After defeating Pennsylvania’s age-based carry restrictions in the Third Circuit, FPC and NRA return to federal court to challenge the Commonwealth’s ban on licensed carry by 18-to-20-year-old adults.

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it filed a new federal Second Amendment lawsuit, Maines v. Bethel, challenging Pennsylvania’s unconstitutional ban on lawful firearm carry in most public places by adults under 21. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the lawsuit is brought by FPC and the National Rifle Association (NRA), alongside a member whose right to carry firearms for self-defense is being denied by the Commonwealth.

Under Pennsylvania law, individuals generally must obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm, carry a firearm in a vehicle, or carry a firearm in public in Philadelphia. But Pennsylvania categorically prohibits adults under 21 from even applying for the license they need to exercise those rights. As a result, peaceable 18-to-20-year-old adults who are legally eligible to possess firearms face criminal prosecution, potentially including felony charges and years in prison, simply for exercising the same rights available to other adults.

Although Pennsylvania generally allows unlicensed open carry in some circumstances, that does not solve the problem. Adults under 21 still cannot generally carry firearms for self-defense in their vehicles or on Philadelphia’s public streets. Even a routine trip to work, the grocery store, or another destination by car can put the exercise of their rights out of reach.

The consequences extend even further because of the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act. That federal law generally criminalizes firearm possession within 1,000 feet of school grounds unless the person has a qualifying license issued by the state where the school is located or qualifies for another narrow exception. Because Pennsylvania refuses to issue carry licenses to 18-to-20-year-old adults, even those who could otherwise lawfully carry firearms openly under state law face federal criminal prosecution for carrying through these expansive school zones. Pennsylvania’s age-based licensing ban thus creates a massive labyrinth of prohibited areas throughout the Commonwealth, effectively disarming peaceable adults under 21 across vast portions of the places they live, work, and travel.

“Pennsylvania already lost in the Third Circuit when it tried to deny 18-to-20-year-olds their right to carry firearms, but the Commonwealth still insists on treating peaceable adults as second-class citizens,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. Read more

NSSF^®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, filed a preliminary injunction motion with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, seeking to block enforcement of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s law requiring a seven-day “cooling-off” waiting period to take legal possession of a lawfully purchased firearm after the buyer has passed a federally mandated National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check. NSSF, earlier this week, filed a legal challenge to the law.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled in an NSSF-supported challenge Ortega v. Grisham that New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period for firearm purchases infringes on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms by those who had already passed a NICS check. The case was sent back to the district court which, citing the Tenth Circuit’s decision, granted summary judgment and entered a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing the law as to the named plaintiffs in that case. Despite these rulings, the state is appealing again and has said it will enforce this unconstitutional law. As a result, NSSF filed a second challenge to New Mexico’s law.

“It would be unconscionable to allow this blatantly unconstitutional law to be enforced and infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding New Mexicans,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President & General Counsel. “The burden is on the state to demonstrate that this unconstitutional law is consistent with a national tradition of imposing waiting periods before taking possession of a firearm, something the state was unable to do in the prior lawsuit. NSSF will not stand idly by and allow New Mexico to continue to knowingly trample on its citizens’ Second Amendment rights.” Read more

The opposition in Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) challenges to so-called “assault weapons” bans has filed their opening briefs with the Supreme Court laying out why their bans meet the demands of the Constitution.

This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear SAF’s two cases – Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins – challenging bans on commonly owned rifles, including the AR-15, in both Cook County, Ill., and Connecticut. Originally filed in 2021, Viramontes challenges Cook County’s ban on many commonly owned modern firearms, which was the precursor for the nearly identical statewide ban passed by the Illinois legislature. In Grant, SAF is challenging Connecticut’s ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles – both by name and by feature set.

“Categorical bans on the most commonly owned rifles in America violate the Second Amendment, full stop,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Unfortunately, countless peaceful Americans across the U.S. are subject to these unconstitutional bans, which single out and demonize modern semi-automatic rifles for nonsensical reasons like the adjustability of a shoulder stock or angle of a grip. Read more

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief with the en banc (full-court) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Cordova, urging the court to reject an erroneous legal theory used to justify federal lifetime gun bans and recognize that Americans cannot be permanently disarmed merely because they have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison.

FPC’s brief challenges the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Diaz, which reasoned that because some crimes were punishable by death at the Founding, permanently disarming people convicted of similar crimes today is constitutionally permissible. FPC argues that this deeply flawed approach has produced absurd results and bears little resemblance to the historical analysis required by the Supreme Court.

In Cordova, Peter Villa Cordova was previously convicted of possessing marijuana and evading arrest in a motor vehicle. He was not sentenced to serve a single day in prison for those offenses and completed probation years before he was found possessing a firearm. Federal prosecutors nevertheless charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which imposes a lifetime firearm prohibition on people with qualifying convictions. A three-judge Fifth Circuit panel upheld his conviction, but the full court subsequently granted rehearing en banc and vacated the panel’s decision.

Notably, Judge Andrew Oldham sharply and correctly criticized the Fifth Circuit’s approach in his opinion accompanying the now-vacated panel decision, declaring that “Diaz must go.” Read more

The Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association have filed an amicus brief in United States v. Cordova, urging the Fifth Circuit to adopt a dangerousness standard to challenges of lifetime federal firearms bans.

The case returns to the Fifth Circuit after the court granted rehearing en banc and vacated the panel opinion. The brief filed today urges the court to hold that historical tradition supports disarming only dangerous persons – those with a proven proclivity for violence or who pose a threat to the government – not every person convicted of a felony. Colonial and Founding-era restrictions targeted the dangerous. Militia laws required able-bodied men to keep arms and contained no exemption for prior nonviolent convictions, and some statutes even expressly protected criminals’ arms from seizure.

“History disarmed the dangerous, not the peaceable,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “A nonviolent felony is not a lifetime forfeiture of the right to keep and bear arms.” Read more

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed a new lawsuit in New Mexico challenging the state’s “cooling off” waiting period for firearms purchases.

In 2024, New Mexico enacted House Bill 129 which forces firearms purchasers to wait out a multi-day waiting period before taking possession of a firearm despite having already been approved through the state’s background check system. This new case follows the 2025 Ortega v. Grisham lawsuit where the Tenth Circuit held the law was unconstitutional and remanded to the district court, which subsequently issued a permanent injunction. Despite these rulings holding the law to violate the Second Amendment, New Mexico has maintained that it will continue to enforce it against everyone except the named individuals in Ortega. The suit filed today seeks to expand the coverage of the Ortega holding to include all SAF members.

“It’s incredibly concerning that state officials would flaunt a federal circuit decision and publicly boast of their intentions to continue to enforce an unconstitutional law,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. Read more

FPC files appeal brief and seeks full-court review to overturn second-class legal standard blocking challenges to D.C.’s ban on common firearm magazines.

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it filed an opening brief and a petition for initial hearing en banc in its Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia appeal, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn decades-old precedent that treats Second Amendment challenges differently from other constitutional cases and keeps peaceable gun owners out of court.

At issue is Washington, D.C.’s ban on firearm magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition. Violating the ban is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $12,500 fine, with a conviction potentially triggering a federal lifetime ban on possessing firearms. FPC and two of its members, William Wehr-Darroca and Gary Stemple, challenged the law because it prohibits them from possessing the standard magazines that came with their handguns. To avoid prosecution, the members were forced to leave those magazines outside the District and purchase restricted-capacity replacements.

But rather than hear their constitutional challenge, the federal district court dismissed the case under D.C. Circuit precedent requiring a heightened showing of a specific threat of prosecution. Under that rule, law-abiding gun owners who want to exercise their rights but refuse to risk criminal prosecution can be denied the opportunity to challenge the very laws threatening them.

“D.C. threatens peaceable gun owners with felony prosecution and years in prison for possessing standard firearm magazines, then hides behind a court-created rule to deny them their day in court,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “That is a disgraceful constitutional Catch-22. The government does not get to tell Americans they must either surrender their rights or risk prison just to challenge an unconstitutional law. The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and gun owners are not second-class citizens. We’re demanding that the D.C. Circuit end this absurd exception, open the courthouse doors, and let us fight D.C.’s immoral magazine ban on the merits. FPC and our Grassroots Army will Fight Forward until these unconstitutional bans are eliminated everywhere.” Read more

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah – In August, we celebrated one of the most impactful victories directly affecting suppressor ownership since the NFA was enacted in 1934. On October 9, the celebration returned following ATF’s announcement that it will no longer enforce the NFA’s requirements regarding making or transferring suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs), short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) and “any other weapons” (AOWs).

Also, ATF will no longer enforce the requirement that these items be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. According to ATF, these policies apply to anyone otherwise subject to these requirements, not just the plaintiffs in the litigation.

We fought, we won. Now, that victory belongs to every American, and we think that’s worth celebrating. Quietly, of course. Very, very quietly.

So what does this mean for Americans? Read more

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today a major victory in the FPC-supported case of Williams v. Blanche, where the en banc (full-court) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment holding that the federal government cannot constitutionally impose its lifetime gun ban on Edward Williams because of his decades-old, nonviolent DUI conviction.

Williams was convicted in 2005 of a Pennsylvania DUI offense that, because of an earlier DUI matter, was punishable by up to five years in prison and therefore triggered the federal prohibition in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). His offense did not involve violence, physical injury, or a firearm. He served his sentence in home confinement, yet federal law purported to permanently prohibit him from possessing firearms for the rest of his life.

After years of litigation, the district court ruled for Williams in 2023, holding that the government had failed to demonstrate that permanently disarming him was consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The federal government appealed. After a three-judge Third Circuit panel heard argument in 2025, the court took the unusual step of ordering rehearing en banc on its own initiative. The full court heard oral argument in February and now affirmed Williams’s victory.

“The federal government spent nearly a decade trying to permanently disarm a peaceable man over a nonviolent misdemeanor—and it lost bigly,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “FPC has spent years building the historical record, litigating these cases, and briefing courts across the country to establish the correct rule: The government does not get to turn a nonviolent conviction into a lifetime ban on exercising a constitutionally protected right. Our strategy is paying off again. The Trump Administration would be better served working with us to end this immoral disarmament regime than fighting us and losing. Either way, FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue to Fight Forward until these unconstitutional lifetime bans are eliminated throughout the United States.” Read more

BELLEVUE, Wash. — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has compiled a new fact sheet refuting 85 documented claims from anti-gun groups, advocates and public officials who stated pro-Second Amendment court rulings and reforms would produce more shootings, more deaths and immediate surges in violence.

FBI data and other sources instead show three consecutive years of declining murder rates (-9.1% in 2023, -13.7% in 2024, and -18.1% in 2025), the largest one-year drop in violent crime on record in 2025, and a 2026 trajectory that would put the national murder rate at a modern low of roughly 3.2 per 100,000 based on data through July. The sheet also links all 85 predictions researched and the underlying crime data for transparency.

“After Bruen, after Cargill, after permitless carry, after every other expansion of the right to keep and bear arms, the same organizations and officials predicted more death,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education and fact sheet author Kostas Moros. “They were not even close, yet the mainstream media continues to quote these sources without checking the facts, which directly contradict the predictions from gun-control advocates. The fact sheet even puts the predictions and the FBI numbers side-by-side, so no one has to take our word for it, the facts are readily accessible in the document.”

Titled The Bloodbath That Never Came, the fact sheet covers predictions issued after New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen (2022), Garland v. Cargill (the bump-stock decision), the spread of permitless or “constitutional” carry, the elimination of the National Firearms Act tax on certain arms and recent Department of Justice and ATF actions. In each case, groups including Brady, Everytown, Giffords and March For Our Lives, along with elected officials, warned of bloodshed.

“Mainstream news coverage continues to quote anti-gun predictions of imminent violence without mentioning the unbroken record of prior claims that failed,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “We hope this research provides a unique resource to anyone looking for the researched numbers instead of relying on the same anti-gun rhetoric we see and hear on the news after every pro-Second Amendment ruling or reform.”

You can view the fact sheet in its entirety here. Read more