BUFFALO, NY – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that United States District Judge John Sinatra, Jr. has issued a preliminary injunction against New York’s law banning guns on all private property without express consent. The order in Christian v. Nigrelli can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“These are places that people, exercising their rights, frequent every day when they move around outside their homes,” wrote Judge Sinatra in his opinion. “The exclusion here makes all of these places presumptively off limits, backed up by the threat of prison. The Nation’s historical traditions have not countenanced such an incursion into the right to keep and bear arms across all varieties of private property spread across the land. The right to self-defense is no less important and no less recognized on private property.”

In addition, Judge Sinatra added that “[n]othing in this decision purports to impact the traditional property right to exclude others, so long as the property owner (not the State) is the one actually exercising that right.”

“We are thrilled that the court has once again reminded New York lawmakers that they are not immune from the demands of the constitution,” said Bill Sack, FPC’s Director of Legal Operations. “The fight continues to rein in a New York political machine sent recklessly flailing in the aftermath of the Bruen decision.” Read more

WILMINGTON, DE – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in Gray v. Jennings, its lawsuit challenging Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault weapons.” The motion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“There is no constitutionally relevant difference between a semiautomatic handgun, shotgun, and rifle,” argues the motion. “While some exterior physical attributes may differ—wood vs. metal stocks and furniture, the number and/or location of grips, having a bare muzzle vs. having muzzle devices, different barrel lengths, etc. – they are, in all relevant respects, the same. Indeed, they are all common firearms that insert cartridges into a firing chamber, burn powder to expel projectiles through barrels, and are functionally semiautomatic in nature. They are all common firearms that have the same cyclical rate of fire: one round fired per pull of the trigger until ammunition is exhausted or the firearm or feeding device malfunctions. They are all common under the same jurisdictional analysis. Further, they are all subject to the same constitutionally relevant history under which Delaware’s Ban is clearly and categorically unconstitutional.”

“There is simply no historical tradition of banning wide categories of arms based on arbitrary features that ignorant contemporary lawmakers find frightening,” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “The unavoidable fact is that the arms now banned by this Delaware statute are bearable arms in common use all over the country. They are protected by the Second Amendment, even with a terrifying pistol grip or adjustable stock.”

FPC is joined in this lawsuit by the Second Amendment Foundation. Read more

ATLANTA, GA – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of an opening brief with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Baughcum v. Jackson, which challenges Georgia’s ban on the right to bear arms as to young adults. The brief can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“Georgia has singled out 18-to-20-year-olds for differential treatment from other adults, seemingly out of a concern that they are too young to be trusted with the right to carry a firearm,” argues the brief. “Yet the Founders knew all about 18-to-20-year-olds; they required them to possess firearms in good working order and to know how to use them so that they could be ready to serve as members of the militia if the need arose. They never enacted a single ‘distinctly similar’ ban on carriage by them.”

“Despite the Supreme Court’s insistence that the right to bear arms outside the home is fundamental, Georgia continues to insist that fundamental rights don’t apply to all legal adults,” said Bill Sack, FPC Director of Legal Operations. “This case, and others like it in FPC’s national litigation strategy, are about undoing the immoral and unlawful double standards states like Georgia have undertaken. Individuals with all of the responsibilities of adulthood are also afforded all of the fundamental rights. There is no titration of rights based on arbitrary ages made up by state lawmakers.” Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an opening brief in support of its motion for a preliminary and permanent injunction against the State of Delaware and enforcement of House Bill 450, which radically expands the state’s laws and bans so-called “assault weapons.”

SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., DJJAMS LLC, and two private citizens, William Taylor and Gabriel Gray, for whom the lawsuit is named. The lawsuit names Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings as the defendant. Plaintiffs are represented by attorney Bradley P. Lehman at Gilbert Scali Busenkell & Brown LLC.

The case is in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO)—a project of the Second Amendment Foundation—has released a new study showing there is “no association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide.”

The study, by DRGO member Mark Hamill, MD, FACS, FCCM, is titled “Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides” and is published in the Journal of Surgical Research. Dr. Hamill worked with a team of nine other doctors to reach their conclusions.

“This confirms what those of us already know who follow all the research by medical, criminology and economic experts,” said DRGO Executive Director Dr. Robert Young. “Lawful gun possession is in no way related to homicide or other crime rates, and the constant drumbeat of anti-gun researchers and activists is a house built on sand.”

“DRGO is an important project of the Second Amendment Foundation,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “because anti-gun billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg are funding research that tries to portray guns and gun ownership as a disease.”

The new report is based on a detailed, objective 50-state analysis of data from the National Instant Background Check System, the Department of Justice Uniform Crime Reporting program, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System covering the years 1999-2015.

Dr. Hamill is an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Nebraska, a longtime gun owner and a law enforcement officer in his previous career. His experience, expertise and thoroughness makes his team’s findings unimpeachable. In 2019, he published earlier research, “State Level Firearm Concealed-Carry Legislation and Rates of Homicide and Other Violent Crime” in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. In this, he and his co-authors do the same careful work analyzing 30 years of data state-by-state. Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, filed suits against the attorneys general of Delaware and New Jersey, challenging recently-enacted “public nuisance” laws in both states that are “specifically designed to evade the judgment of Congress – and the Constitution.”

Both Delaware and New Jersey enacted public nuisance laws allowing the state and private parties to sue firearm manufacturers for the harm caused by the criminal misuse of lawfully sold firearms. In 2005, Congress barred these sorts of baseless lawsuits when it passed the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). Delaware and New Jersey’s laws are preempted by the PLCAA under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

Public nuisance lawsuits brought by municipalities against members of the firearm industry arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s to “regulate through litigation.” None of those dozens of lawsuits, including those by Wilmington, Del., and Newark, Camden County and the City of Camden, N.J., were successful. These municipal lawsuits intended to bankrupt the industry members or, through the massive cost of litigation, force them to accept settlement agreements that contained gun control provisions rejected by Congress and not supported by the American public. Delaware and New Jersey’s new laws are a blatant and unconstitutional attempt to return to an era of “regulation through litigation.” Read more