The Federal Trade Commission Takes On the 2nd Amendment

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson requesting the FTC investigate whether the Biden Administration’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention worked with anti-Second Amendment organizations to demand that the agency crack down on “deceptive and misleading claims” made by gun manufacturers. These efforts were supported by a group of anti-Second Amendment senators who wrote to then-FTC Chair Lina Khan asking her to investigate the gun industry’s advertising practices.

The senators’ letter accused the gun industry of marketing to children because their ads referenced popular “first person shooter video games” like Call of Duty. The problem with this claim is that the majority of gamers are over 18—making it perfectly legal for the firearms industry to market their products to them. The letter also suggests that the gun industry is engaging in “deceptive” advertising by focusing on how firearm ownership can help law-abiding citizens protect themselves, their families, and their property. Once again, the senators’ claims do not fit the facts.

Gun owners use firearms in self-defense between 60,000 and 2,500,000 times per year, and private citizens are 85% more likely to use a gun for self-defense than to be killed by a firearm. It is not misleading to say that firearms can be a useful tool for self-defense. Sadly, it is also true that there are around 526 accidental gun deaths per year, as well as over 40,000 people wounded due to the careless use of firearms. However, the solution is not to restrict firearm advertising—but to promote responsible gun ownership. The gun industry, along with other pro-Second Amendment organizations, does engage in plenty of work in this area.

As weak as the arguments for restricting firearms advertising are, the main argument against such restrictions is that they violate the First Amendment. Supreme Court precedent establishes that commercial speech like advertising is protected by the First Amendment, although at a lower level than political or religious speech. Even under this lower standard of review, banning or otherwise restricting advertisements for firearms would likely be struck down by the courts.

But while a future gun-grabbing FTC Chair may not be able to directly restrict gun advertising, they may try to ban gun ads through the back door. One way to do this would be to condition approval of mergers and acquisitions of media companies—including social media companies—on an agreement to not promote “dangerous” products such as firearms. If this sounds familiar it is because it is the approach of current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson. Ferguson has conditioned approval of advertising firm Omnicom’s acquisition of fellow advertising company Interpublic on the firms agreeing not to restrict web ad placements based on the sites’ political content. Is it too hard to imagine a future progressive FTC conditioning a similar merger on a company’s agreement to not place ads on sites that promote products dangerous to public health, such as firearms?

Government agencies may not even have to directly threaten to deny approval of a merger or acquisition to get a company to disregard the Second Amendment rights of their consumers. For example, before winning approval of their purchase by Skydance, Paramount—who owns CBS—settled a lawsuit brought by President Trump alleging that 60 Minutes edited their interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make her appear more knowledgable and coherent. President Trump claims this was done to make the Vice President more appealing to voters, and thus constituted election interference.

A long time 60 Minutes producer resigned earlier this year, saying the network was interfering with the program’s editorial decisions to moderate criticisms of President Trump. While FCC Chair Brandon Carr did not explicitly demand these actions, his rhetoric about broadcasters being required to act in the “public interest”, and his threats to block the Paramount-Skydance deal, no doubt played a role in Paramount’s actions.

It is easy to imagine a progressive FTC or FCC Chair using this precedent to forbid a news program, podcast, or even entertainment program from including content considered pro-gun. Fortunately, the pro-Second Amendment movement is fighting any attempt to use spurious claims of “false and deceptive” advertising to infringe on the Second Amendment. According to Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, his group “is leading the charge to unravel many of Biden’s unconstitutional restrictions in the courts, and we applaud President Trump for working to roll back other abuses—because the Second Amendment isn’t a bargaining chip, it’s the cornerstone of every American’s freedom.”

Appeal Brief Filed in Knife Rights’ Second Amendment Federal Switchblade Act Lawsuit

Knife Rights and its fellow appellants have filed their Appeal Brief in our Federal Second Amendment lawsuit against the Federal Switchblade Act.

Download the Opening Brief

Download the Full Excerpts (159MB)

The essence of the case is that the Supreme Court has made clear that the “Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms…” Further, in Heller, the Supreme Court stated the Second Amendment protects weapons that are “‘in common use at the time’ for lawful purposes like self-defense” and that weapons “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes” are within the scope of the Second Amendment.

Despite this, the Federal Switchblade Act broadly restricts, or outright bans in over one-third of the U.S., a huge category of such bearable arms that are in common use, in direct violation of the Second Amendment.

The District Court ignored its commands from the Supreme Court with another absurd stretch to avoid ruling in favor of the Second Amendment.We are asking the Appeals Court to reverse this ridiculous decision.

We also hope that with the Department of Justice’s recent amicus briefs in the 7th and 3rd Circuits opposing bans on AR-style rifles (“assault weapons”) and magazines-more-than-10 round capacity as “flagrantly violat[ing] the Second Amendment,” that they will revisit their irrational opposition in our case and stipulate, like in these others, that switchblades are commonly possessed arms under the Second Amendment and that the Federal Switchblade Act (excepting the import ban) also flagrantly violates the Second Amendment.

Knife Rights’ Attorney John Dillon said, “this is a very strong appeal from a district court decision that has no legitimate legal support. There is no question that switchblades are “arms” under every conceivable definition of the term. Because the FSA clearly prohibits the manufacture, transportation, and purchase of these arms in all interstate commerce, as well as possession of switchblades on all federal lands and Indian Country, Heller and Bruen demand that the government bear the burden of justifying the FSA’s prohibitions. The government has entirely failed to meet this burden, and we will prove that on appeal.”

Since 2010 Knife Rights’ efforts have resulted in 58 bills & court decisions repealing knife bans & protecting knife owners in 36 states and over 200 cities and towns! Knife Rights is America’s grassroots knife owners’ organization; leading the fight to Rewrite Knife Law in America™ and forging a Sharper Future for all Americans™.

The Correct Argument for the Second Amendment

Taking a person’s quote out of context is unfair and disingenuous. Doing so when that person is not present to defend themselves is truly heinous and cowardly. Such has been the case in the weeks following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Of all the misrepresentations and outright lies surrounding Charlie Kirk, his beliefs and actions, perhaps the most insidious is the one used to justify his murder. His quote circulating on social media goes as follows: “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” The deliberately fallacious logic of the Left then concludes that by Kirk’s own words, he deserves to be one of those unfortunate casualties. They leave out, of course, the part where Kirk stresses that while the Second Amendment allows us to protect many of our God-given rights, this decision comes with an imperative to reduce gun violence.

Rather than waste time justifying the value of Charlie Kirk’s human life to the soulless who do not care to hear it, it is both in better service to the memory of Charlie Kirk and more edifying to focus on just why a full gun ban should not exist in the United States of America.

There are two common answers conservatives give in defense of the Second Amendment, and both are not only insufficient but fundamentally incorrect. The first and most useless is hunting. While in simple terms, the right to hunt animals is self-evident, guns for the sole purpose of hunting would logically exclude the necessity of semi-automatic weapons and AR-15s. As Joe Biden was wont to say, deer do not run around in Kevlar vests. Furthermore, the benefits of hunting are persuasively dismissed by a side that ostensibly argues for human lives. For the average American influenced by media narrative, it is unjustifiable to allow school shootings in order to allow middle-aged men wearing camouflage to shoot deer.

The second is self-defense. This argument holds up considerably better, though it is still lacking. There exist evil actors, some with guns. The best way to counteract this unfortunate reality is by having good actors with guns, both for deterrence and defending against such actors. Taking away Second Amendment protections leaves good-faith actors susceptible to attack, and leaves the likelihood that bad actors will procure firearms illegally. The argument against this, however, is that an effective repeal of the Second Amendment and large-scale gun confiscation would produce a world with no guns for evil actors, eliminating the need for self-defense from gun violence. From a procedural perspective, a full gun confiscation is unfeasible and would not yield the utopian society the Left desires. While these are valid arguments, they are questions of practical application rather than objective principles.

The argument that Charlie Kirk makes, and the argument made by the Founding Fathers, is in fact the correct one. Americans have the right to bear arms because we have the right to possess a physical check against a tyrannical government. In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers were careful to create a constitution that would prevent their new government from devolving into the tyranny they had escaped under the British. An armed citizenry is a blunt solution to this problem. The Swiss resistance model, for example, inspired the American Revolution and the Second Amendment. It allowed the Swiss people to fend off time and again both foreign and domestic tyranny. Consent of the governed does not mean anything at all if the citizens do not have an alternative option. Without the right to firearms, consent of the governed is a vacuous phrase meant to cleverly enslave the population using the delusion of freedom.

Unfortunately, this is a far more uncomfortable argument. The modern American does not like the idea of rising up to fight a tyrannical power. While the Constitution is one of the great written works in the history of the world, it rests on values and assumptions greater than the document itself. One of these values has been lost by the American spirit, namely, a willingness to die for something. The founders, though differing in theological details, held a deep respect for eternity and the final end. Only with that worldview is it at all reasonable to throw away an earthly life for another person, an ideal, or simply God Himself. The modern American has lost this.

This does not mean that every American should be thirstily awaiting civil war. It is simply a reminder that love for America means a respect for its founding principles. Respect here means more than tacit agreement to these principles — it requires a willingness to defend them. If this sentiment were commonly held among Americans, the right to bear arms would not be a rigorous debate but an assumed fundamental bedrock of our country. When Charlie Kirk acknowledged the risk of gun violence, he did so because he understood this fact. Charlie Kirk’s message and legacy are greater than himself. The fact that his enemies are so intent on distorting his words is a sign that we should listen more carefully to them.

Trump Can (and Should) End Semi-Auto Import Ban Right Now

My first “evil black rifle” was an AK that I built from a kit. Yeah, I know, an evil “ghost gun,” though the term was still years away from becoming uttered, much less mainstream. A gunsmith friend told me to get an 80 percent receiver, a parts kit, and some compliance parts, then we all gathered at his workshop for a day of building AKs, general BSing, and some grilled burgers partway through the day.

It was an absolute blast.

We had to get a parts kit, though, because we couldn’t just import completed AKs, even modified to semi-auto only. During Bush Sr’s administration, he banned the import of semi-automatic firearms for “non-sporting purposes” such as those so-called assault weapons.

My parts kit was a Romanian AK that had the receiver cut in three places with a torch. Now, they also cut the barrels, all because people built guns.

However, as Trump has set this term as the most pro-gun administration in my lifetime, there’s something else he could do, and gun rights groups should be asking for it, as David Codrea notes at Firearms News.

“There’s something else Trump could do quickly that would not require Congressional approval,” this column reported online last November in Donald Trump and Republicans Owe Gun Owners, and It’s Time to Collect. Focused on pledges the president had made to gun owners to solicit their votes, the article explored decisions within the president’s power to make that would help make good on his promises.

What Trump could do, on his own authority, is end the 1989 import ban on semi-automatic rifles pejoratively designated as “assault weapons.” That ban, put in place by Republican President George H.W. Bush, imposed “a permanent import ban on 43 types of semiautomatic assault rifles, including the Chinese-made AK47 and Israeli-made Uzi carbine,” per The Washington Post. The rationale was they “were not being used for sport as required by the Gun Control Act of 1968.” This approved gun control by a Republican president opened the gates for many states and municipalities to ban military-styled semi-auto firearms nationwide without a peep from the Bush Administration or his anti-2A Attorney General William Barr who would later become President Trump’s “best people” attorney general during his first term.

The ban would be “very easy” to overturn, Firearms News Editor-in-Chief Vincent DeNiro assessed. But how? GCA ’68 was a law enacted by Congress. The classification of the semiautos was not.

“President Trump doesn’t even need Congress to get rid of the unconstitutional 1989 ‘assault weapons’ import ban, he just needs to order the BATFE to declare all imported semi-auto rifles as ‘sporting,’ which is what these same models are considered when domestically produced,” DeNiro explained last year. “If he wants to go down in history as a Second Amendment hero, he can make this happen on day one.”

That’s the absolute truth, but Trump didn’t do that on day one, unfortunately.

Still, he could do it now. Semi-autos are still imported. They’re made domestically as well. There’s literally no reason for this ban to be in place except to make it harder to lawfully own these firearms.

More than that, groups like Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, the NSSF, the National Association of Gun Rights, and the NRA should all be challenging the Trump administration to do just that. Lift the import ban. These weapons are, in fact, used for sports–three-gun competition is a sport, as is varment hunting, deer hunting, and so on–and the ban is wrong on every level.

President George H.W. Bush was not a friend of the Second Amendment. That’s clear as day, and he set the stage for the federal assault weapon ban in 1994 by this action. He made it clear that these particular rifles were too dangerous for regular citizens to own, at least in his view, and as the leader of the Republican Party at the time, it gave a green light to a lot of lawmakers that this was OK.

It wasn’t.

It’s time to end this and do it now.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
— Sun Tzu

Be Not Afraid: Fear, Guns, and Gun Policy

here’s something about fear that makes people do very different things, even if their fear is over the same source. It’s why some people stick their heads in the sand while others prepare for disasters. It’s why some people try to change the world and others just dig in and try to survive in it.

And let’s be real here, the subject of fear is a big part of the gun debate, whether we like it or not.

That’s especially true when people let their fears dictate what policies they back, especially when they’re trying to decide what anyone is allowed to do.

This came up because of an op-ed at an independent student publication at Auburn University. I don’t particularly like picking on college students, but sometimes, they offer up tidbits of what others are thinking, and their arguments need to be addressed. This particular op-ed seems to talk a lot about gun control, of course, but there’s a reason I’m talking about fear.

It’s because the author started it.

The heavy emotions I felt receiving my high school diploma this past May came in distinctly differing ways.
I felt a deep sense of accomplishment for myself and my closest friends. I felt as though a suffocating weight was lifted off of my chest, opening a portal for unlimited success. I felt as though I would never return to Huntsville and live the same simple and carefree life. I would never roam the halls of the high school or put my keeper gloves on for soccer practice.   

It was this breakneck speed of time passing that pried my fingers from holding on. An era of childhood was closing in front of my eyes, and I didn’t know how to react to it. As I took in the occasion, feeling gracious for the memories and sentimental for the time I would never get back, for a brief moment, I thought to myself, “I survived.” I survived a part of life that many children and young adults don’t each year.

Now, let’s understand that school shootings are rare. While the current hotness for anti-gunners is that firearms are the leading cause of death in children, it still should be noted that child deaths aren’t super common, either.

In other words, if you’re born in this country, you’ve got a really, really great chance of reaching adulthood. So long as you stay in school, you’ll graduate. There’s really no reason to fear that you won’t survive beyond the media hype trying to convince people that they won’t.

Yet, what I find funny is that this person, who claims they were so relieved to survive to graduate, then had the gall to write this:

What are pro-gun activists so scared about as they leave their house that forces them to conceal carry a life-ending weapon? What does it say about our nation that people feel such a strong need to always protect themselves? Why are people so willing to look past all of this tragedy for their own convenience of owning a gun? Why are we time and time again allowing unstable citizens and children access to buy these guns or access them without stricter security measures?  

American gun violence in schools blows every other first-world nation out of the water in terms of how often they occur and the amount of deaths that result.  

American non-gun violence blows every other first-world nation out of the water in terms of how often it occurs, especially when compared to those nations’ total rates.

And the vast majority of that violence is carried out by people who cannot lawfully access guns, but do so anyway.

I find it funny, though, that the author has decided to question our courage by opting to carry a gun when he was relieved just to survive high school, when there wasn’t really a great chance he wouldn’t.

The truth is that most of us aren’t really afraid. We have concerns that bad things can happen, but we believe that it’s better to be prepared for the unlikely than to simply trust probability to protect us.

Look, I’ve had people in my sights twice. Once because I was afraid for my own life, and once for the life of another. I’m glad I didn’t have to pull the trigger either time. I’m already outside of the probability range for most people, so you’ll excuse me if I go about my day with a gun on me out of concern that the laws of probability aren’t finished screwing with me. I’m not afraid most of the time. The gun is for when there’s a reason to be afraid.

Yet let’s understand that while the author makes a thing about asking what we’re afraid of, his entire approach to the issue of guns is governed my his own fears. He cites fatal shooting statistics around college campuses after lamenting K-12 school shootings, and I get the concern. Colleges are prime targets for bad people, but not because there aren’t enough gun laws. It’s because college campuses are gun-free zones.

Fear governed the creation of gun-free zones. Fear expanded them onto college campuses. Fear governs the calls for gun control throughout the nation, all while anti-gunners ask us what we’re afraid of.

When I’m carrying, the answer is, “Nothing.”

It’s a lot easier to be not afraid when you have the means to meet the threat. It’s a lot easier to have no fear when you’re prepared for whatever dangers you might encounter.

Sure, fear will pop up then, but that’s a different matter. Everyone else is just as afraid. I’m just in a position to do something about it.

I’m not counting on a law that will be ignored to protect me.

NRA files brief in challenge to federal suppressor registration mandate

The National Rifle Association, American Suppressor Association, and Independence Institute filed an amicus brief Sept. 17, urging the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to grant rehearing en banc (in full court) in a challenge to the National Firearms Act’s registration requirement for suppressors.

George Peterson was indicted for possessing an unregistered suppressor under 26 U.S.C. §§ 5841, 5861(d), and 5871, and alleges that the NFA’s prohibition on unregistered suppressors violates the Second Amendment.

Here in Ohio: House bill would let certain officials carry concealed firearms in government facilities
On Aug. 27, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit upheld the prohibition. The court reasoned that registration requirements are the equivalent of licensing schemes, and because the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that shall-issue carry licensing schemes can be constitutional, registration requirements for individual arms are also constitutional. The court declined to apply the test for Second Amendment challenges set forth in the NRA’s landmark Supreme Court victory, NYSRPA v. Bruen.

Our brief urges the Fifth Circuit to rehear the case en banc because the panel decision contradicts Supreme Court case law and sets a troubling precedent. The brief warns that by upholding the registration requirement for suppressors while assuming they are protected arms, the decision implies that the government may require the registration of all arms — and without needing to satisfy the Supreme Court’s test for Second Amendment challenges. The brief then provides various examples throughout history, including from England, Germany, France, Australia, and New York City, to prove that registration often leads to confiscation, and confiscation often leads to tyranny. A regulation with such serious constitutional implications, our brief concludes, must be subject to the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment test.

The brief was filed in United States v. Peterson.