Category: RKBA

Saturday is Constitutional Carry Day in Nebraska!

On Saturday, September 2nd, constitutional carry and statewide preemption laws will take effect in Nebraska. Thanks to the significant victories from this year’s legislative session, law-abiding citizens can exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms for self-defense without unnecessary government interference and can exercise their rights freely across the state without having to navigate a patchwork of local gun control ordinances.

The NRA is grateful to Senator Tom Brewer for championing this legislation and all the Nebraska state legislators who fought for these laws to pass. We also thank all of our members and other Second Amendment advocates whose vigilance made this victory possible.

We encourage you to stay engaged, support pro-Second Amendment candidates, and be prepared to defend our rights whenever necessary. Together, we can continue making strides in protecting our cherished heritage and ensuring that future generations enjoy the freedoms bestowed upon us by our Founding Fathers.

The DailyKos (a rabid anti-gun pub) gets pwned by one of its own

Citizens Have An Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms Unconnected With Service In a Militia

The Second Amendment speaks of two separate groups the Militia and the People. If the right to keep and bear arms was meant ONLY to apply to the militia it would read “The right of Militia members to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Or, it would read “The power of the States to maintain armed militias shall not be infringed.”

It reads “The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  It calls for a “Well-regulated Militia” and not a well regulated populace, and all other references to “The People” in the Bill of Rights are also rights of individual citizens.

 The Federal government, the States and their officials hold powers not rights.  For example, Amendment IV “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”  Amendment X “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Article. I. Section. 1. “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article. II. Section. 1. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Note that they read powers and not rights.

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

This decision wasn’t reached in a vacuum.  The vast majority of law review articles dealing with the Second Amendment conclude that it protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.  In fact, when Dr. Lawrence Tribe, the widely published Constitutional Law scholar, author of the Constitutional law textbook that is standard in many if not most of our nation’s low schools, and strong supporter of gun control, announced that he would conduct a study of the Second Amendment.

Citizen disarmament zealots, their organizations, their media allies, and their apologists were elated for they believed that at last a well respected Constitutional law scholar would finally proclaim that the Second Amendment applies only to the Militia and not individual citizens.

In the end they were disappointed.  Like the Supreme Court Dr. Tribe determined that the framers of the Constitution intended that the Second Amendment confers the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms unconnected with service in a Militia.

Frequently Debunked Crackpots Claim the AR-15 is Worthless for Self-Defense

When the young paste-eaters at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory, known as the Trace, team up with the stodgy window-lickers at the Gun Violence Archive to produce a story about the utility of the AR-15 platform as a modern self-defense tool, it’s hard not to get too excited.

It’s like watching two freight trains headed toward each other on the same track. You know the results are going to be cataclysmic. None of these halfwits have ever heard a shot fired, much less one fired in anger, or especially one fired to good effect. They know less about what makes a reliable home defense weapon than I do about man-buns, skinny jeans, or avocado toast.

We have debunked the Trace and the Gun Violence Archive so often it’s getting old. The kids at the Trace masquerade as legitimate journalists when, in fact, they’re nothing more than highly paid anti-gun activists. The GVA purports to track gun crimes and maintain a list of mass shootings, but their data is collected from media, and even social media sources, and their stats are so inflated they’d have you believe a mass shooting occurs nearly every time someone draws from a holster. When the two anti-gun nonprofits combine for a story, it’s bound to be something as bereft of facts as it is poorly written, and to that standard their most recent collaboration does not disappoint.

A story published Tuesday asks: “How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense? Supporters of AR-15s, often used in mass shootings and racist attacks, say they’re important for self-defense. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data suggests otherwise.”

The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask The Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.

Mascia reportedly searched the GVA’s data for “assault weapon,” which she said the GVA defines as “AR-15, AK-47, and all variants defined by law enforcement.” Of course, there’s no mention of whether the weapons were capable of select-fire and, therefore, actual assault weapons. She started with 190 incidents, which she whittled down for various reasons. The results: “That left 51 incidents over a nine-and-a-half-year span in which legal gun owners brandished or used an AR-style rifle to defend life or property. That averages out to around five per year.”

To be clear, I trust Mascia’s findings about as much as I trust the GVA data that produced the results. The whole story is GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.

It is noteworthy that the firearms “expert” whom Mascia found to further beclown herself – who wrote in a CNN story that the AR is the last gun he’d recommend for self-defense – is none other than former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. He’s the officer who cried a lot before the January 6 Commission – the one with the beard who cried a lot, if that helps jog your memory.

The network must have liked the cut of his jib. Fanone is now a CNN contributor and hawking a new book: “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” (Nancy Pelosi highly recommended it.)

Since he’s so afraid of the AR platform, I can’t help but wonder what weapon Fanone, or for that matter, Mascia, would recommend for home defense. If I had to guess, it probably has two barrels, a wooden stock and exposed hammers.

I’m somewhat familiar with the AR myself, which is why I trust it to defend my hearth and home. It’s light, accurate, and deadly, which is exactly the point, and something we should stop making allowances for.

Despite the exhortations of Bloomberg’s activists or crybaby ex-cops, an AR-15 is exactly what I want when The Bad Man comes a-calling.

BLUF
“The numbers indicate if we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks,”

Over 60% of ‘active shooters’ stopped by ‘good guy with a gun’

A large percentage of “active shooter” incidents are thwarted by armed citizens who sometimes don’t even fire their weapons, but those cases are no longer counted under President Joe Biden’s pro-gun control policies.

According to just-released data from the Crime Prevention Research Center, 41% of active shooting incidents were stopped by armed civilians.

Outside of so-called gun-free zones, which bar the legal carrying of firearms, over 63% of active shooting cases were ended by an armed civilian, according to the center.

The new data from John R. Lott Jr., the former Justice Department senior adviser for research and statistics, are his latest to challenge undercounting and bias in government reports on shootings and back up efforts by Second Amendment and police groups to encourage people to carry firearms.

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This judge has it backwards and I’d say purposefully. The goobermint has to submit evidence that the weapons are not in common use for self defense, (impossible by the way, so that’s why the judge pretzeled it)  not the plaintiffs

Federal judge upholds Conn.’s assault weapons ban for 2nd time in a month

For the second time in less than a month, a federal judge has upheld Connecticut’s assault weapons ban by denying an injunction seeking a temporary halt to the enforcement of the ban as part of a lawsuit challenging the state’s gun laws.

In a 14-page ruling issued earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton said the assault weapons banned by the state are not “commonly” used for self-defense, which would classify the firearms as protected under the Second Amendment.

“Plaintiffs are correct that the Second Amendment provides them with the freedom to choose a firearm . . . ‘that is not dangerous and unusual’ and that is normally used for self-defense,” Arterton said. “However, until they submit evidence that supports a finding that the assault weapons in the challenged statutes meet those requirements, they cannot show a likelihood of success on the merits of their Second Amendment claim.”

She had denied a similar injunction requested by the National Association for Gun Rights, which is also suing state officials to revoke the ban, on Aug. 3. Her ruling this week marks the third time since June that Arterton has upheld the state’s assault weapons ban.

Attorney Cameron Atkinson, one of three lawyers representing the plaintiffs, three people including two former state correction officers and two gun rights advocacy groups, said they will appeal the most recent ruling.

“The District Court did exactly what the Supreme Court told it not to do (in other rulings),” Atkinson said Wednesday. “We’re very confident that the ruling will be reversed on appeal.”

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Frequently debunked crackpots claim the AR is worthless for self-defense
The Trace teams up with the Gun Violence Archive and hilarity ensues.

When the young paste-eaters at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory, known as the Trace, team up with the stodgy window-lickers at the Gun Violence Archive to produce a story about the utility of the AR platform as a modern self-defense tool, it’s hard not to get too excited.

It’s like watching two freight trains headed toward each other on the same track. You know the results are going to be cataclysmic. None of these halfwits have ever heard a shot fired, much less one fired in anger, or especially one fired to good effect. They know less about what makes a reliable home-defense weapon than I do about man-buns, skinny jeans or avocado toast.

We have debunked the Trace and the Gun Violence Archive so often it’s getting old. The kids at the Trace masquerade as legitimate journalists when in fact they’re nothing more than highly paid anti-gun activists. The GVA purports to track gun crimes and maintain a list of mass shootings, but their data is collected from media and even social media sources, and their stats are so inflated they’d have you believe a mass shooting occurs nearly every time someone draws from a holster. When the two anti-gun nonprofits combine for a story, it’s bound to be something as bereft of facts as it is poorly written, and to that standard their most recent collaboration does not disappoint.

A story published Tuesday asks: “How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense? Supporters of AR-15s, often used in mass shootings and racist attacks, say they’re important for self-defense. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data suggests otherwise.”

The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask the Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.

Mascia claims her story was a response to a reader’s question: “Many gun owners claim to buy assault-style rifles for defense. So how many documented cases are out there where someone actually defended themselves with an assault-style rifle?”

Mascia reportedly searched the GVA’s data for “assault weapon,” which she said the GVA defines as “AR-15, AK-47, and all variants defined by law enforcement.” Of course, there’s no mention whether the weapons were capable of select-fire and therefore actual assault weapons. She started with 190 incidents, which she whittled down for various reasons. The results: “That left 51 incidents over a nine-and-a-half-year span in which legal gun owners brandished or used an AR-style rifle to defend life or property. That averages out to around five per year.”

To be clear, I trust Mascia’s findings about as much as I trust the GVA data that produced the results. The whole story is GIGO — garbage in, garbage out.

It is noteworthy that the firearms “expert” whom Mascia found to further beclown herself — who wrote in a CNN story that the AR is the last gun he’d recommend for self-defense — is none other than former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. He’s the officer who cried a lot before the January 6 Commission — the one with the beard who cried a lot, if that helps jog your memory.

“I’m more familiar with the gun than most people: I own one. And one thing I know for sure is that this weapon doesn’t belong in the hands of the average civilian,” Fanone wrote of the AR platform in the CNN story.

The network must have liked the cut of his jib. Fanone is now a CNN contributor and hawking a new book: “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” (Nancy Pelosi highly recommended it.)

Since he’s so afraid of the AR platform, I can’t help but wonder what weapon Fanone, or for that matter, Mascia, would recommend for home defense. If I had to guess, it probably has two barrels, a wooden stock and exposed hammers.

I’m somewhat familiar with the AR myself, which is why I trust it to defend my hearth and home. It’s light, accurate and deadly, which is exactly the point, and something we should stop making allowances for.

Despite the exhortations of Bloomberg’s activists or crybaby ex-cops, an AR is exactly what I want when The Bad Man comes a-calling.

Violent Crime! Our Personal Safety Depends Upon Ourselves

Fewer than half of crimes in the U.S. are reported IMG Pew Research

The “deterrent value” of law enforcement is at an all-time low!

Less than half of crimes of violence in the USA are never “solved.” Of the ones that are “solved” or “cleared,” few arrests and successful prosecutions ever result.

Less than twenty percent of property crimes are ever “solved.”

Owing to the foregoing, the majority of felonies, even forcible felonies, are never reported (what’s the point?) and thus never show up on any statistics. Thus, as dismal as the crime statistics we actually have, real figures are vastly worse!

Low arrest rates are a direct result of “passionless policing” by critically under-staffed, non-supported police departments, combined with unenthusiastic prosecution by liberal, pro-criminal prosecutors, as well as mayors and city council members.

Accordingly, among VCAs (violent criminal actors) in most metro areas, there is scant risk associated with physically victimizing others, at least risk represented by law enforcement. The real risk to VCAs (particularly drug traffickers) is from the violence visited upon them by other VCAs during territorial disputes.

And, of course, there is always the risk of running into an armed “victim,” as frightened Americans continue to buy guns at increasing rates every month.

As citizens, our personal safety depends almost exclusively upon ourselves. We are no longer “protected” by police in the way we used to be, and may never be again!

Lifestyles need to be tweaked accordingly….

Team Biden Continues Two-Pronged Assault on 2nd Amendment and Small Businesses

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Ertenzo felt most purposeful when adding a secret fourth bean to his three-bean salad for the annual Cornhole Club picnic.

The commie puppet masters who run Joe Biden’s brain have made no secret of their contempt for the Second Amendment and law-abiding American gun owners. They’ve had their senile mouthpiece babbling about “assault weapons” almost from the moment he was installed in the Oval Office.

Democrats don’t have a lot of luck with sweeping gun control legislation for a couple of reasons. First, they keep passing laws that make gun owners who have adhered to the law criminals overnight. These laws eventually find their way to a judge or a court that says, “Yeah…no.”

The other reason — and this is the big one — is that there are a lot of Democrats who own guns and are fond of their Second Amendment rights. Most of them are in flyover country, which is why a lot of the D.C. Dems are out of touch with reality.

Team Biden is nothing if not relentless in its pursuit of an anti-American agenda, however. Instead of the legislative process, the bureaucracy is being used to choke the life out of the Second Amendment, which Catherine wrote about yesterday:

The Biden administration, failing to get enough congressional cooperation to trample on the Second Amendment, continues its war against gun dealers.

Bingo.

As we examine the story further, it’s important to remember that Democrats have contempt for small business owners. People who can’t be forced into unionizing and stuffing the coffers of the Democratic Big Labor slush fund are useless to them.

Here’s more from Catherine’s post:

I previously wrote about how hundreds of gun dealers suddenly lost their licenses to Biden’s ATF, in what the gun industry says is a back-handed way of undermining gun rights  Some dealers informed the media that the federal government is hurting a major ally in identifying “suspicious gun buyers” by targeting legitimate gun dealers.

But the Biden administration is successfully hurting gun dealers’ business. “We were making $1 million a year, now it’s less than $100,000,” gun dealer Anthony Navarro told the Wall Street Journal. “This policy is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Amendment.” Now there’s the new ATF rule, also aimed at gun dealers.

I’m an Arizona resident. Rules regarding private gun sales are practically nonexistent. Both parties have to be Arizona residents and after that, YOLO. The Grand Canyon State has functioned with minimal gun laws for a very long time. My grandfather owned a gun store when I was a kid, so I know whence I speak (write). What the feds want to do now is get their fascist little fingers all over the transactions between individuals, which Ryan Petty explains at our sister site Bearing Arms:

The White House outlined that under the suggested guidelines, individuals would be expected to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks if they meet one or more of several conditions. These include frequently selling firearms shortly after purchasing them, offering guns in near-new condition, selling multiple units of the same gun model, or selling business inventory as a previously federally-licensed dealer without transferring it to a personal collection for at least one year, effectively targeting the so-called fire sale loophole. The proposed rules would establish criteria around the frequency and type of gun sales by unlicensed sellers, along with the condition of the firearms.

The Second Amendment infuriates leftists because the federal government hasn’t been able to wrest control of it from the states. It’s a perfect example of how the country is supposed to work. My good friend, colleague, and “Unwoke” podcast co-host Kevin Downey Jr. once asked me if all of my guns were legal. I replied, “In this state they are.” Were I to move back to California, the story would be different.

The anti-2A crowd is fond of saying, “We don’t want to take away your guns.”

They do, of course, but until they can, they’d like to make the legal acquisition of firearms so onerous that people just give up.

Federal Court Temporarily Halts ATF’s Labeling of Forced Reset Triggers as Machine Guns

The Northern District of Texas Federal Court has issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the National Association for Gun Rights in their legal battle against the ATF. This order will maintain the current situation in the case until either September 27, 2023, or until a decision is made on the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

The Association cited a precedent set by the 5th Circuit Court in the Cargill case, arguing that bump stocks should not be considered machine guns. Judge O’Connor concurred, suggesting that the Association has a strong likelihood of winning the case based on existing laws.

In a 2022 communication to federal firearms dealers, the ATF had classified ‘forced reset triggers’ (FRTs) as ‘firearms’ and ‘machine guns’ according to the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act.

Rare Breed Triggers initiated the sale of their Forced Reset Trigger in December 2020 after extensive legal review. However, by January 2021, the ATF had started campaigns to ban these triggers. Despite the ATF’s claim that public concerns initiated this action, Freedom of Information Act requests revealed no such concerns from the public had been recorded.

Dudley Brown, the President of the National Association for Gun Rights, commented that the restraining order represents progress in refuting the ATF’s questionable redefinition of ‘machine gun’ and aims to cease the agency’s overreach towards Rare Breed Triggers.

The lawsuit’s objective is to revoke the ATF’s prohibition on FRT triggers and safeguard the owners of these triggers from undue ATF intervention.

According to existing federal legislation, a ‘machine gun’ is a weapon capable of firing multiple rounds with a single trigger action. This longstanding definition, which the ATF is purportedly disregarding, makes it clear that Rare Breed Triggers’ FRT only enables the firing of one round per trigger action.

Hannah Hill, the Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights— the National Association for Gun Rights’ legal division—expressed optimism that the temporary restraining order is a positive indicator for a future preliminary injunction that would protect all their members.

Biden Administration Proposes Plan to Expand Who Needs a License to Sell Used Guns

President Joe Biden has announced a new proposal to expand the scope of federal gun dealing regulations to cover more people who sell used guns.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice submitted a new plan for determining who must obtain a federal firearms license to legally sell guns on the secondary market. The proposed rule would set limits on how frequently an unlicensed seller could offer up guns to customers, how often they can sell the same kind of gun, and what kind of condition the firearm has to be in before the seller would be required to get a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Anybody who violates the proposed regulations and sells a gun without a license could face up to $250,000 in fines and five years in federal prison or both.

“[U]nder the proposed rule, a person would be presumed to be required to become a licensed dealer and run background checks if they meet one or more of the following criteria,” the White House said in a release. “Offer for sale any number of firearms and also represents to potential buyers that they are willing and able to purchase and sell them additional firearms; Repetitively offer for sale firearms within 30 days after they were purchased; Repetitively offer for sale firearms that are like new in their original packaging; Repetitively offer for sale multiple firearms of the same make and model; or as a formerly federally-licensed firearms dealer, sell firearms that were in the business inventory and not transferred to a personal collection at least a year before the sale, addressing the so-called’ fire sale loophole.’”

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Mass Shootings Have ‘No Correlation to Gun Laws,’ says Report

U.S.A. — Washington, D.C.—a jurisdiction with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country—leads the nation with “the highest rate of mass shootings per capita,” according to a report in the Daily Mail, citing new research released this week by medical researchers in Colorado.

Here’s how the Daily Mail headlined its story: “America’s mass shooting hotspots revealed: First of its kind study breaks down thousands of massacres by state – and there’s NO correlation between gun control laws.”

The study is published in JAMA Network Open, and it relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a database often criticized by the firearms community. The work was done by researchers at the University of Colorado: Leslie M. Barnard, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health; Erin Wright-Kelly, DrPH, MA, Injury and Violence Prevention Center, Colorado School of Public Health, and Marian E. Betz, MD, MPH, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora.

The report may cool some jets in the gun control community, which has maintained that states with the most guns and “lax” laws have the highest number of shootings. But here’s what the report says:

“The rate of mass shootings per 1,000,000 people was highest in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings), followed by much lower rates in Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings) and Illinois (3.6 mass shootings), the states with the next 2 highest rates (Table).”

Translation: Gun laws do not appear to have an impact, since the District of Columbia and the state of Illinois have restrictive laws, while Louisiana is far less restrictive.

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Per the usual way the courts have dealt in the past with this burr under their saddle, by the time they can delay no longer, the plaintiff’s will have reached 21 years old, and dust off their hands as they dismiss the case as moot.

Fraser v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (3:22-cv-00410) District Court, E.D. Virginia

gov.uscourts.vaed.524643.77.0_1

 

ORDER that the DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR A STAY OF INJUNCTION PENDING APPEAL (ECF No. 63 ) is granted. The FINAL ORDER OF INJUNCTION (ECF No. 81 ) and the FINAL ORDER OF DECLARATORY RELIEF (ECF No. 82 ) are STAYED pending appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the Court and oral argument would not aid the decisional process. It is so ORDERED. Signed by District Judge Robert E. Payne on 8/30/2023 at 4:56 p.m. (jenjones, ) (Entered: 08/30/2023)

The Virginia federal judge found that the federal ban on handgun sales to those under the age of 21 is unconstitutional under the 2nd amendment, per Bruen’s  “History and Tradition” test.
The judge issued a nationwide injunction against the law, but stayed the order while the government appeals to the Circuit court.

21-and-up gun law to remain blocked as federal lawsuit plays out

DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado’s new law blocking all gun sales to anyone under age 21 remains on hold while a legal challenge continues to play out in court.

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners argues the law is a Second Amendment violation and is challenging its constitutionality in federal court.

A judge already blocked the gun-buying restrictions from going into effect in August while the court case plays out. Gov. Jared Polis asked the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to block that ruling, but the court declined.

“Today, two Obama-appointed judges agreed with us that our plaintiffs do have standing and that our likelihood of success on the merits is strong,” Taylor Rhodes, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said in part in a statement.

For now, the law will remain blocked until the case is heard in court.

Coloradans under 21 could still buy rifles

While federal law requires buyers to be at least 21 years old to buy a handgun, Coloradans under age 21 can still buy rifles. If upheld, Senate Bill 23-169 would block all gun sales to anyone in Colorado under age 21.

A spokesperson for Polis’ office released a statement after the Tuesday ruling.

“People will remain very confused because of this injunction because since 1968, federal law has required Coloradans to be 21 years old to purchase a pistol, but a loophole allows kids under age 21 to legally buy a rifle instead. This new law approved by the legislature closes that loophole and Governor Polis hopes that the courts agree with him that the law is fully consistent with the Second Amendment and reduces confusion. The Governor is working towards his goal of making Colorado one of the ten safest states in the country and the same age requirements for pistols and rifles would help support responsible gun ownership.”

CONOR CAHILL, PRESS SECRETARY FOR COLORADO GOV. JARED POLIS

The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners lawsuit names two Coloradans plaintiffs in the case, each older than 18 but younger than 21 and who said they want to buy a gun for self-defense.

The gun group’s arguments have hinged on the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In that case, the court ruled Americans have a right to carry guns in public for self-defense. The case also set a standard that courts must look at history to decide the constitutionality of gun laws.

Despite Democrats’ Fearmongering On Firearms, A Majority Of Americans Own Guns Or Want To Own Guns

A majority of Americans are happy or prospective gun owners who keep firearms around to protect themselves, Pew Research found in its latest poll.

The poll, which surveyed 5,115 U.S. adults in June, found that, contrary to Democrats’ anti-gun rhetoric, Americans across all demographics enjoy exercising their Second Amendment rights by personally owning guns or living with someone who does.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans either already live in a household with a gun or have expressed interest in buying a gun in the future. Considering the U.S. is experiencing the highest personal gun ownership uptick since 2011, even those who aren’t firearm owners yet could be soon.

When Pew measured Americans’ attitudes towards guns in 2017, only 67 percent of firearm owners said they had guns for protection. After years of soaring gun sales due to rising crime and the summer 2020 riots, 72 percent of American gun owners now say protection is the primary reason they keep firearms around.Overall, 81 percent of gun owners say owning a firearm makes them feel safer. A majority of non-gun owners, 57 percent, say they also feel safer if someone in their household owns a gun.

“Gun owners express overwhelmingly positive sentiments about owning a gun, with sizable majorities saying it makes them feel safer and that they enjoy having a gun,” Pew noted.

Safety is likely one of the reasons gun ownership among women specifically has climbed in recent years. In 2017, only 22 percent of women said they personally owned a gun. Now, 25 percent of females have a firearm of their own.

Gun ownership, Pew found, is still higher among rural, Republican voters than among urbanites and Democrats. The latter groups, however, saw increases in gun ownership in the last five years. Between 2017 and now, firearm ownership among urban dwellers jumped 1 percent.

Approximately 4 percent more blue voters say they have guns now than they did in 2017. Six percent more Democrats have guns in their household in 2023 than they did in 2017.

Pew tried to overshadow their robust gun ownership report by highlighting that 61 percent of Americans think it is too easy to get a gun in the U.S. What the poll did not specify is exactly how law-abiding Americans feel about leftist-led legislation that seeks to restrict their Second Amendment rights.

Despite the fact that deadly mass shootings increased during Congress’ 1994 ban on “assault weapons,” Democrats, led by President Joe Biden, desperately want another ban on the most popular semi-automatic rifles on the market.

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said in November 2022. “It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

There are a myriad of problems with blue politicians’ unconstitutional gun-grab policies. One such problem is that if Democrats pass a federal ban on AR-15s, they would be depriving Americans of the ability to protect themselves in the they choose.

D.C. to pay $5.1 million settlement after judge finds Second Amendment violations

D.C. will pay $5.1 million as part of a class-action settlement with gun owners who were arrested under laws that have since been found to violate the Second Amendment, according to the settlement agreement.

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U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave preliminary approval to the settlement agreement on Monday following years of litigation. Lamberth had previously ruled in September 2021 that D.C. arrested, jailed, prosecuted and seized guns from six people “based on an unconstitutional set of laws” and violated their Second Amendment rights.

The laws — a ban on carrying handguns outside the home and others that effectively banned nonresidents from carrying guns at all in D.C. — have since been struck down in federal court. They were part of a “gun control regime that completely banned carrying handguns in public,” Lamberth wrote in the 2021 ruling.

Now, D.C. will pay a total of $300,000 to the six plaintiffs and $1.9 million in attorneys fees, with the majority of the rest of the money set aside for more than 3,000 people estimated to qualify for the class-action.

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David Hemenway Given Platform to Mislead on Guns by Obscure Online Outlet

David Hemenway, a Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center, has been a proud proponent of anti-gun “research” for many years. Rather than relying on criminologists and experts in law enforcement to diminish violent crime where firearms are used, Hemenway long-ago jumped on the anti-gun bandwagon of trying to frame the discussion about gun-control from an approach of addressing it as a “public health” issue—as if there is some sort of vaccine that could be developed to stop violent criminals from being violent criminals.

One might consider him simply misguided, or perhaps he has just bought into what many on the far left do whenever faced with something they wish to control; frame it as a “public health” crisis.

But with Hemenway, it may be that he just hates guns and law-abiding gun owners, and all of his “research” he claims supports his radical theories is guided predominantly by confirmation bias. And who better to offer support for the theory that this particular anti-gun researcher just hates guns and gun owners than Hemenway himself?

A recent interview with Hemenway was posted by the online outlet Undark, a relatively obscure digital magazine with ties to any number of media outlets that hold extreme anti-gun views. Publishing partners include outlets that have shown anti-gun bias such as HuffPost, Mother Jones, NPR, Salon, and Slate. It should come as no surprise that Undark would give Hemenway a platform for his anti-gun views.

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Montana leads 18 states in court to strike down Maryland ‘buffer zones’ gun law

EXCLUSIVE — Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R-MT) filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit over a Maryland county law he says is defying the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment test by establishing “unconstitutional” gun-free buffer zones.

A group of 18 attorneys general led by Knudsen filed the brief Monday at the Virginia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, asking the court to side with plaintiffs who say it is “practically impossible” to carry a gun for personal defense in Maryland’s most populous county, Montgomery County, due to a restrictive gun control law passed in late November.

When asked why Montana sought to intervene over a Maryland county law, Knudsen told the Washington Examiner that the Second Amendment is one of his “personal passion issues.”

“I’m a hunter. I’m a reloader. I’m a competitive shooter. I’m a bit of a gun nut — so I keep a pretty close eye on these things,” Knudsen said. “And I firmly believe that as some of these states go, if left unchallenged, we’ll see this kind of nonsense regulation and, frankly, unconstitutional laws being attempted in other places, not just in Maryland.”

Montana’s assistant solicitor general wrote in the brief first provided to the Washington Examiner that Section 57 of Montgomery County Code “prohibits the sale, transfer, or possession of firearms ‘[i]n or within 100 yards of a place of public assembly.'”

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Kamala Harris Pushes Gun Control That Wouldn’t Have Prevented Jacksonville Shooting

Vice President Kamala Harris reacted to Saturday’s shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, by pushing gun control that would not have prevented the attack.

Harris released a statement Sunday noting the shooting was racially motivated and will be investigated “as a possible hate crime and act of domestic violent extremism.”

She closed her statement by saying, “Every person in every community in America should have the freedom to live safe from gun violence. And Congress must help secure that freedom by banning assault weapons and passing other commonsense gun safety legislation.”

It should be noted that Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters pointed out the shooter was armed with two guns, a Glock pistol and an AR-15 style rifle. If the rifle had been denied him, he would still have had the pistol and the attack would not be hindered.

Additionally, universal background checks constitute another piece of “commonsense gun safety legislation” that Democrats are pushing. But the Jacksonville shooter bought his guns “legally,” which indicates he passed background checks for them at retail.

Moreover, Florida has a red flag law, which is often pushed by Democrats as a way to prevent shootings. But the Washington Post noted Waters saying, “There was no criminal arrest history. There is nothing we could have done to stop [the shooting suspect] from owning a rifle or a handgun. There were no red flags.”