ThinkingAfield.org

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation have filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of their case challenging the City of San Jose and its police department in a case involving the seizure of legally-owned firearms and refusal to return them.

This makes the fourth SAF case now awaiting action by the high court. No other gun rights organization has ever had this many pending cases submitted to the Supreme Court at the same time, said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.

SAF is joined by the California Gun Rights Foundation on behalf of plaintiff Lori Rodriguez. Her firearms were seized in 2013 after her husband was taken to a hospital on a mental health issue. A San Jose police officer at the time advised Rodriguez he had authority to seize all firearms in the residence, including those belonging solely to her, which were all locked in a California-approved safe. The guns were seized without a warrant, and over Rodriguez’s objection. Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – Targeting what it calls “harmfully misleading” information, Twitter has identified a tweet from presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders that shows he was all wet when he claimed 40 percent of gun sales in the U.S. didn’t include a background check, so the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is calling on Sanders to correct the error and apologize.

“Truth always seems to be the first casualty when gun control advocates start talking,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but Bernie ought to know better. That 40 percent claim has been debunked so many times in the past, especially when Barack Obama used it, that one would think Sanders might have heard about it. The Washington Post Fact Checker took Obama to the wood shed when he repeated the claim a few years ago, and surely Sanders must remember. He can’t be that long in the tooth.”

Sanders’ Twitter post said this: “Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole.” NBC News first reported on the Twitter effort Thursday.

“Bernie’s estimate comes from a very small telephone survey done more than 25 years ago, during the Clinton administration, and it has been discredited,” Gottlieb noted. “But for some reason, this 40 percent claim has become something of an urban legend that too many people persist in repeating. Maybe they think that if they say it often enough, it will become the truth. Read more

The Second Amendment Foundation is cautioning the public about a new “toolkit” for gun control lobbying groups to help them campaign for passage of so-called “red flag” laws that create “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” designed to take firearms from people based on allegations from family members, intimate partners or others, raising concerns about due process.

The document was produced jointly by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the Giffords gun control group and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.

“This document,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “raises alarms because there’s a lot in it about taking someone’s guns, but only two paragraphs about returning firearms to their rightful owner.” Read more