Let’s start off at the very beginning, following the “Yellow Brick Road,” with a few definitions and essential information for those new gun owners, non-gun owners, and anti-gun critters. Please note I’m sorry if I insult those already in the know!
Definition of the word ASSAULT
assault – verb: a violent physical or verbal attack.
semiautomatic firearm – noun: a firearm able to fire repeatedly through an automatic reloading process but requiring the trigger to be pulled for each successive shot (a semiautomatic rifle or pistol).
assault rifle – noun: any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire (a.k.a. Select Fire).
So where does the infamous Assault Weapon fit into the linguistic picture? It doesn’t! It’s essentially MADE UP! Here’s a brief history:
(The Center Square) – Across the country, there is a push to declare gun violence as a “public health crisis” and impose a “state of emergency” in response to shootings.
Proponents of the Second Amendment are concerned the emergency declarations lay the groundwork for expanded government powers, as witnessed during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
U.S. Congressmen Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., raised those fears in a recent House Judiciary Committee meeting.
“And our fellow Americans know the impact of folks up here in Washington declaring everything and anything a public health emergency,” Gaetz said during the meeting. “It means you’re more likely to be locked in your homes, deprived of your freedoms, less healthy, less safe, less secure and less able to live a truly American life.
“So know this: when the left talks about this as a public health emergency, get ready to see those enhanced authorities abused by the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives],” Gaetz said.
In the same hearing, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO, called for gun violence to be recognized as a public health emergency.
“In St. Louis and nationwide, gun violence is a public health emergency and common sense regulations are a necessity,” Bush said during the hearing.
Cities across the U.S. such as Flint, Michigan, Portland, Oregon, and Blakely, Georgia, have declared gun violence emergencies.
In New York, the cities of Rochester and Albany all declared a gun violence state of emergency. The state of New York declared a gun violence state of emergency in 2021.
Rochester has been under a current gun violence state of emergency since November 2021. That declaration allows the police department to shut down any commercial business that has had a shooting and is determined to be a nuisance after a review process.
The city of Rochester’s press release stated: “The Proclamation gives the Mayor broad powers to protect life and property and to bring the emergency under control.”
The state of New York gun violence emergency order gives the governor the power to “temporarily suspend or modify any statute, local law, ordinance, order, rule or regulation, or parts thereof, during a State disaster emergency if compliance with such would prevent, hinder, or delay action necessary to cope with the disaster emergency.”
The Delaware state legislature passed a resolution in March declaring gun violence a public health crisis.
And what if President Joe Biden declared a national emergency over gun violence? The White House didn’t respond to an email asking if Biden had considered such an option.
When a president declares a national emergency, there are at least 135 statutory powers that could be made available, according to the Brennan Center.
“Debate over the Second Amendment is clouded with propaganda terms intended to diminish the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms,” said Stephen Halbrook, an expert on the Second Amendment and a senior fellow with the Independent Institute.
“Instead of criminals committing acts of violence with guns, the term ‘gun violence’ implies that the guns commit the violence.
Calling criminality with guns a ‘public health crisis’ obscures that crime is volitional and may be repressed only by taking criminals off the streets. Guns create no national ‘state of emergency,’ and recidivist violators create a state of emergency against every victim they attack.”
Texas secretly gives its citizens’ incomes to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Documents show this has led to at least one person being monitored by the feds without a warrant through the federal gun background check system. The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) told The Epoch Times that it has written contracts with ATF for “sharing income information” for criminal investigations. The revelation may lead to oversight by the legislature.
Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican, is”deeply troubled” about this coordination with the state’s unemployment agency and federal government.
“My office will be looking into whether the Texas Workforce Commission is assisting the ATF in the Biden Administration’s mission to violate the constitutional rights of law-abiding Texans,” Cain told The Epoch Times after reviewing the emails obtained by Gun Owners of America (GOA) as part of its ongoing FOIA lawsuit.
This is the third part in an exclusive Epoch Times series on the ATF giving information on innocent suspects to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for daily monitoring through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The FBI uses NICS as a database of people who are prohibited from possessing or buying guns.
Texan’s Income Exposed
In the documents, an ATF agent emailed the FBI that a person suspected of straw purchasing or firearms trafficking needed to be put into the gun background check database. The agent wrote that “per TWC,” the man’s “reported wage earnings with the State of Texas do not appear to supply the financial means to afford the firearms purchased.”
The ATF agent requested on Dec. 28, 2020, that the Texan’s gun purchases be monitored daily for 90 days. However, as previously reported, the FBI wrote to ATF that its agents could request an extension of the monitoring for as long as they wanted.
Texas’s role in the program was uncovered in the ATF’s ninth production of documents to GOA as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The 42 pages are more heavily redacted than the previous ones given to GOA. There are seven pages of blacked-out information before the source of the income of the person in Texas is shown as TWC.
“One would think that a pro-gun state like Texas would not be handing over gun owners’ confidential financial information to the federal government without a warrant or likely even without probable cause,” Rob Olson, an attorney for GOA, told The Epoch Times.
The Cornhusker State is now one signature away from becoming the 27th to adopt permitless gun carry.
The Nebraska legislature voted 33-14 to pass Legislative Bill 77 on final reading Wednesday morning. The bill would allow adults aged 21 and over who would otherwise be eligible for a concealed carry permit to carry a firearm in public without obtaining one. The bill now goes to Governor Jim Pillen’s (R.) desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
“I am proud to support LB 77 and Nebraskans’ constitutional rights,” Pillen said shortly after the bill’s passage. “Thank you to the Nebraska Legislature for sending this bill to my desk.”
Once signed, the bill will add another feather in the cap of gun-rights advocates who have successfully pushed the policy in states across the country over the last two decades. The bill will make Nebraska the second state to adopt permitless carry this year, following Florida’s adoption earlier this month, and the 26th state to enact the policy in the last 20 years. Vermont has had the policy since its founding.
The bill’s passage led to a familiar call and response among activists on either side of the issue.
Gun-rights advocates immediately celebrated.
“With Gov. Pillen’s signature, Nebraska becomes the 27th state in America that protects the right of Americans to carry a firearm outside of their home without first asking the government for additional permission and paying additional fees,” Travis Couture-Lovelady, the Nebraska state director for the NRA, said in a press release. “Nebraska is the latest state to recognize law-abiding citizens are not the problem — criminals are.”
While gun-control advocates denounced the bill as an affront to public safety.
“Nebraska lawmakers have chosen to put politics over protecting our families,” Jen Hodge, a member of the Nebraska chapter of Moms Demand Action, said. “Over the past few weeks, tens of thousands of young people across the country, and here in Nebraska, walked out of school to demand action on gun safety by their representatives, but instead, Nebraska lawmakers are actively stripping away safety measures.”
But the bill also represents a significant victory for state Senator Tom Brewer (R.), the bill’s prime sponsor, who has tried for years to get permitless carry across the finish line in Nebraska. His 2022 permitless carry bill narrowly failed in the state’s unicameral legislature after falling just two votes short of overcoming a Democratic filibuster. However, state Republicans made gains in the chamber last November and now have a filibuster-proof majority. That cleared the way for Wednesday’s successful final vote.
“A person in Nebraska should not have to pay money to the government in order to exercise a constitutional right,” Brewer said.
While the bill would do away with permitting requirements for gun carry, it would not alter who is eligible to carry or obtain a firearm. Those, such as convicted felons, who can’t legally purchase or possess a firearm under state and federal law would not be allowed to carry under the permitless law. It also would not change where people are allowed to carry.
In addition to doing away with permitting requirements for gun carry, the bill would strengthen Nebraska’s preemption statute by removing the authority of local governments to enact gun regulations that are stricter than state law. That measure was aimed at the city of Omaha, which previously required residents to register any handguns they owned unless they possessed a valid concealed handgun permit.
If signed, the bill will take effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session.
Last night, the House voted 102-45 to pass House Bill 282, to ensure law-abiding citizens may carry firearms for self-defense on public transit, with an amendment by Representative Ben Baker, to allow places of worship to make their own security decisions. It now goes to the Senate for further consideration. Please contact your state senator and ask them to SUPPORT HB 282.
House Bill 282 repeals arbitrary “gun-free zones” that do nothing to hinder criminals, while leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless. It removes the prohibition on law-abiding citizens carrying firearms for self-defense on public transit property and in vehicles. This ensures that citizens with varying commutes throughout their day, and of various economic means, are able to exercise their Second Amendment rights and defend themselves.
The bill also repeals the prohibition in state law against carrying firearms for self-defense in places of worship. This empowers private property owners to make such decisions regarding security on their own, rather than the government mandating a one-size-fits-all solution.
A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled to keep an Illinois state-wide “assault weapons” ban in effect, denying a request from a business owner who claims the ban is unconstitutional.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to uphold a lower ruling by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, who found the ban to be “constitutionally sound,” despite the request for an injunction, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Robert Bevis, a firearms store owner in Naperville, is appealing the gun ban signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Jan. 10. He contends it fails to meet a legal standard on what guns can and cannot be banned previously set by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bevis requested the appeals court to block the ban for himself and other business owners affected by the law so that they can resume the sale of the impacted firearms.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation banning the sale of guns classified as assault weapons, rifle magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds and pistol magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds in the state on Jan. 10, 2023.
The legislation was introduced in January, six months after a shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade left seven victims dead and wound more than 48 others injured.
The ban includes penalties for anyone who “Carries or possesses… Manufactures, sells, delivers, imports, or purchases any assault weapon or .50 caliber rifle.” Anyone who legally possessed such a weapon was required to register it with state police.
It also includes penalties for anyone who “sells, manufactures, delivers, imports, possesses, or purchases any assault weapon attachment or .50 caliber cartridge.” It also bans any kit or tools used to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic firearm.
The legislation also capped the purchase of certain magazines for several weapons.
Gov. Pritzker, a billionaire Democrat, signed the controversial bill shortly after.
The attorneys who are representing Bevis, who owns and operates Law Weapons & Supply in Naperville, Illinois, argue their client has suffered because of the ban and that he may have to close his business.
In the lower court ruling, Judge Kendall ruled that “because assault weapons are particularly dangerous weapons … their regulation accords with history and tradition,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Bevis’s lawyers dispute this interpretation and instead argue earlier Supreme Court rulings clarify weapons must be found to be “dangerous and unusual” to be banned, per the report.
Because certain rifles are “commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” they do meet the legal definition of “not unusual,” and thus cannot be banned, they argued, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Several legal challenges remain underway against the state’s ban.
An Ohio school district centered in a tiny town of 560 people has responded to recent school shootings by permitting its teachers to be armed.
River Valley Local School District in Caledonia, which has roughly 2,000 students from around the area, citing a law signed by Governor Mike DeWine in June 2022, said it will allow staff members in its high school, middle school, Heritage, and Liberty elementary schools to arm themselves.
“Our schools will no longer be soft targets and unprotected,” Superintendent Adam Wickham told The Marion Star. “Most active-shooter events occur in areas of ‘gun-free zones’ or with minimal safety measures in place. We want to ensure our schools will not be soft targets.”
“As a rural community, response times can often be minutes away in the event of an active shooter,” he continued. “The use of armed staff in our buildings can potentially save lives by providing a more immediate response to the threat. Recent school shootings such as in Nashville, Uvalde (Texas), and Parkland (Florida) clearly show that the quicker the response time, the more likely you are to potentially save lives.”
Wickham noted that the River Valley Local Schools policy has more stringent training than state requirements.
The bill DeWine signed, House Bill 99, states that it “allows the previous practice of permitting school boards to choose to arm specific staff members and mandates reasonable training requirements for those individuals.”
“Some have expressed questions about the training and selection process,” Wickham acknowledged. “The vast majority of parents have expressed appreciation for the proactive approach in protecting their children. That is really a main reason for adopting the use of armed staff. While we understand not everyone will support this program, every safety measure we take at River Valley, including the use of armed staff, is put in place to try and ensure our staff and students can go home safely to their families and loved ones, each and every day.”
“The River Valley Board had previously approved the use of armed staff for the 2020-21 school year,” Wickham said. “At that time the use of armed staff for the 2020-21 school year was confidential as protected by Ohio law, as part of the district’s safety plan. School districts had to suspend the use of armed staff with the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling in the summer of 2021. Once HB 99 was passed, training details were released by the state in December of 2022, I recommended to the board resuming this program and the board approved the use of armed staff at the Jan. 12, 2023, meeting.”
A pair of Michigan-based pro-firearm organizations, Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry, Inc., have sued the state Legislature over its passage of gun safety bills recently signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, arguing lawmakers violated the Open Meetings Act by not properly allowing public comment on the legislation.
Last week, Whitmer signed legislation expanding background checks on firearm purchases and creating criminal penalties for gun owners who fail to keep firearms out of the hands of minors, commonly referred to as “safe storage” laws. A third proposal to temporarily confiscate guns from those deemed a risk to themselves or others by a court is also making its way through the Legislature.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in the Michigan Court of Claims aims to get a temporary restraining order against the gun safety bills and laws.
Plaintiffs allege both the House and Senate judiciary committees violated Michigan’s open meeting laws by not allowing opposition testimony during some of the hearings before the bills were voted on.
Committees in each chamber held hearings on the bills in March and April. In each, members heard mostly from supporters of the legislation. Groups, including speakers from Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry, submitted cards in opposition but were unable to speak during an April 12 hearing on the so-called “red flag” bills. Lawmakers cited time constraints.
“Defendants have, and continue, to blatantly favor testimony from parties in support of Defendants’ own viewpoints while openly suppressing and outright denying testimony from Plaintiffs and others critical of Defendants’ viewpoint,” wrote Thomas Lambert, an attorney representing the gun groups in the lawsuit. “This is in direct contravention of the Open Meetings Act’s unambiguous mandate that ‘a person must be permitted to address a meeting of a public body,’ which unquestionably includes Defendants.”
The groups are seeking an ex parte motion, meaning they seek an order from the court before defendants can provide a brief of their own.
The lawsuit argues the hearings were unbalanced in terms of the number of speakers, although under both current Democratic and previous Republican leadership, committee hearings on politically contentious proposals have generally featured more speakers in favor of the position of the majority party.
The Open Meetings Act is Michigan’s law requiring public bodies to make their meetings and actions accessible to members of the public. Under the OMA, boards are required to make time for members of the public who attend meetings to speak, although they do have flexibility when it comes to making time limitations for speakers.
“The Michigan House complies with the Open Meetings Act. The groups that filed the lawsuit did participate in the committee process,” said Amber McCann, a spokesperson for House Democrats, over email. In a statement, Sen. Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, also said committees complied with the law.
[O]ne would think supporting policies that let Americans carry any type of gun, anywhere, at anytime would be a losing proposition for any politician, much less one who wants to be president.
And yet as I listened to Trump — and the parade of equally craven Oval Office hopefuls who preceded him onstage — I began to realize that he just might be right in his political calculation. Because, far from losing, the NRA seems to be winning. In fact, it might already have won, polls be damned.
Why would I believe such a thing?
It’s not because of the nonsense I heard longtime NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre spout last week, including that the Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment so that, from “the day you’re born,” Americans have the “God-given right” to carry a gun for self-defense that cannot be infringed upon.
Nor is it because, as former Vice President Mike Pence told the NRA faithful, “freedom is under attack,” and Americans are determined to not let the government take their guns. I’ll spare you the stories of people I know who think this so fervently that they’ve buried boxes of semiautomatic rifles and ammunition in their backyards.
I believe it because of what I’ve seen and heard in liberal California over the past few years — and how similar it is to what I saw and heard at the NRA convention in the conservative state of Indiana last week.
Consider that the past three years have been the most profitable in modern history for gun manufacturers, even as the country has been plagued by mass shooting after mass shooting. …
Of course, this was the NRA’s grand plan all along, this having America armed to the teeth. It’s a lobbying organization for gun manufacturers, after all. Under the veneer of patriotism is just naked greed.
Aside from the true believers, like the woman in the red, white and blue pants,I have to think most Americans know this by now. We were under no obligation to follow the NRA’s grand plan. LaPierre didn’t force us to buy more guns. Republicans didn’t make people start carrying sidearms to the mall like we’re sidling up to a bar in an old western.
Sure, the NRA has made it easier to do all of this. But I don’t think we can blame the gun lobby for the number of people in coastal California who, as CalMatters reported, are rushing to capitalize on last year’s Supreme Court ruling that made it easier to get a concealed carry license before state lawmakers can close the loophole.
We made these choices. And now it appears we’re stuck in a San Francisco-style “doom loop,” when the sheer number of guns owned by Americans, and the violence and death they cause, is prompting still more Americans to buy more guns, leading to more violence and death, and so on.
So as much as I applaud Gov. Gavin Newsom for taking on the NRA and its political lackeys in his so-called Campaign for Democracy, we’re going to have to fix a lot of this ourselves. Somehow we’re going to have to break our addiction to guns.
Parents won’t be able to bring their loaded weapons onto school campuses, at least not while Katie Hobbs is governor.
Nor will students get training on gun safety.
In a single veto letter Monday, the governor vetoed both measures saying they do nothing to prevent gun violence. And she said if safety of school children is really a concern of lawmakers there are better ways to do that — ways the Republican-controlled Legislature has refused to consider.
Hobbs also vetoed two other measures.
One would have directed judges, when confronted with two conflicting interpretations of a state election law, to err on the side of which promotes more transparency.
“This bill adds unnecessary language into statute and does not solve any of the real challenges facing election administration,” the governor wrote of HB 2319. “I look forward to working with the Legislature on bills to do that.”
And even Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, who crafted the bill, acknowledged much of this wouldn’t be necessary if lawmakers crafted clearer statutes.
Hobbs also rejected HB 2297, which would have said that prosecutors pursuing cases of fraudulent schemes and artifices are not required to establish that all the unlawful acts occurred within the state.
“This bill will lead to confusion where none currently exists,” Hobbs said in her veto message.
“Existing state law adequately outlines the jurisdictional issues addressed in this bill.”
But the governor saved most of her comments for the two gun-related measures.
SB 1131, proposed by Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, sought to create an exception to existing laws that preclude loaded guns on school property. It would have allowed parents who have a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon to keep it with them if they also have a child at that school.
Shamp said that, if nothing else, it would keep parents rushing to the school from being charged with a felony simply because they forgot to first unload the weapon.
Anyway, she told colleagues, it is far safer to keep the gun loaded than risk accidents when unloading and reloading it.
HB 2332 was pushed by Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Scottsdale. It would have required public and charter schools to provide “age-appropriate” training in firearms safety to students in grades 6 through 12.
None of that would involve the actual instruction on how to operate weapons. Instead, it was promoted as teaching “simple, easy-to-remember steps so individuals who receive the training know what to do if they ever come across a firearm.”
Hobbs found neither plan acceptable.
“Mandatory firearm safety training in schools is not the solution to gun violence prevention,” the governor wrote. She said the requirement could have “immediate and long-term impacts” on the health and well-being of students, teachers and parents, though Hobbs did not spell out what those were.
Nor did she like Shamp’s proposal.
“Allowing more guns on campus will not make a campus safer,” she said. Then there’s the fact that police officers, arriving at a school with an active-shooter situation, won’t necessarily know who are the criminals who are armed and who are the parents.
“I’m focused on finding concrete solutions to gun violence prevention that protect Arizona families, including but not limited to, policy focused on trauma-informed emergency planning and safe, secure gun storage,” the governor wrote.
And Hobbs said lawmakers did have a chance to consider such a measure.
She pointed to HB 2192, which would have made it illegal to keep a firearm or ammunition in any home unless they were in a “securely locked box” or the gun was equipped with a device that makes it inoperable without a key or combination. The only exception would be if the owner was carrying the gun or it was within “close proximity.”
It is dubbed “Christian’s Law,” named after Christian Petillo, who, while at a friend’s house in Queen Creek for a sleepover, was fatally shot. The death was ruled an accident.
House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Peoria, never even assigned the measure by Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix, for a committee for a hearing.
In fact, GOP leadership used a procedural motion to block a bid by Longdon, who is paralyzed from the waist down since a random drive-by shooting in 2004, to bring what is known as “Christian’s Law” to the full House and put all lawmakers on record. House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci, R-Lake Havasu City, defended the maneuver.
“At the end of the day, it’s the person behind the gun,” he said in engineering the move to block a vote. “And we should never forget that it (the Second Amendment) says ‘shall not be infringed.’ ”
Monday’s actions bring Hobbs’ total vetoes this session to 52. The record of 58 was set by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano in 2005.
Gun sales in Washington State have spiked in the aftermath of last weekend’s passage of legislation to ban the future sale, manufacture and importation of so-called “assault weapons,” according to a report from KOMO News.
The story quoted longtime Bellevue gun dealer Wade Gaughran, owner of Wade’s Eastside Guns, who said sales have jumped 400 percent this month. The House adopted the gun ban legislation, House Bill 1240, in March. He said the legislation violates the Second Amendment, and he predicted it will likely be overturned by the courts.
According to KOIN News in Portland, Oregon, the bill bans more than 50 specific firearms. It is noiw back in the House for concurrence on two amendment adopted by the Senate.If approved, the bill then goes to Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who will likely sign it within days.
Gaughran has estimated the gun ban will affect about 30 percent of his business. He does not believe it will accomplish what the proponents say it will, which is a reduction in violent crime in the Evergreen State. Historical crime data supports his position.
Gun control has been hampering Washington gun owners since the passage of Initiative 594 in 2014. That measure was bankrolled by the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group.
Crime data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Seattle Police Department have shown the steady increase in homicides since 2015, the first full year I-594—mandating so-called “universal background checks”—was in effect.
In 2015, Washington reported 209 homicides, including 141 involving firearms, according to the FBI/UCR. By 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, Washington suffered 325 murders, including 209 involving firearms.
In 2015, Seattle passed a special “gun violence tax” on the sale of firearms and ammunition. It was supposed to generate between $300,000 and $500,000 revenue annually and finance programs to reduce so-called “gun violence.” It has failed on all accounts.
In 2016, the first year the gun tax was in effect, Seattle police reported 19 homicides. Last year, Seattle racked up 52 murders. The revenue has never come close to projected levels.
Gaughran told KOMO he’s been selling modern semiautomatic rifles for some 35 years. In all that time, he said, “we’ve never had one traced back that was used in a serious crime and I’ve sold thousands and thousands of them.”
An African American Second Amendment scholar is bringing a perspective challenging many of the mainstream narratives that firearms increase crime in America. Instead, he believes gun control laws exacerbate racial bias in the criminal justice system.
“We need to take a harder look at those programs, rather than pursuing what we call the modern orthodoxy,” said Nicholas Johnson at the University of Wyoming’s Firearm Research Center on Thursday night. “The community would be better if we took a case-by-case policy look. We need a hard-look approach that is pursued with rigor.”
He questions gun control laws from a perspective he acknowledges many will find uncomfortable, showing a connection to racial and criminal justice questions. He said those who believe bias pervades the criminal justice system should also be opposed to the modern gun control movements, where he says the same biases translate into gun law enforcement.
In his “A Race-Sensitive Hard Look at Firearms and the Black Community” presentation, Johnson explains that studies show many of the same laws leading to disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and other minorities are interconnected with gun control laws that Democrats and many of the same people impacted by the policies support.
“The conservative tough on crime policies cross paths with the liberal paths to solve gun control at all costs,” he said. “Conservatives and liberal progressives have tried to outdo each other to be progressively punitive.”
The Fordham University School of Law professor wants lawmakers to consider firearms regulation from a new lens.
There are many in the gun community that are angry with Trump for the bump stock ban. I have never blamed Trump for the travesty that was the bump stock ban, because I don’t think that he is the one who sold out gun owners. Let’s be honest here- the NRA greenlighted the bump stock ban. This is nothing new, the NRA was pro gun control for most of its history.
In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police. Florida becoming the 26th state to get rid of concealed weapons carry as a crime meant getting rid of that NRA proposal after 100 years.
During the 1930’s, the NRA helped shape the National Firearms Act of 1934. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to make gun control a feature of the New Deal. The NRA assisted Roosevelt in drafting National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, the first federal gun control laws. These laws placed heavy taxes and regulation requirements on firearms that were associated with crime, such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. Gun sellers and owners were required to register with the federal government and felons were banned from owning weapons. Not only was the legislation unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1939, but Karl T. Frederick, the president of the NRA, testified before Congress stating, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
After the assasination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald with an Italian military surplus rifle purchased from a NRA mail-order advertisement, NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth agreed at a congressional hearing that mail-order sales should be banned stating, “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”
The NRA also supported California’s Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party’s impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967.
Then came 1968. The assassinations of JFK, jr and Martin Luther King prompted Congress to enact the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act brought back some proposed laws from 1934, to include minimum age and serial number requirements, and extended the gun ban to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. In addition, it restricted the shipping of guns across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers. The only part of the proposed law that was opposed by the NRA was a national gun registry. In an interview in American Rifleman, Franklin Orth stated that despite portions of the law appearing “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”
It wasn’t until a mini-revolt was staged at the 1977 NRA convention that there was a change in direction. A group of gun owners pushed back and deposed the old leaders in a move called the “Cincinnati Revolt.” Led by former NRA President Harlon Carter and Neal Knox, the revolt ended the tenure of Maxwell Rich as NRA executive vice president and introduced new bylaws. The Revolt at Cincinnati marked a huge change in direction for the NRA. The organization thereafter changed from “hunting, conservation, and marksmanship” and towards the defense of the right to keep and bear arms. The catalyst for this movement was that the NRA wanted to move its headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado. The new headquarters in Colorado was to be an “Outdoors center” that was more about hunting and recreational shooting than it was the RKBA.
I became a member of the NRA about a decade later and remained an annual member, until I became a life member about 15 years later. I believed for years that the NRA was fighting the good fight for gun owners. It wasn’t.
The NRA was always influenced by a group of Fudds who supported hunting, but hated guns that weren’t for hunting. The bureaucrats who were a part of the NRA’s organization always tried to steer towards hunting, eventually caused the organization to morph into an organization that used the threat of Democrat gun bans for fundraising.
LaPierre was able to use the large flow of money to fund his luxurious life on the company dime, including over $13 million each year for travel and a postemployment golden parachute worth $17 million. LaPierre testified in the NRA’s bankruptcy hearings about his annual weeklong trips to the Bahamas on the company dime.
All they were good at was bargaining away gun rights to the Democrat gun banners in exchange for money and power. That’s why my political donations for the past 15 years went to other gun rights organizations, and yours should, too.
the NRA has consistently supported gun legislation which it feels would penalize misuse of guns without harassing law-abiding hunters, target shooters, and collectors”
NRA president Karl T. Frederick
Note that they make no mention of RKBA as anything other than support for the hobby of hunting. The article goes on to declare the NRA’s support for firearm registration, waiting periods, as well as prohibitions on sales of ammunition and firearms across state lines. The also express support for the prohibition of firearms to what they termed as :undesirables.”
The NRA is not, and apparently never has been, a true supporter of the Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. They should rename it the National Hunting Association. It can collapse and die for all I care. We don’t need them.
Woodrow is accidentally accurate here.
He admits he wants you to give up your safety. He wants you to become vulnerable for their social justice experiments.
Other people's safety isn't our problem, Steven. That's more in your ballpark. We protect ourselves & our families. https://t.co/Tyf3eDxvhy
The Illinois Supreme Court has denied a motion to disqualify two justices from hearing a challenge to the state’s new gun ban over perceived conflicts of interest. The two justices also declined to recuse themselves.
Before Elizabeth Rochford and Mary O’Brien were elected to the Illinois Supreme Court in November 2022, Gov. J.B. Pritzker gave each of their campaign funds half a million dollars from both his campaign account and a revocable trust, totaling $1 million to each. The two justices also received six-figure donations out of a campaign fund controlled by Illinois House Speaker Emanual “Chris” Welch,” D-Hillside.
Both Pritzker and Welch are top defendants in a Macon County challenge of Illinois’ gun and magazine ban brought by state Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur. The county judge there issued a final judgment that the law is unconstitutional. The state appealed the case directly to the Illinois Supreme Court after a separate case was found by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to have a likelihood of success on the basis the law violates equal protections.
Late last month, Caulkins’ attorney filed a motion for the two justices to recuse themselves, or for the Illinois Supreme Court to disqualify them from hearing the challenge. Attorney Jerry Stocks argued “unreasonably large campaign contributions” from Pritzker and Welch “undermine public confidence” in the judiciary.
Asked in early March if the justices should recuse themselves because of the donations, Pritzker said that’s “ridiculous.”
Formerly may-issue states continue to thumb their noses at the Supreme Court by passing some of the country’s most restrictive concealed carry laws. In doing so, they run the risk of undermining licensing schemes altogether.
Last Monday, Maryland became the third state impacted by the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen to pass a complete overhaul of its concealed carry laws. In a pair of bills, the state assembly greatly increased the application fees for new “wear and carry” permits, expanded its training requirements, and added new “sensitive places” throughout the state where licensed carry would be a crime. The off-limits areas include almost all publicly-accessible private property, like stores or restaurants.
The bills followed a familiar blueprint already established by states like New York and New Jersey, who were the first two states to rebuke the Court with onerous new laws. Fellow affected states, Hawaii and California, appear poised to do the same.
But those states are tempting judicial fate with their replacement laws, as evidenced by the parameters laid out by Justice Thomas in his Bruen opinion. The early track record of legal challenges to New York and New Jersey’s carry laws, where there have thus far been at least five injunctions between the two, can also attest to that fact. But even aside from the constitutional issues, on a more practical level, establishing a political norm of using licensing regimes to make exercising gun rights as difficult as possible creates new skepticism over the very idea of licensing laws.
The Supreme Court went to great lengths in its Bruen opinion to make clear that it was not yet prepared to call into question the legitimacy of standard “shall-issue” licensing laws.
“To be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes, under which ‘a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit]’,” Justice Thomas wrote in his opinion. “Because these licensing regimes do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense, they do not necessarily prevent ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’ from exercising their Second Amendment right to public carry. Rather, it appears that these shall-issue regimes, which often require applicants to undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course, are designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.’”
This carve-out for “shall-issue” regimes was likely the result of a compromise done to mitigate political backlash and shore up support among justices. It remains unclear how “shall issue” permitting laws really fare when closely examined under the text and historical tradition test articulated later in the ruling.
Nevertheless, the American people currently are broadly in favor of that compromise. A November 2022 poll from Marquette University’s law school found that 64 percent of U.S. adults favor the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling. Similarly, a separate Marquette poll found that 62 percent favor allowing the concealed carry of handguns with a permit or license required. Conversely, permitless carry laws routinely poll poorly despite their continued success in red states.
But that equilibrium, in which Americans broadly favor both concealed carry rights and licensing laws, could ultimately become upended if more and more states continue to make lawful carry all but impossible. If push comes to shove and one has to go, it’s more than likely that the American people (and the Supreme Court, which has tended to act only after public opinion on guns has shifted) will choose licensing laws.
The recent experience in North Carolina is a perfect example of this. For years, gun-rights advocates favored repealing the state’s permit-to-purchase law for handguns, but to no avail. Meanwhile, at least nationally, the policy continued to poll favorably among the public. However, following the COVID pandemic and a series of scandals involving local sheriffs delaying permit applications, enough political momentum was finally there to get the repeal bill through the legislature. Two years later, with improved majorities, Republican lawmakers were able to get the repeal into law after overriding a veto.
Legal rulings striking down many of these likely unconstitutional Bruen replacement laws may arrive before sentiment shifts enough to make a difference. But litigation often takes many years, and the Supreme Court has thus far shown an unwillingness to intervene in New York’s law despite its restrictions being the first enacted and arguably the most burdensome. Therefore, relief from the courts might not be in the offing for some time.
As permitless carry approaches a political wall in the near future, continued efforts by gun-control advocates to undermine workable permitting schemes elsewhere across the country risks shifting the Overton window toward more permissive gun-carry systems, whether among the general public or the courts.
Since gun-control advocates very much don’t want to see that happen, they may be forced in the near future to give up the push for restrictive “shall issue, may carry” licensing schemes.
One firearms instructor attributes this increase to a rise in crime and a general feeling of discontent with the economy.
Two years ago, a pregnant Florida woman, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, gunned down one of two home invaders who had broken into her Tampa home.
The woman, who had a concealed weapons license, said the men were pistol whipping her husband when she grabbed her legally possessed firearm and fired one round.
The woman, who requested her identity be withheld, is one of the 2.5 million people who have a concealed weapons license in Florida, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. As of Feb. 28, one-third of the license holders were women.
Gun safety experts in Gainesville and neighboring communities say they have noticed a significant increase in the last four months in the number of women who wish to obtain a concealed weapons license.
Katelyn Perndoj is a 23-year-old bartender at Miller’s Ale House. She said she wants to make a living, but more importantly, she wants to stay safe.
Sarah Hower
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WUFT News
Katelyn Perndoj, a 23-year-old server at Miller’s Ale House, is seen here at Harry Beckwith Guns & Range where she will soon take the concealed weapons license course.
“I’m pretty small, so if someone wanted to snatch me it wouldn’t be hard,” she said. “I could try and fight as much as I wanted to, but I just don’t want to be put in a situation where I don’t have a fighting chance.”
Perndoj said she has registered to take the concealed weapons course at Harry Beckwith Guns & Range in late April. The course is all she will need to obtain her concealed weapons license.
“I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” she said. “It’s a peace of mind kinda thing.”
During the course, which is five hours long, the instructor goes over the laws, the best ways to conceal carry and how to shoot.
“We want you shooting well enough that we can trust you with a handgun at anytime, anywhere,” said Henry Keys, a 24-year-old self-defense and firearms instructor at Harry Beckwith Guns & Range in Micanopy.
Keys said he considers women the fastest-growing demographic in the gun world.
“When I first started working at Harry Beckwith in early 2022, the courses I taught were 7% or 8% women,” he said. “Now, women make up well over 25%.”
He attributes this increase to a rise in crime and a general feeling of discontent with the economy.
Keys said roughly 75% of the women who register to take the course are 20-29 and African American or Asian. These women cite self-defense as their reason for wanting to own a gun, and the majority know little about firearms.
“They just feel that they are in danger,” he said. “It is important to me that I am able to help them.”
Hunter Thomas, a 23-year-old gun salesman at Bass Pro Shops, agrees.
“I welcome any woman of any race, age or ethnicity to practice their Second Amendment rights,” he said.
Although Bass Pro Shops no longer offers a concealed weapons course, Thomas said he believes the number of women becoming gun owners and acquiring a concealed weapons license has multiplied since he started working for the company two years ago.
“Even as someone with a liberal political perspective, I think that since guns are so widely spread, it’s better for any law-abiding citizen to have a gun,” he said.
Lt. Jimmy Williams has been with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office for 23 years. He encourages women to obtain a concealed weapons license and learn the basics of using a firearm.
“Women need something to equalize their self-defense mechanism,” he said. “Men are typically larger and almost always stronger. I have three daughters and three granddaughters. I don’t ever want any of them, or any woman, to be in a dangerous situation with no way out.”
Sarah Hower
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WUFT News
Smith and Wesson handguns for sale at the Bass Pro Shops in Gainesville.
An estimated 736 million women in the world, almost 1 in 3, have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence, according to USA Facts. Seventeen percent of murder victims in the United States were killed by an intimate partner. Women account for two-thirds of these victims.
Dany Castro went from fearing guns to considering himself a “gun fanatic” in less than two years.
Castro moved from her childhood home in Tampa to her first apartment in Gainesville when she was admitted to the University of Florida in fall of 2020. After one year of constantly feeling unsafe, the 21-year-old sophomore said she decided to apply for her concealed weapons license.
“Before I left for college, I was completely unfamiliar with guns,” she said. “I didn’t grow up in a family with guns. My family didn’t hunt. I knew absolutely nothing about them. Being on my own made me realize how weak and vulnerable I was.”
Sarah Hower
/
WUFT News
Handgun ammo for sale at the Bass Pro Shops in Gainesville. The top shelf is 9 mm ammo and the bottom shelf is .40-caliber S and W ammo
Castro said obtaining her license has given her a greater respect for firearms. Although she said she prays she never has to use one, she is grateful for the option.
Harley Yost, a 24-year-old University of Florida alumni, said she does not believe a gun would make her feel safe.
“I would opt for a less life-threatening deterrent,” she said. “I’m not saying no women should own a gun, but I don’t think it is your best option.”
Keys said he believes the number of women wanting to obtain a concealed weapons license will continue to grow if more restrictions are created.
“The more restrictions, the more demand,” he said. “Every time there is a new restriction put in place, gun sales and license sales skyrocket. In the circle we are in right now, nobody wants to be the last person with the gun.”
