Category: RKBA

2nd Amendment Foundation Backs Federal Challenge Of Illinois Transit Weapons Ban

BELLEVUE, WA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation announced today it is financially supporting a federal lawsuit filed by four Illinois residents who are challenging a ban on licensed concealed carry on Public Transportation under the state’s Firearm Concealed Carry Act.

The plaintiffs in the case are Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, Joseph Vesel, and Douglas Winston. They are all residents of counties in northern Illinois in the greater Chicago area. They are represented by attorney David Sigale of Wheaton, Ill. The case is known as Schoenthal v. Raoul.

Defendants are Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and State’s Attorneys Rick Amato (DeKalb County), Robert Berlin (DuPage County), Kimberly M. Foxx (Cook County), and Eric Rinehart (Lake County), all in their official capacities.

“We’re financially supporting this case because it is the right thing to do,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “All four plaintiffs in this case are law-abiding citizens who cannot exercise their fundamental rights as spelled out by three Supreme Court rulings, including SAF’s 2010 McDonald victory that nullified Chicago’s unconstitutional handgun ban.

“Illinois lawmakers have made it as difficult as possible for honest citizens to exercise their right to bear arms,” he continued, “and the prohibition on licensed carry while traveling via public transportation is a glaring example. This ban is a direct violation of the Second and Fourteenth amendments, and we are delighted to support this case because it cuts to the heart of anti-gun extremism.

“Buses and commuter trains are public places, but they are hardly sensitive places,” Gottlieb observed. “The four plaintiffs in this case rely on public transportation to travel to and from various places, including work, and they should be able to carry firearms for personal protection while in transit. However, current laws, regulations, policies and practices enforced by the defendants have made that legally impossible.

“Illinois is trying to perpetuate an indefensible public disarmament policy despite the clear meaning of Supreme Court rulings,” he concluded, “and we’re going to help the plaintiffs put an end to this nonsense.”

US V. Quiroz – §922 (N) Held Unconstitutional

Jose Gomez Quiroz was indicted in a Texas state court for burglary and later indicted for jumping bail. Both are felonies under Texas state law. While on the lam, Quiroz sought to buy a .22LR pistol from a dealer and answered “no” on the Form 4473 when asked if he was under indictment for a felony. He got a delayed (but not denied) response and subsequently took possession a week later. Then, the NICS System notified the BATFE of Quiroz’s transaction. He was charged with lying on the Form 4473 (18 USC §922(a)(6)) and illegal receipt of a firearm by a person under indictment (18 USC §922(n)). A Federal jury found him guilty on both charges. A week later, Quiroz moved to set aside the conviction under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and asked the court to reconsider in light of Bruen.

US District Court Judge David Counts of the Western District of Texas issued his decision yesterday and found §922(n) facially unconstitutional. Moreover, since §922(n) was found unconstitutional, Quiroz’s lie on the Form 4473 was immaterial. The US Attorney is already appealing the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The media is making a big deal over the fact that Judge Counts was appointed by President Trump. What they fail to say is that Counts was originally nominated for the position by President Barack Obama and that the clock ran out before he could be confirmed by the Senate. Prior to the nomination by President Obama, Counts served as a Magistrate Judge in the Western District and was the State Judge Advocate for the Texas National Guard where he was a Colonel.

The expansion of civil rights has often come in cases with less than desirable defendants. Witness the expansion of rights thanks to Clarence Earl Gideon, a drifter, and Ernesto Miranda, a kidnapper and rapist, whose cases established the right to counsel and the right to a warning against self-incrimination respectively.

Now it is time to examine the decision in detail.

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The Second Amendment puts safety first

The Second Amendment which addresses the right of American citizens to bear arms, is a touchy subject these days, but its effect on our daily lives cannot be overstated. Being able to protect ourselves in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous by the day is essential to survival. The right to arm oneself, whether the weapon is concealed or not, has become more important than ever.

Take a stroll through any major city and you’re likely to see a replay of what I witnessed recently in New York City, rampant homelessness, burgeoning crime and a proliferation of drug use. Feeling safe should be and has previously been an inalienable right, but today that’s no longer a given in this country. Instead, our cities are in a dangerous downward spiral. They are increasingly filthy and crime rates are skyrocketing. Make no mistake about it, America and its people are at risk. Cities that used to be barometers for the American experience are now bastions of hellish disarray.

Take for example San Francisco and you will see precisely what I mean. Shoeless drug addicts roam the streets like zombies in a trance, treating the streets like public toilets. Droves of homeless people shoot up heroin, not in trash-littered back alleys, but in plain sight on major roads and the gutters are filled with discarded syringes. What we need to rectify this situation is more policing and enforcement of the current rule of law. Until then, we are going the wrong direction by focusing on gun control. Our focus needs to be increased funding to the police, not “defunding” them. We also need to ensure that law-abiding citizens are afforded their constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms which is becoming an increasingly essential way for men and women to protect themselves.

People kill people, guns do not. Research has demonstrated that over-regulating gun ownership will have zero effect on the estimated 400 million guns that are already in private circulation. Gun control simply cannot stop violence in this country, which is being caused by a crime-ridden society that is out of control. Imagine that you are a small businessman in a big city rife with crime and short on cops. Imagine how you might react if an armed robber burst into your store, pulled a gun and demanded cash. You could meekly hand the money over and put your fate in the hands of an armed criminal, hoping he doesn’t just decide to orphan your children, or you could up the odds in your favor by defending yourself with a legally purchased and properly registered firearm.

In San Francisco, the former District Attorney decided that the city would not be prosecuting thieves who stole, as long as their thievery fell beneath a certain price point, these initiatives were announced publicly, talk about throwing gasoline on a fire. The result of that ridiculousness? We have all seen the videos of the resulting crime sprees posted online of gangs of criminals breaking into and robbing stores. In this era of lawlessness, the best life insurance policy is one tucked into a holster. Should we be forced to choose a thug’s life or our own, we should have the means to make the right decision.

Gun control advocates like to point to the mayhem wreaked by mass shootings, especially in schools, which are a truly terrifying reality. But we know that the perpetrators of those horrors are often mentally ill people. I am not opposed to sensible steps to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the insane and the criminal—but I am opposed to overreach by the government to prevent law-abiding and rational Americans from securing the firearms of their choice.

Gun violence deaths detailed by Giffords Law Center hype the numbers but fail to look at the hard truth, the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are caused by people who misuse guns and stricter gun legislation would do little to stop those individuals who are compelled to use guns to commit crimes. The sooner we recognize this truth and the sooner we recognize where our country is headed, the quicker we will come to the realization that we truly must protect ourselves at all costs. Responsible gun owners know how to properly secure their weapons away from children and often routinely train with professionals to maintain standard of skill.

Gun ownership by good people deters crime. Criminals may think twice about committing their attacks if they are forced to wonder if their victims are packing heat. As the saying goes, “if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have them.” What’s more, strict gun laws make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families, a growing concern in a day and age where fewer and fewer people want to become police officers. In addition, considering this reality, police simply cannot protect everyone all the time. Response times may be short, but the window for self-preservation often occurs in mere moments.

A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer. Another 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun also said they felt safer.

Safety in a land without allowing people to exercise their Second Amendment will become even harder to find. However, good people can make America safer with a permit in their pockets, and a holstered gun on their hips.

____

Mr. Williams is Manager / Sole Owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. He is the author of “Reawakening Virtues.”

Just now, the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded the lawsuit challenging California’s magazine ban, which means it will now go back to the district court to be heard again….by Judge Benitez!!

The judgment in this case is vacated, Duncan v. Bonta, 142 S. Ct. 2895 (2022), and this case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ____, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022)

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Poll: Majority of Texans Reject ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

“Hell no.”

That’s what Texans appear to be saying about the idea of banning AR-15s and AK-47s, according to a new poll. 50 percent of likely voters told Spectrum News and Siena College they oppose efforts to ban “assault-style” weapons, a term the poll did not define but is generally understood to include the rifles. In contrast, 46 percent said they support a ban. An equal number “strongly” opposed and supported the policy.

Beto O’Rourke (D.) has based much of his campaign against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott (R.) on the need for further gun restrictions in Texas. He is best known for his viral commitment to seize the guns Texans told the pollsters they don’t want to see banned.

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” O’Rourke said during a September 2019 presidential primary debate. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.”

And, while he has been consistently inconsistent on whether he stands by his famous call for confiscation, he has continued to advocate for stricter gun laws.

“Five of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history have taken place in this state in the last five years on Greg Abbott’s watch,” O’Rourke said in an ad featuring a Uvalde shooting survivor that was posted to his social media on Tuesday. “Those kids were not just up against that gunman and that AR-15 and those high-impact, high-velocity rounds that hit their body; they were up against a governor who would not lift a finger to prevent this from happening.”

The focus on gun control hasn’t benefited O’Rourke much in the polls, though. While the Siena poll found Texans were open to some new gun-control policies, with 85 percent supporting universal background checks, Abbott still holds a substantial lead in the race. Siena found 50 percent of respondents support Abbott while 43 percent support O’Rourke, moving Abbott’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average of the race down slightly to 7.5 percent.

O’Rourke hasn’t become any less brash in his approach either. He has crashed a post-Uvalde press conference to heckle Abbott and cursed out a man for laughing during one of his stump speeches on the topic.

The race’s outcome will provide a good guide for how American gun politics are playing out in the wake of a slew of major recent gun-related events. The Uvalde shooting and the first bipartisan federal gun restrictions in decades, combined with two years of recording setting gun sales and the Supreme Court setting a new standard for reviewing gun laws as it struck down restrictive gun-carry permitting regimes, have injected a lot of uncertainty into how the issue will impact voters’ decisions in November. With O’Rourke running on an aggressive gun-control platform against Abbott, who has signed several reforms that removed gun-carry and ownership restrictions, how the candidates fare may indicate where things have settled after those significant shakeups.

The election results may also provide insight into the politics surrounding AR-15s and AK-47s in particular. O’Rourke wants to confiscate them or, failing that, ban their sale to adults under 21. Abbott has opposed both ideas as unconstitutional. The fight in Texas mirrors the national one, with Democrats recently passing an “assault weapons” ban through the House of Representatives despite opposition from all but two Republicans. The push to ban the popular rifles, estimated to be more than 24.4 million in circulation, has been facing increasing headwinds even as they have been used in recent high-profile mass shootings. If Abbott can hold off O’Rourke, it could pull further wind from the sails of those pursuing a ban.

Another recent poll in the state provides a slightly brighter picture for O’Rourke’s confiscation plan. Support for “a mandatory program where the government would buy back semi-automatic assault-style rifles from citizens who currently own them” was 52 percent in the latest Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler poll. However, respondents were more likely to strongly oppose the idea than strongly support it.

As with the Seina poll, the confiscation scheme was the least popular gun policy polled. The Morning News poll also found 55 percent of Texans support arming teachers, which O’Rourke opposes and Abbott supports. That is in line with Seina, which found support at 53 percent.

Seina’s results on issue importance were also similar to a recent poll from The Texas Tribune and the University of Texas. The Tribune poll found Texans said guns were only the sixth-most-important issue in the race. Siena found it was the fifth behind economic issues, threats to democracy, immigration, and abortion.

All three polls found Abbott maintained a significant lead over O’Rourke.

The Seina poll was conducted among 651 likely voters between September 14th and the 18th.

Denver Gazette: Gun control hits a wall in Colorado

Gun-control measures enacted in Boulder County have been placed on hold by the federal courts; left in doubt by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and, as reported in The Gazette last week, stymied even more amid further court developments here in Colorado.

All of which should prompt advocates of more restrictions on firearms to ponder shifting tack in the campaign to curb gun violence. If the courts are turning out to be no friends of more gun control, perhaps it’s time for policy makers to move beyond tilting at the Second Amendment.

How about focusing instead on steps that likely would draw little opposition while making a real difference — like beefing up security at our children’s schools? Let’s have more police deployed as school resource officers. And tighter limits on access during the school day. There’s even a program that has been training faculty and staff in firearms use if needed to defend kids at dozens of participating school districts around the state.

Such alternatives to more gun control make all the more sense considering the inherent futility of attempting to legislate an end to gun violence. Rebranding firearms as “assault rifles” and banning them; limiting the capacity of gun magazines, and other knee-jerk responses were always more about sending a message in the wake of a shooting tragedy than about providing any realistic hope of heading off the next one.

Last Friday, a federal judge declined to combine four different lawsuits brought by right-to-arms advocates against Boulder County and the cities of Boulder, Louisville and Superior. The local governments had enacted similar firearms regulations, including bans on large-capacity magazines and on so-called assault weapons.

U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore, whose court is handling the lawsuit against Superior, declined that city’s request to merge all the court actions. The result could be conflicting rulings between various judges as to whether the local ordinances violate the Second Amendment. But as Moore observed, “if anyone thinks the district court is going to have the last say on this, they’re kidding themselves.” Perhaps there’s no harm, then, in giving each lawsuit its full day in court in light of the long legal journey that lies ahead.

The laws are not in effect thanks to court-issued restraining orders. That’s pending further proceedings and maybe even the resolution of the entire court challenge. Which could take years.

Underlying all of it is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which set a higher bar for gun restrictions to pass constitutional muster.

Given a new prevailing philosophy on the Second Amendment at the nation’s highest court — and lower courts’ pragmatic deference to it — the prospects for imposing new restrictions gun ownership appear a lot dimmer than they used to. Gun control could become the dog that won’t hunt.

Coloradans across the political spectrum should resolve to lower the odds of random violence where they can, in ways that actually work. Our schools — the scene of some of the worst shooting tragedies in Colorado and across the country — are a good place to start.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board

It’s bizarre when a senile President actually seems to believe his own BS.
And I know a perfect rationale for owning ARs & AKs. The founders were very concerned about what our goobermint might turn into – SloJoe and his puppetmasters being a prime current example – and made the best provisions they could against such within the Constitution & Bill of Rights.

Joe Biden: Continued Sale of ‘Semiautomatic Weapons Is Bizarre’

During the September 18 airing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes, President Joe Biden described the continued sale of semiautomatic weapons as “bizarre.”

Scott Pelley conducted a wide-ranging interview with Biden, but when it turned to guns and gun policy, Biden pledged once again to ban “assault weapons.”

Biden suggested that “there is no rationale” for owning firearms like AR-15s, AK-47s, etc.

He talked of visiting Uvalde, Texas, after the May 24, 2022, school shooting, saying he not only visited there but “every one of those places.”

Biden observed, “The NRA continuing to push the sale of assault and semiautomatic weapons is bizarre.”

On August 26, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Biden renewed his pledge to ban “assault weapons” if Democrats manage to hang onto Congress after the November midterm elections.

The Washington Post quoted Biden saying, “I want to be crystal clear about what’s on the ballot this year … Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”

He later added, “If we elect two more senators, we keep the House … we’re going to get a lot of unfinished business done.”

Biden stressed that banning “assault weapons” is part of the Democrats’ unfinished business.

SAF ‘Journalism Project’ Hits Biden White House with FOIA Request RE: Gun Control

The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Biden White House in an effort to see how deeply imbedded the gun prohibition movement is within Joe Biden’s administration.

Biden stepped into the presidency with an acknowledged gun prohibition agenda. He wants to ban semi-automatic modern sport/utility rifles, and even acknowledged in 2021 he would like to ban 9mm pistols. While there have been published reports of his administration’s interactions with the gun control crowd, there is no indication he has reached out to any gun rights organizations.

The FOIA request was made by IJP editor Lee Williams, whose coverage of gun-related news appears in TheGunMag.com, a SAF-owned publication, as well as several other online news sites. Williams’ reports have occasionally at Liberty Park Press.

Via email, Williams told Liberty Park, “The Biden-Harris administration runs the least transparent White House in recent history. Everything is conducted in secret, behind closed doors. Through this Freedom of Information Act request, we will start holding the shot-callers accountable for their constant infringements on our Second Amendment rights. At the very least, we will find out who’s actually orchestrating their war on our guns.”

In a prepared statement to the media, SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said the FOIA request was necessary in order to learn just how closely and under-the-radar the Biden White House is working with the gun prohibition lobby on legislation and other efforts that may impair Second Amendment rights.

However, this looks purely like a First Amendment issue.

“Joe Biden is a perennial anti-gun-rights politician and he has spent his entire career pushing various gun control schemes that would turn the right to keep and bear arms into a heavily-regulated privilege,” Gottlieb observed. “Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we might be able to learn just how deeply entrenched the gun ban movement has become in his administration.”

The FOIA request seeks copies of all documents, including emails and visitor logs, between the White House and gun control and gun safety groups including, but not limited to, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, The Trace, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Third Way, Newtown Action Alliance, Gun Control Giving Fund, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Violence Policy Center, Gun Violence Archive, Sandy Hook Promise, March for Our Lives, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Alliance for Gun Responsibility and Guns Down America.

“If the Biden White House declines to produce the requested materials, we’re going to wonder why,” Gottlieb said, “and we will not be satisfied until we get some answers, even if it means a court fight.”

Murphy Blocking Cruz School Security Bill Says It All

United States Senate – -(AmmoLand.com)- The next time some anti-Second Amendment extremist claims that those of us who object to gun control aren’t trying to prevent school shootings, the objection of Senator Chris Murphy to Ted Cruz’s School Security Enhancement Act should be thrown in their face.

Second Amendment supporters are all too aware of how anti-Second Amendment extremists weaponize mass shootings in general and mass shootings at schools in particular against our rights. Cruz’s legislation would allow current Student Support and Academic Enrichment grant programs to be used to improve the security at schools.

This sort of thing is – or should be – a no-brainer all around. Who doesn’t want safe schools? Chris Murphy, for one, it seems. What could he find so objectionable about Cruz’s legislation, which doesn’t even permit the use of the grants to arm teachers or train them?

We can quibble whether or not Cruz should have allowed the grants to be used to arm teachers. On the one hand, arming teachers does generate controversy (a voluntary program really shouldn’t, but we’re not in an ideal world). On the other hand, if Murphy won’t even support measures to improve school security that don’t involve guns… what do we have to gain by taking armed teachers off the table? That can be discussed later.

The topic for now, must be Murphy’s decision to object to even bringing such a measure up for debate. This is a no-lose proposition for Second Amendment supporters, especially if we make a lot of noise about it now. If we are seen working on efforts to deter, prevent, or mitigate mass shootings – including efforts that don’t involve guns – we have a chance to head off attacks.

As has been discussed on these pages earlier, Murphy has pushed legislation that would prohibit any sort of federal funding for law enforcement in schools. In other words, what he is proposing would actually make repeats of Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Uvalde not only much more likely to happen but also to rack up the kind of body counts that force us into a major action in defense of our rights.

Why would he remove something that could deter or mitigate attacks? That is a question we’d see him asked if the vast majority of media outlets were honest. We don’t have that world today, so much of it could end up needing to be done by Second Amendment supporters at town meetings. Those in Connecticut should press Murphy on this and demand an explanation.

Remember the time it took for cops to arrive at Sandy Hook? It was ten minutes – 600 seconds. The long periods of inaction by law enforcement at Parkland and Uvalde also should be kept in mind. Murphy’s past track record of smearing Second Amendment supporters means he has forfeited any claim to receiving the benefit of the doubt from Second Amendment supporters on this matter as well.

One final thing: Working to prevent school shootings with legislative proposals like what Senator Cruz proposed is not being a “Fudd.” The fact is, we should be trying to head off these shootings – it’s in our interest to do so, just look at the aftermath of Parkland.

Second Amendment supporters have a chance to immunize themselves to some degree from attacks in the wake of the next school shooting. If they can seize this chance, it will help efforts to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists at the federal, state, and local levels via the ballot box.

NYT Poll Finds More Voters Agree with GOP on Gun Policy

A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted September 6 to 14, 2022, finds more voters agree with the Republican Party on gun policy.

The poll questioned nearly Nearly 1,400 registered voters.

When asked, “Who do you agree with more on gun policy?” voters responded 47 percent to 43 percent, in favor of Republicans over Democrats

Voters were also asked, “Who do you agree with more on crime and policing?” They responded 47 percent to 37 percent in favor of Republicans over Democrats.

The NYT/Siena College poll also asked voters whether they support “A ban on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.” Forty-nine percent of voters said they do not support such a ban, while 46 percent said they did.

When responses were broken down among voting patterns, 74 percent of Biden voters supported banning semiautomatic weapons and “high capacity” magazines. An identical percentage of Trump voters opposed banning semiautomatic weapons and “high capacity” magazines.

When ages were taken into account, 54 percent of the youngest voters–ages 18-29–opposed a ban on semiautomatic weapons and “high capacity” magazines, while 41 percent of the youngest voters supported it.

BLUF
While this reference guide is by no means a comprehensive list of the administration’s entire gun control agenda, there is one thing that is not missing.

Nowhere in any of the Biden-Harris administration’s plans is there a single mention of how they intend to disarm criminals. Only law-abiding citizens are targeted for disarmament, not the bad guys.

That, friends, is all you need to know of their true intent.

A reference guide to Joe Biden’s war on guns
Documenting the administration’s anti-gun agenda.

The Biden-Harris administration’s war on guns is the most comprehensive and multi-faceted gun control scheme ever created.

Former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice, who has admitted meeting with gun control groups regularly at the White House, likely drafted most of the plan.

Under Rice, the administration nimbly exploits any anti-gun gain, while quickly pivoting away from pushback from the media, the public or Congress.

By design, most of their gun control agenda skirts any oversight — legislative or constitutional — and is immune from other normal checks and balances.

With their weaponized foot soldiers in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives willing to carry out any order regardless of its constitutionality, the Biden-Harris administration has become one of the biggest threats to the Second Amendment since the Bill of Rights was first written.

Because it is so vast and comprehensive, simply tracking all of the administration’s gun control initiatives has been difficult, which is why this reference guide was drafted.

What follows is a partial list of the Biden-Harris administration’s gun control agenda. It will be updated as needed.

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Analysis: How 50 Million Defensive Gun Uses Played Out According to a Massive Survey

The largest-ever scientific survey of gun owners found Americans used a gun in self-defense at least 1.67 million times per year. But the poll did a lot more than just count defensive uses; it also detailed how, when, and where they happened.

The National Firearms Survey, conducted by Georgetown University Professor William English, presented a ton of information on key questions surrounding guns in America. It found gun ownership is diversifying and gun carry is broadly popular. It found about a third of gun owners have owned an AR-15 or similar rifle and 50 percent have owned magazines holding more than ten rounds–key information for the legal battles over whether they can be banned.

And, of course, it also found a large number of American gun owners report using their guns to protect themselves. 31.1 percent of gun owners said they’d used a gun in self-defense. That equates to about 25.3 million Americans, according to English.

While a plurality of respondents said they’d only been involved in a single defensive gun use, the majority said they’d used a gun for self-defense more than once. That’s how English determined there were about 50 million reported defensive uses. He found the yearly rate of 1.67 million by dividing that total by the number of adult years the respondents had lived.

English said he did it that way to address one of the critiques of previous survey-based estimates of defense gun uses, which relied on people recounting not only that they used a gun in self-defense but that it happened in the last year.

However, that doesn’t mean it perfectly captures defensive gun uses. Critics have long questioned the validity of survey-based estimates altogether. Often they argue people who self-report using a gun to defend themselves are often misrepresenting what happened and may have even broken the law during the incident. Another common critique is the number of defensive gun uses doesn’t square with the number of justifiable homicides or criminals treated for gunshots.

Similarly, surveys of self-identified crime victims show a lower rate of self-reported gun defensive uses.

English said his estimates square with reported rates of hospital visits for gunshot wounds if you take the most common form of reported defensive gun use into account: incidents where no shots are fired. The more limited estimates, which put self-defense incidents in the tens of thousands rather than millions, do not account for defensive gun uses where nobody is injured. That’s a subset of events that English’s survey found was massive.

“[I]n the vast majority of defensive gun uses (81.9%), the gun was not fired,” he wrote in the preprint paper on the survey. “Rather, displaying a firearm or threatening to use a firearm (through, for example, a verbal threat) was sufficient. This suggests that firearms have a powerful deterrent effect on crime, which, in most cases, does not depend on a gun actually being fired or an aggressor being injured.”

The survey includes stories from a number of respondents who recount their self-defense encounters, including many who did not fire a shot.

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How Hochul’s gun laws will make churches less safe

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been on an anti-gun tirade pretty much since she took office. Any hopes she’d be a smidge better than her predecessor on the Second Amendment have been well and truly dashed. The only thing she may be better on is not sexually harassing her female subordinates.

Following New York’s epic smackdown by the Supreme Court, Hochul and the legislature rushed through a measure seeking to try and adhere to the letter of the Bruen decision only as much as they felt they had to.

Yet that law includes a prohibition of guns at any place of worship.

As noted at our sister site PJ Media, that’s going to make those places of worship a lot less safe.

For your consideration:

  • On June 17, 2015, a man walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., where a prayer meeting was being held. He shot and killed nine people, including the pastor, State Senator Clementa Pinckney. The shooter was charged with a hate crime.
  • November 5, 2017 — a man entered the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church in Texas. He was dressed in black and wearing tactical gear. By the time he finished shooting, 26 were dead and 20 were wounded.
  • On a Sunday morning in December 2019, a man walked through the door of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, and opened fire during services. Two victims died in the attack. The gunman was killed by two parishioners, one of whom was the security guard.
  • October 27, 2018 — a man came into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. After shouting “All Jews must die!” he shot and killed 11 people. Six others were wounded. He was known for posting anti-Semitic rants on Gab.
  • One person was killed and three were injured when a man entered Chabad of Poway in California and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle in April 2019.
  • In January of this year, a man held four people, including the rabbi, hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, for 10 hours before being killed by police. The suspect said that he had hidden bombs in undisclosed locations.
  • In May 2022, the New York Post reported a rise in anti-Semitic activity in the city. This included vandalization of synagogues and attacks on individual people.

It should be noted that if you want to go further back, you can find still more places of worship being targeted.

What’s more, many churches and synagogues can’t afford to hire professional armed security, yet there’s no provision in state law for volunteers to step in if the church so desires.

Look, one area where I tend to infuriate my fellow Second Amendment supporters is that I think a property owner has the right to ban guns on their property. I’m fine with laws that give signs the force of law, even. I want to know where I’m not welcome, after all.

But the flip side of that is that I cannot tolerate laws that tell property owners that they can’t make that determination for themselves. That’s precisely what Hochul’s law does since the churches and synagogues are, in fact, property owners in most cases.

Looking at this list, it’s easy to see that places of worship get targeted by maniacs looking to kill as many people as possible.

Hochul and folks like her probably think this law will stop that, but it won’t. I mean, if a law would stop such a thing, then wouldn’t the laws against murder do the trick on their own?

They don’t, though.

Instead, these places of worship cannot allow their congregations to be lawfully armed as a defensive measure. That means these very places become better targets for the deranged.

And when it happens in New York, remember that it was Hochul and her buddies who made that target so attractive.

Inclusive advertising for AR-15s

Lawyers are seeking to circumvent the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act with what I view as junk lawsuits against gun manufacturers whose products are sold lawfully but later misused by violent criminals.

Attorneys were however successful in circumventing the PLCAA with a lawsuit against Remington for Adam Lanza’s use of a stolen AR-15 to commit a mass shooting at Sandy Hook.

The lawsuit relied on advertisements for the AR-15 that said, “Consider your man card reissued.” While I do not care for the gender-specific nature of this ad, I also doubt that any reasonable juror who was not in the pocket of the anti-Second Amendment camp would be receptive to the idea that a “man card” is a license to use a weapon for purposes other than lawful self-defense or on inanimate objects in a safe environment.

If we go back a couple of generations to the time when men but not women were expected to put themselves at risk to stop unlawful violence, your “man card” is your right and even possibly your moral duty to use your firearm to stop individuals like Adam Lanza, Luke Woodham, Dylann Roof, Nikolas Cruz, Matthew Murray, Jacob Roberts, Keith Thomas Kinnunen, and Salvador Ramos before they can complete their crimes. The hyperlinked individuals were in fact stopped in this manner and there was nothing wrong with Lanza, Roof, Cruz, Ramos and (allegedly unless and until proven guilty) Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers that would not have been fixed by well-aimed bullets.

Jurors Must Reject Junk Lawsuits

If you are called for jury duty in a junk liability case against a gun manufacturer, remember that there are lawyers who have tried to use repressed memories as evidence in other forms of litigation and even criminal cases.

From where I sit, “repressed memory” is simply a designer label for “perjury” or “subornation of perjury,” whether initiated by the witness or somebody coaching or even brainwashing the witness respectively, because one is then free to “suddenly remember” anything he, she, or an ambitious prosecutor or personal injury lawyer finds convenient. These kinds of attorneys would, if given the chance, initiate litigation for harm incurred during past lives if they could get away with it. “Bad karma? Have you been harmed in a past life? The law firm of Dewey Cheatham & Howe will assign a team of memory regression experts to find the current incarnation of the person who wronged you long ago, and ensure that he or she has very deep pockets from which you can rake in cash and give us our cut.

We are sure we can find six people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty to buy this argument.” While this proposition does not appear on the web site of this fictitious law firm, equally humorous material does but you may have to add .html to some of the links to get them to load.

Let’s Make Gun Ads Inclusive of Women

Let’s return however to the gender-specific “Consider your man card reissued.” It’s the twenty-first century, folks, and not the nineteenth. Women as well as men now protect our society as police officers and members of our Armed Forces. Women often use lawfully-owned firearms to protect their families as well. Here’s audio of a 911 call in which a woman in Georgia shot a home invader who followed her and her children into a hiding place. A Chinese immigrant shot at three home invaders, and was lauded by the communist Chinese media which is ironic, because communist China does not allow its subjects to own firearms.

The AR-15 is in fact an ideal self-defense firearm for women due to its relatively light weight, ease of handling, and low recoil.

I have accordingly composed an ad that combines material from Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (warning, profanity), Edge of Tomorrow, and Colonel Jeff Cooper’s depiction of violent criminals as goblins. (Cooper referred to soldiers of repressive regimes as “orcs,” which people now apply to Vladimir Putin’s minions, and East Germany as “Mordor.”) Here we go: “AR-15, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively, have to go full metal bitch on every goblin who has invaded your home and put your family at risk, accept no substitute.” Note that, while the B word is normally a socially unacceptable pejorative for a woman, it was the nom de guerre of Rita Vrataski, also known as the Angel of Verdun, in Edge of Tomorrow where she was defending the human species from alien invaders, and this is the intended context here.

If we return to reality, the likelihood is well upward of 99.99% that you will never, regardless of your gender, have to menace anything other than a paper target with your AR-15. It’s better to have it and not need it, though, rather than to need it and not have it.

Tactical gear for women to carry arms

Vicky Johnston, the owner and designer of Her Tactical, joined the show today to talk about her business.

Johnston encourages women to be prepared, be aware, and be ready for anything they may encounter. She shares her self defense skills with others through her company, offering a workshop to help build confidence.

Johnston tells of her story finding items to conceal a gun that work well for women. In her experience, every store she went to only had products for men, so she started her own company specifically tailored for women.

Her Tactical is putting on a workshop in February, and is offering a 15% discount on any concealed carry product purchased using the coupon code “ABC4” on her website.

Concealed Carry Products: https://hertactical.com/

Workshop Registration: https://hertactical.com/workshop/