Category: RKBA

What the Mainstream Media Doesn’t Tell Us About Guns

It’s hard to fool an honest man or woman who wants to know the truth. Unfortunately, many of us depend on the media to bring us much of our news, and lying to us — or withholding key parts of the story — today makes it easier to fool us tomorrow.

Most of us feel horrible when we see news stories about violent crime. Beyond the emotional shock of the story, though, we are seldom told what the story means. Is that newsworthy event a common problem or is it rare? Are there good solutions that make us safer most of the time?

Besides the violence shown in movies and TV dramas, it’s almost as if the news deliberately keeps us in the dark about real violence and its causes. We can’t make good choices unless we have perspective. For a minute, let’s shed some light on the reality of armed citizens and guns

We’re told that guns cause crime. That’s odd because a lot of criminals didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Only one out of twelve violent crimes are committed with a firearm. If someone says they need to disarm honest people in order to stop violent crime, they are going to leave about 92 percent of those violent crimes untouched. No wonder gun control laws don’t make us any safer.

If guns cause crime, then honest gun owners haven’t gotten the message either. Ordinary citizens like us own a lot of guns. About 40 percent of Americans live with a gun in our homes and we own hundreds of millions of firearms that are never used in crimes.

These are the guns you never seem to hear about. The news media don’t want to admit that firearms are ordinary tools that a huge portion of Americans lawfully own and use on a daily basis.

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Justice Thomas directly spoke to this in the Bruen decision whan he noted that the whole of Manhattan Island couldn’t be such, and which goobernor Hochul signed a hastily drafted law into effect.

Gun rights group asks judge to block NY gun ban in Times Square, other ‘sensitive’ places

A Second Amendment advocacy group on Tuesday asked a federal judge to block a New York state law that bans the carry of firearms in certain “sensitive locations” such as stadiums, hospitals and Manhattan’s Times Square.

The request was part of a lawsuit brought by the Gun Owners of America against a New York law enacted this summer in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court decision expanding the Second Amendment.

The justices’ 6-3 decision in late June found the Constitution generally protects the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. At the same time, the court said guns could be restricted in certain “sensitive locations,” but left that term largely undefined.

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on July 1 signed a law that criminalizes the concealed carry of guns in airports, houses of worship, Times Square and other sensitive places, prompting a swift legal challenge.

Gun Owners of America is one of several plaintiffs who are urging a federal judge in Syracuse to block the New York law before it takes effect on Sept. 1.

During a hearing in the case on Tuesday, a lawyer for the gun rights group told U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby that the Supreme Court meant for the “sensitive location” exception to apply only to a “narrow group of places.”

“You know, government building, schools. But it’s not all of these places. Like, Times Square — it can’t be a sensitive place,” attorney Stephen Stamboulieh said. “It could be that Times Square is sensitive at certain times. But not all the time.”

Defending the law was James Thompson, a lawyer with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, who argued that New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act is “deeply rooted in American history.”

He said the Supreme Court’s recent June decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen recognized that “protecting people from guns in vulnerable places” is “presumptively lawful.”

A ruling on the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction against the New York law is expected soon in the case, Antonyuk v. Bruen.

SCOTUS Turns Back Maryland Gun Ban Case, New Brief Filed

BELLEVUE, WA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms have filed a supplemental opening brief in their challenge of Maryland’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” based on the Supreme Court’s remand of the case back to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals following the landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in June.

SAF and CCRKBA are joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Field Traders, LLC, and three private citizens: David Snope, Micah Schaefer, and Dominic Bianchi, for whom the case is named. Defendants are Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, State Police Secretary Col. Woodrow W. Jones, III, Baltimore County Sheriff R. Jay Fisher, and Anne Arundel County Sheriff Jim Fredericks, all in their official capacities.

Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Raymond M. DiGuiseppe, DiGuiseppe Law Firm P.C. in Southport, N.C., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and Tiernan B. Kane, Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, Washington, D.C. The case is known as Bianchi v. Frosh.

The brief details how the high court in Bruen overruled the use of “intermediate scrutiny” in such cases as Bianchi and instead mandated “the only way that a law burdening conduct falling within the Second Amendment’s scope can be upheld is if the government can demonstrate a ‘historical tradition’ of regulations, rooted in the Founding Era, that burdened the right in a similar way and for similar reasons.” Further, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen “demonstrates that Maryland’s ban on certain semiautomatic rifles is unconstitutional.”

“The Bruen ruling effectively ended lower court ‘means-end scrutiny’ of Second Amendment challenges that have allowed perpetuation of extremist gun laws banning firearms that are in common use,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “In that regard, the Bruen decision makes it difficult to uphold certain laws, especially when they arbitrarily ban whole classes of firearms and criminalize their possession, clearly violating a citizen’s individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Gottlieb observed that an affirmative ruling overturning Maryland’s ban could significantly impact other states where bans have been enacted or may be proposed via legislation or citizen initiative.

That’s why the Bianchi case is so important in SAF’s effort to win firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time.

Why a national gun registry would not reduce crime

On Aug. 19th, Louisville, Kentucky Metro Chief of Police Erica Shields flashed her tyrannical instincts on local television.

Chief Shields’ sanctimonious comments perfectly illustrate an attitude that habitually pops up throughout the gun rights debate: It is your responsibility, the anti-gunners believe, to surrender your civil rights and other legal protections to make enforcing the law easier.

Louisville, Kentucky Metro Chief of Police Erica Shields. 

Commenting to a local news channel Shields said that anyone who does not support a new national digital firearms registry is not pro law enforcement, and that all such people “are giving law enforcement the middle finger.”

Her poorly thought-out statement assumes more than a good investigator would dare. The following disclaimer is on the ATF’s website regarding their firearms tracing: “Firearms are normally traced to the first retail seller, and sources reported for firearms traced do not necessarily represent the sources or methods by which firearms in general are acquired for use in crime.”

Tracing fireams

The ATF clearly acknowledges that firearms tracing produces mixed results, because firearms both voluntarily and involuntarily change hands – a fact that would confound a digital registry as much as the current system.

The logistical challenges of tying a name and serial number together for every firearm in the country is astronomical.

It’s also unclear what impact ATF traces have on convictions. Do ATF firearm traces substantially help convict murderers? There is very little data to support that assumption, or the legal validity of a trace report in a court of law.

The idea that a comprehensive digital database of gun owners would affect violent crime is nothing but speculation.

However, we do have recent examples of how local law enforcement and federal agents abuse the data they’ve collected on private citizen’s gun purchases.

While we have no fact-based reasons to believe a gun registry would benefit public safety, we can be certain it would create opportunities for more misconduct.

Policing a free society is necessarily difficult. And our justice system is adversarial for very important reasons.

We can’t have both fast and easy solutions, and real justice. We need law enforcement officials who will do the hard work and not cut corners at the expense of our civil rights.

How “sensitive area” battle is shaping up in New York

In the Bruen decision, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that there were a handful of places where guns could be constitutionally banned. He called these “sensitive areas” and they include places like courthouses, jails, and things of that sort.

On one level, it makes sense. These are places where some are more inclined to be violent. Plus, they’re easily secured so that virtually no one is able to bring a gun in. In other words, they use metal detectors, not signs on the door.

However, in so doing, the term “sensitive area” is getting used to justify a whole lot of restrictions. In fact, the battle over them in New York is just starting to fire up.

“Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department,” wrote Thomas.

While New York politicians have yet to declare Manhattan a gun-free zone, they have pushed back against the ruling. In a long list of new “sensitive places,” state legislators named parks, which by definition includes the biggest park in the lower 48, the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. Interestingly, the Adirondack Park is home to about 130,000 residents—all of whom will effectively see their Second Amendment rights erased when the law takes effect on Sept. 1.

This law is in direct conflict with NYSRPA. When the U.S. Supreme Court recently confirmed the right of Americans to “bear” arms in this case, it didn’t do so in some mealy-mouthed manner that indicated the ruling was a difficult decision or was uncertain in any way.…

For residents of the Adirondack Park, which is about half private land and half publicly owned, the law puts them in a dilemma. Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the state NRA affiliate, said he has received “hundreds of calls” about the ban from residents of the Adirondacks who are confused and frustrated.

Of course, Adirondack Park is only one of the battlegrounds. In fact, the above-linked piece goes on to quote a Democratic lawmaker who takes issue with this particular measure and how it impacts these good folks.

However, I’m going to go a step further and note that while Thomas explicitly wrote that the entire island of Manhattan couldn’t be declared a sensitive area, what has actually transpired there is just a step shy of precisely that.

For example, a large number of areas are declared sensitive areas, for one thing. Then there’s the idea of carrying on private property.

Now, in many states, business owners can put a sign up to serve notice that the building is gun-free. I know it’s not popular, but I’m actually fine with this because property rights are also a thing that needs to be respected. If a business owner doesn’t want guns on their property, they’re free to do so.

However, in New York, the default is that guns aren’t permitted.

While that’s fine for anti-gun businesses, it also means those ambivalent on the subject of concealed carry are, in effect, determined to be essentially the same as sensitive areas. Since most people try to actively avoid politics, the default for these folks is likely to be that ambivalence.

So, in effect, the majority of the island of Manhattan–and the rest of the state, really–has been essentially declared a sensitive area.

Yes, I support businesses being able to declare themselves gun-free–why would I want to spend money with companies who don’t support my fundamental rights–the default position on something like that should be toward freedom.

What New York did looks to have gone beyond what Justice Thomas intended.

The battle over what actually can constitute a sensitive area has just started. It’s going to be rough going for a lot of people, too, unfortunately, before it’s all settled.

Gun control not a “resource” to stop mass shootings

If the idea of being involved in a mass shooting, even if that involvement is just knowing one of the victims, is a personal nightmare of yours, you’re probably right to be concerned. They’re awful and the pain of having someone taken from your life like that hurts beyond words.

Believe me, I know.

In North Carolina, a sheriff decided to stop playing around and decided school resource officers will have AR-15s to use to protect students and staff. To say some don’t like that is an understatement.

In the Charlotte Observer, one columnist put his opposition into words.

Madison County, one county over from where I live in Asheville, garnered national headlines recently with an announcement that every school in the N.C. county will be outfitted with AR-15s this school year.

This initiative embodies how many on the right today bend over backward to suggest anything but gun control as the salve for gun violence.

Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood wrote on Facebook, “to exhaust every resource we’ve got to ensure that our kids are safe, that when they go to school, they can learn…and they can go the playground and play, and not worry about some thug who’s going to come out onto the playground and open up on them with some type of AR-15, shotgun, pistol, whatever.”

Only Harwood didn’t exhaust every resource. If he’d done that, he would’ve been advocating for meaningful gun control — a shooter can’t open fire with an AR-15 if they can’t purchase one.

Well, that last paragraph is possibly one of the dumbest ever written in the English language.

First, understand that there are an estimated 20 million or more AR-15s currently in circulation. Does the author think that a new law will magically make them unobtainable for the average citizen? I’m sorry, that ship has long since set sail.

Further, it’s not like the AR-15 is the only weapon used to commit a mass shooting. In fact, handguns are far more commonly used for such horrific acts.

Yet an AR-15 would allow deputies to engage handgun-armed would-be mass shooters at greater range, meaning they could save lives that much sooner without having to close to handgun range. Or, if such a killer has a rifle of some type, he can at least meet them on equal ground.

Moving on…

Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban in 1994, outlawing AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles. As reported by NPR, mass shootings were down in the decade that followed, compared to the decade before (1984-1994) and the one after (2004-2014). Assault weapon bans work.

Except the study referenced used an odd definition of “mass shooting;” one that also happened to reduce tilt the findings more in the favor of the desired outcome. That NPR didn’t critically look at that study isn’t overly surprising.

But the author is starting to approach his point:

Harwood represents a bigger problem: the refusal of law enforcement in North Carolina to lead the gun control conversation.

There we go.

The problem is that Harwood and other North Carolina law enforcement officials aren’t pushing his preferred politics. Yet there are valid reasons for this.

For one, Harwood is an elected official, which means his politics are more likely to reflect the beliefs of his constituents. He’s not going to push a “gun control conversation” in a pro-gun county unless he’s looking to retire without having to announce it.

Second, it wasn’t that long ago when people like the author were screaming about defunding the police, and now they’re upset that the cops don’t seem to be on their side?

The truth of the matter is that a lot of law enforcement see what happens when good people are disarmed. They can’t stop criminals from getting guns, regardless of the laws on the books. They’ve seen how those laws completely fail every time they arrest a known felon and find a firearm on them. So, they often come to recognize that gun control isn’t going to do the trick.

They fail to push the author’s agenda simply because they know it to be a complete failure of an idea.

Putting AR-15 in the hands of school resource officers isn’t just a good idea, it’s the only sane one.

America’s Standing Army

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

The IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.

The Veterans Administration (VA) purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.

According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) owns 600 guns. And the Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”

This is how it begins.

We have what the Founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil.

This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics.

Mind you, this de facto standing army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies may look and act like the military, but they are not the military.

Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.

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Progressive writer admits real reason for anti-gun lawsuits

The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in our Bill of Rights. While it’s been a bumpy road, the last several Supreme Court cases on the topic have firmly come down and made it clear that only minimal restrictions on that right can be tolerated.
What that means is that anti-gun progressives who want to infringe on our rights have to look at another way to do that.
Unfortunately, they’ve long had one. They tried lawsuits, then the PLCAA was passed to block that.
Yet a progressive writer at a progressive publication argues that the recent verdict against Alex Jones may provide a roadmap against gun companies, and he makes it clear what he wants to do. After all, it’s titled, “Does the Alex Jones Civil Verdict Show Us How to Bankrupt the Gun Industry?”
And the body doesn’t get much better.
lthough Alex Jones is attempting to protect himself from a recent civil court verdict (for compensatory and punitive damages) of nearly $50 million by declaring bankruptcy for his main propaganda business, more civil suits are in the pipeline. Furthermore, if the civil suit he lost last week for defamation is successful after appeals, along with others filed against him, he may indeed become bankrupt, even if he is raising money through other vehicles than his parent company right now.
Jones was sued for propagating the cruel lie that the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012 was actually a false flag operation perpetrated to try to pass more gun control. The result has been a merciless and ceaseless series of verbal attacks, doxxing and harassment against the parents of children who died in the school. Jones’s statements were heinously harmful to those who were already living with the grief of a child being shot and killed in a classroom.
Civil suits are about attacking the pocket books of defendants, and they can be filed when a criminal suit doesn’t apply.
The gun industry learned of the danger of such suits based on the charge that gun manufacturers were and are knowingly excessively manufacturing guns for potential killers, and that they are specifically designing and marketing guns to appeal to the young, deranged, non-sports shooter based on firepower and style, as if they were selling the latest season’s cars.
Except, there’s no reason to even suspect that the gun industry believes any such thing. Yes, guns can be misused, but we also know that those manufacturers aren’t selling directly to criminals. All of their sales go through FFL holders, which means everyone gets a background check before the sale can go through.
Considering what advocates of such measures claimed when these were passed, why wouldn’t they believe they were doing enough?
Yet it’s clear the goal of such lawsuits is to essentially destroy the firearm industry in this country, all because they don’t personally approve of the private ownership of firearms.
Which, of course, we knew, but it’s always nice when they confirm it for us.
If it were merely about punishing irresponsible actions by the industry, this isn’t the language they’d use. They wouldn’t talk about bankrupting an entire industry.
But they are.
What’s more, their claims are nonsense. Yes, the marketing is meant to appeal to people. That’s what marketing is for.
However, these efforts to attack the marketing continue to fail to illustrate any link between the marketing and the bad actors themselves in any of these lawsuits. After all, gun marketing isn’t exactly on mainstream television or your average YouTube ad. For the marketing to have any impact, someone would have to actually see that marketing, and yet that link never gets shown.
That’s because that link typically just doesn’t exist.
The only “marketing” that most of these killers see is the “marketing” done by the mainstream media, which shills for people like the author and pushes the idea that such weapons cannot be stopped and are the preferred choice of mass shooters, even though they’re not.
But somehow, we don’t see CNN getting lawsuits. Weird, ain’t it?

Gun bill modeled on ‘Strong Ohio’

Aug. 20—An attempt to revive some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence, stalled in the General Assembly since 2019, faces a timeline that’s hard to meet.
State Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, announced Senate Bill 357 this week…….

Dolan’s bill has five major provisions:

—A “red flag” law in which a judge can allow police to temporarily take the guns of someone suffering a “severe mental health condition,” at risk of harming themself or others.

—Requiring anyone age 18 to 21 who wants to buy a gun that can fire more than one shot before reloading to get a cosigner at least 25 years old for the purchase. Dolan said there is an exemption for young people in the military or police.

—A written statement from a county sheriff would be needed for private gun sales, except transfers between relatives, confirming the buyer is legally eligible to own guns.

—Improving background checks by requiring information on gun buyers to be entered in law enforcement databases by the end of the following business day.

—Using $85 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to help hospitals and colleges train more mental health workers, and another $90 million in ARPA funds to build mental health crisis centers for people who need treatment but are now being sent to jails.

Both incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nan Whaley, former mayor of Dayton, indicated their approval of SB 357.

Its provisions resemble some in the “Strong Ohio” bill that DeWine introduced in 2019 after the mass shooting in Dayton’s Oregon District. DeWine’s press secretary noted that similarity, while Whaley called Dolan’s bill a “good first step.”

The Buckeye Firearms Association denounced the bill as “‘Strong Ohio’ by another name.” The group has already opposed its major provisions, BFA Executive Director Dean Rieck said.

The Break Down of The First Known ATF FRT Confiscation

GREENVILLE, S.C. -(Ammoland.com)- The man that was the first known target of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) crackdown on forced reset triggers has spoken to Paul Glasco of Legally Armed America, and Paul has graciously shared his notes with AmmoLand News. This article breaks down the encounter between the gun owner and the ATF Special Agents. This encounter was the first visit of an ATF agent to a person’s home to confiscate a Rare Breed Trigger. We have been notified of other visits in different parts of the country that followed the same pattern of intimidation and pressure.

The gun owner has requested that AmmoLand News only use his first name. Paul and his wife live in South Carolina. The couple purchased two Rare Breed FRT-15 triggers. One trigger was purchased from Gun Broker. The other trigger was purchased directly from Rare Breed Triggers. Paul and his wife purchased the triggers before he knew the ATF considered them to be machine guns. The couple is law-abiding American citizens and never expected a visit from a government law enforcement agency.

Paul was napping inside his house while his wife was outside. ATF Special Agent Chuck Donahoe and three other agents rolled up onto the couple’s home. The agents approached Paul’s wife and demanded to know about the Rare Breed FRT-15 the couple purchased on Gun Broker. The ATF agents started threatening Paul’s wife about what could happen if the couple didn’t cooperate and forced the ATF to get a search warrant. The ATF was applying intimation tactics to get the trigger. Paul’s wife finally admitted to having the trigger and told the agents that the trigger was locked up and she would have to get her husband to retrieve the Rare Breed FRT-15.

Paul’s wife woke him up. She was visibly shaken by the ATF’s agents’ “visit.” Paul, confused, walked out to see what the agents wanted. The agents were in no mood for talking. They told Paul they knew he bought a trigger from Gun Broker. They knew the name of the person that sold him the trigger and demanded he hands the FRT-15 over. If he didn’t hand it over, the agents would get a search warrant to take the trigger from the house forcibly. Paul could either turn over the trigger or have his home ripped apart by the ATF and face possible other charges. Paul felt he had no other choice but to give them what they wanted.

Special Agent Donahue wanted to know if Paul and his wife had purchased any other force reset triggers. Paul admitted to buying an FRT-15 directly from Rare Breed Triggers but told the agents that he sold it to someone else from a 2A chat. The agents wanted to know the identity of the person who bought the triggers. Paul only knew the buyer as Joe Rare Breed. The agents accepted the answer and left with his trigger.

AmmoLand News reached out to ATF Special Agent Chuck Donahoe with a series of questions about the visit, but SA Donahoe chose not to respond to our phone calls or texts.

Now, this is real ‘gun safety’.

Louisville gun safety group aims to make gun education more accessible

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —
A local gun safety group is trying to make gun education more accessible.

The group Armed and Educated partnered with Cleav’s Family Market and Black Market to give out groceries with gun safety lessons today.

Shauntrice Martin volunteers with the group and founded Black Market.

She says the goal is to use short lessons – five to ten minutes long – as an entry point to show people that handling guns safely is an easy process.

In exchange for patrons participating in a demonstration with an air pistol, they received a case of groceries.

Organizers believed they gave out groceries to roughly sixty people.

Armed and Educated plans to host future events to encourage the proper handling of guns.

Some still cling to idea of Second Amendment and militias

The Second Amendment reads: [no, it does not read that way. I wish these authors would not be so ignorant]

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the people’s right right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

[FIFY- fixed it for you]

We also know that our Founding Fathers were fearful of a standing army, having seen that army used as a tool of oppression. As such, they favored citizen soldiers, much like how the Greek city-states maintained their armies.

Little did they expect the debate that we would see since then over a single sentence. Unfortunately, the debate continues.

What’s more, we get pieces like this one for LA Progressive subtitled, “Most constitutional experts argue that the Second Amendment protects the right of State militias to bear arms. Not private militias or individuals.”

Now, I’m not sure how they figure most constitutional experts agree with them unless they dismiss anyone who doesn’t as a constitutional expert, but it doesn’t get any better moving forward.

Why does the United States have more civilian gun deaths than the entire rest of the world combined? Is it because people in the US are more violent? NO.

Except, we don’t. Not even close.

If you look at a list of civilian gun fatalities by nation, you’ll find a lot of places whose numbers are far worse than ours, especially if you look at the per capita figures.

Further, are Americans more violent? The author dismisses this out of hand, yet a look at non-gun homicides compared to total rates from places like Europe suggests that yeah, we might just be.

And now look at all of this and we’ve only gotten to the subtitle and the first paragraph. You know this is going to be a disaster.

However, it should be noted that most constitutional experts argue that the Second Amendment protects the right of State militias to bear arms. Not private militias or individuals. Be that as it may, exactly what “well regulated Militias” did [redacting mass killers’ names]

I’m sorry, but that line of “reasoning” is just absolutely insane.

First, why would the government need to protect the “right” of the government to have guns? Yes, it’s different levels of government, but it’s still government.

Further, why is it that throughout the Constitution, when the Founding Fathers wanted to specify the states, they said “the states” in every other instance but this one? And that every other place protecting a right of the people, it meant actual individuals everywhere but here?

On ever level, this argument is absolutely insane. “But militia!” they scream.

Sure, but look at the Second Amendment for a moment. What exactly in the rest of it suggests that the right to keep and bear arms should be infringed for everyone but the militia? Even if the right is to be taken as protecting state militias versus private ones, where in the Second Amendment does it preserve the right just for those state militias?

After all, it says “the people’s right right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

So what gives? Well, it seems some parties are more interested in manipulating the text of the Second Amendment to mean anything they want it to mean, and they expect the American people to swallow it whole.

Sorry, that’s not our style.

Obviously, we haven’t delved too deeply into this piece, but why should we? It’s already clear they can’t be reasoned out of this position because they haven’t shown they reasoned themselves into it. They’re simply trying to play games and hoping people are too stupid to see what they’re doing.

Well, we do.

Giffords Says This is Gun Safety Week, So Let’s Talk ACTUAL Gun Safety

If you follow the big gun control orgs’ accounts on social media, chances are you’ve already come across a post like this one . . .

 

That’s right, the Giffords civilian disarmament operation has unilaterally declared this Gun Owners for Safety Week and are using it to push their message of gun control under the guise of “gun safety” and “standing up to the gun lobby.”

So, in the spirit of Gun Owners For Safety Week, I think we need to amplify responsible gun ownership, too. That’s always a good idea. If you aren’t already familiar with them, here are the four rules of gun safety that every gun owner should know and practice.

But we all know that groups like Giffords aren’t really concerned about actual firearm safety as much as as they are control those who own guns. Even if every single armed citizen was the very model of gun safety, never doing anything even remotely questionable and only using firearms outside of a range for and clear-cut cases of self defense, that still wouldn’t satisfy them.

That’s why they’re pumping messages like this one . . .

 

The real goal here, of course, is to push and pass restrictive laws — think: universal background checks, gun owners licensing, waiting periods and “safe storage” mandates — to the point where lawfully-possessed guns aren’t only mostly useless for armed self-defense, but are utterly worthless against a tyrannical government, too.

Reducing their usefulness as defensive tools against the kind of criminals the average citizen is likely to encounter is just a happy side effect of their real objective: making life safer for illiberal governments and their enforcers.

But they know we know this. They’re not trying to change our minds here. They want the general public — the majority who don’t know much about the issues surrounding firearms and gun rights — to rethink what “safety” is. Instead of being about the practices an individual should adopt for basic firearm safety, they want people to think that “gun safety” comes from the imposition of “commonsense” gun control laws.

They want John and Jane Q. Public to think that gun owners don’t give a damn about safety, when precisely the opposite is the truth. We all started out dumb about guns at some point and were corrected by a parent, an instructor, a range safety officer, or a mentor. Some of us have had worse experiences that woke us up. But the general public hasn’t had that experience. They don’t know (and don’t want others to know) how seriously safety is taken as a normal part of the gun culture.

That’s why a lack of basic, fundamental gun safety practices isn’t tolerated in the gun-owning community.

To spread that message even further, we need to be reminding people of three things:

  • What actual gun safety really is
  • That we take it seriously
  • That passing laws can’t make bad owners or criminals into good ones

What Real Gun Safety Is

Real gun safety doesn’t come from collective action. It doesn’t come from laws. It doesn’t come from firearms design (assuming the design isn’t seriously defective). It doesn’t come from your gun shop, or even from a firearms instructor. Ultimately, gun safety lies in the hands of the individual holding a gun. Everyone else can do everything right, but if you as the owner don’t adopt safe practices, none of that matters one little bit.

negligent unintentional discharge training range
Courtesy Jeff Gonzales

That’s why, long ago, various groups of firearm owners and gun-carrying professionals came up with safety rules which we’re all expected to know and practice. While the exact wording differs, the Four Rules cover things really well . . .

“The Four Rules of Gun Safety”

If you take any basic class given by a reputable instructor, you will start off with gun safety before ever going to the range. Beyond what’s contained in the Four Rules (or the NRA’s 3 rules, if that’s what you learned), there are other safety considerations to know including . . . .

  • The gun needs to be safe to operate
  • You need to know how to use it safely
  • Use the correct ammo
  • Wear eye and ear protection
  • Never use alcohol or drugs while shooting
  • Keep guns away from unauthorized people (children, thieves, etc.)
  • Range safety procedures and rules

As a community, we take these rules seriously. To be told by gun control advocacy operations — of all people — that they’re the ones who really care about firearm safety is not only false, it’s downright insulting. We need to make sure everyone hears this.

Biden invites gun control groups to White House to help “heal the soul of a nation”

Makes sense. After all, nothing promotes unity like demonizing 80-100 million gun owners and threatening to turn them into criminals if they don’t register or turn their AR-15s over to the government, right?

Next month Joe Biden’s going to be hosting a “United We Stand Summit” that’s ostensibly about the “corrosive effects” of threats of violence on our political system and public life; an event that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claims will be “important opportunity for Americans of all races, religions, regions, political affiliations, and walks of life to take up that cause together.” If you don’t believe in gun-controlling our way to “unity”, however, expect your invite to get lost in the mail.

Biden will deliver a keynote speech at the gathering, which the White House says will include civil rights groups, faith leaders, business executives, law enforcement, gun violence prevention advocates, former members of violent hate groups, the victims of extremist violence and cultural figures. The White House emphasized that it also intends to bring together Democrats and Republicans, as well as political leaders on the federal, state and local levels to unite against hate-motivated violence.

You know, there are plenty of new gun owners out there who specifically bought a firearm because they’re worried about being the victim of “extremist violence” who might also have a thing or two to say about the idiocy of trying to reduce violence by preventing people from defending themselves, but Biden and his allies have no interest in hearing from those folks. In fact, for an event that’s ostensibly about promoting unity, it sure seems awfully divisive in nature.

Sindy Benavides, the CEO of League of United Latin American Citizens, said the genesis of the summit came after the Buffalo massacre, as her organization along with the Anti-Defamation League, the National Action Network and other groups wanted to press the Biden administration to more directly tackle extremist threats.

“As civil rights organizations, social justice organizations, we fight every day against this, and we wanted to make sure to acknowledge that government needs to have a leading role in addressing right-wing extremism,” she said.

… Benavides said Biden holding the summit would help galvanize the country to address the threats of hate-inspired violence but also said she hoped for “long-term solutions” to emerge from the summit.

“What’s important to us is addressing mental health, gun control reform, addressing misinformation, disinformation and malinformation,” she said. “We want policy makers to focus on common sense solutions so we don’t see this type of violence in our communities. And we want to see the implementation of policies that reduce violence.”

Sounds like less of a summit and more like a pep rally for Democrats to me; a day where Biden and his closest allies can portray Republicans as “right wing extremists” and push for more divisive gun control laws ahead of the midterms.

The divides in this country are obviously growing deeper by the day, but this event is likely to flame those tensions instead of alleviating them. I truly hope I’m wrong, but given the blatantly partisan nature of this “unity summit,” it’s hard to predict otherwise.

Young v. Hawaii

George Young, a Vietnam veteran, wants to openly carry a firearm for self‐​defense in his home state of Hawaii. Hawaii allows firearms to be openly carried only by those who are “engaged in the protection of life and property.” Young was denied his permit twice and filed suit in federal district court. Young’s suit was summarily dismissed three times before he obtained pro‐​bono counsel to appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

The Ninth Circuit, in an in‐​depth and historically rooted decision, held that the Second Amendment does in fact protect the right of law‐​abiding citizens to openly carry a firearm. The Ninth Circuit then decided to hear the case en banc—meaning every judge on the circuit will hear the case rather than the typical three‐​judge panel—but that hearing was delayed pending the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. New York. Unfortunately, that case was dismissed by the Court as moot after the city changed its law in order to prevent a pro‐​Second Amendment decision.

Now the full Ninth Circuit is ready to hear Mr. Young’s case and Cato has joined with many Second Amendment groups and law professors on a brief discussing the original meaning of the Second Amendment and historical practice of carrying a firearm. We argue that contemporary understandings of the word “bear” are synonymous with “carry,” and that it was not limited to a military context. We also survey early colonial laws and show that carrying was common and legal. Finally, we discuss how individual Founders, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, carried weapons for self protection.

The history is clear: arms were borne by common people for self‐​defense, and the Second Amendment protects that right. The Ninth Circuit should follow the panel decision, overrule the district court, and protect Young’s right to defend himself.

Why More Americans Are Becoming First-Time Gun Owners
Many Americans are turning to firearm ownership for many different reasons – much of it having nothing to do with politics but a need to protect themselves.

Why Is Gun Ownership Up? Expert Analysis and Some Personal Stories: Following the start of the global novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in early 2020, firearms sales steadily picked up. By the end of the year, 2020 had seen the strongest sales of guns in the history of the United States. It was driven significantly by many “first-time” buyers – those who had never previously owned a firearm.

According to data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry trade association, there were some five million first-time gun buyers in 2020 – while other statistics put the number significantly higher. What is also notable is that in the months that have followed, many of those individuals have become repeat customers, with nearly 23 percent of retailers reporting that those new owners made a second firearm purchase in 2021.

The impact of the pandemic, followed by summer 2020’s wave of violent protests that coincided with calls to “defund the police” and then the election of Joe Biden to the White House, can’t be overstated. By comparison, just 2.4 million Americans became new gun owners in 2019.

Sales Remain Strong in 2022

As the country settles into a “post-pandemic” new normal, firearm sales have fallen this year, but still remain above pre-pandemic levels. Gun sales this past spring saw year-over-year declines, yet are outpacing 2019 and all years prior. More significantly, the trend was reversed in June, which had the first year-over-year increase of 2022 – with firearm sales up 7.7 percent compared to June 2021.

“The June 2022 data are of interest in that they reflect this calendar year’s first year-over-year increase in firearms unit sales,” explained Small Arms Analytics (SAAF) chief economist Jurgen Brauer. “This increase possibly was due to the discussion regarding additional federal firearms legislation that some customers may have viewed as detrimental to their interests even as the industry as a whole has been not wholly unsupportive of the final bill signed into law by President Biden.”

The passage of new gun safety legislation, the first in nearly 30 years, likely spurred the spike in sales earlier this summer. Moreover, according to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), there have now been 36 straight months of sales in excess of one million units.

More First-Time Buyers

Gun sales have continued to remain strong in 2022, and a driving factor is once again those first-time buyers – who are increasingly more diverse than ever.

Instead of the “redneck” firearms enthusiasts – which is how gun control groups have long painted Americans who support the Second Amendment – new data found that in 2021, some 33 percent of first-time gun buyers were women, while the number of African Americans purchasing firearms increased by 44 percent, and Hispanic Americans who purchased a firearm jumped by 40 percent.

“Gun owners no longer fit into the tiny little boxes gun control groups wish to put us in,” said NSSF director of public affairs Mark Olivia. “Today’s gun owner is younger, more urban, and more representative of the different demographic groups we see across America.”

Clearly, more Americans are exercising their Second Amendment rights, something President Biden and the gun control groups will eventually have to accept.

What Two First-Time Gun Owners Told 19FortyFive

We reached out to several new gun owners to get their perspectives on why they made the decision they did. Two new owners agreed to speak to us on the condition they not be named and that we respect their right to privacy and not share any identifying information.

Smith & Wesson Model 610 Gun

Smith & Wesson Model 610. Image: Smith & Wesson.

One new gun owner based in Maryland explained he purchased a simple .38 revolver to protect his convenience store, which was robbed twice in the last year. “I was tired of working so hard to only have my profits stolen from me,” explained the shopkeeper, a third-generation small business owner. “I hate guns to be honest, but I need to protect my countless hours of hard work and provide for my family. They need to know I will come home every night to them. A firearm makes me feel I can do that.”

Another store owner, operating a small deli in Ithaca, New York, explained to 19FortyFive that she purchased a firearm for her home and business for self-defense. “The riots and chaos of 2020 really have me very concerned. My choice to purchase a gun does not have anything to do with politics – I am a registered Democrat, to be honest. I just want to feel safe.”

New York Uses Historic Gun Bans Against Native Americans, Catholics to Justify Current Restrictions in Court Filing.

The Empire State believes its gun-carry restrictions are similar to racist gun bans from the past, and that’s why they should be upheld.

New York cited historical bans on gun ownership by Native Americans and Catholics to support its current concealed-carry permitting law. The state argued in a Monday filing its “good moral character” clause, which allows officials to deny permits to those they don’t feel are good people, is rooted in the historical tradition of “Anglo-American” gun regulations. It first pointed to several colonial gun bans as analogous to its own law.

“From the early days of English settlement in America, the colonies sought to prevent Native American tribes from acquiring firearms, passing laws forbidding the sale and trading of arms to Indigenous people,” the filing from the office of Attorney General Letitia James (D.) reads.

New York then cited historical laws in England and America denying people their gun rights based on religion as another example of the tradition its requirement is based in.

“[E]ven after the English Bill of Rights established a right of the people to arm themselves, the right was only given to Protestants, based on a continued belief that Catholics were likely to engage in conduct that would harm themselves or others and upset the peace,” the filing said.

The arguments come in an effort to save the subjective standard for issuing permits after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s similarly subjective “good reason” clause earlier this year in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. That case also established a new standard for reviewing Second Amendment cases that involves proving regulations are rooted in tradition from the time of the founding.

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Two Carry Permits Confirmed Issued in New Jersey

New Jersey – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Garden State is known for being an anti-civil rights wasteland. Firearm possession in the state is by exemption or permits. Up until recently, the permitting regulating the possession of handguns and pistols was an out-of-reach unicorn. Handgun and pistol owners had to largely rely on exemptions of the law, as NJ Rev Stat § 2C:39-5 b (2021) states one must first obtain a permit to carry prior to possessing a handgun. However, now in our post NYSRPA v. Bruen world, obtaining a permit to carry is possible.

Social media sites have been buzzing with people applying, allegedly getting denied, and also some rumors of permits to carry actually getting issued. To say a lot of rumors have been abound would be an understatement.

There’s plenty of counterproductive talks, such as people “in the know” going off when the uninitiated refer to the New Jersey permit to carry as a “CCW” or a concealed carry permit. The fact that NJ makes no distinction between open or concealed carry and said permit is referred to as a “permit to carry” is not cause for berating those that quickly refer to the permit as a CCW or a concealed carry permit. A collective sigh of relief should be exhaled by all persons in this fight, and while some kind of corrective rudder is not a bad thing, let’s not act like we don’t know what people are talking about.

There’s also been a ton of counterproductive talks about what is required to rope and wrangle one of these one-horned horses in the land of one thousand diners. I have spoken to two verified permit-to-carry recipients in New Jersey and want to share that information.

The first thing we should divert our attention to is a document on the New Jersey State Police website called: “Permit To Carry Instructions“. While the document is not necessarily the best, it does outline the needed steps to take to apply for a permit to carry in New Jersey. It’s important to note that New Jersey, at this time, also does not make a distinction between resident and non-resident permits. Non-residents are to apply to the closest State Police barracks that are not on a toll road to where the applicant would be entering the state.

The first recipient of a New Jersey permits to carry that I spoke to was Jamie DeAngelis. DeAngelis lives in Warren County, in Hackettstown, New Jersey. DeAngelis told me that he dropped off his completed application on July 26th at his police department. The local range where DeAngelis shoots, RTSP in Randolph, he said, had the complete process of what to do from beginning to end on their web page.

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BLUF
Fear-based marketing? It is reality-based marketing.
American manufacturers are not the problem. Marketing campaigns are not the problem. Retailers are not the problem. The problem is the cascading failures of our schools, police departments, prosecutors, mental-health systems, and correctional systems, which are built upon still larger failures: of our cities, of our families, of our civil society.

We have so many “usual suspects” that we don’t know what to do with them all. But it is no mystery where violent crime comes from or what needs to be done about it — and you won’t find the answers you are looking for in Smith & Wesson’s quarterly statements.

Gun Manufacturers Are Not the Problem

The Democrats’ effort to make storied American manufacturer Smith & Wesson the villain du jour in their jihad against the Second Amendment is stupid for any number of reasons, one of which is that the campaign is targeted specifically at AR-style rifles — and “Smith & Wesson” is hardly the first name that leaps to mind when one thinks of such firearms, although the firm, like almost every other firearms maker interested in turning a profit, manufactures the “modern sporting rifles” that are by far the most popular style of long gun sold in the United States. Instead, Smith & Wesson is best known for old-fashioned revolvers, like the Model 29 that I just happen to have right here.

As I will document in an upcoming magazine piece for National Review, Smith & Wesson — along with traditional rivals such as Ruger and dozens of less-famous companies around the country — is one of those rare birds for which politicians of both parties pray so fervently: an American manufacturing success story. Old domestic companies such as Smith & Wesson now compete for skilled workers with European firms that have shifted their manufacturing to the United States — these manufacturers are not coming here in search of cheap labor — as well as with dozens of innovative new U.S. companies. The market does indeed produce surprising results — at this year’s National Rifle Association meeting in Houston, I was tickled to see a sign reading: “Kalashnikov—Proudly Made in the USA!” Somewhere, the ghost of John Rambo is having a good laugh at that.

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