Tag: 2nd amendment

DOJ Filing on Forced Reset Triggers Contradicts Pledges and Complicates Midterms

“@TheJusticeDept  just filed an anti-gun statement of interest in Rare Breed Triggers’ lawsuit against @HoffmanTactical,” Gun Owners of  America posted on X Monday. “It says @ATFHQ  has a “strong interest… in limiting the sale and distribution of FRTs” or forced reset triggers.”

Read the full, anti-gun filing where @TheJusticeDept reveals its unconstitutional plans to hamstring ownership of forced reset triggers here,” GOA added, posting a copy of the “Statement of Interest of the United States of America” filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

That makes fair the question “Why?” since it’s not in the interests of the millions of gun owners who voted for a Trump administration based on promises he repeatedly made to roaring and adoring crowds:

“Right from the beginning, for four incredible years it was my honor to be the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House, by far. Now I stand before you with a very simple promise: Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president when I’m back in the Oval Office,” Trump promised to resulting exuberance. “No one will lay a finger on your firearms. It’s not going to happen…”

Inarguably the administration has been “better” on the Second Amendment than any in our lifetimes, as exemplified by positive actions like filing briefs against bans on so-called “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines, repealing “zero tolerance” of minor FFL errors, reviewing rules including “engaged in business” restrictions, supporting challenges to Hawaii’s restrictive carry laws, investigating “pattern or practice” by the Los Angeles County Sheriff for “slow walking” concealed carry permits, working on rights restoration and working to defund grants and foreign aid for gun control advocacy groups.

But it then turns around and in a seemingly bipolar move does things like backing NFA registration of untaxed firearms (to the exploitative delight of anti-gun groups).

Every infringement also contradicts the  promise made by AG Pam Bondi in her April 8 “all hands” memo from last year, where she pledged:

“For too long, the Second Amendment, which establishes the fundamental individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, has been treated as a second-class right. No more. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

The purpose of that memorandum was to introduce the Second Amendment Task Force – an idea that seemed to have great political value at the time, until it became apparent that no gun owner representation meant everything would be decided by careerists with political stakes in the game. One wonders how many infringements would be advanced if groups like GOA or Firearms Policy Coalition had advisory seats at the table to help caution against missteps before they are made. You don’t have to contradict yourself and backtrack too often before people begin to suspect you’re insincere and will only tell voters what they want to hear long enough to secure their votes.

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Justice Jackson Cites Racist ‘Black Codes’ As Precedent To Justify Gun Control In Hawaii

During oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the post-Civil War “Black Codes” – a set of openly racist laws enacted in the Democrat-controlled South to strip newly freed Black Americans of basic rights, including the right to possess firearms – could serve as legitimate historical precedent under the Supreme Court’s Bruen test. That test evaluates modern gun laws by asking whether similar restrictions were accepted in the nation’s historical tradition. The case concerns a Hawaii law that bars licensed gun owners from carrying firearms onto privately owned property open to the public. Jackson relying on the Black Codes for constitutional guidance is hilarious, as those laws were explicitly designed to deny civil rights to Black Americans in defiance of emancipation.

The exchange unfolded as Justice Jackson pressed U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris on why post–Civil War Black Codes should be excluded from consideration when courts examine modern-day gun control laws. Hawaii relied on a 1865 Louisiana statute as historical support for its law, a statute even Neal Katyal, the lawyer representing Hawaii, admitted was “undoubtedly a relic of a shameful portion of American history.”

“So, I guess I really don’t understand your response to Justice Gorsuch on the Black Codes,” Jackson began. She explained that, under Bruen, courts are required to look to history and tradition to assess constitutionality. “The fact that the Black Codes were, at some later point, determined themselves to be unconstitutional doesn’t seem to me to be relevant to the assessment that Bruen is asking us to make.”

Harris responded by emphasizing the fundamentally racist purpose of those laws. “Black Codes were unconstitutional from the moment of their inception because they are pretextual laws that are designed to ensure that newly freed slaves are returned to a condition of sharecropping.”

Justice Jackson, a black woman, immediately pushed back. “Okay, let me stop you there. They were not deemed unconstitutional at the time that they were enacted,” she said. “They were part of the history and tradition of the country, and when we have a test now that’s asking us to look at what people were doing back then, I don’t understand why they should be excluded.”

Harris reiterated that point. “Because they are outliers. They are, by definition, unconstitutional. They have always been unconstitutional.”

Jackson bizarrely remained unconvinced. “Found later, afterwards, not at the time,” she said, returning to the Bruen framework. “And if the test says what’s happening at the time tells us what’s constitutional for this purpose, why aren’t they in?”

Harris responded by insisting the laws should be disregarded because they were aberrations and unconstitutional from their inception.

But Jackson rejected that framing. She argued that their unconstitutionality was determined later, not contemporaneously, making it a legitimate precedent. And, according to Jackson, if the test looks to historical practice at the time of enactment, she asked, why should those laws be left out?

Harris attempted to explain how a law could be unconstitutional from inception, while still accounting for historical analysis. Jackson claimed that Harris’s position effectively dismissed history altogether. When Harris denied that implication, Jackson underscored the contradiction by noting that history either matters under Bruen or it does not.

Harris then stressed that historical inquiry remains essential, though not indiscriminate. “We should deeply care about the history,” she said, adding that Bruen requires courts to identify a genuine national tradition by excluding aberrations. She described the Black Codes as precisely that — laws enacted “for the purpose of trying to reduce newly freed slaves back to conditions of servitude,” including measures that criminalized carrying arms on private property. “Those are obvious outliers which should not count under the whole point of Bruen.”

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19 States That Legalized Marijuana Use Nevertheless Say It Should Disqualify People From Owning Guns

If you are a cannabis consumer who owns a gun, you are committing a federal felony right now, even if you live in one of the 40 states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. That perplexing situation is perfectly reasonable and constitutional, according to 19 of those states, which are urging the Supreme Court to uphold the federal ban on gun possession by “unlawful” users of “any controlled substance.”

That law is at the center of a case that the Court is scheduled to hear on March 2, which involves a Texas man, Ali Hemani, who was charged with illegal gun possession after an FBI search of his home discovered a Glock 19 pistol, two ounces of marijuana, and less than a gram of cocaine. The potential implications extend far beyond Hemani because this ban applies to millions of peaceful Americans who pose no plausible threat to public safety.

As I explain in my new book, Beyond Control, that policy authorizes severe criminal penalties for drug users who try to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Under the law that Hemani violated, it does not matter whether someone handles guns while intoxicated or otherwise endangers the public.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a federal judge’s dismissal of the gun charge against Hemani. That outcome was dictated by a 2024 ruling in which the 5th Circuit held that the Second Amendment barred the government from prosecuting a gun-owning cannabis consumer “based solely on her ‘habitual or occasional drug use.'”

Such prosecutions, the 5th Circuit said, are not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the Second Amendment test that the Supreme Court established in 2022. While “our history and tradition may support some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon,” the appeals court said, “they do not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage.”

The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to reject that conclusion and reinstate the charge against Hemani. Solicitor General D. John Sauer implausibly argues that all “unlawful” drug users, including occasional cannabis consumers and state-registered patients who use marijuana for symptom relief, pose a danger that justifies disarming them.

Sauer likens drug users to “habitual drunkards,” who historically could be confined to workhouses as “vagrants.” But the law he is defending is more analogous to a categorical ban on gun possession by alcohol consumers, which would be clearly unconstitutional.

The Trump administration’s position, which echoes the Biden administration’s, seems inconsistent with the president’s avowed commitment to the Second Amendment. The states that have joined Sauer in asking the Supreme Court to overrule the 5th Circuit likewise seem to be contradicting their own policies.

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DOJ: Ban on mailing concealable firearms unconstitutional, can’t be enforced

A nearly 100-year-old federal ban on mailing handguns through the U.S. Postal Service is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced, according to an opinion released Thursday by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The 15-page opinion concluded that a 1927 law, which made it illegal to use the Postal Service to mail concealable firearms, such as pistols and revolvers, infringes on the Second Amendment.

“Section 1715 makes it difficult to travel with arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense, target shooting, and hunting,” wrote T. Elliot Gaiser, the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

“The statute also imposes significant barriers to shipping constitutionally protected firearms as articles of commerce, which interferes with citizens’ incidental rights to acquire and maintain arms,” the opinion continued.

Postal Service policy mandates that nonmailable firearms found in the mail stream “must be immediately reported to the United States Postal Inspection Service,” and investigations are then referred to the relevant U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution.

The agency categorizes “pistols, revolvers, and other firearms capable of being concealed on a person,” including short-barreled shotguns and rifles, as handguns. It also notes that there are no restrictions on mailing rifles and shotguns between licensed dealers, manufacturers and importers.

Major private carriers, including UPS and FedEx, also restrict the shipping of firearms to only licensed dealers, which the opinion argued effectively creates a “complete ban” for unlicensed people.

The opinion acknowledged some limitations, finding that the law was only unconstitutional related to handguns but still applied to undetectable firearms, such as pen guns.

It also found that the Postal Service should not be required to carry ammunition or gunpowder, despite those being constitutionally protected, because the existing restriction on explosives “serves legitimate postal needs to prevent injury to postal employees and property.”

Still, the DOJ determined the restrictions on handguns are unenforceable because such firearms “fall within the core of the ‘arms’ protected by the Second Amendment.”

“Consequently, so long as Congress chooses to run a parcel service, the Second Amendment precludes it from refusing to ship constitutionally protected firearms to and from law-abiding citizens, even if they are not licensed manufacturers or dealers,” the opinion stated.

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Virginia Democrats Move To Establish Limitless Abortion, Ban Guns, And Gerrymander Districts

The Republican-run government of Virginia has four days left in office, and Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., along with Democrat majorities in the Commonwealth’s legislature, are going to start the ball rolling with expanding abortion, making sure felons can vote, and implementing gun restrictions.

Responsible political leadership in Virginia might be focused on answering things like the housing affordability crisis, which has been made much more acute with the importation of foreigners to the most populous areas of the state.

Democrats coming into power in Virginia will hold a 21-19 majority in the state Senate and a 64-36 majority in the House of Delegates. Their top priorities include four proposed constitutional amendments: To expand abortion even later in the pregnancy and make it impossible to restrict (Virginia already allows most abortion up to 26 weeks — the most permissive in the entire South); to enshrine homosexual unions as a right; to automatically restore voting to felons who have completed their sentences; and to allow for mid-decade congressional redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterms, where Democrats could nuke up to four Republican-held seats through gerrymandering.

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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Strikes Down California’s Ban on Open Carry – Trump Judge Issues Scathing Opinion

A US Appeals Court on Friday in a 2-1 decision struck down a California law banning people from openly carrying firearms.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cited a 2022 Supreme Court ruling and said California’s ban on open carry is unconstitutional.

US Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion and blasted the state of California for banning open carry for 95% of its population.

California banned open carry on all counties with populations greater than 200,000 – which is 95% of the state.

In 2019, Mark Baid filed a lawsuit against the California Attorney General challenging the state’s ban on open carry.

Judge VanDyke, a known gun enthusiast, said California’ ban on open carry is unconstitutional.

“For most of American history, open carry has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms. It remains the norm across the country—more than thirty states generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations,” VanDyke wrote.

VanDyke said many states allow open carry and California has a history of open carry.

“Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California. From 1850, when California first became a state, until the Mulford Act of 1967, public carry of firearms in California (open or concealed) was entirely unregulated. And when California first deviated (or considered deviating) from this practice, its reasons for doing so were less than morally exemplary,” VanDyke wrote.

“In our Nation’s history and tradition, open carry was widely recognized as being central to the Second Amendment right,” VanDyke added. “A ban on that which is at the core of the Second Amendment is not a ‘minimal burden’ on the Second Amendment right.”

Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California’s ban on large-capacity magazines.

The en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court (a decision from the court’s entire slate of judges) sided with California’s radical Marxist Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who grew up in Bozeman, Montana, angered a lefty judge on the court after he released a highly unusual video dissent demonstrating him handling several different firearms.

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Everytown’s Defense of ‘Vampire Rule’ Renders the Second Amendment Meaningless

In less than a month from now, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, the challenge to Hawaii’s default ban on concealed carry on all private property (also known as the “vampire rule”, thanks to FPC’s Rob Romano) unless property owners specifically allow it. Amicus briefs in support of both the plaintiffs and defendants have now been filed with the Court, and over the next couple of days we’ll be taking a closer look at some of the arguments raised in defense of the gun control law… starting with the amicus brief filed by Everytown for Gun Safety. 

What makes this brief noteworthy is the audacity of the gun control group’s arguments, which fly in the face of the Court’s decisions in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen and would essentially turn the Second Amendment into a dead letter if adopted by the justices. 

The first argument raised by Everytown is that laws that are specifically designed to frustrate Second Amendment rights are presumptively constitutional, and that an “improper purpose” for a gun control statute is not reason enough for the courts to strike it down. 

This Court’s decisions in Bruen and Rahimi set forth the operative analytical framework for Second Amendment challenges. When a contemporary law regulates conduct that falls within the Amendment’s text, this framework points courts to historical evidence to determine whether the law is consistent with tradition. The United States and petitioners now ask the Court to distort that methodology by arguing for per se invalidation of any regulations that “restrict[] firearms simply to frustrate the exercise of Second Amendment rights”—a description they incorrectly ascribe to Hawai‘i’s statutory scheme. And they incorrectly claim that their freefloating improper-purpose test is grounded in the textual and historical understanding of the Second Amendment. Because neither precedent, text, nor history supports that novel test, the Court should reject it.

Now, it’s true that the Supreme Court has said that courts need to look to the text of the Second Amendment as well as the national tradition of gun ownership to determine if a modern gun control law is 2A-compliant, but there’s a good reason why the justices have never explicitly said that laws meant to chill the exercise of our right to keep and bear arms are unconstitutional: it’s self-evident. 

Rights exist for a reason, and any laws that are put in place with an eye towards curtailing that right are, by their very nature, constitutionally unsound. And despite Everytown’s claim to the contrary, Hawaii’s “vampire rule” is absolutely meant to stop people from exercising their right to bear arms. If it’s illegal to carry a gun in the vast majority of publicly accessible places, even with a concealed carry permit, then most people aren’t going to bother getting one… and those that do will be unable to carry except in a very limited number of locations. 

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Trump’s DOJ Sues Washington, D.C. Police Department Over Unconstitutional Ban on Semi-Automatic Firearms

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department for enforcing a ban on semi-automatic firearms in violation of the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit alleges that D.C.’s gun laws require registration of all firearms with the MPD; however, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on numerous protected weapons, making it legally impossible for residents to own them for self-defense or other lawful purposes.

The DOJ said in a press release announcing the lawsuit:

“MPD’s current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.”

“Today’s action from the Department of Justice’s new Second Amendment Section underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Bondi continued, “Washington, DC’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation’s capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

Echoing this sentiment, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division added, “This Civil Rights Division will defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions of commonly used firearms, in violation of their Second Amendment rights. The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today — and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so.”

The case draws directly from the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to own semi-automatic weapons in their homes for self-defense.

Back in 2003, D.C. special policeman Richard Heller challenged the District’s handgun ban, leading to this pivotal ruling. Yet, nearly two decades later, D.C. continues to enforce similar unconstitutional restrictions, resulting in wrongful arrests and denials of basic rights.

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Tim Walz Goes It Alone: Uses Executive Orders for Gun Control After Legislature Rejects His Push

Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed executive orders Tuesday expanding Minnesota’s red flag law and creating a “Statewide Safety Council” intended to prevent “mass violence” and “targeted attacks.”

Walz’s gun control executive orders come after the state legislature refused to pass gun control measures he pushed after the August 27, 2025, Minneapolis Catholic school attack, in which a transgender man who had been identifying as a woman opened fire during mass.

According to KSTP, Walz said:

These actions today don’t limit your freedoms at all. Being shot dead in your school certainly does. … There’s no one fix to this, but there are certainly things that we know, there are certain things we’ve learned globally that make a difference, and these two actions will be another step in that direction.

Walz did not mention that the Catholic school attacker used three guns–a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun–and that he bought all three guns legally, which means he complied with the left’s gun controls on acquisition.

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North Carolina Woman’s Lawsuit Gives SCOTUS a Chance to Establish National Reciprocity

In January 2021, Eva Marie Gardner was driving in Montgomery County, Maryland when her car was allegedly hit by an assailant who ran her off the road before exiting his vehicle and rushing towards her. Gardner says she first screamed at him to get away, but when he continued advancing she drew her pistol in self-defense, though she never fired a shot. 

When police arrived on scene, they ended up releasing the man who allegedly ran her off the road, but arrested Gardner for illegal possession of a firearm. Gardner, who now lives in North Carolina, had a valid concealed carry permit from Virginia, but Maryland doesn’t recognize carry permits from any other state and she was ultimately convicted despite raising a Second Amendment claim. 

Gardner appealed all the way to the Maryland Supreme Court without success, and in mid-October she took her case to the Supreme Court, filing a cert petition on her own behalf that asks the Court to decide several questions, including whether “Maryland’s prohibition on carrying a handgun without a state permit, as applied to an interstate traveler with a valid Virginia concealed carry permit who displayed a loaded firearm in self-defense against an assailant’s vehicular assault and physical advance, violate the Second Amendment under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, by lacking a historical tradition of disarming law-abiding citizens in such circumstances.”

Gardner also brings a claim under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguing that Maryland’s refusal to recognize out-of-state permits violates the Constitution and conflicts with the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Ordinarily, a pro se petition has little chance of being granted cert by the Supreme Court, with one study finding just 84 cases since 1945. The good news for Gardner is that at least one justice has taken an interest in the case. After Maryland waived its right to respond to her cert petition, the Court requested the state provide one, and Maryland’s reply brief is now due on January 26, 2026. 

Second Amendment Foundation Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros has discovered another new detail that could up the odds of SCOTUS hearing Gardner’s case next year. 

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