GOA, Partners Request Summary Judgement on NFA Provisions

We’re kind of in a special time right now. While the Hearing Protection Act and SHORT Act didn’t land quite like we wanted, with the new fiscal year, we can buy short-barreled rifles and suppressors without the $200 tax stamp.

The problem, though, is that we still need NFA paperwork, and those products will still be entered into the NFA database.

That’s a database whose stated existence isn’t about registering scary devices to keep them out of naughty hands. It’s about making sure whoever has them has paid the tax.

And the fact that there’s not a tax on these items anymore means there shouldn’t be a registration requirement.

While Congress insisted on leaving that in, unfortunately, Gun Owners of America and its partners have filed a lawsuit to try and fix the issue. Now, they’ve just filed a motion for summary judgment in the case.

From a press release:

Yesterday [October 7th], Gun Owners of America, Inc., Gun Owners Foundation, together with a coalition of plaintiffs including Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Inc., Silencer Shop Foundation, B&T USA, LLC, Palmetto State Armory, LLC, SilencerCo Weapons Research, LLC, Brady Wetz, and fifteen states led by Texas, filed a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The motion seeks both a declaratory judgment that certain provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) are unconstitutional and an injunction to halt their enforcement as applied to newly “untaxed” firearms—including short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, and so-called “any other weapons” (AOWs).

GOA’s coalition of plaintiffs challenged the NFA’s making, transfer, and possession restrictions on these “untaxed” firearms, arguing they are unconstitutional following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. No. 119-21) (“OBBB”), which President Donald J. Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025.

Effective January 1, 2026, the OBBB eliminates the NFA’s taxation requirements for these categories of firearms, leaving behind vestigial registration requirements that no longer serve as proof of payment of any tax. As a result, we argued that these excessive regulatory burdens go beyond Congress’s taxing power, cannot be defended under the Commerce Clause, and violate the Second Amendment.

With the filing of this motion for summary judgment, GOA and GOF now expect the Trump Administration to take an official position on untaxed firearm registration and file a response on or before November 6, 2025.

Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:

“The National Firearms Act’s onerous registration requirements for untaxed firearms are a relic of a taxing scheme that no longer exists.  These provisions violate the Constitution by exceeding Congress’s authority and infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.  We urge the Court to strike down these unconstitutional restrictions and protect the rights of our members, supporters, and millions of gun owners nationwide.”

John Velleco, GOF’s Executive Vice President, issued the following statement: 

“The NFA is the strictest federal gun control law in the nation’s history. Even so, NFA-regulated weapons have proliferated in recent years, quickly becoming favored tools of the home defender, hunter, and hobbyist alike.  This lawsuit takes aim at FDR-era restrictions that never should have been passed in the first place. We look forward to taking a big step towards restoring the Founders’ original vision for American gun owners.”

This is a bit of a test for the Trump administration.

They’ve already done more for the Second Amendment than any previous administration in my lifetime, but there have also been some cracks that I don’t like seeing. The DOJ has defended a few questionable gun control laws, for example. Here, they can make a clear position on the matter, and one that should make perfect sense in the long run. The registration is about a tax that no longer applies to suppressors and short-barreled firearms.

If the DOJ does the right thing here and agrees with GOA and its allies, then what we’ll see is a world where you can walk into a gun store, buy a suppressor with just a NICS check, then take it home without any further paperwork than you would buying a single-shot .22.

I’d say that’s how it should be, but it’s not. We shouldn’t even have to go through that, but it would at least be far more acceptable than the current status quo, where you go to the ATF with hat in hand and ask, “Mother, may I?”

That’s not how our rights should work. We should be able to buy what we want, when we want.

But this is just the first step in a process of getting to that point. The Department of Justice can help with that, but even if they don’t, there’s a long road ahead, and we can and should follow the process to the very end. We need this killed throughout the country and done so in a way that leaves no ambiguity, so states figure they can do their own registries on these devices.

Good luck to the plaintiffs on this one.

Louisiana Man Shot While Trying to Set House on Fire With Someone Inside

LIVINGSTON PARISH, LA (KPEL) —The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office responded to a residence in the Albany area after receiving reports of a shooting.

Deputies arrived on scene around 3 pm Tuesday, where they discovered a man who had been shot suffering from a leg wound. He was brought to a local hospital where he recieved treatment and has been confirmed to be in stable condition.

The other individual was detained for questioning, and investigators learned that the wounded individual was attempting to set a home on fire by pouring gasoline on the floor, with someone inside.

At that point, the individual who was initially detained by police fired a shot, striking the other individual to prevent him from starting the house fire.

Our investigation points to the shooter acting in self-defense.

Wednesday afternoon, the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s office confirmed that he was active and that the shot fired was an attempt to prevent a house fire.

During our investigation, it was learned prior to being shot, the person with the gunshot wound had poured gasoline on the house floor & was attempting to set it ablaze with someone inside. The shot was fired in an attempt to stop that from happening.

The wounded individual now faces an Attempted Aggravated Arson charge. The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office says the investigation is ongoing.

The identity of both individuals involved has not been released at this time.

All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land. —William Kingdon Clifford

Cocoa Extract Supplements Could Reduce Aging-Related Chronic Inflammation.

An extract made from cocoa beans may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by reducing age-related inflammation, according to a recent study by an international team of researchers.

The scientists behind the study expanded on previous research suggesting that flavanol-rich food and drink, such as chocolate, significantly reduced death by cardiovascular disease.

Found in cocoa beans and other foods such as green tea, apples, and grapes, flavanols have long been associated with a variety of health improvements, including a role in reducing damage caused by excess inflammation.

Inflammation worsens with age in a process commonly referred to as ‘inflammaging‘, and is associated with a host of age-related health problems (from chronic pain to Alzheimer’s disease).

If cocoa supplements can reduce that inflammation, the potential benefits are significant.

“Our interest in cocoa extract and inflammaging started based on cocoa-related reductions in cardiovascular disease,” says Howard Sesso, an epidemiologist from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US.

“We wanted to see whether multi-year cocoa extract supplementation versus a placebo could modulate inflammaging – and the data suggests it does.”

Continue reading “”

13 arrested, four police officers injured in violent Boston Common protest: ‘Completely despicable.’

Thirteen people were arrested Tuesday night in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest that turned violent on the Boston Common and left four police officers injured, including some with broken bones, according to officials.

Protesters “turned on police” at approximately 6:50 p.m. when they began to move from the Common to the area of Tremont and Winter streets, Boston Police said.

“At that time, protesters turned on police, kicking a marked cruiser, assaulting officers, blocking traffic, and setting off devices causing red smoke in the air,” Boston Police spokesman Sgt. Det. John Boyle said in a Tuesday night statement.

Protesters scuffle with officers at Chicago anti-ICE demonstration

Eight men and five women were placed under arrest. No one had been booked as of shortly before 9 p.m.

Four police officers were injured in connection with the incident. Two officers were taken to local hospitals for treatment. Police have preliminary reports of officers with broken bones, but all injuries are considered non-life-threatening, Boyle said.

“Another night of violence against police officers in Boston tonight,” said Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association.

“Our officers were attacked, assaulted and sent to the hospital with injuries. Completely despicable and totally unacceptable. We were outnumbered and understaffed for the event,” he continued.

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Man dead after shooting near Sayre, police say
Not much in this news item. More below

Man Shoots Wife’s Ex-Husband in Self-Defense While Being Violently Beaten With Picture Frame

SAYRE, PA — A deadly altercation unfolded Friday afternoon in a Sayre home when a man was forced to defend himself against a violent and prolonged assault by his wife’s ex-husband, resulting in a fatal shooting.

According to the Athens Township Police Department, officers responded to a report of gunfire at 210 Vista Drive at approximately 3:40 p.m. on October 3, 2025. Upon arrival, officers found 59-year-old John J. Kraus suffering from gunshot wounds. He was transported by Greater Valley EMS to Robert Packer Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

Police say the incident began when 57-year-old David Hancock and his wife—Kraus’s ex-wife—were visiting Kraus’s mother at the residence. Both were inside the home by invitation.

Without warning or provocation, Kraus reportedly attacked Hancock in the living room, slamming him to the floor and knocking over furniture. Witnesses stated that Kraus pinned Hancock and repeatedly punched him in the head and face. Kraus then grabbed a nearby picture frame and continued striking Hancock, breaking the frame and glass in the process.

Despite being severely injured and bleeding from the head, Hancock remained pinned under Kraus. Hancock told police he believed Kraus intended to kill him, prompting him to draw his legally concealed firearm and shoot Kraus twice in self-defense.

Responding officers observed Hancock bleeding heavily from the head and holding a blood-soaked shirt to his injuries. He was also treated at Robert Packer Hospital.

Police confirmed that Hancock and all witnesses remained on scene and fully cooperated with the investigation. The case remains under review, but initial findings suggest the use of deadly force was consistent with Pennsylvania law, which permits such action when a person reasonably believes it is necessary to protect themselves from death or serious bodily injury.

Thankfully, Hancock was armed and able to draw his concealed handgun while under a brutal and sustained attack. Although Kraus was unarmed in the conventional sense, he used an improvised weapon—a picture frame with glass—to repeatedly strike Hancock in the head while pinning him to the floor. The force and nature of the assault, combined with Hancock’s visible injuries, highlight why Pennsylvania law permits the use of deadly force in self-defense when faced with an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. This case serves as a stark reminder that a deadly threat does not require a firearm—violent intent and the means to cause serious injury can justify a defensive response.

I wonder why their Supreme Court didn’t simp0ly throw the whole case out of court and dismiss the charge. Of course, we have to remember that lawyers live on ‘billable hours’ and judges are mostly lawyers too.

Self-defense law applies to bedrooms, Arizona Supreme Court says

Arizona law allows anyone to protect themselves from an uninvited person entering their home, and according to the Arizona Supreme Court, that also includes bedrooms.

A Pima County jury found John Brown guilty of attacking a neighbor with a microphone stand after the neighbor and his girlfriend entered his room. Though Brown lived with his girlfriend, the two had separate rooms. His girlfriend had invited the neighbor, someone Brown had previously gotten into a fight with. Brown left the two of them alone and locked himself in his bedroom. His girlfriend broke open the lock, and the neighbor tried to enter the room when Brown attacked him.

At trial, Brown asked that the jury be educated on state law that allows a person to claim self-defense if they attack someone entering their residential structure uninvited. The judge denied the request, ruling that his bedroom was not a “residential structure” and that the neighbor had been invited over to the home by another person living in the home.

After being found guilty, the judge sentenced Brown to five years in prison. Brown appealed the ruling, and after losing the appeal, he asked the Arizona Supreme Court to review the case.

Five out of six justices disagreed with the Pima County court’s decision not to let the jury consider the residential self-defense argument.

In an opinion written by Justice James Beene, the court decided that the way the state law is written, Brown’s bedroom should have been considered a residential structure.

Three things make any space a legally recognized residential structure, according to the justices:

The space must be a structure, movable or immovable, permanent or temporary, and adapted for human residence. It should be enclosed and have sides and a floor.
The structure also must be a place for lodging, meaning that it is a place where someone can rest or sleep.
The structure also needs to be separately securable, meaning that the entry point can be locked or secured.

Beene explained that Brown’s room fit all these points, and because he locked the room, it could be said that any person breaking into the room was uninvited.

The Arizona Supreme Court vacated Brown’s verdict and sent the case back to Pima County Superior Court for a new trial.

If it was never clear you, by now it should be that government, as a whole and no matter the fundamentals of how and why it was formed (cf. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights), has always been really hesitant to give free and unfettered access to the implements that make it so much easier for the unwashed masses to do away with a tyrant goobermint that sees them as mere peons.

Federal Judge Says Gun Law Unconstitutional, But Allows Feds to Largely Keep Enforcing It

Five years ago, Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Louisiana Shooting Association, and several individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit challenging the federal ban on handgun sales to adults between the ages of 18 and 20. In late 2022, U.S. District Judge Robert R. Summerhays dismissed the complaint, ruling that young adults have no Second Amendment right to purchase the most common firearm for self-defense, but that decision was overturned by a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in January of this year.

Since then, the plaintiffs and the DOJ have been arguing over the scope of the relief that should be granted, given that the appellate court found the law in question is unconstitutional. That alone should have favored a judgment from Summerhays that covered as many 18-to-20-year-olds as possible. Instead, on Tuesday, Summerhays rendered a judgment that leaves the unconstitutional law in place for almost everyone.

In a press release, SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said the “practical effect of this order is almost laughable if it wasn’t so frustrating and didn’t impact the Second Amendment rights of thousands of individuals.”

“What the court has done here is say that this law is unconstitutional, but in order for an 18-year-old to avoid having their constitutional rights trounced by it today they must live in one of only three states in the nation and have been the member of SAF at age 13. And even then, they’re only covered if SAF discloses their membership to the government under duress. We’re currently examining our options in relation to the relief granted and will vigorously defend our members’ right to free association and privacy of such.”

The Firearms Policy Coalition is similarly incensed, stating in a release:

Rather than uphold the Constitution and binding Supreme Court precedent, the Court regurgitated the Trump Administration’s self-serving demand to wipe away the Fifth Circuit’s ruling against the government’s unconstitutional ban and continue denying millions of peaceable adults their right to keep and bear arms.

To be clear: FPC has never provided a list of its members to the government—and never will.

Our legal team is already taking action to urgently address this appalling order. We will commence appellate proceedings as necessary to protect our members and effectuate the Fifth Circuit’s decision in our favor. Further updates will be provided as the case proceeds.

The descriptions of Summerhays’ judgment aren’t hyperbolic. Here’s the text of the order so you can see for yourself.

The Court enters declaratory judgment, as described in paragraph 3 below, with respect to (a) Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, Emily Naquin, and (b) individuals and federally licensed firearms importers, manufacturers, dealers or collectors who were members of Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Second Amendment Foundation, or Louisiana Shooting Association at the time this action was filed on November 6, 2020.

The Court hereby declares that 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1), and their attendant regulations, are unconstitutional and violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution to the extent those provisions prevent the sale or delivery of handguns and/or handgun ammunition by and to persons identified in paragraph 2 on account of the buyer being 18 to 20 years old.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, its Director, the Attorney General of the United States, and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and all persons in active concert with them and who have actual notice of this Judgment are hereby enjoined, within the jurisdictional boundaries of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (i.e., Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), from enforcing the provisions referenced in paragraph 3, to the extent those provisions prevent the sale or delivery of handguns and/or handgun ammunition by and to persons identified in paragraph 2 on account of the buyer being 18 to 20 years old.

Within twenty-one (21) days of issuance of this Judgment, those Plaintiffs identified at paragraph 2(b) shall provide to Defendants a verified list of their members as of November 6, 2020.

Summerhays’ order basically parrots the judgment proposed by the DOJ, which is another problem. President Donald Trump’s executive action to protect the Second Amendment states, in part, that:

… the Attorney General shall examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
     (b)  In developing such proposed plan of action, the Attorney General shall review, at a minimum:
…
(v)    The positions taken by the United States in any and all ongoing and potential litigation that affects or could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights;

The judgment proposed by the DOJ (and accepted by Summerhays) is completely contrary to Trump’s order for the DOJ to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.

Donald Trump wasn’t in office when oral arguments in Reese v. ATF took place before the Fifth Circuit last fall, and had only been in office for ten days when the Fifth Circuit overturned Summerhays’s original decision and declared the ban on handgun sales unconstitutional.

Trump issued his executive order on protecting the Second Amendment in early February, and DOJ decided not long after that it would not appeal the Fifth Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court. That was in accordance with the president’s order, but at some point between February and July, when the DOJ submitted its proposed judgment to the court, the agency adopted a position that runs counter to Trump’s executive action.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the proposed judgment was written, at least in part, by attorneys within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which has been taking historic actions to protect the right to keep and bear arms. In just the past couple of months the division has weighed in against “assault weapon” and “large capacity” magazine bans and sued the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over delays in issuing concealed carry permits. It’s bizarre, then, to see the DOJ take the position that, even though this law is unconstitutional, it can continue to enforce it against virtually everyone except the named plaintiffs in Reese.

We’ll be talking more about this case with FPC”s Brandon Combs on today’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co, and I encourage you to tune in and check out what he has to say. Thankfully, this isn’t the only case dealing with young adults and their 2A rights in the legal pipeline, and the Supreme Court has the opportunity to grant cert to similar challenges coming out of the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits later this fall. There’s a clear split in the appellate courts on the issue, and hopefully SCOTUS will soon provide young adults the relief denied to them by Summerhays.

Cynical Publius

🔥MRS. DR. PUBLIUS ALERT🔥

To the women of the Western world – I have a sober urgent message.

Please listen carefully. For those of you who believe the toxic rhetoric of the left -PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY.

You must stop this nonsense – raging war against Western civilization. Western men do not (as a cultural norm) rape children or adjudicate cases of rape by allowing the rapist to marry the victim as reparations. That’s not our cultural norm.

Western women, we must use our voices and platforms wisely. Our entire culture is under attack – our real enemy will be the implementation of Sharia law. Please investigate the tenets of Sharia law for yourself- don’t take my word for it. Step back and look at the situation. Even without a profound understanding of history, we must look beyond today’s headlines and think strategically.

I’ve spent several months reading from different resources describing what Sharia law really means for non-Muslim, Western women. With certainty, you WILL lose all of your independence/autonomy – you will lose control over your own body – you will lose control over your own life – things you currently possess in our culture. These things don’t exist for Muslim women.

STOP listening to the left – they don’t care if you become subjugated against your will. Look at the Christian churches being burned in Nigeria or in Sudan’s North Darfur- Christians are being killed or young girls are being stalked and raped by rape gangs in the UK – all at the hands of Muslim men. This is the Muslim community’s idea of tolerance. If we in the West don’t reverse course – stand up and state the obvious truth – the numbers don’t lie – our culture will succumb to the will of people who desperately do not share like values with us. This is our very survival.

Women, it is the preservation of our constitutional rights that gives us true equality with men – and it is Christianity that reflects this authentic equality most clearly in our modern world. I don’t care if you are offended by that – history confirms my stance.

This needs to be said – the left is waging a war of distraction while the real travesty of what illegal immigration has done to Europe (and to a lesser extent the US) is being obscured – this policy is engulfing Western civilization because Islam does not practice tolerance of other religions/cultures in its home countries. This isn’t about “working families,” healthcare is a right, or any of the corrupted rhetoric of the left to engender class warfare – neither is the offensive racist rhetoric against white men. The left only pulls these sound bites out for their convenience.

I understand Islam is a religion and in the U.S. people have a right to practice their religion (unless it infringes on the rights of others), all because our Constitutional rights are the great equalizer. However, once Muslims take over our government at all levels by sheer numbers – they will implement Sharia law – this is why Islam is incompatible with our constitutional republic. Under Sharia law, Muslims may mislead non-Muslims in order to benefit the spread of Islam. So today, the left touts an ephemeral alliance with Muslims against Israel, but under Sharia law, these same neo-Marxists will be executed for being homosexual or transgender or having sex outside of marriage, and Christians will be enslaved, reduced to dhimmitude and/or executed for their faith. Convert or die – that will be the only choice – that is the reality.

So, that’s what awaits us if we don’t STOP this nonsense now and if we don’t change course, the perpetrators who engineered this catastrophic collapse of Western civilization will be enjoying their Mai Tais on their private islands while our culture lay in ruins.

Even the globalists who think they will still be in control when Western civilization has imploded are truly deceived – because they will face the irrational hoards of Islamic jihadists thirsting for their severed heads.

The women of the left have alienated the very culture that would have defended them. Please consider my arguments, and reverse course while there is still time.

Peace and prepare.

Cynical Publius
I’d like to add my own 2c here, A lot of Americans think what my missus is saying is hyperbole. Ask any veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan if this is all true. Ask anyone who has ever lived or worked in a Gulf state if this is all true. Not only will they confirm it, but they will tell you Mrs. Dr. P. Is holding back.

Your tax dollars at work….and play

Legal Trouble on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Has a for-profit film school been padding its job-placement stats?

The Los Angeles Film School is caught up in a scandal over its alleged efforts to trick students into believing that its graduates do extraordinarily well in the Hollywood job market. The accusation comes from two former executives of the school, wherein no doubt there is the plot outline for a noir-ish movie about double- and triple-crosses in the shadows of Sunset Boulevard. Happily the Los Angeles Film School sits at 6363 Sunset Boulevard, and it is a private, for-profit entity, just like a movie studio or a casino.

I admit that the troubles on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams are not my usual beat. I’m more accustomed to the smooth operators of the Ivy League and the grifters of the state universities. But since the dawn of Hollywood there has never been a shortage of young people to say, in the words of Green Day, “Sometimes I wish someone out there [would] find me.” And a fair number of those who harbor such wishes are lured by the Los Angeles Film School, where “Hollywood is your classroom.”

The pockets (allegedly) picked in this instance are not just those of the students. My news in this case comes from that key source for higher-ed intel, Variety. The pockets (allegedly) picked in this instance are not just those of the students. The federal government was (allegedly) fleeced, as well. Can I skip the “allegedly” from this point on? I stipulate that this is all about allegations, and, this being Los Angeles, those allegations could well disappear with the re-write.

“‘Nearly all’ of the tens of millions of dollars the school receives each year from federal student aid programs is the result of fraud.” Most of the school’s students qualified for federal student loans: money that can be spent only to pay tuition at educational institutions that meet certain criteria. This is to prevent students from being fleeced at degree mills. The government determines whether a school is a degree mill by the percentage of students who graduate and get a well-paying job in their field of study. The Los Angeles Film School has an abundance of attractive programs, from “Animation: Environment and Character Design” to “Audio Production” and “Film Cinematography.” A bachelor’s degree in one of these costs about $80,000.

A reasonably prudent student might have some doubts about the likelihood that such a degree would pay off.

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Supreme Court turns away Missouri’s bid to revive gun law

The Supreme Court turned away Missouri’s bid to revive its law purporting to declare various federal gun restrictions unconstitutional in the state, the justices announced Monday.

It has become a major battle over state versus federal authority. The Biden administration launched a lawsuit and convinced lower courts that Missouri’s statute violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

After the change in administration, Trump’s Justice Department maintains that some provisions are unconstitutional.

But it agreed the lower judge went too far in blocking the act’s entirety at the onset. The administration urged the Supreme Court to turn away Missouri’s appeal and send the case back so the injunction can be narrowed.

“That is all the more reason why review by this Court is unwarranted at this juncture,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court filings.

Monday’s announcement came on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, a year already filled with major battles over race, LGBTQ rights and Trump’s second-term agenda.

The justices considered Missouri’s petition at a closed-door conference last week alongside hundreds of other cases that had piled up over the summer. On Friday, the court announced it will hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Hawaii gun law, which bans concealed carry on private property without the owner’s express permission.

Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act in 2021, declaring certain federal gun laws unconstitutional and prohibits using state resources to enforce them.

Missouri agencies and law enforcement also cannot hire anyone who has attempted to enforce those laws as a federal employee. Private parties can sue over violations and seek up to $50,000 penalties.

The Biden administration challenged the law and won in the lower courts.

The Supreme Court at an earlier stage of the case declined Missouri’s request for an emergency intervention that would enable the law’s enforcement as litigation proceeds. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s conservatives, publicly dissented.

Back at the high court, Missouri’s petition insisted the law is constitutional and the federal government lacks the right to sue Missouri because the law is enforced by private citizens, not state actors.

Missouri told the justices they should still take up the case to definitively reject the legal challenge, despite the Trump administration’s urging to turn away the appeal.

“The Eighth Circuit’s reasoning is a Pandora’s Box that will misguide lower courts and impose a straitjacket on States,” the state wrote in court filings.

“No wonder the Government refuses to defend it.”

I love it when activist judge with a political agenda get slapped by SCOTUS and have to publicly reverse themselves.

Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Blaming Gun Company for Mass Shooting

A Brady-backed lawsuit against Century Arms blaming a Romanian gun company and a U.S. firearms distributor for the 2019 mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California has finally been dismissed by a federal judge, almost a year after he ruled the case could move forward.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions refused to dismiss the suit in late 2024, arguing that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act didn’t shield Romarm S.A. and Century Arms because the plaintiffs had “plausibly pled an aiding and abetting theory that satisfied the predicate exception to PLCAA’s liability bar.”

The predicate exception, according to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Smith & Wesson v. Mexcio, requires that defendants “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing” of firearms, and the violation “was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.”

The plaintiffs in the case stemming from the Garlic Festival shooting had argued that Romarm and Century Arms had aided and abetted the shooter’s illegal gun possession in California by selling the WASR-10 that was used in the attack in states where the arm is perfectly legal to own.

Sessions originally accepted that claim under the dubious reasoning that the defendants “knew that California-based criminals were buying guns in Nevada with the illegal intent of transporting them into California,” yet “flooded the Nevada market with guns and employed marketing and pricing strategies with the intent of encouraging or facilitating such transport, not merely with indifference that such transport occurs,” which in turn “aided the commission of illegal gun possession in California.”

But in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, the Supreme Court stated that any aiding-and-abetting claims that aren’t based on a specific violation of state or federal law “must be backed by plausible allegations of pervasive, systemic, and culpable assistance.” After that decision was handed down Romarm and Century Arms asked Sessions to reconsider his decision, and now the judge has reversed himself and dismissed the case.

The issue for reconsideration, in light of Smith and Wesson, is that none of those findings are particular to the specific incident in this case. The shooter was a Nevada resident at the time of purchase, so his purchase was presumptively legal. Plaintiffs have not alleged with any specificity that Defendants advertised or marketed their products in any way that encouraged the shooter to take his legally purchased firearm across the border to California where it would be illegally possessed.

The oversupply argument similarly fails, as applied to the shooter, because he was a Nevada resident. No matter how many surplus guns were distributed in Nevada beyond what the Nevada market could bear, the fact that the Plaintiff was a part of the Nevada market who was not engaged in some sort of broader trafficking scheme is a flaw in that reasoning.

Put another way, the firearm at the center of this case was not part of an excess supply allegedly flooded into Nevada with the goal of attracting California residents for the simple reason that the shooter was a Nevada resident. So, while Defendants’ act in manufacturing the firearm and marketing it in Nevada may have aided the commission of some illegal gun possession in California, it does not follow, on the facts pled, that they aided the shooter’s illegal gun possession in California “beyond providing the good on the open market.”

It seems to me that Sessions could and should have dismissed the case even before SCOTUS handed down its unanimous decision throwing out Mexico’s lawsuit against Smith & Wesson and other U.S. gunmakers, but the fact that he allowed the case to move forward under such specious claims just demonstrates the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision that helped lay out the scope of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act’s protections.

Sessions, a Clinton appointee who’s served on the bench since 1995, still argued in dismissing the case that “it may well be true” that “Defendants’ acts aided the commission of illegal gun possession in California” in other instances, but the plaintiffs haven’t plausibly proved that to be the case here. That statement was completely superfluous and unnecessary, and appears to telegraph Session’s willingness to punish companies in the firearms industry for the third-party actions of criminals whenever possible. 

In this case, thankfully, Sessions couldn’t get around the plain language of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico. If it weren’t for that unanimous decision penned by Justice Elena Kagan, though, Brady’s junk lawsuit would still be an ongoing threat to the lawful commerce in arms.