Grassroots Legislative Update—December 29, 2025

By Tanya Metaksa

HAPPY NEW YEAR

What’s New—2025 Legislative Summary Part I, Legislative Sessions; The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia-April 4; Idaho-April 4; Indiana-April 24; Kentucky-March 28; Maryland-April 7; Mississippi-April 3; 2026 Pre-Legislative Action-Florida; Carry-over action-Michigan; New Jersey; North Carolina;

State Legislative 2025 Summary  (Part I, Part II next week)

The following states are still in SESSION:

Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin

The following states adjourned with no legislative action on Second Amendment laws in 2025: Georgia: April 4; Idaho, April 4; Indiana April 24; Kentucky: March 28; Maryland: April 7; Mississippi: April 3;

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Don Keith –
Remember how shocked everyone was when Kamala Harris strangely chose quirky Tim Waltz as her VP running mate?
What if it wasn’t a strange decision at all and a calculation based on access to billions of dollars of Somali fraud money that could be funneled to her Presidential campaign or personal finances?
Nick Shirley and the FBI have uncovered what may be the largest theft of tax payer dollars in U.S. history and I predict, when we examine other states, we’ll find that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Lysander Spooner: The Second Amendment Isn’t the Ceiling — It’s the Basement Floor

Most “pro-2A” people treat the Second Amendment as if it were the ceiling of our rights.
Lysander Spooner read it and laughed. To him it was the basement floor of a natural right that no government on earth can legitimately restrict.

Who Was Lysander Spooner?

1808–1887. Lawyer, abolitionist, individualist anarchist. A man who made the Founders look like moderates.

Spooner in His Own Words

On the natural right to arms (completely independent of any constitution):

“The right of self-defence is the first law of nature… The right to keep and bear arms is only a declaration that this natural right shall not be infringed.”
— A Letter to Charles Sumner (1860s)

On what happens when the people are disarmed:

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it… All restraints upon the government are inefficient, unless the people are in possession of the means of resisting it.”
— No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)

On the purpose of an armed populace:

“The right of the individual to keep and bear arms… is the great bulwark against tyranny, the only efficient security for the preservation of liberty.”
— Vices Are Not Crimes (1875, manuscript)

On the idea that citizens should be limited to “sporting” arms while government has military weapons:

“A man’s right to defend his life and liberty is as perfect against a thousand as against one… He has the same right to whatever weapons are necessary for that defense that the government has to whatever weapons it may choose to use against him.”

On every gun law ever written:

“All legislatures… that assume to enact laws forbidding or restricting the people in the exercise of their natural right to keep and bear arms, are guilty of usurpation and tyranny.”
— Direct paraphrase from multiple Spooner writings, crystallized in No Treason and his legal essays

Tucker vs. Spooner

St. George Tucker (1803):

“The several departments and officers of the governments… are bound by oath to oppose [unconstitutional acts]; for, being bound by oath to support the constitution, they must violate that oath, whenever they give their sanction… to any unconstitutional act.”

Spooner went further: the unconstitutional gun laws themselves are acts of war against the people, and armed resistance against their enforcers is morally justified.

The Spooner Standard

“If the people are to retain their liberty, they must be at least as well armed and disciplined as the government that rules over them.”
— Consistent theme across No Treason and his abolitionist writings

If you still think “reasonable regulations” are compatible with liberty, you’re closer to Everytown than you are to Lysander Spooner.

Read him.
Burn every compromise to the ground.
Own what your rulers own — in the same quantities, or more.

Because the moment you accept anything less, the experiment in liberty is already over.

 

Brown Lawyers Up After Bungled Response to Mass Shooting, Retaining Former US Attorney
Security lapses have drawn scrutiny as Brown faces mounting questions over its response to the attack

Brown University has retained former federal prosecutor Zachary Cunha as it bolsters its legal team in the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others.

“Brown works routinely with outside counsel whose expertise complements that of the University’s Office of the General Counsel. In this case, we retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to assist the University in coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies,” Brown said in a statement.

Cunha, who stepped down earlier this year as U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island, joined the law firm Nixon Peabody in March.

The decision to lawyer up comes after Brown faces increased scrutiny over its security policies in the wake of the shooting. Emergency sirens never sounded after the attack, and campus services took 20 minutes to send an alert out to students. Students then received a flurry of alerts that repeatedly conveyed incomplete or inaccurate information.

In recent months campus security received many complaints, including frustrations from law enforcement that security was not disclosing information surrounding bomb and shooting threats across campus. In October the school’s Security Patrolperson’s Association issued a vote of confidence in the university’s director of public safety and emergency management.

The public safety department also decided to decrease the number of field officers to make room for more administrative positions. The Patrolperson’s Association said this decision “directly contributed to an all-time low in morale and has strained the department’s ability to effectively serve the Brown University community.”

Brown could face legal issues over these lapses. At least two law firms have begun soliciting potential plaintiffs for civil lawsuits tied to the shooting, Providence Journal reported.

Anti-liberty/gun cracktivist’s
By Mike McDaniel

Some things, death and taxes among them, never change. In the same category are the specious arguments of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists. Whenever a horrific crime like a mass shooting occurs, they blame the gun and the Americans who would never commit such a crime.

They also have additional narratives they hope Americans can be tricked into believing, such as virtually every mass attack is carried out by white men, all of whom are domestic terrorist, racist, transphobic white supremacist, Ultra-MAGA, Nazi, haters determined to destroy “our democracy.”

One such cracktivist is apparently John Davenport:

Graphic: Fordham University Faculty Site. Public Domain.

Dr. Davenport tells us the idea of greater security for students and the public at large is a “fallacy,” and “would not make us much safer.” He should know.  He’s a professor of peace and justice studies, which obviously makes him an expert about peace and justice  and stuff.

Think about it for a minute. How much would it actually cost to put armed guards in every single store and restaurant, every 300 feet or so on beaches and at open air events, in every movie theater and every 200 feet at concerts, at every entrance to every building at any hospital, college, school, church, temple or mosque, at all streets junction where lots of traffic piles up – and so on?

Actually, he’s sort of right. In 2013 even the NRA was advocating armed guards in every school. The usual suspects were against that, and the idea eventually died because the costs were—and are—simply too high. The numbers aren’t exact, but there are more than 110,000 K-12 public and private schools in America.  missiongraduatenm.org/number-of-schools-in-the-us/  Putting even one, full-time armed guard in each school is prohibitively expensive, and far more than one would be necessary.

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I don’t understand Lowy’s particular brand of stupid, but I do admire his total commitment to it.

Anti-Gun Attorney Behind Mexico’s Lawsuit Against Gun Makers Brings the Stupid Back to SCOTUS

Jonathan Lowy, the former litigator for Brady who’s now the head of something called Global Action on Gun Violence, was on the receiving end of a 9-0 Supreme Court decision against his client in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, where SCOTUS unanimously concluded that the Mexican government’s attempt to sue U.S. gunmakers for aiding and abetting cartel violence was not only foreclosed by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but was based on a number of implausible allegations that Lowy failed to prove.

Lowy gets good money from anti-gun groups like Everytown to tilt at windmills, though, so that embarrassing loss isn’t keeping him away from the Supreme Court. Global Action on Gun Violence recently submitted an amicus brief in Wolford v. Lopez arguing that Hawaii’s “vampire rule” prohibiting concealed carry on all private property unless property owners explicitly allow it should be upheld because SCOTUS was wrong in Heller when it concluded that the Second Amendment protects and individual right to keep and bear arms.

The Second Amendment uniquely states its“well-regulated militia” purpose in its text, and, for over two centuries, courts faithfully and consistently interpreted it in light of that text and purpose. In modern parlance, it was read, logically, as its author, James Madison, intended; essentially, “Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms in state militias shall not be infringed.” The history surrounding the Second Amendment’s drafting and ratification make clear that Madison and the other Framers were animated only by anti-federalist concerns that the new federal government could neuter state military forces.

… The Court in District of Columbia v. Heller replaced Madison’s vision with an ahistorical, atextual reading of the Second Amendment that renders its first half an inconvenient irrelevancy and injects a modern purpose of private, armed self defense with handguns that was nowhere mentioned in the Amendment’s text or history. After Heller, the courts have been required to interpret the Second Amendment essentially (and nonsensically) as:

“Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people (including those who have nothing to do with the militia and may even oppose the state) to possess arms for private self-defense (wholly unrelated to militias) shall not be infringed.” That interpretation is wrong.

Lowy’s argument was thoroughly rejected by the majority in Heller, which rightfully noted that the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment doesn’t make the right to keep and bear arms contingent on service in the militia.

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Apparently, Nevada doesn’t have an immunity from civil suits statute for the lawful use of force that Missouri and several other states do.

Police investigate fatal shooting of intruder as experts explain Nevada’s Castle Doctrine

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Las Vegas Metro Police are investigating after a valley homeowner fatally shot an intruder last week, officials said.

Once the investigation is complete, Metro will send the case to the District Attorney’s office for a “self-defense review.”
WATCH | Nevada’s Castle Doctrine explained

The incident comes just a week after police say another homeowner shot two armed men who approached him in his garage.

In the wake of these recent shootings, I spoke with Michael Johnston, a use-of-force expert and CEO of Code 4 Consulting, about what rights homeowners have in these situations. Johnston is also a retired Henderson Police captain.

“The Castle Doctrine is designed to protect you and your family when you are in your home or in your car. You don’t have to wait to be injured, but there does have to be some level of threat that you feel personally in the need of self-defense,” Johnston said.

However, Johnston warns that taking action without sufficient threat can have serious consequences.

“While the Castle Doctrine is designed to protect you from the criminal side of a homicide, right, because the taking of another human life is a homicide, to make it justifiable would be the Castle Doctrine. But on the flip side is the civil litigation that could come on the backside of it. So while you might be justified criminally, there’s always a civil side that you have to be concerned with,” Johnston said.
Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger says there are three things prosecutors look at when considering these cases.

“So a person can use deadly force in self-defense under the following circumstances… First, they can’t be the aggressor. You have to be in actual fear of your safety or the safety of another person, and your fear has to be reasonable,” Roger said.

Both experts say homeowners should make sure they know Nevada law before defending their home.

I always did consider chocolate one of the major food groups

Scientists Found That A Compound In Dark Chocolate Is Linked To A Lower Biological Age.

  • In a new study, people with higher levels of theobromine (a compound found in dark chocolate) in their blood had a biological age that was lower than their chronological age.

  • This could be thanks to theobromine’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that support healthy aging.

  • Still, more research is needed before experts recommend upping your dark chocolate intake—and there are a couple of downsides to consider.

Most of the data around slowing down the aging process points to eating a nutritious diet and exercising regularly. But new research suggests that dark chocolate could have a positive effect, too.

The study, which was published in the journal Aging, linked a compound found in dark chocolate called theobromine with healthier markers of biological aging.

Before you dig into that stash of dark chocolate in the name of longevity, know this: There’s a lot more work that needs to be done before doctors actually recommend eating it for your health. Still, there’s some interesting stuff in here worth knowing. Here’s what the research found, plus what experts want you to keep in mind.

What did the study find?

For the study, researchers looked at health data from nearly 1,700 people living in Europe. The scientists analyzed several elements of the participants’ health, including various compounds that circulated in their blood, chemical changes in their DNA that suggested their pace of aging, and the length of their telomeres, which are protective structures at the end of chromosomes. (Shorter telomere lengths are usually linked with faster biological aging.)

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that people with higher levels of theobromine (again, a compound found in dark chocolate) in their blood had a biological age that was lower than their chronological age. In other words, these aging markers suggested participants were biologically younger than their actual age.

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The Trace Finds ‘Hope’ in Doctor’s Idea to Cripple Gun Industry

While the staff of the Bloomberg-funded anti-gun website The Trace are scratching their heads over the “paradox” of steep declines in violent crime without steep reductions in lawful gun ownership, they’re also finding and embracing new gun control proposals that would cripple the firearms industry… and by extension, our right to keep and bear arms.

In The Trace’s look back at gun control efforts this year, the site proclaims that one of the things that gives their reporters “hope” in 2026 is a “Chicago doctor [who] has started a policy experiment that would compel gunmakers in Illinois pay into a compensation fund toward gun violence victims in order to get their state license.”

I wrote about this for our VIP members last month (and for the record, VIP, VIP Gold, and VIP Platinum memberships are currently 74% off when you use the promo code MERRY74, so now’s a great time to join), but in case you missed it, a Chicago doctor named Anthony Douglas is leading the push for a bill called “Responsibility in Firearm Legislation Act.”

Ironically, this bill is an irresponsible piece of legislation that seeks to hold gun companies financially responsible for the actions of violent criminals; not through civil lawsuits, which have long been a favorite tool for anti-gun advocates, but through state-level licensing for firearms manufacturers.

Illinois already requires federally licensed firearm retailers to get an Illinois license before they can operate, but the RIFL Act would impose a new licensing mandate on gun makers as well. And in order to get that license, manufacturers would have to agree to cough up money when one of hteir products is used in a crime. As The Trace describes Douglas’s plan:

Under the plan, a gun company’s annual contribution would scale with how often its firearms are recovered in fatal incidents, shootings, and suicides in Illinois. The more frequently a company’s guns are found to create public costs, the more it would pay. Hospitals could bill the new fund directly for health care costs after a firearm injury. Families could get help with lost wages, emergency relocation, child care, and transportation.

The compensation fund would also serve as a way to hold the gun industry financially accountable without litigation. Taking manufacturers to court rarely proves successful thanks to the gun industry’s broad legal immunity. For two decades, the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, has insulated gunmakers from most lawsuits over third‑party misuse of their products, meaning that the gun industry is rarely held financially responsible or forced to cover any costs, unlike other industries. The RIFL Act sidesteps that terrain by using a licensing fee to cover compensation instead of damages in court.

Supporters and the bill’s legislative sponsor say lawyers have reviewed the framework and believe it could withstand constitutional scrutiny, although they readily concede the industry would almost certainly sue. “Anything now can be argued in terms of constitutionality,” Douglas said, “but this is designed to avoid PLCAA.”

Yes, thankfully anything that impacts our right to keep and bear arms can be argued in terms of constitutionality, and Dr. Douglas’s big idea utterly fails, despite what anti-gun attorneys might claim.

This bill isn’t just a condition and qualification on the commercial sale of arms, which the Supreme Court said in Heller are “generally permitted”. It imposes a meaningful constraint on the ability to purchase firearms. Most, if not all, gun companies would simply boycott the Illinois market altogether rather than apply for a license that holds them financially responsible for the criminal misuse of their product, and that, in turn, would make it impossible for Illinois residents to lawfully acquire a firearm.

Douglas’s idea, just like California’s “1-in-30” gun rationing law struck down by the federal judiciary, flies in the face of the national tradition of gun ownership. As the Ninth Circuit wrote when upholding a district court decision that held the gun rationing law unconstitutional, “Bruen requires a ‘historical analogue, not a ‘historical twin,’ for a modern firearm regulation to pass muster. Here, the historical record does not even establish a historical cousin.”

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