Category: Gun Control

21 States’ AGs Defend Second Amendment Rights


AGs Argue 4th Circuit Ban on Modern Sporting Rifles UnconstitutionalNEWTOWN, Conn. — Twenty-one state Attorneys General have filed a joint amici curiae, or “friends of the court,” brief supporting the petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court by plaintiffs, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation, to take up Kolbe v. Hogan, the case in which the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Maryland could ban semi-automatic modern sporting rifles on grounds they are “like” firearms in use by the military.

Led by West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey, the attorneys general ask the court to consider whether the lower court inappropriately limited the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms by banning certain firearms typically owned by citizens by finding that those firearms would be most useful for military service.

Joining West Virginia’s effort are the attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Read more

Gun Control

Court Forces Seattle to Reveal Major ‘Gun Tax” Shortfall

BELLEVUE, WA – Acting in accordance with the order of a King County Superior Court judge, the City of Seattle on Monday afternoon revealed what had been suspected for more than a year, that its revenue from a so-called “gun violence tax” was far below projections when the tax was hastily adopted in 2015, the Second Amendment Foundation has learned.

According to court-ordered data provided to the senior editor of TheGunMag.com, a SAF-owned publication, the city collected $103,766.22. That is woefully short of the predicted $300,000 to $500,000 predicted by then-City Council President Tim Burgess when he championed the tax.

“We suspected all along that the city’s predictions were fabricated,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “That’s why we were happy to support the First Amendment-based lawsuit initiated by editor Dave Workman. Earlier this year when the city would only acknowledge that it had collected ‘less than $200,000’ we were certain that Seattle’s stubborn reluctance to reveal their actual revenue was a matter of embarrassment.” Read more

Gun Control

USCCA President on Terror and the Gun Debate

U.S. Concealed Carry Association President: “London Terror Attacks SHOULD Spark Gun Debate”
Asks Why National Media Isn’t Focusing On Failed Anti-Gun Laws in Europe, Elsewhere

Tim Schmidt, President & Founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, Available for Commentary

In the aftermath of this past weekend’s terrorist attacks in London, some in the national media and anti-Second Amendment community criticized President Donald Trump for rightly observing that they did not immediately spark a renewed debate over gun control because the attackers did not use guns. But Tim Schmidt, President & Founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, said today that the President’s observation was the correct one and that the recent terrorist attacks in London, Paris and elsewhere SHOULD bring the issue of failed gun control laws to the forefront including the inability of citizens in many countries to adequately protect themselves. Read more

Gun Control, Self Defense

NSSF Warns Retailers of Potential Brady Campaign “Visits”

Attention Retailers:
Brady Campaign May Approach You

It has been brought to our attention that individuals working directly for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence may be seeking to visit FFLs to engage with owners or employees in order to better understand the “Gun Culture.” NSSF strongly advises that if you or your employees are approached in person, by phone, over email or via social media that you decline to participate in any fact-finding visit or discussion.

The Brady Campaign on its website states: “Brady is leading the fight to change the gun industry and force it to reform by holding gun companies accountable to victims in the courts, and staging protests to challenge ‘bad apple’ gun dealers at their doorsteps.”

Make no mistake, no matter how friendly the approach, the Brady Campaign does not have your best interests in mind. To the contrary, the campaign has a long history of misstating facts, misleading the public, lobbying policy makers to enact punishing legislation and filing baseless lawsuits against members of our industry. You will not be able to affect the Brady Campaign’s course of action or reach any real mutual agreement. Anything you say could be used against your business and the industry as a whole. Read more

Gun Control

CCRKBA: UK Firearms, Knife Restrictions Ineffective According to Scotland Yard

BELLEVUE, WA – A new report from Scotland Yard reveals that a “significant spike in knife and gun offenses” has occurred in the United Kingdom, throwing cold water on the notion that restrictive British gun and knife laws have made that nation safer, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

According to Scotland Yard, there has been a 42 percent increase in so-called “gun violence” and a 24 percent rise in “knife offenses” during the 2016-2017 financial year.

“All the rhetoric we’ve heard over the years about how the British solved their crime problem by having law-abiding citizens turn in their guns, and adopting strict knife and gun control has suddenly turned out to be wishful thinking, if not simply wrong,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Like gun control efforts anywhere, the Brits have disarmed the wrong people. Read more

Gun Control

2nd Amendment Groups To Ask SCOTUS to Review Decision on California’s Waiting Period Laws

SAN FRANCISCO – On April 4, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc (by the “full court”) in the case of Jeff Silvester, et al. v. Calif. Attorney General Xavier Becerra (formerly captioned Silvester v. Kamala Harris), a federal Second Amendment lawsuit challenging the State of California’s irrational waiting period laws imposed on law-abiding existing gun owners and people licensed to carry handguns in public by their sheriff or police chief.

In response to the court’s order, The Calguns Foundation has issued the following statement:

In its decision to ignore the trial court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law as well as longstanding principles of appellate review, and now in its refusal to correct the 3-judge panel decision’s manifest errors in all regards, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has made it crystal clear that it has no intention of following the Supreme Court’s precedent and protecting Second Amendment rights from unconstitutional, burdensome, and irrational laws. Read more

Gun Control

National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bill Introduced in Senate

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has introduced the NSSF-supported Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (S.446), a companion to the House of Representatives bipartisan bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.). The proposed legislation, with 30 co-sponsors, would compel states to recognize concealed carry permits issued from other states that have concealed carry laws within their own borders – much in the same way a driver’s license is recognized. The bill aims to eliminate the confusion of varying state-by-state laws and provide protection for Second Amendment rights for permit holders.

“This bill strengthens both the constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and the power of states to implement laws best-suited for the folks who live there,” Sen. Cornyn said. “This legislation is an important affirmation of our Second Amendment rights and has been a top priority of law-abiding gun owners in Texas for a long time.” Read more

Firearms, Gun Control, Self Defense

Court Rules for Plaintiffs in First Amendment Case Challenging Takedown of Political Speech Protesting New Gun Laws

SACRAMENTO, CA and FRESNO, CA — Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, issued an order granting plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction in a First Amendment civil rights lawsuit challenging a California statute that broadly restricts the Internet publication of the home address or telephone number of any “elected or appointed official.” The case, captioned Doe Publius and Derek Hoskins v. California Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine, is supported by civil rights advocacy organization Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). Read more

Gun Control

Congress Acts on Bad Social Security Measure

By Jim Shepherd

After the Senate voted 57-43 yesterday to strike down a Social Security regulation that would have required the Social Security Administration to report anyone who received disability benefits and had a wide range of medical conditions – from serious mental issues to sleeping and eating disorders- mainstream headlines quickly read “Senate Restores Right of Mentally Ill to Purchase Guns”.

It’s a certain sign of just how far the chasm is between fact and objectivity when it comes to supposedly “unbiased” news reports. The measure wasn’t a great piece of legislation artfully crafted to address a glaring need in the existing system. It was a slap-dash piece of legislation. In fact, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, said it was filled with “vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard” . Those same “vague characteristics” would have lumped people with sleeping disorders into a group of considerably more serious mental issues that would have required the Social Security Administration to notify the FBI of those conditions- so they could be entered into the FBI’s NICS background check system.

In short, it would have guaranteed those people would be denied if they tried to purchase a gun if their conditions led them to have third-party involvement in the management of their affairs.

As Grassley said “If a specific individual is likely to be violent due to the nature of their mental illness, then the government should have to prove it.”
I know it’s not popular with anti-gun folks, but the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” is woven pretty tightly into our national fabric. Read more

Firearms, Gun Control

Trump Nominates Gorsuch to Supreme Court

Last evening, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, an appellate judge from Colorado to fill the United States Supreme Court seat left vacant since the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia almost a year ago. President Trump called Gorsuch’s nomination his fulfillment of a promise to voters who told him a justice who would “interpret them (the laws) as they are written was the single most important issue for them when they voted for me as president.”

Selected from a list of 20 potential judges compiled during the campaign. Gorsuch’s opinions on religious liberty and his feelings on the separation of powers were seen as key in his selection over Judge Thomas Hardiman. With an Ivy League pedigree- Columbia and Harvard- and a doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford, Gorsuch is young enough that he could carry on the Trump legacy long after the President leaves office, as well as restoring the conservative/liberal balance of the Supreme Court.

His confirmation, however, will be hotly contested, with Democrats stung over the Republican’s blocking of Obama nominee Merrick Garland, spoiling for a fight. No word -yet- on whether Senate Republicans will use the so-called “nuclear option” of reducing the vote on Grouch to a simple majority rather than a 60-vote threshold should Democrats mount a serious effort to stymie the confirmation process. Gorsuch photo from 10th Circuit Court of Appeals with permission.

Gun Control
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