RKBA – Page 74 – MILESFORTIS

ATF Requests Funding for Pistol Brace Amnesty Registration Program

Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- AmmoLand News has uncovered information showing that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is planning to force gun owners to register firearms with pistol braces as a National Firearms Act (NFA) ATF Form 1 item.

The document (embedded below) was uncovered in a budget justification from the ATF to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This form confirms the leaked information AmmoLand News has heard for months from our inside sources at the ATF.

The document reads: Due to the upcoming Amnesty Registration of Pistol Brace weapons, photos of the weapon being registered will be required to prove the weapon does utilize a pistol brace in its configuration and would qualify for an amnesty registration.

Pistol Brace Amnesty/Registration

Our ATF inside sources have told AmmoLand News that the ATF was planning for an amnesty period where gun owners would be able to register their braced pistols as short-barreled rifles (SBR) and that it is expected they will receive a free tax stamp. The ATF charges $200 per SBR. Currently, there are at least four million braced pistols in the United States.

The ATF posted the proposed pistol brace rules to the Federal Register late last year for public comment. Over 250,000 comments were submitted, with most comments being against any new regulations. The gun community let their voices be heard, and the ATF ignored them.

ATF Funding Request for Pistol Brace Amnesty Screengrab — ATF Funding Request for Pistol Brace Amnesty

According to this document, owners of braced pistols would have to submit photos of their firearms to the ATF to prove that they qualify for “amnesty registration.”

The ATF has issued multiple letters stating that pistol stabilizing braces are legal to put on pistols, but this action would change agency’s course.

The White House ordered the ATF to redefine the definition of a firearm and change rules surrounding pistol stabilizing devices. The proposed rule covering frames and receivers was unveiled 30 days later, and the proposed rule for braced pistols was revealed 60 days later. The frames and receiver rule went into effect on August 24th after a 120-day grace period.

The final pistol stabilizing device rule has not been finalized. Based on this budget request and information from our sources, it seems to include a registry. The ATF recently implemented the eForms systems for some Form 1 NFA items. The new system automates a lot of the tedious work that ATF employees and the National Firearms Act (NFA) division used to do manually. It remains to be seen if the system can withstand millions of additional form submissions.

This influx of millions of new applications will also backlog any other forms submitted for processing. The ATF promised that the average time to process a Form 1 tax stamp application would be 90 days. The ATF is nowhere close to that number, with only 30% being processed in the promised time period. With millions of additional applications, the 90-day period seems to be a pipe dream.

The new rule is expected to be announced by December of this year.

California gun control law stays unenforceable after Democrat lawmakers fail key vote

Democratic lawmakers in California failed to replace an existing gun control bill that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional Thursday, leaving the state’s concealed carry regulations unenforceable.

The legislation failed to pass the California Assembly by a single vote early Thursday morning. California Attorney General Rob Bonta lamented that Californians currently have nearly unfettered access to concealed carry permits following the failed vote.

“There would be a huge influx of applicants now that the ‘just cause’ component has been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and not enough safety precautions for the individuals who are seeking that,” Bonta said.

“If this bill doesn’t pass, people who haven’t had a comprehensive safety evaluation can get a concealed weapon and bring it into [sensitive] places,” he added prior to the vote.

Lawmakers say they will bring the bill back up for a vote during a December session.

California’s concealed carry laws were struck down after the Supreme Court ruled in June that states cannot require Americans to demonstrate the particular need for a firearm in order to receive a concealed carry license.

While the ruling related specifically to a New York law, California’s legislation mirrored the requirement and was struck down.

“California was made less safe tonight by not passing the bill to make us consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino, one of the California bill’s central supporters. “It’s unfortunate, it’s sad, it’s surprising.”

More on the case out of Pennsylvania

BLUF
This is a strong ruling restoring Second Amendment rights. As a Circuit Court ruling, it is a precedential ruling which applies to the entire Third Circuit. The Third Circuit includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the District of the Virgin Islands.

For New Jersey, Delaware, and the District of the Virgin Islands, this is a tsunami in firearms law, potentially washing away decades of Second Amendment infringements.

Ownership of Arms Protected by Takings Clause, 2nd and 14th Amendments

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– On August 30, 2022, a three-judge panel in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled the Pennsylvania government violated the Takings clause, the Second Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment when they refused to return a gun collection of the parents of a man who was convicted of murder.

The parents never committed a crime. The state never used the parents’ gun collection as evidence. From a list of properties, I estimate 47 guns, accessories, computers, and other items valued at $40,000 or more were taken.

The State refused to return the parents’ property under the rule of force: we have them, and we won’t give them back.

After their son had lost his appeal, the parents asked for their property back. It had not been used as evidence in the case. The state refused. The parents sued in federal district court under U.S. 42:1983, civil rights act. The case was filed on June 10, 2020.

The District Court ruled against the parents. The parents appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The appeals court ruling, written by Judge Bibas, appears to be unanimous (no dissent was seen) and very strongly written. The Bruen decision was important in this case. From the order of the three-judge panel:

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Don’t Believe Anti-Gun Lies About Armed Self-Defense

Most America’s 1st Freedom readers are well aware that anti-gun politicians, gun-ban advocates, and the so-called “mainstream” media tend to play fast and loose with the facts. One specific area where they tend to flat out lie is in the frequency of armed self-defense episodes by law-abiding Americans.

“People very rarely use guns successfully to defend themselves from crimes—both in their homes and in public,” Laura Cutilletta, managing director for the anti-gun Giffords Law Center, wrote in a recent op-ed titled “Debunking the ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ Myth.”

Cutilletta further pontificated: “Having access to a gun doesn’t better protect people from being injured during a crime compared to other protective actions like calling law enforcement or fleeing the scene.”

Of course, she’s completely wrong, as we’ve detailed before. Back in 2013, even the Centers for Disease Control wrote: “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

Four Southern gun owners became living proof of that fact during a five-day period in late August.

On Aug. 28, in League City, Texas, a couple was at their home in a trailer park at about 10 p.m. when a man broke into the trailer and threatened them with a knife. Fearing for their lives, one of them fired a shot, hitting the intruder.

Officers responding to the shooting found the home invader dead inside of the trailer. The incident is being investigated as an act of self-defense.

A day earlier, in Loganville, Ga., a 23-year-old man had gone to attend a family event when another man approached him and started an argument. The man told police officers that he retreated and attempted to get away, but the other man pursued. Believing the aggressor to be armed and fearing for his life, the first man shot him.

The attacker was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. While it has been reported that “(e)vidence at the scene corroborated” the claims of the man who said he acted in self-defense, police continue to investigate the case. No charges have been filed.

Three days before that, a Boones Mill, Va., homeowner used his legally owned firearm to defend himself and his family. According to media reports, a man unknown to the homeowner came to the house and an altercation ensued. The homeowner shot 26-year-old Christopher Hill, who died at the scene. Police are still investigating the incident.

That same day, in Hialeah, Fla., a man used his firearm to protect himself during an alleged road rage incident. Police say one man blocked in another man’s car with his own, got out of the vehicle, approached the other car in an aggressive manner, and confronted the other driver.

Fearing for his life, the second man shot the aggressor in the chest, killing him. Police are still investigating the incident and treating it as a case of armed self-defense.

“This case is still open and active but appears to be an act of stand your ground,” the Hialeah Police Department told Local 10 News via email. “The shooter is fully cooperating in the incident and is facing no charges as of this writing.”

The truth of the matter is, armed citizens across the country save their own lives and the lives of others many times every day. The anti-gun narrative that says otherwise is clearly fake news.

FEDERAL JUDGE FINDS NEW YORK’S NEW CONCEALED CARRY LAW TO BE PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, BUT ALLOWS IT TO TAKE EFFECT

Washington, D.C. – Late yesterday, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, Chief Judge Glenn T. Suddaby issued an opinion and order denying GOA’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the State of New York’s poorly named “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.” Although going into detail about how just about every aspect of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) is unconstitutional, the judge concluded that none of the plaintiffs had standing to challenge any aspect of the law.

This bad news comes after Gun Owners of America (GOA) and its nonprofit legal arm, Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation in July. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a GOA member from Schenectady County.

Among other alarming provisions flouting recent Supreme Court precedent, this law, which is in effect as of September 1, requires concealed carry permit applicants to:

Display “good moral character”
Disclose their social media accounts for review
Have in person interviews with law enforcement
Provide four “character references”
Undergo 18 hours of combined training, a tremendous increase from the existing 4-hour requirement

In spite of his dismissal of the case, thankfully, Judge Suddaby understood, took to heart, and applied the clear edict from the U.S. Supreme Court in June, when the High Court instituted a “text and history” test for judges evaluating the constitutionality of restrictions on Second Amendment rights.

Shockingly, the anti-gunners defending the law in court elected to cite historical precedents such as the disarming of Catholics and Native Americans in the colonial era, as well as the slave codes of the antebellum South, to defend the legislation under the new “text and history” test requirement.

Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:

“Despite the judge’s dismissal of the complaint, his opinion contains a silver lining for New Yorkers and the nation, as the robust precedent laid out by the Supreme Court in June is clearly making headway. GOA looks forward to continuing the fight against clear violations of the Second Amendment, as we work to restore the rights of all Americans.”

Sam Paredes, on behalf of the Board of Directors for the Gun Owners Foundation, added:

“Thankfully, Judge Suddaby rejected the bigoted historical laws that New York cited as justification for this highly restrictive law. We look forward to continuing our efforts to fully dismantle this law and sending a second clear message to Albany: ‘shall not be infringed.’”

NEW: NYSRPA v. Bruen (N.D. NY): NYSRPA files lawsuit challenging New York's Bruen response law with the same plaintiffs and defendants as the first NYSRPA v. Bruen. The case is currently assigned to Judge Suddaby. https://t.co/ccBChmXf1K pic.twitter.com/HsXvpq8lz7

— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) September 1, 2022

COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Plaintiffs New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., Robert Nash, and Brandon Koch (collectively “Plaintiffs”), by and through the undersigned attorneys, file this Complaint against the above-captioned Defendants, in their official capacities as state and local officials responsible under New York law for administering and enforcing the State’s laws and regulations governing the carrying of firearms outside the home. Plaintiffs seek a declaration that New York’s limitations of and burdens on the right to carry firearms as enacted in Senate Bill 51001 (“SB51001”) and as otherwise detailed below are unconstitutional under the First, Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Plaintiffs also seek an injunction compelling Defendants to refrain from enforcing those invalid limitations

“This scares tyrants, and it should” – Couldn’t say it better.

Joe Biden’s Ghost Gun ‘Ban’ Lasted Less Than A Minute

The ability to manufacture arms today ensures that free Americans will never truly be deprived of the ability to defend themselves.

The Biden administration and its allies are celebrating that President Joe Biden has now “banned ghost guns” by executive order. A “ghost gun,” as the gun control movement calls it, is a homemade firearm that does not have a serial number and is not known by the federal government to exist. Since the moment our country was founded, it has always been legal at the federal level to build a firearm for personal use, as long as the firearm manufactured is otherwise legal to own.

As of August 24, 2022, a new federal regulation prohibits kits with all of the parts needed to build a gun from being sold to the public without a background check.

As the gun control movement describes it, America’s streets are now safe from the scourge of homemade firearms because companies cannot sell the kits to make these guns without the purchaser receiving them through a licensed gun store and undergoing a background check.

Their celebration was short-lived, however. As soon as the clock struck midnight and Biden’s new rule went into effect, retailers had already adjusted their inventory to comply with the new regulations. Biden’s ban on “ghost guns” lasted no longer than a minute.

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Birmingham mayor calls for gun ban

The city of Birmingham, Alabama isn’t exactly Chicago or New York City when it comes to size, but it’s not exactly Lotsee, Oklahoma (population: 6) either.

Because it’s a good-sized city, it tends to have a lot of the problems one would associate with a larger city. That obviously includes crime.

In fact, now the mayor is using that crime rate to demand stricter gun control laws.

Since January 1, Birmingham Police have investigated 90 homicides to date in the city with 83 of those by guns, according to Mayor Randall Woodfin during Tuesday’s city council meeting.

This, as he reports that over 700 firearms have been taken off the streets in that same amount of time.

Woodfin is calling for stricter gun laws to get those weapons off the streets, while asking for more help from the community.

“I wake up every day thinking how can we address this?” Woodfin said.

At Tuesday’s meeting he had two police officers take in examples of the types of guns that they have confiscated to people could see what they look like – he says the most common ones are mini-Draco’s and the AR pistol. Woodfin said there is no use for them on the streets but harm.

No, that’s not true at all. There are plenty of uses for them; legitimate, law-abiding uses. Just because criminals are using them doesn’t mean no one else is.

As for Woodfin’s calls for gun control, they’re going to fall on deaf ears, as they should.

Look, Birmingham may be pretty rough, and the crime statistics say that it is, but just what gun control does Woodfin think will suddenly make this end?

It seems he wants to ban them.

“If you can’t support this ban that’s un-American because the whole idea is public safety,” Woodfin said. “Federal tax dollars, state tax dollars, local tax dollars, the root of what we do is public safety first.”

So, it’s un-American to want to uphold the actual Constitution? Seriously?

As for public safety, I took another look at the text of the Constitution. The term “public safety” appears exactly once, and that’s only in reference to suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus. That’s it. At no other point does it claim any other right can be suspended in the name of public safety, even the Second Amendment rights.

Further, the idea that you can ban these particular weapons and criminals not get their hands on them is absolutely insane.

On one hand, there are already plenty of them running around the state as it is. A ban now would, at best, simply keep law-abiding folks from buying any more of them. It won’t stop criminals from getting them at all. Even if they ran out of guns to steal, they’d just obtain them from out-of-state sources.

Further, these are easy to put together yourself, even without a “ghost gun” kit. How does Woodfin propose preventing that?

Look, Birmingham’s problems are significant, to be sure, and Woodfin isn’t a complete idiot. Yes, he’s calling for gun bans, but he’s also asking for community help. That’s where he should be directing his time and effort because that’s going to accomplish far more than anything else he’s talking about.

In fact, had he not called for the gun ban, I’d be celebrating him for talking common sense. Instead, he wants something he can’t have, then has the cajones to call it “un-American” if you oppose it.

A New Kind of Threat to 2nd Amendment & Free Speech Rights

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- In the wake of another Supreme Court ruling that strengthens and more clearly defines Second Amendment protections, anti-gun politicians have developed another way to threaten those rights, and rights protected by the First Amendment all in an effort to silence gun owners and penalize them for fighting back.

In California, where such strategies are typically developed and then spread across the map, this plan of attack is already in progress.

A federal court case known as Junior Sports Magazines, Inc. et.al. v. Bonta cuts to the heart of the problem. Several plaintiffs, including gun rights organizations, are challenging changes in state law created by the passage of Assembly Bill 2571, which makes it unlawful for any firearm industry members to advertise, market, or arrange for placement of an advertising or marketing communication concerning any firearm-related product in a manner that is designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to minors. The plaintiffs are asking for a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the law.

The second prong of this anti-gun strategy is legislation enacted to thwart such challenges by financially penalizing anyone, including an attorney or an entire law firm if they seek declaratory or injunctive relief from any firearms-related California state statute or local ordinance or even a rule or regulation by making them liable to pay attorney’s fees and costs of the prevailing party. Simply put, anybody seeking to enjoin a California gun restriction faces the prospect of liability for the state’s attorneys’ fees if the plaintiff does not win on all aspects of the case, even if their case prevails on the merits, settles a claim without a waiver or voluntarily dismisses any portion of the case for any reason.

In essence, California politicians are effectively silencing debate on issues directly affecting rights secured by the Second Amendment by legislating against those who would challenge their laws.

What began as an attack on one constitutional right has now become an attack on another right, yet civil libertarians are silent.

Democrats led by Gov. Gavin Newsom are saying, “You have freedom of speech only if you agree with us.” That is not how the Founders perceived this country, and it is why they included the First Amendment in our Bill of Rights.

If this were about any issue other than guns, the media would be going crazy. Where are the editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post? Why aren’t there reports about this in every newspaper? Are stories being spiked, or is the situation simply being ignored?

One might expect this sort of censorship in Putin’s Russia, but it is here, now in Joe Biden’s America. When anti-rights fanatics take their fight to this level, it’s really an attack on all Americans, not just 100 million gun owners.

Today, they’re coming after gun rights. Tomorrow, perhaps they’ll be coming after a right you cherish or your right to protest, publish or provide an alternate viewpoint.

That’s not the country where our parents and grandparents grew up, and it shouldn’t be the country our children and grandchildren are forced to accept.

Word’s getting out to rational people, even those who appear to know little to nothing about guns.

Why a military-style weapons ban may do little to stop crime

President Joe Biden this week pushed for a ban on military-style weapons as an answer to the nation’s rise in gun violence.

But critics say little evidence supports the notion that such a ban, in force for a decade from 1994 to 2004, would reduce the crime rates gripping most cities in America.

And some jurisdictions are struggling to enforce gun laws already on the books, raising questions about how they would find the resources to enforce even stricter ones.

Guns that fall into the “assault weapons” category are indeed used in just a fraction of crimes, data show.

According to an analysis from the National Institutes of Health, “most estimates suggest less than 7%” of the firearms used for “crime in general” were “assault weapons.”

Most of the violent crimes that occurred in 2020 were committed with handguns, FBI data show.

Rifles, on the other hand, were responsible for fewer homicides in 2020 than knives or a perpetrator’s fists and feet. Rifles, which typically fall into the loosely defined “assault weapons” category, were specified as the weapon in less than 3% of homicides in 2020. Handguns were specified as the weapon in 45% of homicides.

Biden floated a renewal of the “assault weapons” ban during a speech Tuesday that the White House billed as his answer to the problem of rising crime rates nationwide. However, when he brought up the need for such a ban, he did so both in the context of street crime and mass shootings.

“We have to act for all those kids gunned down on our streets every single day that never make the news. There’s a mass shooting every single day in this country in the streets of America — every single day,” Biden said during the speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

The FBI’s definition of mass shooting involves “any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun,” and although the term typically evokes the image of a headline-grabbing school massacre, mass shootings can include street violence if the victim count reaches that threshold.

Biden appeared to be citing data from the Gun Violence Archive, a shooting tracker used by many news outlets and advocacy groups that defines mass shootings as any incident in which multiple people are shot, even if there is no loss of life. That figure supports Biden’s claim; however, when mass shootings are defined by the criteria historically used by law enforcement, the number of mass shootings this year drops far below an average of one per day.

“You know, we’re living in a country awash with weapons of war, weapons that weren’t designed to hunt, were designed to take on an enemy,” Biden said during the speech. “That’s what they’re designed to do. For God’s sake, what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone?”

Biden’s efforts to tie street violence to “assault weapons” ignore the reality of how criminals operate, said Amy Swearer, a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

“Most of the time when criminals are committing crimes in public, they want a type of firearm that is concealable, which is why they want handguns,” Swearer told the Washington Examiner.

She pointed to a 2004 study sponsored by the Justice Department that found no meaningful evidence the “assault weapons” ban had lowered gun violence.

“They should have taken it a step further and said, you’re also dealing with a ban, a prospective ban, with aspects of a firearm that aren’t inherently related to solving the problem of crime,” Swearer said.

That’s because pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and the other components of a rifle that typically classify it as an “assault weapon” don’t make the firearm inherently more useful to a committed mass shooter, she said.

The 2004 study noted that military-style weapons “were used in only a small fraction of gun crimes prior to the ban: about 2% according to most studies and no more than 8%.”

“Although the ban has been successful in reducing crimes with” such weapons in the decade it stood, the study noted that “any benefits from this reduction are likely to have been outweighed by steady or rising use of nonbanned semiautomatics with” large-capacity magazines, “which are used in crime much more frequently than” military-style weapons.

“Therefore, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” according to the study.

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Armed Citizen Stops Man Randomly Shooting People in Detroit; 3 Dead 1 Wounded

It took an armed citizen to stop a man that was randomly shooting people in Detroit that spanned over two hours.

This past Sunday, a 19-year-old man started randomly shooting people. He shot and killed three people, including a 28-year-old and a 43-year-old.

The shooter then shot a 4th person, who was an 80-year-old man walking his dog. A neighbor witnessed the incident, grabbed his gun, and fired back at the suspect.

“He saw my weapon, and he went from predator to prey. He had that look of shock,” said the neighbor. via WXYZ

Another neighbor said he saved the 80-year-old man’s life because had he not shot at the suspect, he would have walked up and shot the victim multiple times like he did his other victims.

The suspect was arrested a few hours later and is currently in custody pending charges.

This senseless act of violence was only stopped due to someone else having a gun to stop the threat. And this is why you should always carry and be prepared to use your gun in self-defense. If only someone were there to stop the threat before this coward could take his first victim.

New York Enacts Gun-Carry Restrictions in Rebuke to Supreme Court

The Empire State has made it harder than ever to legally carry a gun.

On Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul (D.) signed a series of new restrictions on where licensed carriers can take their guns and who can get a license in the first place. She painted the new measures as a direct response to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, which struck down a key provision of the state’s previous law.

“[T]he Supreme Court issued a reckless decision removing century-old limitations on who is allowed to carry concealed weapons in our state — senselessly sending us backward and putting the safety of our residents in jeopardy,” Hochul said in a statement. “Today, we are taking swift and bold action to protect New Yorkers.”

The move puts the state squarely back in the crosshairs of gun-rights activists who want to take it right back to the high court. The collection of new restrictions will serve as test cases for feeling out the new limits of gun-carry regulation in the wake of Bruen. The more aggressive restrictions could serve as easier targets for those activists and have greater potential to set new Supreme Court precedents expanding the scope of recognized Second Amendment protections.

Government officials, who can no longer subjectively deny permits based on whether they think an applicant has “proper cause” for one, will be allowed to subjectively deny applicants based on their social media activity and “moral character.” Those who do obtain a permit will be barred from carrying on private property unless the owner posts a sign allowing it and anywhere the state has declared a “sensitive place,” including Times Square and several blocks around it.

The Supreme Court has already cast doubt on the constitutionality of those restrictions in their Bruen decision. Despite Governor Hochul’s claim the state only passed the new restrictions “after a close review of the NYSRPA vs. Bruen decision and extensive discussions with constitutional and policy experts, advocates, and legislative partners,” she has repeatedly made comments suggesting the laws are in direct conflict with the will of the Court.

A concurrence from Justices John Roberts and Bret Kavanaugh said requiring permitting for gun carry based on objective standards, including a background check or training requirement, was presumptively constitutional.

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With RINO-Republicans Like Ohio’s Matt Dolan, Who Needs Democrats?

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Ohio GOP lawmaker introduces gun safety bill; includes red flag law, enhanced background checks,” ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland video reports. “Cleveland-area state Sen. Matt Dolan proposed bill with mental health in mind.”

That this obvious advocacy piece masked as news relies on assumptions right out of the starting gate is evidenced by repeating the term “gun safety” in the headline, the lede, the body of the “report,” and twice in the crusading reporter’s embedded self-publicizing tweet (embedded below). And curiously, since “red flag” laws are also promoted, you’d think the term “due process” would appear at least once in an unbiased report?

You’d think.

Also of note, no real opposing viewpoints are presented. The single gun owner quoted who appears marginally uncomfortable with what he’s being told isn’t totally against the idea; he just isn’t sure what it would actually do. He said that “most gun owners don’t want to cause issues.”

I suppose asking someone from Buckeye Firearms Association what they thought about it would be too much of an investigative reporting stretch. Besides, they’d probably just throw a wrench in the predetermined narrative and give the video editor much more work to futz around with context. And that’s assuming anyone at WEWS even bothered to look for “Ohio gun rights groups” to see what might turn up first on Google.

For his part, that Republican Matt Dolan is following a time-worn gun-grabber script could not be more apparent, especially when he declares, “[The bill] protects the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens while also…”

Grabbers always sound that way when they feign “I support the Second Amendment” right before showing everyone their big “but.” Remembering that it ends in “shall not be infringed,” what other tyrannical usurpations besides disarming citizens who have not been convicted, let alone even charged, does Dolan intend to “protect” us with?

“If someone aged 18 to 21 wants to buy a gun, they would only be able to buy a rifle or shotgun that holds only a single round of ammunition if they buy the gun by themselves,” the report notes. So evidently double-barrel Fudd guns are out.

Why would he invent such a ludicrous Constitutionally and historically unsupportable and offensive restriction?

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NRA using Texas case to build its challenge to Florida law restricting gun buyers to age 21 and older

TALLAHASSEE — The National Rifle Association is pointing to a Texas case to try to bolster its constitutional challenge to a 2018 Florida law that prevents people under age 21 from buying guns.

An attorney for the NRA filed documents Monday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge last week issued an injunction against a Texas law that bars people under 21 from carrying handguns outside their homes for self-defense.

“The [Texas] court’s opinion confirmed that young adults come within the Second Amendment’s protections, and that banning young adults’ right to purchase [or carry] a firearm is inconsistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” NRA attorney John Parker Sweeney wrote in a filing known as supplemental authority.

A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in May about the Florida law, which the Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott approved after a mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people. The gunman, former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Nikolas Cruz, was 19 at the time of the shooting.

California moved swiftly to limit concealed weapons after Supreme Court ruling. That plan backfired

When the U.S. Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to concealed-carry gun laws that limit firearms in public places, California officials vowed to swiftly respond and enact new restrictions.

But a measure to tighten the state’s rules for concealed weapons failed in the state Capitol early Thursday morning, a shocking outcome for a plan championed by Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

SB918 by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), would have added a slew of new regulations and background check requirements for gun owners to obtain permits. It also sought to greatly expand the list of public places where guns cannot be carried, including bars, parks, casinos, sports arenas, libraries, churches and gyms.

Ironically, part of what spelled defeat for the measure was the rush by legislators to enact it quickly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June.

Because Portantino added an emergency clause to the bill — so it would take effect immediately upon Newsom’s signature — it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. The measure fell just two votes short on the last night of legislators’ session, on a 52-23 vote in the state Assembly.

Portantino and Democratic leaders, including state Attorney General Rob Bonta, worked feverishly throughout the night to try to whip the necessary votes. The bill faltered just after midnight.

The Supreme Court struck down a New York law requiring gun owners to show they have “proper cause” to get a permit to carry a handgun outside of their home. In other words, the state could not require applicants to demonstrate that they need a gun for self-defense.

The decision in the landmark case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, was widely interpreted as striking down similarly restrictive laws in California and a half-dozen other states.

The court’s conservative majority held, in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that states can require handgun owners to get a permit to carry in public as long as they use objective requirements to decide whether to issue a permit. Thomas also suggested that the government can still prohibit guns in “sensitive places” like schools and government buildings.

SB918 attempted to take those two openings and adapt California’s law to be as restrictive as possible while complying with the letter of the ruling. Portantino said the state needed to act, in the wake of recent mass shootings across the country, to prevent more violence.

“We need fewer guns on our streets, not more,” he said in a statement earlier this summer. “California will not wait to see the consequences of these trends and will act now to protect the public.”

In California, concealed-weapon licenses are generally available in the state’s most rural counties, those with a population of fewer than 200,000 people. But such licenses have historically been difficult to obtain in metropolitan areas, and cities and counties can create their own restrictions and set fee amounts.

Portantino’s bill was opposed by gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of California, which said the bill would create onerous hurdles for permit applicants and defines “sensitive places” so broadly that it would contradict the court’s narrow intent.

“It is very apparent that this bill is an attempt to pre-empt the expected ruling from the United States Supreme Court,” Gun Owners of California said in a statement. “By your definition the legislature can designate any public place as sensitive.”

Amy Swearer

I read the transcript of Biden’s gun control speech yesterday so that you didn’t have to. Here are the top five most unserious things he said:

(1) “The bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun…and can pierce Kevlar.”

What even…? This is obviously and objectively false. He just flat made it up. Especially if you’re talking about your typical 55 gr. .223/5.56 rounds.

An intern could have fact checked this with a basic google search. There are dozens of readily available charts for this:

chuckhawks.com Improved Rifle Ballistics Table

But also, muzzle velocity is not synonymous with lethality or vague notions of “stopping power.”

(2) “You can’t go out and buy an automatic weapon. You can’t go out and buy a cannon.”

Okay, we’re actually tired of fact-checking this. You can, in fact, own both of these things. Both at the time of ratification and today.

Hundreds of thousands of civilian-owned machine guns are currently in the NFA registry. Heck, you can own a tank if you can afford it.
(3) “For those brave right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15…need something more than a gun.”

How many F-15s did the Taliban own?

Also, I’m confused…is my AR-15 an ultra-dangerous weapon of war that no civilian should own because it rips bodies apart…or is it a useless hunk of carbon fiber that has zero value in a hypothetical armed defense against a tyrannical gov?

Seriously, though, this view of armed revolution/defense against tyranny underappreciates the role of federalism in that scenario. It’s not “me and my AR.” It’s “tens of thousands of armed Americans and almost certainly a lot of state national guard units [which have F-15s].”

While we’re here, let’s also acknowledge that “your AR-15 is useless because the government could just carpet bomb you into submission” isn’t an argument in favor of gun control. It’s actually an argument for a better armed citizenry and against trusting whoever said that.

Re: Kevlar – literally every rifle round will go through soft body armor. This isn’t unique to an AR-15. There’s a reason body armoring grading exists – if you’re planning on using soft body armor against rifle rounds….don’t. You need the proper grade. That’s the whole point.

(4) “For God sake, what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone? They inflict severe damage…they rip bodies apart.”
…so then why do we universally exempt law enforcement officers from these bans, including while they’re off duty? Are they waging war against the American people? And how does removing a pistol grip and barrel shroud change the rationale for possession? [It doesn’t].

I mean this sincerely but also gently – if you think a single child in Uvalde would still be alive (or their body less horribly destroyed) if the shooter used a different firearm or a featureless “non-assault” weapon chambered in .223/5.56…you don’t understand guns. At all.

(5) “There are certain gun dealers that are basically… Not gun dealers, they’re wholesalers providing the weapons to anybody who have the money.”

Either he’s suggesting that these gun dealers are breaking the law and selling to felons, etc. – in which case, shut them down and put them in prison – or he’s suggesting that gun sellers are somehow bad for selling guns in full compliance with federal law.

This is how sales of anything work. But yes, gun sellers will sell to anyone who has the money to purchase then gun and who passes a background check….because that buyer has a right to keep and bear arms and his purchase/possession is perfectly legal.

Biden has never showed himself to be a serious person when it comes to gun policy and the Second Amendment [remember “just fire two blasts of your shotgun outside the house if you think there’s an intruder”?] But was hands down his most unserious speech on the issue to-date.

If he wanted to be serious about gun violence, he’d be in Philadelphia talking about rogue prosecutors and straw purchasing. Instead, he’s in Wilkes-Barre telling law-abiding citizens they should give up their ARs because he could just order the Air Force to bomb them.

Biden Is the Semi-Fascist He Is Looking For

JOE BIDEN IS THE FASCIST IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Biden and his administration are framing out an ideological war which puts Democrats in possession of the “soul of the nation,” and paints conservatives as fascists, bigots and any other insult they can come up with. The goal is to try to seize the moral high ground, only they are doing it on behalf of butchers disguised as doctors, groomers disguised as academics, and racists disguised as equity professionals.

When Biden spoke to Democrats last week and proclaimed that conservatives and Trump supporters are semi-fascist, his handlers knew exactly what they were doing. When Biden was asked what he meant with the comment, he said “you know exactly what I mean,” leaving explanations to flow from the podium in the White House briefing room.

“We have seen MAGA republicans take away our rights, make threats of violence, including this weekend,” Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about Louisiana Senator Lindsey Graham’s caution against prosecuting former President Donald Trump, “and that is what the president was referring to when you all asked me last week about the ‘semi-fascism’ comment.”

Congress is held by Democrats, the White House has a Democrat in the Oval Office. The approval rating for the president and his administration is trash. Yet somehow, they continuously blame the opposition party for their own failures. Democrats could not, in 50 years, pass a bill federally legalizing abortion. In recent years, their efforts to obstruct states from enacting their own voting laws were met with realizations that Delaware, Biden’s home state, as well as bastion of liberal thought New York, each have voting laws more “restrictive” than Georgia and Texas.

Using the term “fascist” is a language game designed to paint the opposition as something they are not, and obfuscate the fact that it has been Democrats in power that have repeatedly and consistently limited the rights of Americans. Charlie Kirk rightfully noted that Joe Biden is a fascist.

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That’s Black GUNS Matter, just to make it clear.

If Voters Keep Believing Gun Control Lies, It Will Lead to Communism: Black Guns Matter Founder
Conservatives must spread libertarian message among urban voters, Toure says

Maj Toure is a Philadelphian and founder of “Black Guns Matter,” a movement that advocates for protecting the Second Amendment and promoting responsible gun ownership in black and urban communities. He believes that the gun control movement has been and continues to be racist.

He began his gun rights work after seeing people he knew getting gun charges because they purchased a gun but did not know all the rules of usage, storage, or carry. He began helping people legally acquire and responsibly use guns to defend themselves.

Toure said the Second Amendment is the foundation of liberty in the United States but as more restrictions are placed on gun ownership, we get closer to complete government take over.

“But that [U.S.] Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, is there to check government, not to check the people. But if we keep convincing people that, ‘Oh, this is for your protection’ or restricting the people, we’re going to create another communist regime,” Toure said during a recent interview with EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program on Aug. 20 at the Turning Point USA Conference.

Toure said what has happened in communist countries is what is slowly happening in the United States.

Necessity of Second Amendment

“The reason why the conversation about the Second Amendment and firearms is so important is that all of your other values and beliefs and all of those different things … if you can’t defend them, you don’t have them,” Toure said.

Recently, the mayor of Philadelphia told Toure that only police should carry guns.

“That’s what he said. That means you’re not fit to serve, you don’t know the Constitution, you don’t even know your job description, you’re just winging it,” he said.

Toure said his organization has to counter these types of anti-American narratives.

“And these are the types of things that we have to consistently remind the American people about because there’s a propaganda onslaught to convince the American people to operate and vote in their own disinterest.”

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Well, SloJoe has always been known as a liar, so…

Fact Check: Biden Claims Mass Shootings ‘Tripled’ After ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Ended

CLAIM: During his speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden said mass shootings “tripled” after the 1994-2004 “assault weapons” ban expired.

VERDICT: Mostly False.

Biden said, “Back in 1994, I took on the NRA and passed the ‘assault weapons’ ban. For ten years, mass shootings were down.”

He added, “But in 2004, Republicans let that ban expire, and what happened? Mass shootings tripled.”

There are two things to unpack here: First, his claim that the ban itself was successful while in effect and, second, his claim that mass shootings “tripled” once the ban expired.

On February 19, 2018, Breitbart News looked at a report by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ), which found that the “assault weapons” ban could not be credited with any reduction in crime.

The NIJ report was written in 2004 as the ban was about to expire.

The Washington Times quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Koper, author of the NIJ report, saying, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

The NIJ report observed, “The ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

So much for the claims of all the great things the ban accomplished. Now consider the claim that mass shootings tripled after the ban expired.

Breitbart News noted that the Washington Post fact-checked the claim about mass shootings tripling when Biden first made it in early June 2022.

The Post reported:

Biden claimed that mass shooting deaths tripled after the law expired. He appears to be relying on a study of mass shooting data from 1981 to 2017, published in 2019 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery by a team led by Charles DiMaggio, a professor of surgery at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. That group found that an assault weapons ban would have prevented 314 out of 448, or 70 percent, of the mass shooting deaths during the years when the ban was not in effect. But the data used in that study has come under attack by some analysts.

The Post added, “The new mass-shooting database shows that there were 31 mass shootings in the decade before the 1994 law, 31 in the 10 years the law was in force (Sept. 13, 1994 to Sept. 12, 2004) and 47 in the 10 years after it expired. As noted, some of that increase stems from population growth.”

The claim that mass shootings “tripled” after the “assault weapons” ban expired is mostly false. There was a modest increase in such shootings, but the expiration of the ban does not seem to be causal in that rise.

A New Kind of Threat to 2nd Amendment & Free Speech Rights

In California, where such strategies are typically developed and then spread across the map, this plan of attack is already in progress.

What began as an attack on one constitutional right has now become an attack on another right, yet civil libertarians are silent.

Today, they’re coming after gun rights. Tomorrow, perhaps they’ll be coming after a right you cherish or your right to protest, publish or provide an alternate viewpoint.

That’s not the country where our parents and grandparents grew up, and it shouldn’t be the country our children and grandchildren are forced to accept.