Category: RKBA

Lawsuit Targets Glendale, CA Over Gun Ban On Public Property

California – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners today filed a federal lawsuit asking for declaratory and injunctive relief against the City of Glendale, Calif., its police chief and city clerk. The case is known as CRPA v. Glendale.

Joining SAF are the Gun Owners of California and the California Rifle & Pistol Association. They are represented by attorneys Chuck Michel, Joshua Robert Dale, Konstadinos T. Moros of Long Beach, and Donald Kilmer of Caldwell, Idaho. In addition to the City of Glendale, the defendants are Police Chief Carl Povilaitis and City Clerk Suzie Abajian in their official capacities. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division.

“The City of Glendale’s municipal code generally bans possession of firearms and ammunition on any city property, with no exception for citizens with concealed carry permits,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This ban applies not just to city property, but also publicly-controlled property or public-affiliated private property, with the only exceptions being streets, roads and sidewalks. Such restrictions relegate the right to keep and bear arms to the status of a strictly-regulated government privilege.

“Our lawsuit is blunt,” he continued. “The Glendale ordinance is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms for personal protection extends outside the home. As we note in our complaint, the burden is on the city to prove that all areas falling within the definition of ‘city property’ are so-called ‘sensitive places,’ and they cannot do it.”

As explained in the 24-page complaint, the city has 47 parks and recreation facilities (including four community centers, one golf course, three soccer fields, and sixteen ball fields), playgrounds, eight public libraries, three downtown parking structures and other city-owned or operated parking lots, the Glendale Civic Auditorium and civic center complex, a youth center, an emergency center, undefined “open spaces” and “plazas,” and an unknowable amount of properties in the possession of private companies under contract with the city.

“That broad definition essentially turns much if not most of the city into a gun-free zone where Second Amendment rights do not exist, and that simply doesn’t pass the smell test,” Gottlieb stated. “We are hopeful the court quickly recognizes this and grants our request.”

Gun rights in flux—the next steps

The main stream media is taking notice (the Wall Street Journal):

Judges Across U.S. Expand Gun Rights, Taking Cues From Supreme Court — Courts are placing more emphasis on historical traditions, presenting new challenges for defending gun regulations

The Supreme Court’s decision this year to strengthen Second Amendment protections for carrying concealed weapons is starting to ripple through lower courts, with several judges citing the ruling to strike down other gun regulations.

This is just the first step to cementing our gains. The gun culture needs to expanded into the new territory. Fortunately, the political left has cleared a lot of obstacles for us. The whole “defund the police” movement helped the BLM and Antifa riots open a lot of eyes and made gun ownership seem like “a good idea” to many and a near requirement others. We need to welcome them and enable them to safely and responsibly exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. If we can do this with 60% or 70% of the population we will have a good chance of being able to breathe easy for a generation or two.

3 banned from Greenwood Park Mall for carrying guns

It wasn’t all that long ago when Greenwood Park Mall was a huge topic here. More specifically, the heroic actions of a law-abiding, armed citizen who put an end to a mass shooting in progress with some really top-notch shooting.

However, in the wake of that incident, some lashed out. You see, the mall doesn’t actually allow people to carry guns.

In fact, three people were just banned from the mall for a year because they were carrying.

Three people have been banned for one year from the Greenwood Park Mall after police say they were caught carrying guns inside the mall.

The incident happened Saturday in the mall’s food court. Police said all three people were carrying guns. One of the people was wearing a backpack and he had a high-capacity magazine in it along with a gun.

While they were standing in line to order food, the magazine fell and hit the floor. When the magazine hit the floor, bullets fell out.

This caused some chaos, police said. A woman who saw what happened kicked the magazine across the floor and the man who dropped the magazine scrambled to grab it, police said.

The man then ran to the women’s bathroom and shoved the ammunition into his backpack.

Police were called to the scene and interviewed all three people, none of whom were prior felons.

The Greenwood Police Department said all three people were lawfully carrying guns under Indiana law and “at no time did the individuals display a weapon and no threats were made.”

Now, Elisjsha Dicken carried a gun in the mall, used it to stop a mass shooting, and was not banned, so I can kind of understand why these three might have assumed they could carry too, regardless of what signs might be up.

And, from a legal standpoint, they can.

You see, this incident really helps to undermine some of the narrative we saw after Dicken ended that mass shooting. Some, such as Shannon Watts, tried to claim Dicken was carrying illegally, that he was a criminal simply by being armed.

Yet here, we see none of these three arrested. They didn’t have the benefit of having stopped a mass shooting at the mall, either. Had this actually been illegal, they would have.

No, they were just banned from the mall.

And understand, that’s the mall’s right. It’s their property and they’re entitled to decide who can and cannot use their facility. Yes, that also means they can deny people exercising their gun rights there, much as they can also deny someone their right to free speech on their property.

That doesn’t make it right, though.

After all, Greenwood Park Mall officials should well have learned the benefit of armed citizens. Three people were killed in July but who knows how many more might have been killed had Dicken not been there and been armed?

Further, their decision not to ban Dicken from the mall likely sent mixed signals. Many likely figured ownership approved of armed citizens after that event.

Clearly, though, they didn’t.

So now folks in the area have a choice. They can either leave their guns at home, carry and hope no one notices, or just not go to the mall.

My guess is most will do one of the latter two.

Man can argue he needed handgun because police did not protect him, N.J. court rules

A state appeals court has reversed a man’s handgun possession conviction after finding he should have been able to argue he needed it for protection from people trying to kill him for cooperating with police.

The court, in a Tuesday decision, found merit in the man’s arguments that the danger he faced was real, and that authorities had not sufficiently helped him – after he’d helped them by wearing a wire in an investigation.

The man, who was identified only by his initials, was beat up twice, shot at once and moved residences before finally arming himself in case his attackers accosted him again, the decision describes.

Before that occurred, a Lawrence police officer arrested him during a traffic stop in 2015, and found the Beretta pistol in his pants. He was 21 years old at the time.

After being unable to suppress the gun evidence and the trial judge in Mercer County ruling against his defense, the necessity defense, the man took a plea bargain. A judge sentenced him to eight years behind bars with four as a mandatory minimum.

The man’s appeal failed in one part. He argued that the Lawrence police officer overstepped during the traffic stop by asking the driver to roll down the rear, tinted windows, where he found the man as one of two backseat passengers.

The officer also smelled marijuana and eventually searched the car, with the driver’s consent, and the occupants – and only found the gun in the defendant’s pants. One bullet was in the chamber.

The appeals court found the officer’s actions lawful, as he was dealing with four people during a nighttime stop and the steps he took to protect himself were reasonable.

The court took issue with the barring of the necessity defense, which allows defendants to argue that their conduct, while normally illegal, was necessary or justified in a limited instance – in this case, carrying a gun.

The decision says the man described his situation to a police detective: he’d helped police and prosecutors in a prior case and now people were “after him.”

After the two assaults and being fired upon, and moving, he sought help from a detective and the prosecutor from the case, but received no assistance. He told police he wanted to move out of state, but could not due to being on probation.

He then admitted obtaining the gun a few days prior and knew it was loaded with the bullet.

He had a plan, he told the detective interviewing him, that if confronted a fourth time, he’d fire the gun and flee.

The Mercer prosecutor’s office argued against the necessity defense in the appeal, saying the man had not qualified for the defense, specifically that he had not been met with an “imminent and compelling” emergency.

The appeals court disagreed.

The man wore a wire for police. “By doing so, he assisted police in performing their duty to protect the public. Through no fault of his own, his cooperation with the police led to him being beaten up twice and fired upon in his own community,” the decision said.

“Defendant was acutely aware that other individuals in the community wanted to hurt or kill him. We find more than sufficient evidence … to conclude that the threat to defendant was ‘imminent and compelling,’ and raised a reasonable expectation in the defendant that he would suffer physical injury, if not death,” the decision went on.

The defendant’s, “plea to law enforcement for assistance went unanswered. He tried to move out of state to avoid the threat to his life, however he was unable to do so. Defendant also changed his local residence to avoid encounters with his attackers, which didn’t work, as he was attacked outside his new home.”

“Consequently,” it said, “he faced a crisis with no opportunity to avoid repeated assaults until he was severely injured or killed.”

A jury should hear those arguments and be the deciders, the decision says.

NY AG appeals judge’s decision halting enforcement of most new carry restrictions

New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal judge’s decision to halt enforcement of many aspects of the state’s new Concealed Carry Improvement Act, arguing that there’s a “serious risk of irreparable harm to public safety and the possibility of regulatory chaos” if U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order is allowed to take effect.

Suddaby’s ruling left intact, at least for now, the draconian training requirements imposed by the state in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, but barred enforcement of most of the state’s new “sensitive places” where guns are banned, as well as many of the other requirements mandated for those applying for a concealed carry permit; turning over social media accounts and informing authorities of all other family members living with the applicant among them.

In her request to the Second Circuit, James claims that if the appeals court allows the TRO to take effect, the result will be massive confusion over the status of the law, which might be true but pales in significance compared to the daily deprivation of the right to keep and bear arms that the CCIA has enabled.

Exposing eighteen million New Yorkers to a heightened risk of gunfire severely outweighs any prejudice to plaintiffs here from a stay.Five plaintiffs allegedly wish to carry guns into specific sensitive or restricted places, such as the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, the airport for a flight to Tennessee, the church where one plaintiff lives, or Catskills State Park, through which another plaintiff must drive.

Yet the district court restrained defendants from enforcing the challenged CCIA provisions on a statewide basis, as applied to anyone — a remedy far beyond what relates to the individual harms alleged.

Well, no. Virtually everyone who possesses a concealed carry permit and all those who wish to do so are being harmed by the state’s new restrictions. As for the potential for “regulatory chaos” if the new laws are halted, I have news for James and other anti-gun Democrats: the CCIA is already sowing confusion. In fact, in St. Lawrence County no concealed carry applications have been issued since the law took effect back on September 1st because no one is clear on what the law entails.

“We just haven’t been accepting applications since the new law has taken effect. Number one, the state has already changed the application that they originally came out with once. You know, to keep processing stuff that’s not even right to begin with. So at this point basically what it is is that we’re waiting for clarification from both the state and the judge,” said Santamoor.

As New York’s gun laws work their way through the courts, gun shop owner Matt Pinkerton is frustrated, believing the new laws were flawed from the start.

“I completely understand why the permit process would be slowed or halted at this point because the governor has put into place a system that is very logistically difficult to enact,” he said.

For New York lawmakers, the confusion isn’t a bug, but a feature of the new law meant to artificially depress the number of citizens exercising their right to carry a firearm in self-defense.

James offered no real historical analogues to the sweeping number of locations deemed “sensitive” and off-limits to concealed carry. Instead, she argues to the Second Circuit that it’s the plaintiffs themselves who had the burden of showing that the Second Amendment’s text and tradition “plausibly encom-passed any of these areas.” In a bit of circular logic, James claims that once a state has declared a location to be a “sensitive place”, it should automatically be presumed to be justified.

Carrying weapons in sensitive places has traditionally been “altogether prohibited.” These areas thus fall outside the “scope of the Second Amendment,” and are “an exception to the general right to bear arms” codified therein. 

The question, of course, is whether New York is violating the Second Amendment rights of its residents by declaring broad swathes of the state to be “gun-free zones.” Under James’s argument, once the state has deemed a particular location to be “sensitive”, it automatically falls outside of the Second Amendment’s protections; a nice trick, but one that flies in the face of what the Supreme Court actually said in Bruen.

James also takes issue with how Suddaby determined that many of the state’s “sensitive places” don’t have similar analogues in U.S. history.

Second, the court’s analogies were flawed—none more so than for barring weapons on mass transit, which the court held to be inconsistent with nineteenth-century laws authorizing carrying pistols when “‘on a journey.’” Old and new regulations may be “relevantly similar” in many ways.

Comparing hurtling through tunnels in electrically powered cars filled with thousands of people (including schoolchildren and the elderly) to journeying via horse through the countryside is like saying that “a green truck and a green hat are relevantly similar” because both are green.

It’s worth noting that “hurtling through tunnels in electrically powered cars” with a permitted concealed firearm was perfectly legal on New York City subways until just a few weeks ago. The ban on concealed carry on public transportation in the city and state wasn’t enacted until after the Bruen decision was handed down; before that those chosen few who were lucky or well-connected enough to receive a permit were perfectly fine carrying on the subway. Only after the average New Yorker was told she could do the same did the state reverse course and declare mass transit to be “sensitive places” where guns must be banned; again without any evidence that there were similar bans in place at the time of the ratification of either the Second or Fourteenth amendments.

All in all I found James’ initial filing to be less than impressive, but given the Second Circuit’s past hostility towards the right to keep and bear arms she might not need a strong argument to be successful at blocking Suddaby’s ruling from taking effect… at least immediately. No matter what the Second Circuit decides, expect this to be appealed up to the Supreme Court, and hopefully it won’t take long for the justices who struck down New York’s “may issue” laws to halt enforcement of the state’s latest infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.

SAF FILES MEMORANDUM FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation’s challenge of California’s new law that includes a one-way fee-shifting penalty to discourage lawsuits against restrictive gun laws have filed a memorandum of points and authorities in support of their motion for a preliminary injunction.

Attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay of the Benbrook Law Group, PC, and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and Joseph O. Masterman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC filed the memorandum, which asserts plaintiffs have already suffered harm due to the constitutional violations contained in the new law.

The lawsuit, and this new memorandum, allege the law (Section 1021.11 of the California Penal Code) is unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause, and that it also violates the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The statute also discriminates against gun rights plaintiffs in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, according to the lawsuit.

SAF is joined by Gunfighter Tactical, LLC, PWGG, L.P., the San Diego County Gun Owners’ PAC, California Gun Rights Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Dillon Law Group, P.C., John Phillips, Ryan Peterson, George M. Lee, John W. Dillon and James Miller, for whom the lawsuit is named.

The new motion also says Section 1021.11 has “caused several Plaintiffs to dismiss or refrain from bringing additional lawsuits challenging other California firearms regulations that they believe are unconstitutional.”

“We are pulling out all the stops in fighting this new statute because of its egregious nature,” said SAF founder and executive vice president Alan M. Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs in the case known as Miller v. Bonta. “Section 1021.11 is part of Senate Bill 1327, adopted earlier this year in reaction to a Texas law passed last year, which is about abortion. The California law was crafted as a political response to the Texas statute, which California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the chief defendant in our case, described as ‘blatantly unconstitutional.’

“Bonta is trying to have it both ways,” Gottlieb continued. “He simply cannot protest a law he considers unconstitutional by enforcing another law which is equally unconstitutional in what amounts to a childish political snit that began with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California legislature.”

 

Local Work By Anti-Gun Radicals Emphasizes Need For Preemption

We usually spend a great deal of time talking about the impact on the Second Amendment made at the federal and state level. But it is important to remember that attacks on our right to keep and bear arms are often made at the local level, and we don’t want these affronts to freedom to slip under anyone’s radar. Statewide preemption statutes that reserve the authority to enact gun-control laws to state legislatures are critical to diminishing these efforts. They help to avoid a patchwork of conflicting laws and regulations throughout a state.

Unfortunately, not every state has a preemption statute, and even with them in place, anti-gun local authorities regularly work to challenge, undermine or circumvent them. Here are a few of the things extremists have tried to do, or actually have done, at the local level to undermine law-abiding gun owners that may not have caught the attention of national news coverage.

Boulder County Adopts Gun Control
In Colorado, the Boulder County Commissioners unanimously voted to pass a gun-control package consisting of five ordinances to infringe on your Second Amendment rights. Commissioner Matt Jones claims these ordinances are “common-sense gun violence laws designed to help keep people safe,” but, apparently, common sense isn’t common. These ordinances are restrictions that attack your constitutional right to bear arms and do nothing to promote public safety.

The gun-control package includes: banning the sale of firearms to anyone under the age of 21; requiring a waiting period of 10 days to sell or purchase a firearm; prohibiting the carrying of firearms in a number of public places; banning the sale of “assault rifles,” “large” magazines, and trigger activators; and regulating the possession of unfinished gun frames and guns without serial numbers, sometimes referred to as “ghost guns.”

The city council forced this gun-control package through at the beginning of July with no opportunity for public comment. The first public hearing was in early August, which is conveniently when the gun-control package went into effect. Cities in Colorado like Boulder have had the authority to pass a patchwork of confusing and conflicting local laws throughout the state since Colorado repealed its firearms preemption statutes last year. By doing this, Colorado became one of the few states to take away the state legislature’s sole authority to regulate firearms, and the various cities’ gun-control regulations have already begun to create inconsistency and uncertainty statewide.

Pima County Passes Resolution Calling for Repeal of State Preemption Statute
In Arizona, the Pima County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in early August calling for a lawsuit to challenge the state’s preemption statutes, as well as urging the state legislature to repeal them. This resolution falls in line with efforts by both Pima County and Tucson to pass local gun-control ordinances. In 2017, the Arizona State Supreme Court ruled in the State’s favor, causing the City of Tucson to repeal an ordinance that was in violation of the state statute.

The Arizona Legislature enacted the state firearms preemption law in 2000, which has been modified and strengthened over the years, most recently in 2016.

Columbia to Consider More Gun Control
South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, submitted a draft ordinance to Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office in July, asking if it violates the state’s preemption law. The draft ordinance victimizes gun owners who have suffered the loss or theft of their property if they fail to report a lost or stolen firearm within a certain period of time after discovering it missing. Nearby Virginia passed a similar law in 2020, which has not only been ineffective in hindering criminals, but also has been almost unenforceable, as there have been just three civil penalties in the two years it has been in effect.

Attorney General Wilson has previously stopped Columbia from violating the state’s preemption law, which prevents localities from passing their own gun control. Columbia’s newest effort is just another waste of time and taxpayer resources while doing nothing to hold criminals accountable for their actions, such as stealing firearms, and get them off the streets.

As we went to press for this issue, Attorney General Wilson had not yet responded to Columbia’s request for his opinion.

Woman Who Had Never Fired A Gun Before, Shoots And Wounds Burglar In Attempted Robbery

A North Carolina resident named Tarika McAllister fired a gun for the first time last week and it helped put a man who broke into her home behind bars.

According to WRAL-TV, McAllister, who lives in the city of Dunn, was home alone when she awaken by loud noises and her dog barking around 6 a.m last Tuesday. After hearing the sounds coming from the rear of her house, she went to check if everything was okay. McAllister was stunned to find a man attempting to steal some of her items —including her dog. It was at that moment that she took matters into her own hands.

The 29-year-old yelled for the intruder to get out, but he was unphased. Fortunately, within her reach was the gun she kept stored. And although she had never used it before, she put her nervousness aside and grabbed it.

“All I did was turn around and grab the gun,” McAllister told WRAL. “I was fumbling with it. It’s my first time using it.”

McAllister added that she lifted the safety and did what she had to do.

“I just lifted it up, and I started shooting at him, wherever he was moving to, I just shot him out of the house,” she said.

When the police arrived to the scene, they found the thief, who has been identified as 20-year-old Malihk Giles, only about 200 yards from McAllister’s home with two gunshot wounds, one on his right lower leg and the other on his right side. After his wounds were treated at a local hospital, he was taken into custody at Harnett County Detention Center where he is being held on charges of first-degree burglary and possession of stolen property with a $75,000 bond. McAllister and Giles had no connection to each before the incident but according to McAllister, she experienced a similar incident at her home just three weeks prior. Luckily, she was able to just scare the man away.

“I know a lot of women are scared of guns,” says McAllister. “I feel those are the best protectors for us because we can’t fight a man. We can’t fight an intruder off.”

Although she’s still shaken up and it’s difficult for her to be alone at the moment, McAllister feels “stronger” now and ready for any other attempt at a home invasion in the future.

Orchid News Update: NICS Enhanced Background Checks

Orchid FFL News

As a result of the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) of 2022, signed into law on June 25, 2022, the NICS Section is working towards the implementation of an enhanced background check process for persons between the ages of 18-20. The enhancement provides the opportunity for additional outreach and research to be conducted regarding the existence of any juvenile adjudication information and/or mental health prohibition. As a result, transactions on persons between the ages of 18-20 will initially be delayed.

In order to conduct the aforementioned outreach and research, the address of the individual will be collected so that the appropriate local and state entities may be contacted. All descriptive information, including address, will follow normal purge requirements (i.e., deleted from NICS within 24 hours of the FFL receiving a proceed status). If potentially prohibiting juvenile information is uncovered, the BSCA allows for the delay period to extend up to ten business days. However, if no potentially prohibiting information is located, the transaction will be proceeded as soon as possible.

The NICS Section is working in collaboration with numerous other entities in the implementation of all aspects of the BSCA, including firearm handler checks for FFL employees, and will keep industry members informed as additional guidance becomes available.

For questions, please contact (844) 265-6716 or nicsliaison@fbi.gov.

Yes, Democrats, Sometimes a ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Does ‘Stop the Bad Guys.’ Here’s Proof.

In a press conference defending the state’s new restrictions on concealed carry permit holders, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, told reporters last month: “This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.”

With all due respect to the governor, she clearly hasn’t actually looked at the data.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the latest report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just this year, a more comprehensive study concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from 2019, 2020, 2021, and so far in 2022.)

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

The examples below represent only a fraction of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in September. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

  • Sept. 1, Detroit: A woman shot and wounded a man who ran onto her porch while fleeing from police after a hit-and-run. The woman told police that she felt threatened by the man and couldn’t tell what was in his hand when he approached her. The man was charged with fleeing police, resisting arrest, and obstructing justice.
  • Sept. 3, Adams Run, South Carolina: Police said a homeowner isn’t expected to face charges after he shot and wounded a man who smashed a window and climbed into his home in the middle of the night. The suspect apparently had been drinking and doing drugs at a nearby party before he broke in. Police said they found a small bag of cocaine in his possession.
  • Sept. 9, Pensacola, Florida: When a would-be robber with a shotgun entered a convenience store, the clerk ran to a back room and grabbed his own firearm, police said. The threat of armed resistance apparently stunned the robber, who told the clerk: “I’m not from around here. … I’m from Chicago, bro,” before fleeing. No shots were fired. Police arrested a suspect several days later.
  • Sept. 9, Channelview, Texas: A woman was home with her three children—a 12-year-old and two 17-year-olds—when four armed and masked men tried to force their way inside, police said. One of the teens grabbed a shotgun and fired several rounds at the intruders, killing two and sending the other two fleeing.
  • Sept. 13, Chicago: Police said that two gunmen randomly opened fire on a family celebrating a grandmother’s birthday, critically injuring a 13-year-old boy who was returning to the party with his uncle after buying a game at a nearby store. The uncle, a concealed carry permit holder, returned fire at the gunmen, and they fled. The wounded teen was expected to survive, but faces a long road to recovery. Police later arrested two men and charged them with attempted murder.
  • Sept. 14, Hyattsville, Maryland: A resident saw a would-be package thief struggling with a Postal Service deliveryman and tried to intervene, police said. The thief then assaulted the resident and chased him into his house. The resident was able to reach his handgun and shot the thief once in the leg, wounding him, police said.
  • Sept. 17, Ridgeland, Mississippi: Police said that the owner of a popcorn store shot and wounded a teenage girl who pulled a gun on him while trying to shoplift. The teen was taken to a hospital for treatment before being charged as an adult with aggravated assault with a weapon.
  • Sept. 19, Tenino, Washington: A homeowner whose property had been burglarized multiple times spotted two suspicious all-terrain vehicles parked near a storage trailer and alerted his brother, who lived nearby, police said. Armed with a rifle, they confronted two burglars who were breaking into the trailer. One burglar immediately fled, but the second charged at the homeowner and his brother. The homeowner shot him once, wounding him. Police later arrested the first burglar.
  • Sept. 23, Collingdale, Pennsylvania: A man was walking to work early in the morning when a car with headlights off stopped in front of him, blocking his path, police said. Three masked individuals exited and approached the man, and one of them appeared to reach for a gun. The man drew his own legally possessed gun and fired, hitting one person in the leg. The three fled. Police later arrested a 15-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man in connection with the attempted robbery. Investigators determined that the vehicle used had been stolen during a carjacking in Philadelphia.
  • Sept. 24, Patterson, California: A woman fatally shot an intoxicated intruder who had assaulted her husband while trying to break into the couple’s home, police said. The husband initially tried to restrain the intruder, but ended up being injured in “a significant fight,” police said. The woman saw her husband struggling, grabbed a handgun that she had legally acquired just one day earlier, and shot the intruder.
  • Sept. 28, Wichita, Kansas: Police credited the actions of an armed bystander with helping to save a motorist’s life during a brutal knife attack. The assailant rammed a man’s car on purpose, smashed out the windows with nunchucks, then began stabbing the driver as he tried to get his two young children out of the car, police said. One witness drove her car at the suspect, stopping his attack. The bystander then held the assailant at gunpoint, allowing others to give first aid to the badly injured man, police said.
  • Sept. 30, Missoula, Montana: A driver was stopped at a traffic light when he saw a machete-wielding man chasing someone down the street, police said. Armed with his handgun, the driver confronted the assailant and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The suspect was charged with three counts of felonious assault with a weapon.

As these recent cases show, the reality of armed citizens defending life, liberty, and property never has been more relevant, or more supported by the available evidence.

Restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans doesn’t make them safer. It just hinders their ability to protect themselves and others, making them even more vulnerable to attacks by criminals who know their victims are defenseless.

A Second Amendment With Teeth
The Court’s Bruen decision actually protects Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Democrat-controlled state governments may finally be starting to realize the precedent problem standing in the way of their gun-control agenda. As I wrote when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in June, the Court declared in that ruling a strong restoration of the Second Amendment: “the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens (“the People”) to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’”

The Court laid out a very strict and specific rule to which gun-control laws must conform in order to avoid being declared unconstitutional. As history shows, there were very few (if any) regulations concerning commonly used weapons at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. Therefore, it stands to reason that there are very few regulations concerning commonly used weapons that will survive Second Amendment analysis post-Bruen.

Of course, that will not stop the left from trying. But perhaps they will finally start to see the pattern. At the end of the 2021-2022 Supreme Court term, the Court issued a series of summary decisions in four cases, including Bianchi v. Frosh, vacating lower-court decisions principally involving “extended” magazines and assault-rifle bans. The Court’s decisions required the lower federal courts to rehear the cases in light of the decision in Bruen.

On October 5, the Supreme Court vacated a lower-court decision in a case called Morin v. Lyver. The lower court upheld the constitutionality of a Massachusetts statute that included strict licensing standards to purchase or possess a pistol. The law included a lifetime ban on licensing to those convicted of certain non-violent offenses involving possession or use of firearms. The Supreme Court used language identical to that in Bianchi v. Frosh and the other cases mentioned above: the case was “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

These results are not surprising. The U.S. Supreme Court takes cases and writes extensive opinions when there are difficult questions of law that have not been answered, when bad precedent needs to be revisited and overwritten, and when different federal circuit courts disagree on interpretation of law. The Court will not waste its time hearing cases that have already been clearly decided—a category that will include most Second Amendment cases post-Bruen.

The Bruen test is clear. If a law restricts the right to keep and bear arms, especially weapons in common use, that law is unconstitutional unless the law is consistent with traditional, historic firearm regulations. Laws that ban or severely regulate weapons in common use are simply not going to survive scrutiny under Bruen. Both handguns and long rifles such as AR-15s are objectively weapons in common use.

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Biden’s move on pot has Second Amendment ramifications

President Joe Biden is no friend of gun owners. What’s more, is that he doesn’t seem interested in even trying to pretend he is, what with his anti-gun rhetoric time and time again.

So if he does something that could potentially benefit the Second Amendment crowd, it’s only by accident.

And that’s likely what’s happening with his latest move, where he announced taking steps toward changing how the government views marijuana.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced executive actions that would pardon thousands of people with prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession.

Biden then called on governors to follow suit with state offenses for simple marijuana possession, saying that “just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”

The president also directed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal law as a Schedule I drug, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most dangerous classification that includes substances like heroin and LSD.

Biden’s executive order to pardon simple possession includes the District of Columbia as well as people convicted in the federal court system.

Now, simple marijuana possession isn’t necessarily something that will preclude anyone from owning a gun. The pardons aren’t likely to make a big difference toward gun ownership.

But the potential reclassification of marijuana is.

As we’ve noted, people who use marijuana in accordance with the laws of their state are still legally prohibited from even owning a gun. It’s what led Florida Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried to file a lawsuit. She’s no friend of gun owners either, but she is very much in the pro-legalization effort, so this ties into that.

Now, understand that what Biden is doing here is a political stunt. Democrats aren’t doing as well in the polls as the president would like, so he’s making a big splash with something that polls pretty well. This is an attempt to garner support for Democrats.

However, that doesn’t mean gun owners won’t benefit.

After all, there’s nothing in the Second Amendment that says gun rights can be removed from someone for getting a prescription. Nothing in that whole “shall not be infringed” thing is followed up with “unless they use this one substance that only makes them a threat to the snack aisle at the nearest curb store.”

Yet federal law actually does. It doesn’t differentiate between heroin or cocaine and marijuana.

Hell, you can still own a gun if you’re prescribed Fentanyl, which is the drug of choice in the whole opioid epidemic, but not pot.

Biden’s move is, for once, welcome.

The problem, however, is that it’s directing people to just look at rescheduling marijuana. It doesn’t actually do anything. Considering how the Department of Justice has tried to defend the prohibition in the Florida lawsuit–which included using blatantly racist laws of the past, it should be noted–I won’t hold out much hope that it will actually happen.

Yet if it does, suddenly an untold number of Americans who would like to own a gun and use the marijuana their doctor prescribed will be able to lawfully do so. They won’t have to worry about being arrested for exercising their Second Amendment rights.

And if Biden is able to deliver this, it’ll be a rare moment of this anti-un White House benefitting gun owners, even if it’s only by accident.

Honestly, considering the way things have gone over the last year at the federal level, I’m willing to take what wins I can get.

Black women are the fastest growing group of gun owners. This instructor has taught 2,000 students how to safely bear arms.

During the pandemic, gun and ammunition sales spiked dramatically in the United States — particularly among Black women, who have become the fastest growing group of gun owners in the country.

“In 2021, we were just coming outta COVID and violence was at an all-time high, riots were at an all-time high and human trafficking is at an all-time high,” licensed gun instructor Robin Evans tells Yahoo Life as a way to explain the rise. “So at that moment, I feel like there was a huge shift in Black people, in general, just wanting to learn how to defend themselves.”

After noticing the increasing reports of violence against women in 2021, Evans founded Chicks with Triggers, a business dedicated to teaching women, and specifically Black women, how to safely use firearms.

“When I got into this, there was no one who looked like me, and so I decided to create that lane for people to come and know that they have a safe space,” says Evans. “When I first started, I didn’t even know women would come. I thought maybe a woman here and there, but man, they came through the gates running. I just hit another milestone of 2,000 people that I have trained since I started in 2021.”

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Gun Group Questions LAPD’s Fee for Concealed Carry Weapon Permit

A gun-rights group is taking issue with the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) new concealed carry weapon permitting policy, which adds a $268 fee with 20 percent or $53 due at the time of the in-person interview.

“The fee is quite high at $268,” said attorney Konstadinos T. Moros who represents the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA). “This compares to the $150 total the LA Sheriff’s Department charges. It’s not clear why LAPD feels it can charge so much more.”

Neither the LAPD’s fee of $268 nor the Los Angeles Sheriffs’ fee of $150 includes the cost of the livescan or training class, which adds nearly $300 to the cost of becoming licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

“We are looking at more than a $500 effective price tag to exercise a constitutional right if you are getting a permit from LAPD,” Moros told The Epoch Times.

The LAPD, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment, previously told The Epoch Times that it temporarily suspended the application process for concealed carry permits while it evaluates the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

“We are still waiting to see whether LAPD actually gets moving soon,” Moros said. “Releasing a policy is one thing, but actually processing applications in a reasonable time frame is another.”

In Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated good or proper cause requirements in concealed carry weapon permitting with Justice Clarence Thomas explaining that permit regimes that do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense are acceptable.

On Sept. 16, the CRPA issued a pre-litigation letter to the LAPD demanding that it comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling by accepting applications for permitting within 45 days.

“If we do pursue a lawsuit against LAPD, the excessive expense would certainly be one of the claims, particularly for any working-class plaintiffs for whom $268 is not a trivial amount of money,” Moros added.

The letter to the LAPD threatening legal action was addressed to Chief Michel R. Moore and accuses the department of having unclear processes on how to apply for permits, endless wait times, subjective requirements, application procedures that violate applicants’ privacy, and the refusal to even accept applications for processing.

 

Obama Judge Denies NY Jews a Temporary Stop of Hochul’s Ban On Guns In Synagogues

In an insulting reiteration of NY Governor Kathy Hochul’s stunning hypocrisy over the rights of people to defend themselves, an Obama-appointed judge has DENIED a requested Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the NY state “sensitive area” gun ban called the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), which went into effect September 1.

As I recently reported, the New York State Jewish Gun Club filed suit on September 29, after members and the group’s legal council recognized the threat of the CCIA – which Hochul signed on July 1, and which represents her leftist NY Assembly’s blitzkrieg response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June “Bruen” gun decision supposedly insuring that the right to keep and bear arms also includes the obvious right to carry a concealed weapon outside the home. The half-hearted Bruen decision left wiggle room for oppressive state politicians to claim that certain “sensitive” public areas were off limits to the right of concealed-carry.

And Hochul’s hypocrisy is so towering that, even as she backed a “legislative package” supposedly honoring Holocaust victims over the summer, she and her pals in the state legislature smacked together a new statute that would ban concealed carry within synagogues and houses or worship — or, as I mentioned, at any of what they ambiguously call places where there is a “religious observance.”

In other words, she is threatening people that she will use gun-grabbing state aggression, and possibly use it against some of the same Holocaust survivors and/or their descendants who were attacked by the gun-grabbing Nazi regime.

Now, the new development. The NY State Jewish Gun Club filing in Federal District Court to temporarily restrain enforcement of Hochul’s gangland CCIA “religious observance” and “house of worship” gun ban has proven fruitless. BearingArms’ Cam Edwards caught the news, right away:

“Their first request was for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state from enforcing that portion of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act; a request that was denied on Monday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick.”

And, guess what? The judge got his tax-funded job thanks to leftist political engineers:

“In his ruling, the Obama-appointed judge (who also has political ties to gun control fans Michael Bloomberg and former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo) found that the plaintiffs had not met the requirements for a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order)…”

Here, observers can see a telling sign of the difference between a person who respects natural, God-given, rights, and a person looking only at material concerns, a person who cannot understand, or will not acknowledge, that the term “injury” does not pertain merely to physical harm, but includes the abstract and perennial realm of principles.

Broderick’s argument stands on the spongy notion that, as he declares:

“…I find that the harm pled is too remote and speculative, and fails to reach the stringent standard of ‘immediate irreparable harm.’”

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How Much are Gun Laws Repressing Exercise of 2A Rights?

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– The states with the most restrictive gun laws are repressing the exercise of Second Amendment rights.  How much damage are they doing?

In the 2022 Bruen decision, released by the Supreme Court on June 22, the court named six states and the District of Columbia as polities where the governments were violating the rights of their residents to keep and bear arms.

Those states were California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.

There are reasonably good measures to compare those states to the rest of the country, where laws restricting the sale, ownership, and carry of arms are less burdensome.

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) tracks retail gun sales in all the states. Gun sales are much closer than NICS background checks alone because NICS checks are done for many other things as well.

Gun sales, measured in the NICS system, give us a strong representation of how many guns were purchased in a given year in each state.

Looking at the restrictive states compared to the non-restrictive states will show if the restrictive state laws are repressing the exercise of the right to keep arms by repressing the number of people who purchase firearms.

The number of people who have permits to carry is not as easily obtained. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CRPC) has worked to determine how many carry permits exist in each state. The numbers reported in 2021 will be used for this comparison.

This is a quick, first-order comparison to see if any obvious disparity exists. If no disparity exists, a more sophisticated analysis may or may not show those laws repress the exercise of Second Amendment rights.

Population figures for the states were taken from the 2020 census. Gun sales and carry permits will be expressed as rates so as to make a state-to-state comparison meaningful. The numbers of gun sales are from two years, 2020 and 2021.

2020 is a particularly useful year, as there was both a significant increase in violent crime and political posturing to restrict firearms sales and possession. The motivation to exercise Second Amendment rights should have been high.

2020 recorded all-time records for gun sales.

Gun sales for the restrictive states and the District of Columbia in 2020, as calculated from the NICS data, were 2.05 million. Per capita firearm sales were .024 firearms per person.

In 2021, for the restrictive states and DC, the numbers were: 1.93 million, and .023 firearms sold per person.

Restrictive states gun sales per capita: 2020 – .024; 2021 – .023.

Gun sales for the rest of the USA in 2020 were 18.6 million, and .075 firearms sold per person. In 2021, there were 16.2 million firearms sold, and .065 firearms sold per person.

Less restrictive states, gun sales per capita: 2020 – .075; 2021 – .065.

This is significant evidence of repressing the exercise of Second Amendment rights.  In 2020 and 2021, the sales of firearms in the restrictive states were only one-third as many per capita as in non-repressive states.

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Latest e-mail from the bureaucraps at ATF to a LGS

Short Version: 18-20 yr olds – automatic 10 day delay and info transmitted to fed, state and local law enforcement for possible investigation.

As a result of the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) of 2022, signed into law on June 25, 2022, the NICS Section is working towards the implementation of an enhanced background check process for persons between the ages of 18-20.

The enhancement provides the opportunity for additional outreach and research to be conducted regarding the existence of any juvenile adjudication information and/or mental health prohibition. As a result, transactions on persons between the ages of 18-20 will initially be delayed. In order to conduct the aforementioned outreach and research, the address of the individual will be collected so that the appropriate local and state entities may be contacted.

All descriptive information, including address, will follow normal purge requirements (i.e., deleted from NICS within 24 hours of the FFL receiving a proceed status.) If potentially prohibiting juvenile information is uncovered, the BSCA allows for the delay period to extend up to ten business days. However, if no potentially prohibiting information is located, the transaction will be proceeded as soon as possible.

The NICS Section is working in collaboration with numerous other entities in the implementation of all aspects of the BSCA and will keep you informed as additional guidance becomes available.

Thank you!

Firearms dealers now required to provide buyers’ addresses to feds for denied transactions
Newly implemented measures also mandate that the FBI pass on the personal information to local law enforcement.

As part of a sweeping change that has gun rights groups alarmed, federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs) are now required to provide the FBI with the personal addresses of individuals whose attempted purchases were denied.

In turn, the FBI must now provide details of the failed transactions — not only those denied but also those just delayed — and the personal information of the rejected individuals to local law enforcement, raising fears of greater government infringement on the Second Amendment.

The changes were quietly implemented last week by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to comply with new federal law. NICS was established to determine if an individual is prohibited by law from receiving firearms and can either approve, deny, or delay a firearms purchase.

In March, Congress passed and President Biden signed a massive appropriations package for fiscal year 2022 that included the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act (VAWA). Tucked into the VAWA was a bipartisan measure called the NICS Denial Notification Act, which mandates that the FBI’s NICS Section alert state and local law enforcement of all denied attempts to purchase a firearm within 24 hours.

The stated purpose of the bill is to stop criminals and prevent gun crimes before they happen.

The FBI elaborated on how the law will be implemented in an email obtained by Gun Owners of America.

The NICS Denial Notification Act of 2022 requires the FBI’s NICS Section to notify state, local, or tribal law enforcement of all FBI NICS denied transactions within 24 hours,” the email reads. “The FBI must provide notification to law enforcement based upon the location of the FFL and if different, the purchaser’s address.

The email also explained that FFLs must provide the addresses of purchasers to the feds.

“To support the determination of what local agency should receive the notification, FFLs will be required to provide the buyer’s complete address to NICS as recorded on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Form 4473 when transactions are denied or delayed,” the message continued. “The address information will be required before the status can be provided or retrieved either by the NICS contracted call center or via the NICS E-Check.”

Previously, firearms dealers were only required to provide the state of residence of a customer rather than their full address in the event of a delay or denial.

Gun rights groups have expressed outrage at the changes, arguing they lay the groundwork for a registry of potential gun owners maintained by the federal government.

“The NICS process was never intended to hinder the ability of law-abiding firearms consumers by requiring the forced collection of unnecessary personal consumer data in bulk,” Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, said in a press release. “Neither the ATF nor the FBI can act beyond authority of Congress and violate the Constitution by furthering the ultimate goal of creating an illegal firearms owner database.”

Gun rights advocates have also noted the new law doesn’t actually require the reporting of addresses for delays.

“What the law actually says and how FFLs are being told they must implement it are totally different,” said attorney Emily Taylor on the Armed Attorneys podcast. “The implementation is far broader than the law itself — and of course very, very bad news for gunowners, because who wants their address shot out to local law enforcement because you’re trying to buy a gun.”

Cargill called for the feds to remove from their interpretation of the law their language regarding delays, arguing it “exceeds the scope of the plain language of the NICS Denial Notification Act” and “the constitutional rights of a customer’s privacy are being violated by extending this reporting requirement to delayed customers.”

Delays by NICS require the retailer to pause the transaction for three business days, allowing NICS more time to research the individual in question. The FBI is supposed to follow up with law enforcement if someone is erroneously delayed or denied.

One concern among gun rights advocates is the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy for gun dealers that willfully violate the law. Officials have warned FFLs will have their licenses revoked if they try to skirt the law.

According to critics, however, FFLs are increasingly at risk of losing their licenses as regulations get more complex and dealers become more likely to inadvertently violate the law.

“If you create more and more complex rules that the FFLs have to follow, they will mess up, which means they’re licenses will get yanked,” said Taylor.

Just the News reached out to both the FBI and the ATF for comment for this story. The ATF referred Just the News to the FBI, which didn’t respond.