FORT WORTH, TX – Last night, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw appealed FPC’s victory in our Andrews v. McCraw lawsuit, which correctly held that Texas’ ban on handgun carry by young adults is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. Case documents are available at FPCLegal.org.

“Texas Public Safety Director McCraw is welcome to appeal to a higher power, as is his right,” said Bill Sack, FPC Director of Legal Operations. “But we fully expect that he will be equally disappointed when the Fifth Circuit properly applies the Bruen standard, just as the District Court has done, and strikes down Texas’ ban.” Read more

ROCKFORD, IL – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) today announced the filing of a new FPC-supported federal lawsuit challenging Illinois’ ban on the carrying of firearms on public transportation and in public transportation facilities. The complaint in Schoenthal v. Raoul can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“The unifying feature of the historically accepted sensitive places where individuals were deprived of the right to bear arms was security,” argues the complaint. “In compensation for an individual’s lessened right to protect himself, the government provided security measures to ensure the physical protection of anyone in a legislative assembly or courthouse. In a modern context, this would mean measures such as requiring individuals to pass though magnetometers when entering the location in question. The Public Transportation Carry Ban is not accompanied by security measures of this type.”

“The underlying question here is clear: Do individuals have the right to defend themselves from unjust violence while on a bus?” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “And the answer is self-evident: Anywhere individuals may be met with confrontation and unjust violence, they have the right to effectively defend themselves. The very concept of banning self-defense in those areas where people congregate is absurd on its face.” Read more

BUFFALO, NY – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it has filed a new Second Amendment lawsuit challenging New York’s “sensitive location” handgun carry bans in public parks, public transportation, and all private property without express consent. The complaint in Boron v. Bruen can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“Collectively, New York’s ‘sensitive location’ and ‘restricted location’ designations, and Defendants’ enforcement of them, are a de facto ban on the fundamental, individual right to bear arms in public virtually everywhere,” argues the complaint. “Indeed, asked by reporters where New York carry license-holders would be able to legally exercise their rights after enactment of S51001, New York Governor Kathy Hochul could only affirm that New Yorkers have their Second Amendment rights to peaceably carry for self-defense on ‘[p]robably some streets.’”

“New York’s so-called ‘Bruen response bill’ is a hastily assembled wish list of gun control enacted by a legislature whose world view had just been rocked by the Supreme Court,” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “When single-party majorities enact poorly drafted, ill-conceived and unconstitutional legislation, FPC Law will step up and challenge them in the courts, as we have today in the Western District of New York.” Read more

From Jim Shepherd

On Friday, another shot was fired – quietly- at the gun industry. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), voted to create a “special code” for gun stores to use when processing credit and debit card transactions. Proponents of the move are quick to point out that other business categories already have these categories.

That may be true, but this isn’t being done as a simple business move. It’s a calculated move to circumvent regulations preventing federal tracking of gun sales.

As described by Priscilla Sims Brown, the president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank (the bank that requested the ISO category) in her statement of support, the new category will allow Amalgamated to “fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales.”

She also said “we all have to do our part to prevent gun violence.”

A couple of important points spring to mind: 1) where are the definitions of “suspicious activities” on a credit card, and 2) if she has a “duty to report” those suspicious activities, to whom would that report be given? Read more

Today, an Op Ed from Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation and Dave Workman, Communications Director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

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 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 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. Plaintiffs are asking for a preliminary injunction against 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 in which our parents and grandparents grew up, and it shouldn’t be the country our children and grandchildren are forced to accept.

— Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman

Alan Gottlieb is founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman is the communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.