New York judge declines to appoint monitor for NRA, bans former CEO Wayne LaPierre from working with group
Ruling came amid four-year legal battle between gun rights group and New York state

A New York judge on Monday decided not to assign an outside monitor to oversee the National Rifle Association (NRA), but banned Wayne LaPierre, the former CEO of the gun rights group, from employment with the organization for ten years.

The split decision from Judge Joel Cohen came on the final day of arguments in the second stage of the civil trial of the NRA brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Cohen said appointing a monitor to oversee the NRA wasn’t a correct remedy, saying it would be “time-consuming, disruptive and will impose significant costs on the NRA without corresponding benefits.”

He also voiced concerns about potential government intrusion into the gun rights organization.

“Today’s developments validate the NRA’s reform efforts and commitment to good governance – and recognize the First Amendment stakes of this case,” NRA attorney William A. Brewer III said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Based on the record established at trial, the court rejected the NYAG’s request for a monitor.”

LaPierre said appointing a monitor to oversee the NRA’s finances would be the “equivalent to putting a knife straight through the heart of the organization and twisting it.”

“General James will have achieved her objective to fulfill that campaign promise of, in effect, dissolving the NRA for a lack of money and a lack of members,” he said.

In a statement, NRA President Bob Barr said the group is committed to improving its “good governance.”

NY Attorney General Letitia James during an inauguration ceremony in 2019
Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, vowed to take on the NRA and called the group a “terrorist organization.” (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

“As the NRA committed to the court, we will continue to pursue improvements to our commitment to good governance,” Barr said. “We thank the board for its support and salute our loyal members. Freedom prevails, again.”

LaPierre resigned from the organization earlier this year, citing health reasons. James brought a corruption case against the former CEO, who was accused of siphoning millions of dollars from the NRA to fund a lavish lifestyle complete with trips on private jets and other luxury gifts.

Prior to being elected, James vowed to take on the NRA and called the group a “terrorist organization.” The NRA has accused James of weaponizing her office to target the group.

In 2020, she brought a lawsuit accusing NRA leadership of violating state and federal laws to divert millions of dollars to their own pockets.

A jury ordered LaPierre to repay almost $4.4 million to the organization, while the NRA’s retired finance chief, Wilson “Woody” Phillips, was ordered to pay back $2 million.

Following Monday’s ruling, NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin said the group plans to move “full speed ahead” with its mission.

“We have a mission to fulfill and elections to win up and down the ballot,” he said. “This is a major step toward rebuilding the trust of the members, donors, industry, and our staff.”

Intruder shot and killed by homeowner on Corpus Christi’s Southside

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — Corpus Christi Police are investigating after a homeowner shot and killed an intruder at his home on Sunday morning around 7:51 a.m.

CCPD told KRIS 6 News that the shooting happened on the 7000 block of Brandon Drive. That’s inside the Buckingham Estates subdivision off Yorktown Blvd and South Staples Street on Corpus Christi’s south side.

Police said just before 8 a.m., they got a call from the homeowner, who said he shot an intruder who had broken into his home. When officers arrived, they found the man dead inside the home.

The homeowner is cooperating with investigators. No one else was hurt.

Supreme Court to hear disputes over ghost guns, veteran disabilities, pollution during new term

The Supreme Court will return from its summer recess in October and hear legal battles involving ghost guns, veteran disability claims and water pollution in the justices’ first sitting of the new term.

On Friday, the court released its October calendar, which includes four notable disputes:

Ghost guns

On Oct. 8, the justices will take up a dispute over ghost guns — firearms that can be assembled and lack serial numbers. It will be the second day for the justices after they return from a three-month recess to kick off the 2024-25 term.

The Biden administration asked the justices to review a case in which a federal appeals court struck down a regulation governing the sale of kits to make ghost guns, saying it stretched the definition of “firearm” found in the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Justice Department lawyers say ghost guns have turned into an end-run around federal gun control laws, allowing “anyone with access to the internet to anonymously buy a parts kit or partially complete frame or receiver that can be assembled into a working firearm in as little as 20 minutes.”

Gun rights advocates say if the government wants to regulate the sale of ghost guns, it must pass a new law, arguing the feds can’t stretch the 1968 legislation that far.

Comment O’ The Day….
“This is not the result of inept teaching. It’s the result of a deliberate strategy.”

Today’s Students Are Dangerously Ignorant of Our Nation’s History. And Our Failing Education System Is to Blame.

When Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” he was, as usual, prescient.

This summer, the democratic republic known as the United States of America is 248 years old, and civically minded organizations around the country are already busily working on plans to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. Such a milestone is a cause for real celebration; by most reckonings, we are the longest-lasting democracy in history. Democracies are fragile: The Athenian democracy never made it to 200. Americans should use this anniversary as an opportunity for sober reflection on the current state, as well as the future, of our own democratic republic.

There is much for which to be thankful, as America’s free market economy and all-volunteer military force are still the envy of the world. There is also much to give us pause regarding the durability of our institutions, the moral fiber of our leaders, and the prospects for free government at home and abroad. It should be obvious: Challenges to election integrity—typically a sign of disease in a free body politic—an assault on our Capitol, and a looming election in which 25% of voters are dissatisfied with both major candidates are not cause for carefree celebration.

Oxford philosopher of history R.G. Collingwood wrote, “All history is an attempt to understand the present by reconstructing its determining conditions.” In these times, it should come as a dire warning that without a doubt, most young American college graduates are nowhere close to having the historical perspective to guide them through the rough political climate we face.

How much do today’s college students really know about their nation’s past? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has conducted a fresh national survey of college students to answer just this question. The results are concerning.

Sixty percent of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress. Sixty-three percent were unable to identify the chief justice of the Supreme Court. These are multiple-choice questions. Students did not have to recall John Roberts’s name, they merely had to recognize it, and a large majority failed. The same is true for the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, whose name was only known to 35% of students. Sixty-eight percent did not know that impeachment trials occur before the Senate, despite living through two presidential impeachments as well as the impeachment trial of a cabinet official.

If these students are not reading the newspaper, it does not seem to be because they are busy studying their history lessons. A majority of students believe—falsely—that the Constitution was written in 1776, rather than 1787. This suggests two things: First, most students do not understand the origin of our Constitution—how the Articles of Confederation proved unworkable, how James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others gathered in Philadelphia to make amendments but emerged instead with a new form of government, which the American people then debated before adopting. (This explains another survey result, which shows that a majority of students could not identify the purpose of the Federalist Papers.)

Students who believe the Constitution was written in 1776 do not understand the purpose and meaning of the Constitution. Second, and more importantly, these students clearly have not learned the true events of 1776, and thus their yearly Independence Day celebrations on July 4th are sadly hollow and devoid of content. They enjoy the barbecues and the fireworks, but they often lack a basic understanding of what is being honored by the holiday.

America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, once explained that the Constitution of 1787 was like a silver frame surrounding an apple of gold. The golden apple, he said, was the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the principles of which animate the republic, dedicate it to liberty and human equality, and cause it, so long as it adheres to such principles, to be a light unto the other nations, a beacon of freedom to all people. It was also President Lincoln who said in his Gettysburg Address that in America the government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Of course, only 23% of students were able to identify the source of that quote, and we may fear something yet more dangerous: that not many more understand what it means.

None of this is the fault of the students. Numbers like these do not arise from lazy pupils but from feckless pedagogues who are failing in their charge. Fewer than 20% of American colleges and universities require a course on United States government or history to graduate, according to data ACTA has compiled for our curricular study, WhatWillTheyLearn.com. This is unacceptable. Higher education that is worthy of its name would do better, and our universities must do better for our Constitution to endure another two decades, let alone two centuries. Every student should be required to take U.S. government and history to earn a college degree. Some states, such as South Carolina and Texas, already mandate this, and more should follow suit.

In a democratic republic such as ours, citizens must be informed for the commonwealth to function. As George Washington said in his Farewell Address, “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” Far from being enlightened, our students today are seldom even taught the basics. This must change, for the sake of the students and for the future of our nation.

Speaking of commie chicanery…..

Media’s Soviet-Style Airbrushing of Kamala Harris’ Problematic History.

After episodes of Axios and GovTrack retroactively changing their reporting, we are in uncharted territory where we are in Soviet style rewriting of history, not just media bias.

Today I time traveled back to my days in the USSR as a student, and my study of Soviet history. Or should I say Soviet historical revisionism.

Below is my take on these two stories we covered:

Today I had a little bit of PTSD reaction to the news cycle.

As many of you know, I studied in the Soviet Union during college. I traveled extensively throughout the country and I became very friendly with dissident and refusenik families who were being persecuted. So I knew Soviet history very well.

And there’s a joke that I saw on Twitter today, which was that in the Soviet Union, the future was always written, but it’s the past that kept changing. And what they were talking about is Stalin and other Soviet leaders had a habit of changing history. And they would do it in many ways. And one of the ways they would do it as featured in this image.

Stalin was notorious for having a group of Photoshop, before there was Photoshop, of photo editors who could take people out of photos, could airbrush people who were now politically not acceptable. But they also did it by replacing pages in encyclopedias. Beria, the former secret police chief, had his pages replaced in the Soviet encyclopedias so that future generations literally would not know he existed because all they had then was the encyclopedia.

And I felt a little bit of that vibe, a lot of bit of that vibe today when there were stories about how Axios was going back and essentially rewriting its history. As we know for Kamala Harris, one of her big problems is that she was responsible for the border. And we all remember she was called the Border Czar. And you know what? Axios wrote an article today saying that’s not true. She was never called the Border Czar. And then people found from 2021 articles in Axios calling her the Border Czar because she doesn’t want to now take responsibility for the border problems.

So Axios just reinvented it, wrote an addition saying, oh, we were wrong back then. We used it improperly.

No, they didn’t. They used it in context at the time because that’s what she was called. And just like the Soviets go back and airbrush people and rewrite things, that’s what Axios did today.

But it even got worse because another one of Kamala Harris’s major problems, and this is already running in GOP ads attacking her, is that in 2019 GovTack.us, which is not a governmental agency, it’s a private company, but people rely on it as an authority on what happens in the government. GovTrack had rated her in 2019 as the most liberal senator in the Senate. That means to the left of Bernie Sanders. That’s a problem for Kamala Harris, and that is something that Republicans are hitting her on.

And in completely Soviet style. GovTrack simply took down her page and posted a notice saying that they’ve reconsidered things. And their whole methodology that they used in 2019, not just for her, but for everybody, was now wrong. And they removed the page much like the Soviets would remove pages from the encyclopedia.

So that’s what I felt today, we are in really uncharted territories. We are used to media bias, that’s baked into the system. We are used to politicians and the media lying about each other’s history.

We’re really not used to Soviet style recapitulation, Soviet style airbrushing, Soviet style reinventing of history. And that’s what the media appears to be set to do because she’s such a problematic candidate with her positions, with her ratings as being to the left of Bernie Sanders, they are simply going to rewrite history. They’re going to pretend that that never existed. Now maybe you like that, maybe you want somebody to the left of Bernie Sanders, but they know that’s a problem.

So we are in uncharted territory where we are in Soviet style rewriting of history, not just media bias.

Still In Denial

NRA President Bob Barr sent out an email to the Board of Directors this afternoon. It noted that the bench portion of the New York trial was coming to a close on Monday, July 29th. The gist of the email which is below is that there is no need for a special monitor, it is invasive and detrimental to the NRA, and that since 2018 the NRA has cleaned up its act. Barr went on to say he was not fully quoted with regard to recouping the $4 million plus owed to the NRA by Wayne LaPierre. In that, he may be correct.

I said in late May that Barr had the ability to regain the trust of members and to reassure the court that a special monitor was not needed through his committee appointments. I said it needed to be transparent and that Mssrs. Cotton and Coy must never be allowed to remain on the Audit and Finance Committees. I also suggested that members of the Four for Reform ought to be considered for important committee assignments.

Disappointingly, Barr all but assured that Judge Cohen will feel that he has no option but to appoint a special monitor with his committee assignments. First, not only was Charles Cotton allowed to remain as chair of the Audit Committee but was added to the Ethics Committee as the chair. Second, David Coy remains as chair of the Finance Committee. Third, the anti-reform Cabal holds all the chair and vice-chair positions on the major committees for whom appointments have been made public. Only Rocky Marshall of the Four for Reform was given a major committee assignment and “Gang of 12” reformers are in a minority on all the committees. Barr had a chance but in my opinion he blew it.

Barr and, by extension, the Board are still in denial. They can say they have made changes and point to the hiring of a Chief Compliance Officer among other things. They can say their expert witnesses all testified to improvements, to not needing a special compliance monitor, and that this is the “new” NRA. The NRA publications can write about the NRA’s “new direction” and run headlines saying “the future of the NRA is bright.”

What they fail to understand is that the rank and file members of the NRA don’t trust them. Trust, once lost, is hard to regain. Hopes were raised at the last Board meeting with the election of ostensible reformers to major positions and then the committee assignments dashed that hope. We see that the people that allowed Wayne and his pack of grifters to get away with it for years are still running things. We read that the NRA has paid at least $182 million in legal fees to Bill Brewer and his minions all the while thinking what that money could have done for the Second Amendment. We know the members voted for a Chief Compliance Officer but then hear it whispered about how he has blown off serious whistleblower complaints. And the list goes on.

I could go on but I think I’ll just post the email and let you, the reader, come to your own conclusion.

From Bob Barr as sent out by John Frazer:

Dear Board of Directors,

As you know, the NRA is nearing the end of “phase two” of the trial proceedings versus the New York Attorney General (NYAG). The bench trial began on July 15, and will conclude on Monday, July 29. As reported to the board on July 4, a focal point of the proceedings is the NYAG’s pursuit of a court-appointed monitor with sweeping powers. On behalf of the Special Litigation Committee (SLC), please note that the NYAG’s court filing, Exhibit O, reflects an invasive measure that we believe is absolutely detrimental to the Association and its mission.

Of course, it is no surprise that the NYAG, who filed suit to dissolve the NRA, is peddling its “version” of the story. However, the trial testimony has shown that, beginning in 2018, the NRA undertook to prevent any override of its financial controls. Extensive testimony has clearly established the NRA’s commitment to good governance. Importantly, there has been no evidence that the NRA is not appropriately managing its assets; and there is no ongoing or persistent violation of its internal controls – all alleged by the NYAG.

Our senior staff members, board members, and experts offered powerful testimony regarding our heightened commitment to compliance training, and the important role played by our Chief Compliance Officer and our Internal Auditor. As such, we believe there is no need for the court to impose invasive equitable relief. Doing so would have a chilling effect on our organization’s ability to fulfill its mission and cultivate grassroots support, donations, and public goodwill. For these many reasons, I am optimistic we will achieve a positive outcome for the NRA and its millions of members.

On Thursday, the court heard testimony from Daniel Kurtz, the former New York State Assistant Attorney General-in-Charge of the Charities Bureau. He testified that he sees “New York State both persecuting and prosecuting the NRA,” and noted the NYAG’s pursuit of a monitor is “crazy, unprecedented.” He added, “There’s never been a situation, to my knowledge, in which a monitor has been appointed to reform the nonprofit governance of an organization” – equating New York’s pursuit of the NRA to McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s.

In closing, know that no board officer, including myself, has ever suggested the NRA would not seek to recover any final awards owed to the NRA by individual defendants. At trial, I testified that I assumed the NRA was still finalizing its plans in this regard. My full testimony (conveniently not publicized via “X” and other social media platforms) explained this is because no final awards have yet been confirmed, and the NYAG bears the responsibility to pursue the recoveries in question. The NYAG is responsible for securing the awards because of her standing as the plaintiff in these proceedings. The NRA, of course, is committed to holding the NYAG’s feet to the fire and pursuing every dollar to which it is entitled, period. 

The bottom line is, I remain optimistic that despite attempts to distort the NRA’s commitment to good governance, the court appreciates and understands our record. The NRA and its many witnesses have presented a true picture of the Association – one that is dedicated now and in the future to achieving the best interests of our members in all we do.

Thanks,

Bob Barr, President 

Federal Judge Tosses Lawsuit Blaming Gun Companies for D.C. Shooting

In April, 2022, a 23-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia opened fire from a Washington, D.C. apartment, injuring four people before taking his own life. One of the victims of the shooting filed a $75 million lawsuit several months later that sought to blame a number of companies in the firearms industry responsible for the crime, including Daniel Defense, Magpul Industries, and Vista Outdoors.

In her initial complaint, Karen Lowy and her attorneys claimed that the companies “have deceptively and unfairly marketed their assault rifles, rifle accessories, and ammunition in ways designed to appeal to the impulsive, risk-taking tendencies of civilian adolescent and post-adolescent males—the same category of consumers Defendants have watched, time after time, commit the type of mass shooting that unfolded again at the Edmund Burke School.”

Now a federal judge has thrown out the lawsuit, ruling that Lowy failed to back up those claims with facts.

Here, a third party bridges the alleged causal chain between defendants’ conduct and plaintiffs’ injuries. At the beginning of the alleged causal chain, defendants marketed their weapons and weapons accessories to potential consumers in Virginia.

At the end, Shooter injured plaintiffs by firing at an elementary school. This chain relies on Shooter, a third party not before the Court, to link defendants to plaintiffs’ injuries.
Accordingly, to establish standing against defendants, plaintiffs must allege that defendants’ conduct had a determinative or coercive effect upon Shooter’s actions.

Much of plaintiffs’ complaint concerns defendants’ marketing to Virginia residents generally and “young men like the Shooter,” id. { 57, but few paragraphs allege the effect of defendants’ marketing on Shooter specifically.

To link Shooter’s actions to Defendant Daniel Defense, LLC, for example, plaintiffs plead that Daniel Defense “advertised to Virginia residents such as the Shooter,”  and allege “[upon information and belief, the Shooter relied on Defendant Daniel Defense, LLC’s advertisements to purchase the DDM4 V7 rifle and DD magazine.”

These allegations fail for two reasons.

First, concerning Shooter’s reliance on defendants’ marketing, plaintiffs’ allegations are conclusory. Generally, a plaintiff may plead “based on ‘information and belief if such plaintiff is in a position of uncertainty because the necessary evidence is controlled by the defendant.”

But, like all other allegations, allegations pled upon information and belief “may not be wholly conclusory.” If “not supported by any well-pled facts that exist independent of [plaintiffs’) legal conclusions,” allegations pled upon information and belief fail.

Such is the case here: no factual allegations in the complaint support the conclusion that Shooter relied on defendants’ marketing. The complaint does not suggest defendants control such evidence of Shooter’s reliance and does no more than speculate that Shooter, like other young men in Virginia, observed defendants’ advertisements.

Without more support, these pleadings fail to raise plaintiffs’ right to relief above the speculative level and can proceed no further.

Second, viewed most optimistically, plaintiffs allege that Shooter relied on defendants’ advertisements when choosing to purchase defendants’ products. The Court cannot transform that allegation into an allegation that defendants’ marketing had a “determinative or coercive effect” on Shooters’ decision to shoot at plaintiffs. While the bounds of Article III’s causation requirement may at times seem opaque, “[c]ausation
makes its most useful contribution to standing analysis in circumstances that show a clear break in the causal chain.

Here, the actions of a third party injured plaintiffs. As explained above, completing the causal chain requires plaintiffs to allege
defendants’ conduct had a determinative or coercive effect on that third party’s injurious actions. This complaint, however, fails to make that allegation.

Maybe defendants’ advertising coerced Shooter to purchase defendants’ products (and that allegation, as discussed above, is speculative), but absent is any allegation that defendants’ advertising coerced Shooter to attack the elementary school. Without that allegation, plaintiffs’ alleged causal chain is incomplete, and plaintiffs lack standing against these defendants.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton went on to say that even if Lowy had been able to produce evidence that the shooter was motivated to shoot people because he saw a gun ad, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would have precluded the case from going forward. I’m glad to see that Hilton didn’t solely rely on the PLCAA in his decision to dismiss the case against these companies, but instead highlighted the vacuous nature of the claims that the shooter must have been goaded into his criminal activity by the marketing of companies like Daniel Defense and Magpul.

The only person to blame for this shooting is the shooter himself, and because he took his own life Lowy won’t be able to get justice in a criminal court. As frustrating as that undoubtedly is, it doesn’t justify scapegoating gun, ammo, and accessory companies for his crimes, and Judge Hilton made the right call in dismissing Lowy’s lawsuit.

Houston home invasion leaves suspect in critical condition

HOUSTON – A home invasion in southwest Houston left one suspect in critical condition after shots were fired on Friday night.

According to Houston Police Department Lieutenant Riley, a woman called to report four to five men were outside her home in the 10600 block of Beechnut Street with rifles, banging on her door.

The suspects forced entry into the home and the occupants inside exchanged gunfire with the men, according to HPD.

Lt. Rile reports one suspect was hit in the head multiple times. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

No one inside the home was hurt, officials say.

HPD is investigating the incident.