Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

What we really need is for the courts to overrule Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) where the Supreme Court ruled that even traveling state to state was ‘commerce’ and could be regulated by goobermint under the Constitution’s  commerce clause, thus unfortunately allowing the Feds to run amok.

As of October, “E-Form” .20s are already active, but as of now only works for those items that were made or transferred within the E-Form system. Those of you who know I have had – among others – an UZI smg for over 40 years are not aware of the problems I encounter with the lower level bureaucraps at ATF with traveling with it, that have to be resolved at higher levels….because the worked bees don’t appear to be all that bright.

ATF Proposes Changes to Make Travel With NFA Items Easier.

Until the National Firearms Act is a relic of the past, every little bit that makes it easier to navigate can surely help. In recent weeks, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives published their intent to do just that in the form of a two-fer.

A proposed rule would help clarify and streamline the process for those transporting National Firearms Act-regulated items across state lines. In simplifying and digitizing that process, the move would also get rid of some unnecessary bureaucracy at ATF, as well as save time and money for both NFA-item owners and the agency.

Currently, a person wishing to transport certain NFA-regulated items – such as “short-barreled” rifles and shotguns – must, per 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(4), complete and submit ATF Form 5321.20, the Application to Transport Interstate or to Temporarily Export Certain National Firearms Act (NFA) Firearms to ATF in advance of the travel. Alternatively, a person can mail a letter of request, in duplicate, containing all information required on the ATF Form, in lieu of the form.

Note just a few of the archaic instructions:

The registered owner of NFA firearm(s) shall complete two copies of ATF Form 5320.20 and forward the forms to the Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 244 Needy Road, Martinsburg, WV 25405 (Attention: NFA Division).  The form can be submitted via facsimile to the NFA Division at (304) 616-4501 or may be scanned and emailed to NFAFax@atf.gov.

All signatures on both copies of the form shall be in ink. All other entries on the form shall be printed in ink or typewritten.

In the notice ATF submitted to the Federal Register, it stated that the plan is to permanently overhaul and digitize the process by revising the information collection method to make the form electronically fillable and allow it to be emailed directly, as well as auto-fill the required second copy. Additionally, the form will be part of its online eForms section on the ATF website for easier access and include more clarifying language on the application of the regulation for travel.

This latest proposal by ATF appears to be part of the ongoing effort announced as a “new era of reform” as posted on the ATF website earlier this year: https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/atf-launches-new-era-reform. A quick perusal of the ATF Forms and Information Collection site shows multiple recent and similar updates meant to assist in streamlining forms, reducing paperwork, and updating procedures through digitization, all great efforts helping to ultimately reduce wait times and resources that burden both agency and citizen.

ATF is seeking public feedback on this proposed rule until January 27, 2026, to help assess the utility of the efforts and asks specifically for comments that:

  • Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary to properly perform ATF’s functions, including whether the information will have practical utility;
  • Evaluate the agency’s estimate of the proposed information collection’s burden for accuracy, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used;
  • Evaluate whether, and if so, how the quality, utility, and clarity of the collected information can be enhanced; and
  • Minimize the information collection’s burden on those who are to respond, including using appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses.

While there is still much work to be done in repealing the NFA, work NRA continues alongside Second Amendment partners in multiple lawsuits, for today, modernization is far better than weaponization.

Alabama Gets “F” From Anti-Gun Organization. Let’s Examine Why That’s A Compliment

Some anti-gun politicians tout their “F” grade from the NRA with a certain amount of pride.

That’s fine, because the NRA isn’t doing it for the benefit of people who will see that as a mark of respect. Their grades for politicians is really just a tool for passing along who tends to be pro-gun and who isn’t as a means to help folks who might not know. Not everyone can know every politician in Congress, even those of us who work in politics are hard-pressed to know even most members of the House and Senate, much less all of them.

But what about an organization like Giffords?

No, they’re not trying to help individuals. They’re trying to guilt states into working toward a better grade, and they’re doing it by using allies in the media to pretend the grade means more than it actually does.

For example, Alabama just got a big, old “F” from them, and AL.com is all a-twitter about it.

Alabama continues to have some of the worst gun laws and rates of gun death in the country, according to an annual report from GIFFORDS Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The report ranked Alabama at 36 out of all 50 states in terms of its gun law strength resulting in an F on the overall scorecard, maintaining the same grade from 2024….

Scorecards are determined after experts analyze the gun laws of each individual state and assess how effective they are at reducing gun violence, the report says.

“Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and young people in the United States — an unacceptable reality. Our country can do so much better,” GIFFORDS Executive Director Emma Brown said. “Alabama has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, earning an F on GIFFORDS Law Center’s Annual Gun Law Scorecard. It’s time for leaders in Alabama to step up and act to address this crisis.

Except that the laws in question aren’t any with compelling evidence of them working. In fact, literally none have been found to have really great evidence of being effective. The left-leaning RAND has admitted as much in its annual reports of gun control studies. There are a few that have some degree of evidence, but none are compelling.

Instead, Giffords does essentially what the NRA does. It makes its ranks based exclusively on how much a state toes the line with its agenda. States that pass Giffords’ priorities get higher grades than states that don’t.

Which is fine, of course, if that’s what they want to do.

However, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the effectiveness of a given measure.

While Giffords at least makes an attempt at showing a trend for weaker gun laws leading to higher “gun death” rates, what they don’t show is that they don’t even try to account for any other potential factors. It’s a pure attempt at correlation, which uses a trend so as to exclude outliers as mere inconveniences.

So Alabama getting an “F” isn’t a terrible thing.

In fact, it means the state is respecting the Second Amendment, something that Giffords cannot and will not ever try to comprehend. The fact that the founders both swore oaths to defend the Constitution, then immediately turned against it tells us an awful lot about just how meaningless anything they say actually is.

This is part of the anti-American legacy of President Auto-Pen

She actually said:
“replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything…”
Anything she ever says again should be ignored forever.

Yes, but this statement is even more dangerous:
“these issues should not be in presidential control”
She is placing the bureaucracy above the constitution.

Federal judges crave the spotlight: In case after case, judges ruled to stymie the executive branch for one main reason.

In the great injunction sweepstakes that have followed Donald Trump’s second administration like a shadow, we have seen district court judges with a hankering for executive power attempt to play president in more than a hundred cases from immigration and tariffs to funding various executive branch agencies, so-called trans-rights, DEI and climate change.

Some of these injunctions and temporary restraining orders are still pending. Many, perhaps most, have been resolved by the Supreme Court in ways that favor the Trump administration, not always categorically but usually by affirming the broad scope of executive power envisioned by Article II of the Constitution. “The executive Power,” quoth that magisterial document, “shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” “A president,” mind you, a single one. Not a president and hundreds of district court judges.

The rousing start to Article II of the Constitution is neatly put, isn’t it? But those judges took it as a challenge. Trump is an affront to what every right-thinking, i.e., left-leaning, person believes. He wants to make America more prosperous, freer and more secure than it has become in the hands of Democrats and other disciples of hegemonic bureaucracy.

He moved quickly to secure the border.  Can you believe it? He is deporting scads of people who are here illegally. Outrageous. He outlawed the racist practice of DEI throughout the federal government and made federal funds contingent upon ending the scam. Horrible. He thinks that the military should be an institution specializing in fighting wars, not promoting “social justice.” Clearly he must be stopped.

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The “Seditious Six” — A Long History of Gun Control Efforts, Now Trying to Foment Treason

The group of six Democratic lawmakers (all with military or national-security backgrounds) — now widely dubbed the “Seditious Six” — are attempting to cloak themselves in constitutional righteousness.

In a highly politicized video, they urged U.S. service members to “refuse illegal orders,” a message so ambiguous and inflammatory that the Pentagon launched a formal misconduct investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly.

Their “constitutional” posturing now is not an isolated event. It is the latest escalation in a long, coordinated effort to weaken the Second Amendment while hiding behind military credentials and patriotic language.

Here’s the breakdown.

The Shared Agenda: Every Major Gun-Control Proposal, Straight Down the Line

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FLASHBACK:(Deceit O’ The Day)

What is Operation Allies Welcome? The refugee scheme that allowed DC shooting suspect into the US

The man accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House Wednesday night entered the country through Operation Allies Welcome, a resettlement program to assist Afghan nationals.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the suspect – an Afghan man identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal – arrived in the U.S. in 2021. He later applied for asylum in 2024, which was approved this year under the Trump administration.

The U.S. has now suspended all Afghan immigration requests in response to the shooting outside a metro station in downtown Washington D.C., which officials described as a targeted ambush. The two guard members are still in critical condition.

In a televised address from Mar-a-Lago, Trump condemned the attack – the day before Thanksgiving celebrations get underway – as a “crime against humanity”.

On Wednesday, Trump lashed out at former president Joe Biden’s administration for letting in “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” to the US through the Operation Allies Welcome program. However, this figure appears to be an enormous exaggeration.

The scheme was launched in August 2021 during Biden’s presidency, following the chaos of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power.

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Investigators Say National Guardsmen Shot Near White House Were Ambushed in Targeted Attack

FBI Director Kash Patel, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, DC Metro Police Department Executive Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll provided an update after two West Virginia National Guardsmen deployed to D.C. were shot Wednesday afternoon. Despite a previous report by West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morissey stating that both National Guardsmen had succumbed to their injuries, the assembled officials confirmed that both are alive but are in critical condition.

Patel said that the FBI is leading the investigation into the shooting of the guardsmen, whom he said “were brazenly attacked in a horrendous act of violence.”

Carroll said:

“At approximately 2:15 this afternoon, members of the National Guard were on high visibility patrols at 17 and I when suspect came around the corner, raised his arm with the firearm, and discharged at the National Guard members.

The suspect is in custody, being treated at a local hospital, and Carroll said that it’s unclear at this time whether the suspect was shot by other National Guard members or other law enforcement officers in the area. He added that investigators believe that the suspect in custody acted alone “and ambushed these members of the National Guard.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser described the attack as “a targeted shooting,” also saying, “I, too, want to send my thoughts and prayers to the families of the guardsmen and to the guardsmen.”


In response to the shooting, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that more National Guardsmen will be surged to the city.

Democrats Calling for Mutiny Must Be Punished

By now everyone is aware that six Democrats in Congress created videos in which they openly encourage members of the U.S. military and Intelligence Community to mutiny against the commander in chief.  They couched their seditious statements in the pretense that they are interested only in protecting the Constitution, but their message is unmistakable: Resist President Trump’s lawful orders, and we’ll have your backs.

Americans whose minds have not been pickled by leftism are not impressed.  The Democrat instigators have been called “TikTok Traitors,” the “Seditious Six,” the “Idiot Six,” and worse.  President Trump immediately accused the lawmakers of sedition and demanded that they be arrested and stand trial for their potentially deadly provocations.  In response, the Democrat provocateurs have pretended to be outraged that the commander in chief would correctly describe their seditious actions as seditious.

Democrat word games have become so exhausting over the last thirty years.  Remember when Bill Clinton lied about his affair with twenty-two-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky by telling a grand jury, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”?  No matter how corrupt American politicians were before Clinton’s galling equivocation, it has seemed as if rhetorical obfuscation began exponentially accelerating after that moment.

Fast-forward to 2025, and former CIA director John Brennan is entirely comfortable going on national news shows and telling the world that he and fifty other “intelligence professionals” never lied about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell” being Russian disinformation because the spies clearly stated in their 2020 pre-election op-ed defending the Bidens that the laptop’s treasure trove of criminality had merely “the hallmarks” of a Russian operation.  If Americans were confused about their attempt to blame Hunter’s crimes on the Russians, that’s because Americans are poor readers!

Senator Elissa Slotkin — one of the “Seditious Six,” a former CIA analyst, and a protégée of John Brennan — is busy playing the same sick word games as Slick Willy and commie Brennan.  She claims that her seditious video is meant only to draw attention to President Trump’s “illegal orders,” but when she is pressed to name one such “illegal order,” she admits that she is “not aware” of any.

If Slotkin can’t identify any of President Trump’s orders as illegal, why is she making videos encouraging rank insubordination among America’s military and intelligence personnel?  The Democrats are executing the exact same playbook that they have been using against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.  For months, Democrat governors and lawmakers have threatened federal agents with future prosecution for doing nothing more than enforcing existing immigration law and arresting criminal illegal aliens in their states.  In order to protect millions of foreign nationals from deportation, Democrats have been obstructing law enforcement operations by promising to punish officers who do their jobs.

Threatening ICE agents with unlawful and malicious prosecutions will inevitably get people killed, because in the real world, hesitation invites disaster.  When prominent Democrats encourage military and intelligence personnel to resist orders, the consequences are potentially catastrophic.  As one astute commenter notes, “the threat of weaponized lawfare against U.S. troops is seditious psychological warfare.  It’s seditious sabotage aimed at breaking the chain of command.  It’s a seditious plot to erode trust in leaders and it undermines the oath that keeps the military united and effective.”  The Democrat strategy is nefarious and straightforward: Induce service members to question the orders of their commanding officers.  Hesitation and delay during combat will not only get Americans killed, but also directly serve enemy interests.

Democrats’ attempts to confuse American service members also encourage our geopolitical adversaries to be more aggressive.  As Glenn Beck argues, “if a video like this were aimed at Putin’s military, we’d assume Russia was unstable or nearing a coup.”  Therefore, Democrats have severely “weakened America — signaling doubt to allies and opportunity to enemies.”  If you were a general in China’s military, would you be less or more willing to invade Taiwan after prominent Democrat officials encouraged division and subversion among America’s rank-and-file troops?  Public calls for insubordination make America appear destined for civil war at home and ill-prepared to defend its own interests or those of its allies abroad.

In describing his disgust with Democrats’ efforts to instigate a military rebellion against the Trump administration, Congressman Byron Donalds pulled no punches: “Donald Trump is the commander in chief, not Mr. Crow, not Senator Slotkin.  They are not the commander in chief!  And like I said before, they would not tolerate any Republican launching any video like that!”

Can you imagine?  After patriotic grandparents and Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans protested the fraudulent 2020 election by walking through the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Democrats (and useful RINO idiots Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) spent tens of millions of dollars producing a theatrical congressional hearing meant to demonize all MAGA voters as “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.”  If prominent Republicans in Congress had subsequently encouraged members of the military and Intelligence Community to disobey orders coming from installed-president Biden, the backlash against them would have been swift and brutal.  Not only would they have been expelled from Congress, but they also would have been arrested in the most publicly humiliating fashion.  In contrast, the “Seditious Six” sit for ego-stroking interviews during which they play victim.

This is what Republicans mean when they denounce “Democrat privilege” in the United States.  Time and again, Democrats do things with impunity that would land a normal Republican in prison for decades.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, and their fellow Russia Collusion Hoax co-conspirators will never be held accountable for manipulating intelligence to frame President Trump as a Russian spy.  Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats who bailed out arsonists during the most destructive riots in American history will never be held accountable for putting violent repeat offenders back on the street.  Alexander Vindman will never be held accountable for undermining the Trump White House and triggering a farcical impeachment.  None of the conspirators who violated state election laws and used fraudulent mail-in ballots to pretend that Sleepy Joe Biden was the most popular presidential candidate in our nation’s history will ever be held accountable for stealing the 2020 election.  Anthony Fauci won’t be held accountable for covering up the laboratory origin of COVID or hiding the worst side-effects of the mRNA “vaccines.”  Social media companies won’t be held accountable for censoring Americans who protested the stolen 2020 election or the unconstitutional “vaccine” mandates imposed by installed-president Biden’s administration.  It appears that neither Jim Comey nor Letitia James will be held accountable for respectively committing perjury and mortgage fraud.  Democrat prosecutors and judges will never be held accountable for abusing the criminal justice system to railroad President Trump, his friends, and his voters.

In the United States, two-tiered “justice” protects Democrats and renders Republicans defenseless.

Now we will see whether six Democrats can actually get away with encouraging a military mutiny.  If past is prologue, the answer is surely “yes.”

There’s a popular social media meme that succinctly describes our situation: When leftists say “our democracy,” what they mean is “our regime.”  Democrats have taken over so much of the permanent bureaucracy that even when they are out of power, they still command much of the American government.  They are emboldened to commit sedition and treason because they know that no left-leaning prosecutor, judge, or jury will hold them accountable.  This kind of in-your-face double-standard will eventually end the Union.

Let’s hope, for the sake of our country’s future, that guilty Democrats begin to pay a price.  Forgive me for not holding my breath.

Like that ‘not a cartel per se’ matters

US labels Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles as a terror organization. It’s not a cartel per se

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has ramped up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by designating the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. But the entity that the U.S. government alleges is led by Maduro is not a cartel per se.

The designation, published Monday in the Federal Register, is the latest measure in the Trump administration’s escalating campaign to combat drug trafficking into the U.S. In previewing the step about a week ago, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, of being “responsible for terrorist violence” in the Western Hemisphere.

The move comes as Trump evaluates whether to take military action against Venezuela, which he has not ruled out despite bringing up the possibility of talks with Maduro. Land strikes or other actions would be a major expansion of the monthslong operation that has included a massive military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and striking boats accused of trafficking drugs, killing more than 80 people.

Venezuelans began using the term Cartel de los Soles in the 1990s to refer to high-ranking military officers who had grown rich from drug-running. As corruption expanded nationwide, first under the late President Hugo Chávez and then under Maduro, its use loosely expanded to police and government officials as well as activities like illegal mining and fuel trafficking. The “suns” in the name refer to the epaulettes affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking military officers.

The umbrella term was elevated to a Maduro-led drug-trafficking organization in 2020, when the U.S. Justice Department in Trump’s first term announced the indictment of Venezuela’s leader and his inner circle on narcoterrorism and other charges.

“It is not a group,” said Adam Isaacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America organization. “It’s not like a group that people would ever identify themselves as members. They don’t have regular meetings. They don’t have a hierarchy.”

Maduro’s government in a statement Monday categorically denied the existence of the cartel, describing the Trump administration’s accusation as a “ridiculous fabrication” meant to “justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela.”

Up until this year, the label of foreign terrorist organization had been reserved for groups like the Islamic State or al-Qaida that use violence for political ends. The Trump administration applied it in February to eight Latin American criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking, migrant smuggling and other activities.

The administration blames such designated groups for operating the boats it is striking but rarely identifies the organizations and has not provided any evidence. It says the attacks , which began off the coast of Venezuela and later expanded to the eastern Pacific Ocean, are meant to stop narcotics from flowing to American cities.

But many — including Maduro himself — see the military moves as an effort to end the ruling party’s 26-year hold on power.

Since the arrival of U.S. military vessels and troops to the Caribbean months ago, Venezuela’s U.S.-backed political opposition also has reignited its perennial promise of removing Maduro from office, fueling speculation over the purpose of what the Trump administration has called a counterdrug operation.

 

BLUF
They assume they are exempt from following the law because they believe they are our moral and intellectual superiors.

And so for the next four years, they will once again insist they can ignore or violate with contempt any federal law they please—as the nation is heading toward widespread civil insurrection of the left’s own neo-Confederate making.

Insurrection Chic

Who is the real, or fictional, inspiration for the new insurrectionary wing of the Democrat Party?

The fictitious Hollywood insurrectionist, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “James Mattoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster), who in the 1964 film Seven Days in May attempted to overthrow the presidency?

Or perhaps Jefferson Davis? He ultimately ordered the attack by South Carolina state forces against the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which ignited the Civil War.

Or is the better inspiration the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door?” Alabama Governor George Wallace likewise vowed to use his state’s law enforcement to nullify a federal law.

Yet how odd that the left, which had lectured us so often about a January 6th “insurrection”—a charge that not even the Javert-like special counsel Jack Smith ever lodged against Donald Trump—now talks frequently about the proud nullification of our nation’s federal laws.

The New Confederacy

Democrats weirdly boast of the subordination of the Constitution to international statutes. Our governors and mayors in blue states and cities take neo-Confederate vows to oppose the national government’s right to protect its own property, to direct its own employees, and to enforce our shared federal laws.

Over a decade ago, some 600 “sanctuary cities” declared that they were immune from the full enforcement of federal law. They further boasted that they would not hand over illegal aliens, detained by state or local authorities, to federal agents.

These were strange threats. Not long ago, at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions, liberal grandees like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi had vowed to stop all would-be illegal aliens from unlawfully entering the U.S. Apparently, they all flipped to open borders when spiraling numbers turned the undocumented into a new Democratic constituency.

Moreover, being the left, their loud nullificationist vows were, of course, purely political and never principled.

Once, an exasperated Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, had beseeched the Obama administration in vain to enforce its own federal laws at the southern border. In frustration, she finally sought ways to use her own state’s resources to do what Obama refused.

And the reaction of the Obama administration?

It was certainly not gratitude for Brewer’s efforts to enforce federal law. Instead, the Obama crowd sued her. It successfully sought out left-wing judges to stay her state’s efforts.

How strange that our current “principled” district judges once ruled that states could not interfere with federal border policing—even in cases where the federal government was illegally refusing to enforce its own laws.

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DOJ Arrests U.S. Citizens and Chinese Nationals for Exporting AI Tech to China.

Are you ready for some good news?

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a statement that it has arrested two U.S. citizens and two Chinese nationals and charged them with conspiracy to illegally export to China advanced NVIDIA microchips called Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). GPUs are used in a wide range of critical artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

The two American citizens who were arrested are Hon Ning Ho, also known as “Mathew Ho,” a Tampa resident who was born in Hong Kong, and Brian Curtis Raymond from Huntsville, Alabama. The two Chinese nationals arrested by the DOJ are Cham Li, also known as “Tony Li,” a resident of San Leandro, California, and Jing Chen, also known as “Harry Chen,” a 45-year-old who was living in Tampa under an F-1 nonimmigrant student visa.

All four were arrested and appeared in courtrooms in their respective jurisdictions on Nov. 19.

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Why? Simple. It’s because like all goobermint, they’re scared to death that the peons may one day get fed up enough with the blatant and open corruption (See – among other’s -Nancy Pelosi’s impossible stock portfolio performance) and decide to take care of business, along with the clear understanding that, while Mao was a murderous dictator, he was very correct when he said that political power grew from the barrel of a gun and that the party should control the guns.

Why Does SCOTUS Hear So Few Second Amendment Cases?
The right to keep and bear arms occupies a curious place in American legal history.

The Second Amendment occupies a curious place in American legal history. It has been sitting right there in the Bill of Rights since those amendments were first added to the Constitution in 1791. Yet it was not until the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the U.S. Supreme Court got around to recognizing what many legal scholars had been saying all along: Namely, that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not a collective right, nor a state’s right.

Two years after Heller, in 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago, the Court additionally held that the individual right to keep and bear arms that applied against the federal enclave of D.C. also applied against state and local governments.

But then the Supreme Court sort of went quiet for a while. The next truly major Second Amendment case did not arrive until 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which extended the logic of Heller and McDonald to recognize “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

The recent news that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new Second Amendment dispute later this term raises the interesting question of why it takes the Court so long to hear so few of these kinds of cases. What gives?

For a persuasive explanation of the Supreme Court’s pre-Heller silence on the Second Amendment, I recommend reading a 1989 Yale Law Journal article titled “The Embarrassing Second Amendment,” written by the liberal law professor Sanford Levinson. “I cannot help but suspect that the best explanation for the absence of the Second Amendment from the legal consciousness of the elite bar,” Levinson wrote, “is derived from a mixture of sheer opposition to the idea of private ownership of guns and the perhaps subconscious fear that altogether plausible, and perhaps even ‘winning’ interpretations would present real hurdles to those of us supporting prohibitory regulation.” In this telling, legal elites basically understood that if the Second Amendment was ever taken seriously, then some (or even many) gun control laws would necessarily fall. So they just declined to take the amendment seriously.

But if that explains some or all of the pre-Heller period, what explains the more recent era? One explanation may be found in an oft-quoted passage from Justice Antonin Scalia’s Heller decision. “Nothing in our opinion,” Scalia wrote, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

I recall several Second Amendment advocates grumbling to me at the time that this passage by Scalia was both unnecessary to the outcome of the case and potentially quite injurious to the broader gun rights cause. Those advocates feared that the gun control side would immediately grab hold of the “sensitive places” exception and run with it, leading to more regulations on guns instead of less.

And the federal courts would, of course, have to deal with Scalia’s language, too. In fact, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, invoked that very language by Scalia in a notable concurrence filed in the Bruen case. “Properly interpreted,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations.”

Why did Kavanaugh feel compelled to emphasize that particular point in a separate concurrence that managed to garner the support of only the chief justice? I speculated at the time that Kavanaugh “may be signaling to the lower courts that, in his view, many such gun control regulations are presumptively constitutional, and lower court judges should therefore act accordingly.”

In other words, Kavanaugh and Roberts might be less hawkish on gun rights than some of their colleagues. And there might be a small but growing fissure among the Court’s “conservative bloc” over just how broadly the Second Amendment should be interpreted and enforced. That fissure, if it exists, might also explain why the post-Heller Court has not exactly been in a hurry to take up new gun rights cases.

We’ll learn more when the Supreme Court takes up this latest gun rights case, Wolford v. Lopez, in earnest later this term. For now, we’re still left to ponder the Second Amendment’s curious position.

Everytown Misfires in Attack on Defensive Gun Uses

When Everytown for Gun Safety announced it was holding online gun “training” classes, many anti-gun activists and volunteers with the organization were sharply critical of the move, declaring it was akin to the group normalizing gun ownership instead of advocating for a gun-free future.

Of course, the so-called training has proved to be mostly anti-gun talking points, but if the group’s anti-2A critics have any doubts that Everytown is still as opposed to our right to keep and bear arms as ever they just have to look at the organization’s latest report for reassurance.

Titled “Disarming Fear: Debunking Myths of Defensive Gun Use”, Everytown’s report starts with several incidents that they allege were reported as defensive gun uses even though there were elements of each incident that were immediately known that undercut any self-defense claim. One incident highlighted by Everytown, for example, was the shooting of teenager Ralph Yarl in Kansas City after he knocked on the wrong door of a home when he went to pick up his little brothers from a friend’s house. While Andrew Lester Lester told police that he believed that Yarl was trying to break in to his home and was “scared to death” of Yarl’s size, it only took prosecutors four days to file charges against him.

Everytown asserts that legitimate defensive gun uses are “exceedingly rare,” and that they are “often deployed against unarmed perpetrators, and often accompanied by underappreciated personal and social risks, including loss of life and property.”

How rare? Everytown says it used National Crime Victimization Survey data and came up with a figure of about 69,000 DGUs every year between 2019 and 2023. That’s far below the estimates of 1 million or more DGUs from researchers like Gary Kleck and William English, but even so, that’s about three times the number of homicides in the United States. If DGU’s are “rare”, then murders involving firearms are even more rare, which undercuts Everytown’s entire ideology.

Everytown also takes issue with using a gun to defend yourself against someone who doesn’t have a firearm.

In the majority of these uses, suspected perpetrators are unarmed. In fact, 58 percent of perpetrators are not armed with any weapon. In eight out of 10 DGUs, the suspected perpetrator is not armed with a gun.

So what? An unarmed individual can still pose a threat to life and limb. Just look at the recent DGU in Los Angeles where a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran shot and killed a man who had thrown him to the ground and broke both his legs and continued to assault him while he was writhing in pain. Does Everytown believe George Karkoc should be charged for acting in self-defense since his attacker wasn’t armed with any kind of weapon?

If not, it sure looks like they at least believe Karkoc would have been better off without a gun.

Crime victims who responded with a gun were less likely to get away from the offender than those who responded without one (7 percent with a gun compared to 18 percent without) and less likely to avoid injury (39 percent compared to 44 percent).

So… in either case the vast majority of individuals who were the victim of a violent crime were unable to get away from their attacker, and the difference in the injury rate is honestly negligible. If that’s true, then I would definitely prefer to be armed if someone decides to invade my home, carjack my vehicle, or assault me on the street.

Everytown also notes that violent crime is trending down across the United States, but as FPC’s Rob Romano notes, they still claim that an armed society is a more dangerous place.


Giffords has also recently complained about the number of justifiable homicides, which makes me wonder if this going to be a new talking point for the gun control lobby. “Too many people are defending themselves from violent attackers” doesn’t sound like a great argument to me, but maybe their focus groups are telling them differently.

Everytown’s conclusion, of course, is that you’re better off not owning a gun at all. I’d say the gun control group gave us 69,000 reasons to disregard that advice. In reality the number of defensive gun uses is likely much higher than what the anti-gun org is wililng to admit, but even using their numbers hundreds of people are protecting themselves with firearms each and every day across the United States; proof positive that DGUs aren’t uncommon or unnecessary.

Veterans Day 2025: Giffords Pushes More Gun Control for Veterans

On Veterans Day 2025 Gabby Giffords’ gun control group, Giffords, is pushing more gun control for veterans who avail themselves of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) services.

Giffords posted to X:

Since 2006, veterans have died by suicide nearly 20 times more often than soldiers have been killed at war. Veterans deserve more than empty words. They deserve leaders who work to protect them.

But many in Congress are stopping the VA from flagging when a veteran is at a heightened risk of harming themselves or others, and therefore shouldn’t have access to a gun.

Giffords is complaining about the efforts Republicans have undertaken to end the VA’s decades-long habit of blocking veterans’ gun rights by reporting said veterans to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for actions as benign as needing help handling finances.

Through the years, Breitbart News has warned of the situation wherein veterans who use a fiduciary to handle their finances face the threat of being reported by the VA and subsequently prohibited from gun purchases. The need for help in balancing finances — even for a time — is equated with mental health problems, and gun rights are revoked.

Moreover, on February 21, 2016, Breitbart News reported that combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who needed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were increasingly hesitant to pursue treatment because they feared a PTSD diagnosis would be used to deny their gun rights under the Obama administration.

A combat vet confined to a wheelchair spoke to Breitbart News anonymously at the time, saying, “I was diagnosed with PTSD. What’s being done to be sure my guns aren’t taken away?” He said he lived with the added anxiety of questioning his every trip to the doctor, fearing that he was one visit away from having his gun rights snuffed out.

Earlier this year, Rep. Eli Crane (R)–a former U.S. Navy SEAL–told Breitbart News that Democrats who support the status quo on bureaucrats being able to strip away gun rights often claim they do so in order to help reduce suicide among veterans, particularly combat veterans. But Crane rejected this line of thinking, saying, “When it comes to suicide, a lot of these individuals, a lot of veterans….who are struggling with PTSD and have some of these issues, one of [their] biggest issues is fear and trauma because [they] thought [they] might lose [their] life in battle against other people with guns.”

He suggested that taking away their guns now only serves to increase the feeling of defenselessness, thereby increasing feelings of fear and fueling the very suicides which Democrats claim they are trying to stop.

Yet on this Veterans Day, Giffords is urging more gun control for veterans.