North Carolina’s General Assembly vetoed to overturn Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 41, legislation that scraps the state’s 104-year-old racist Jim Crow-era law for permit-to-purchase pistol requirements.

The new law strikes the Tar Heel State’s requirement that sheriffs make a “good moral character” judgement on North Carolinians seeking to purchase a handgun. The state legislature’s override of Gov. Cooper’s veto means the state will instead rely on the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to verify that every purchase of a firearm is only allowed for those who can pass the instant background check.

“This is a tremendous victory for North Carolina and a long-overdue move to relegate this racist Jim Crow-era law to the ash heap of history,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Governor Cooper’s insistence of retaining this ill-conceived relic of a discriminatory era was wrong and the firearm industry is grateful to the North Carolina legislators to put an end to this scheme that only served to deny citizens their Second Amendment rights.” Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, applauds Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s signature on a package of laws that will end “woke” corporate discrimination against firearm-related businesses. The laws were recently signed and target corporations that discriminate against the firearm industry by making them ineligible for state and municipal contracts, among other provisions. These laws ensure that Utah will choose to do business with those companies that do not discriminate based on a Constitutionally-protected industry they may not like or with which they disagree.

“These laws ensure that lawful businesses, including the firearm industry, are free from the pressures of special interests that attempt to sway public policy through discriminatory policies that put ‘wokeism’ ahead of Constitutional rights,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Corporations, especially Wall Street banks, have abused taxpayer-funded state contracts to force public policy outside of legislative authorities. The firearm industry is grateful to the Utah Legislature and Governor Cox for their principled stand that public policy must remain accountable to the people who elect their representatives, not unaccountable corporate elites in Wall Street ivory towers.”

Gov. Cox signed a package of legislation that includes:

SB 97: a law that prohibits a Utah public entity from entering into a contract with a company that engages in certain boycott actions, including businesses that engage in, facilitate, or support the manufacture, distribution, sale, or use of firearms. Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a case concerning gun owner privacy in California have filed a respondent’s brief in the ongoing case of Barba v. Bonta, challenging the constitutionality of a 2021 law requiring the California Department of Justice (CAL/DOJ) to share extensive personal identifying information of gun owners in the state with a non-government research group.

Joining SAF in this legal action are the Firearms Policy Coalition, California Gun Rights Foundation, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, Orange County Gun Owners PAC, Inland Empire Gun Owners PAC and Ashleymarie Barba, for whom the lawsuit is named. They are represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay at the Benbrook Law Group in Sacramento. The brief was filed with the California Court of Appeals, Fourth Appellate District, Division One.

In California, considerable personal information is required to purchase firearms or ammunition. This information is collected by CAL/DOJ. With passage of Assembly Bill 173 two years ago, CAL/DOJ now shares this information with the California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis for non-law enforcement purposes. This has never been done before.

“It was an outrage when California lawmakers added this requirement to the state penal code,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “so we immediately sued to protect the privacy of millions of law-abiding gun owners in the state. AB 173 amounted to a radical change to the privacy previously afforded to California gun owners, and this cannot possibly be legal or constitutional. Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in their federal challenge of an Illinois ban on so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines” have filed a reply brief to the defendants’ effort to defend the ban.

Joining SAF in this case are the Illinois State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition. Marengo Guns, the C4 Gun Store and Dane Harrel, for whom the case Harrel v. Raoul is known. They are represented by attorney David Sigale of Wheaton, Ill. The case is in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. The oral argument is scheduled April 12 in East St. Louis.

According to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, the State of Illinois is trying to defend historical traditions that do not exist. As noted in the reply brief, “No matter how many policy justifications the State may summon, the Second Amendment, by its ‘enshrinement’ in the Constitution ‘necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.’ The only constitutionally acceptable justification for banning certain types of arms is if the State demonstrates that such firearms are both ‘dangerous and unusual.’ The State has failed to do so. Instead, the State searches for other historical traditions, but it cannot identify any tradition of banning the most popular rifles or magazines in contemporary society.” Read more

NSSF Praises Court’s Preliminary Injunction on California’s Unsafe Handgun Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, praises the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Southern Division’s order granting a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs blocking enforcement of California’s Unsafe Handgun Act. The case, Boland v. Bonta, was filed shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. The court issued the preliminary injunction today.

“This order is a victory for lawful gun ownership in California. For too long, the Second Amendment has been significantly infringed upon by elected officials who have taken every opportunity to put roadblocks in front of law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The order is the first step in what will be a protracted legal battle, but it is a significant win. NSSF has long contended that California’s Unsafe Handgun Act is an unconstitutional infringement denying Californians their ability to legally purchase the handguns that would best suit their needs. The court is correctly applying the holdings of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision that the Second Amendment is the only test when it comes to lawful firearm ownership and the holdings of Heller that firearms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment.”

Boland v. Bonta, brought also by California Rifle & Pistol Association and Chuck Michel of Michel & Associates, challenged the California’s Unsafe Handgun Act that requires all new models of pistols sold in the state to be equipped with a chamber-loaded indicator, a magazine disconnect mechanism and be capable of imparting a microstamp from the handgun’s firing pin on the primer of an expended cartridge case. That final requirement is technologically impossible. Read more