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Friday, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) condemned a decision by Chief United States District Judge Denise J. Casper that upheld Massachusetts’s ban on modern, constitutionally protected handguns and granted summary judgment to the state.

“The Court’s opinion is as dangerous as it is wrong. Incredibly, the judge held that Massachusetts’s handgun ban doesn’t even implicate the Second Amendment. In this bizarre and deeply flawed decision, the Court effectively said governments could ban every handgun make and model but one. This decision is absurd, lawless, and impossible to reconcile with binding Supreme Court precedent or the text and history of the Constitution,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “Make no mistake: FPC will appeal this insane ruling and we will fight until this unconstitutional ban is struck down—whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.” Read more

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) today condemned a badly flawed decision issued by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. George Peterson, an FPC-backed criminal appeal challenging the federal government’s unconstitutional National Firearms Act (NFA) firearm suppressor rules:

Once again, the Fifth Circuit has wrongly upheld the National Firearms Act in a dangerously flawed opinion that tramples the Constitution and disregards our nation’s history. Suppressors are unquestionably “arms” under the plain text of the Second Amendment. Nothing in our nation’s history of arms regulation supports the government’s unconstitutional taxation and registration mandates. Indeed, the federal government’s NFA scheme is not just dangerous to liberty, it is blatantly unconstitutional. FPC will continue to stand with Mr. Peterson and his counsel as they weigh every option in the fight ahead to put an end to the NFA and its unconstitutional regulations on suppressors and other protected arms. Individuals who would like to support Mr. Peterson’s appeal, our Brown v. ATF NFA challenge, and dozens of important cases to eliminate unconstitutional federal, state, and local laws should join our FPC Grassroots Army at JoinFPC.org. Read more

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) today announced that it has petitioned the United States Supreme Court in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, seeking to overturn Cook County’s unconstitutional ban on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles.

This case is the ideal vehicle for the Supreme Court to say—once and for all—that semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 are protected by the Constitution,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “The stakes could not be higher: If the Second Amendment doesn’t cover the most popular rifles in America, then it covers virtually nothing at all.”

Combs went on, “The Supreme Court must end this lawless two-step where politicians ban arms they dislike and judges pretend that’s constitutional to rubber-stamp their policy preferences. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America, owned by millions of peaceable people for lawful purposes every day. The Bill of Rights is not a suggestion, and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right. It’s time for the Court to make that unmistakably clear to the lower courts.”

“The issue raised by this case is exceptionally important,” the petition argues. “The AR-15 platform rifle is the most popular rifle in the country, and modern semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 are the second-best selling type of firearm in the country behind only semiautomatic handguns.”

Indeed, the petitioners argue in the filing, it is “hard to imagine a court of appeals treating any other provision of the Bill of Rights this way. If the Second Amendment is not to be relegated to second-class status, and if it truly is intended to elevate above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms for self-defense, then the decision below must be overturned.” Read more