. There’ll still be a lot of work to be done. As anybody with a passing understanding of America’s constitutional system knows, repealing the Second Amendment won’t in and of itself lead to the end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next, you’ll need to craft the laws that bring about change — think of them as modern Volstead Acts — and you’ll need to get them past the opposition. And, if the federal government doesn’t immediately go the whole hog, you’ll need to replicate your efforts in the states, too, 45 of which have their own constitutional protections.
Maybe New Jersey and California will go quietly. Maybe. But Idaho won’t. Louisiana won’t. Kentucky won’t. Maine won’t. You’ll need to persuade those sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do what’s right as defined by you. Unfortunately, that won’t involve vague talk of holding “national conversations” and “doing something” and “fighting back against the NRA.” It’ll mean going to all sorts of groups — unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues — and telling them not that you want “common-sense reforms,” but that you want their guns, as in Australia or Britain or Japan. Obviously, the Republicans aren’t going to help in this, so you’ll need to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you’ll need their presidential candidates on board. That means you’ll need to make full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That means you’ll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to back away if it gets tough. And if they won’t, you’ll need to start a third party and accept all that that entails.
And when you’ve done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment, you’ll need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby, eh-we-don’t-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I mean enforce it — with force. When Australia took its decision to Do Something, the Australian citizenry owned between 2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe three-quarters of a million of them — somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. That wouldn’t be good enough here, of course.
There are around 350 million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked up one in three, you’d only be returning the stock to where it was in 1994. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8 million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American people, it’s that they do not go quietly into the night. But the government has to have their guns. It has to. The Second Amendment has to go.
You’re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to-door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants — and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won’t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item — let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it’s slightly odd that you think that we can’t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that’s just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to be done: For the children; for America; for the future. Hey hey, ho ho, the Second Amendment has to go. Let’s do this thing.
When do you get started?
Very quick move from “nobody wants to take your guns!” to “we’re going to forcibly confiscate every single handgun, semi-automatic long gun, and pump-action shotgun in the entire united states.” https://t.co/cMWj2czRng
— Latino Rifle Association (@LatinoRifleOrg) September 27, 2022
BLUF
It’s about those “weapons of war” the violence monopolists are trying to swindle the people into turning their backs on and surrendering. It’s about tricking Americans into thinking it’s all about hunting (which they then regulate through licensing, restrictions, and lead ammunition bans that are extended to the non-sporting gun owner population). And by appointing known prohibitionists and masking their affiliations, the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council is doing its part to help spread the deception.
Hunting Council Masks Hostility to Founding Intent with Gun Banner’s Appointment
U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council’s purpose is to provide recommendations to the Federal Government, through the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, that (a) benefit wildlife resources; (b) encourage partnership among the public; sporting conservation organizations; Federal, State, Tribal, and territorial governments; and (c) benefit fair chase recreational hunting and safe recreational shooting sports,” the Council declares on its website.
A name included among primary council members raises a red flag, particularly in how it is presented:
“Ryan Busse (Unaffiliated) representing shooting sports interests”
“The appointment of Ryan Busse to the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council, a federal advisory committee, is a farce and demonstrates the contempt the Biden administration holds for lawful gun owners who hunt on America’s public and private lands,” Mark Oliva, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Managing Director of Public Affairs tells AmmoLand News. Busse was listed as ‘unaffiliated,’ but that is not true. He is not an unaffiliated shooting sports interest expert.”
“He is an advisor for the Giffords gun control group and has openly advocated the ban on the most popular selling centerfire rifle in America – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR),” Oliva explained. “He has published a book advocating radical gun control policies.”
“Glaringly absent, however, is any representative from the firearm and ammunition industry even though the industry is responsible for the vast majority of conservation funds through the Pittman-Robertson excise tax,” Oliva continued. “To date, the firearm and ammunition industry has provided over $15.3 billion to wildlife conservation since 1937 and over $1.1 billion of the conservation funds apportioned to the states last year was directly tied to taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.”
“The Biden administration has politicized this advisory council to legitimize Busse and the far-left gun control policies he and the gun control group he represents,” Oliva concluded. “This is a sham and doesn’t come close to representing the interests of lawful gun owners who hunt and are faithful stewards of the precious wildlife resources our nation enjoys.”
Readers here are well aware of Busse and the danger he represents to the right to keep and bear arms. Once a highly compensated industry insider, he now masks his (that is, his Giffords benefactors’) citizen disarmament goals with the obligatory big “but” qualifier:
I believe in the Second Amendment but…
About 3 1/2 years ago, Judge Benitez ruled that California’s magazine ban was unconstitutional and enjoined the state from enforcing the ban. That injunction was in effect for about a week before the 9th circuit reversed it.
During that week anyone could -legally- buy, and retain, magazines that had been previously banned. It was called ‘Freedom Week’.
What this did, in effect, was make possession of all previously banned magazines legal in California since there is really no way for the state to prove someone didn’t buy them during that week
The case, still at the 9th circuit, was remanded back to him last week with the instruction to rehear the case, taking SCOTUS’ Bruen ruling into account.
So the Judge made his original injunction effective again. Heh heh heh heh.
2A Reality isn’t “falsehood,” no matter how much you scream
The text of the Second Amendment is, all in all, surprisingly clear for a bit of law. The same can be said for most of the Bill of Rights, of course, but the Second is particularly important, and it’s the reality of that we need to talk about. After all, few disagree that people have the right to assemble, worship as they please, or petition the government. The idea that people should be protected from unreasonable search or seizure is also pretty well agreed upon.
But there is this weird perception of the Second Amendment that simply doesn’t conform to anything real.
You see, there are still those who think the individual right to keep and bear arms is a modern invention and call any claim to the contrary a fabrication.
Like this dipstick from The Hill:
The gun lobby’s triumphs have been due in large part to two coordinated and well-funded disinformation campaigns. The first was designed to revise legal scholarship around the Second Amendment and the second flooded Americans with false information about the benefits of firearms. These campaigns use what is called a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, a type of disinformation campaign that is challenging to counteract and has four foundational features:
- It is high-volume and multichannel
- It is rapid, continuous and repetitive
- It lacks a commitment to objective reality
- It lacks a commitment to consistency
The first firehose deployed by the gun lobby was intended to change the interpretation of the Second Amendment itself. The book, “The Second Amendment: A Biography,” found that before 1960, every law review article on the Second Amendment rejected the “individual rights” interpretation touted by the gun lobby, which was trying to claim that the Second Amendment should be applied to an individual, not just to a group (such as a militia).
And?
What? I’m supposed to be moved that law review articles–which are authoritative in many ways, but are not how we are governed, nor should they be–found something that makes absolutely no sense?
See, the author is trying to use law review articles and a review of them to deflect from some very simple facts that don’t require legal expertise.
First, there’s the fact that the Second Amendment plainly says, “the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Nowhere else in the Constitution is “the people” taken to mean the right is collective, rather than individual. There’s no understanding that the Fourth Amendment only applies to society as a whole rather than you as an individual.
So why would that suddenly change in the Second Amendment and not before or afterward in the Bill of Rights?
Second, what law reviews say is less than meaningless in this discussion because what ultimately matters is what the Founding Fathers intended, not what some lawyers decades or centuries later thought.
From the Founding Fathers’ own quotes, it was clear they intended gun rights to be individual rights. The Buckeye Firearms Association has a nice collection of those quotes. Here are a few highlights:
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776“To disarm the people…[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adooption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788…“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787…“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
– James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789…“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
– Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
So it seems pretty clear that regardless of what some people wrote in various law reviews, the Founding Fathers saw the Second Amendment as an individual right.
And really, why wouldn’t it be?
In what reality would the government need to preserve the right for the government to have guns? On the very surface, that makes no sense and no amount of law school is going to change that.
Oh, but our author at The Hill was far from finished in distorting reality.
The second firehose of falsehood strategy was designed to convince the public that firearms make people safer. The U.S. has a long history of gun ownership for hunting, but in the 1970s and 80s, the gun lobby’s focus shifted substantially to promoting guns for self-defense. When research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrated that a firearm in the home substantially increased the risk of death, the gun lobby successfully petitioned their allies in Congress to threaten the CDC with massive funding cuts if such research continued. This greatly hampered the production of new research, as well as the dissemination of such research to the public.
Except that the research was fundamentally flawed and would never have been tolerated on literally any other subject.
We’ve already seen a lot about how gun research is heavily biased toward the anti-gun side and how pro-gun results are routinely stifled.
And that’s a gross misrepresentation of what happened. The CDC was always permitted to carry out whatever research it wanted. The threatened cuts to funding were from anti-gun advocacy. The fact that the CDC interpreted their research as advocacy is telling, of course, but only in so far as it revealed their own biases.
The truth of the matter is that the “falsehoods” the author seeks to debunk are nothing of the sort. He simply cannot fathom that reality refuses to conform to his own beliefs. Well, that’s just how life is sometimes and he’ll learn to deal with disappointment.
Or he won’t and can be miserable for his entire life. I honestly don’t care.
But he should be aware that the only one peddling falsehoods here is him.