Tag: 2nd amendment

Washington man who had explosives in underground bunker to spend 42 months in prison

A man living in Washington state will spend 42 months in prison for having guns and explosives inside an underground bunker beneath his house.

The man, 42-year-old James Wesley Bowden, was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle following his arrest in November 2021. The man was arrested after being involved in an altercation at his home that resulted in Bowden threatening another man with a gun, according to a statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

When officials responded to the initial report of the altercation, they discovered a room in the garage that officials likened to a “laboratory with various chemicals and equipment consistent with the manufacturing of homemade explosives.”

Once deputies secured the area from the explosives, they found a removable panel on the floor of the garage that led to an underground bunker, according to officials. Inside the bunker, officials found guns, ammunition, grenades, silencers, armor, and other equipment. Two of the weapons were altered to shoot as fully automatic machine guns, the DOJ said.

At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez, noted that Bowden’s drug addiction likely caused a substantial portion of his criminal conduct.

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New ATF Rule Could Turn Millions of Gun Owners into Felons, Literally Overnight

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is set to release its final rule on Braced firearms later this month.

In Analyzing the proposed rule, which was released June 2021, it appears that ATF has intentionally designed its Factoring Criteria for Rifled Barrel Weapons with Accessories Commonly Referred to as “Stabilizing Braces” to effect a complete ban of every pistol-braced firearm currently on the market.

Masquerading as a helpful rulemaking “to assist” gun owners and the firearms industry in complying with the law, in reality the proposed rule is designed with the obvious and specific intent to largely outlaw the use of stabilizing braces on firearms, threatening millions of current owners with imprisonment and putting a large segment of the gun industry out of business entirely.

To accomplish this goal, the proposed rule creates “Worksheet 4999,” which contains three sections of analysis, each more restrictive than the last, designed to ensure that virtually no stabilizing brace is eligible for use on a non-rifle firearm, and thereafter ensuring that most firearms do not qualify to even use an allowed stabilizing brace.

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Biden Pushes To Ban ‘Semi-Automatic’ Firearms: ‘No Social Redeeming Value’

President Joe Biden said on Thanksgiving that he is going to try to curtail the Second Amendment freedoms of law abiding Americans by banning “semi-automatic” firearms after a couple of recent shootings.

Biden made the remarks after a recent shooting at a gay nightclub by a man who reportedly identifies as non-binary and after a store manager shot up a Walmart.

“I’m sick and tired of these shootings. We should have much stricter gun laws,” Biden told reporters. “Look, the idea that we’re not enforcing red-flag laws, period, just based on knowledge, not on parents saying or a loved one saying you should arrest this person now for his own sake, is ridiculous.”

“The idea — the idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden continued. “It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

Biden has previously called for banning semi-automatic firearms, including handguns.

“The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon, whether it’s a, whether it’s a 9mm pistol or whether it’s a rifle, is ridiculous,” Biden said during a CNN town hall event last summer. “I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things, but I’m not likely to get that done in the near term.”

Biden has also previously suggested that a “rational policy” would be one that “that says you cannot have 20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon.” Biden has also stated that he wants to ban “clips that have multiple bullets in them,” which critics argue would be an effective ban on most semi-automatic firearms.

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Lawmakers call on Biden to make it more difficult for people to download gun blueprints

Lawmakers in California, led by Congressman Mike Thompson, penned a letter asking the Joe Biden administration to hold manufacturers responsible for homemade ghost guns.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Currently, it is relatively easy to buy gun parts, or make them at home with a 3D printer, and create an untraceable firearm. Ghost guns allow people to circumvent the background check requirement to own a gun.

“It is far too easy for anyone to download from the internet the computer code to 3D-print unserialized, untraceable, plastic ‘ghost guns,’” the letter said. “These 3D-printed weapons circumvent our system of gun safety rules and regulations, and pose a serious threat to public safety and national security.”

The question of banning the distribution of blueprints for 3D printed guns has been debated over the years, with much speculation that banning the sharing of blueprints is a First Amendment violation.

“President Biden can undo the Trump-era rule that has made the instructions for the 3D-printing of untraceable and deadly ‘ghost’ guns widely available online,” said Senator Markey. “The online distribution of these ghost gun blueprints only increases the risk of these weapons proliferating and poses a serious threat to public safety and national security. President Biden should fulfil his campaign promise and reverse the Trump administration’s weakening of these gun safety regulations.”

“They’re making firearms and they’re shooting and they’re killing people,” Thompson said.

“If you are a danger to yourself or to others, if you’re dangerously mentally ill, if you’re a criminal, you should not be able to get your mitts on a gun,” he added.

CBS13 asked Thompson about gun advocacy groups pushing back against manufacturers being held liable yet they did not commit the actual crimes.

“I have one word for these groups and that’s, ‘tough.’ We need these rules,” he responded.

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Federal judge rules law criminalizing possession of guns without serial numbers is unconstitutional

A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled that a federal law banning possession of a gun with its serial number removed is unconstitutional, relying on the legal standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in June.

The federal law in question, 18 U.S.C. § 922(k), prohibits “any person” from knowingly transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, “any firearm which has had the importer’s or manufacturer’s serial number removed, obliterated, or altered,” or from possessing such weapons.

In U.S. v. Price, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin found the federal law was not consistent with the United States’ “historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which was the standard established by the Supreme Court in its 6-3 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

The criminal case concerns Randy Price, a man who was charged with illegal possession of a firearm that had the serial number removed. The weapon was found in his vehicle during a traffic stop in Charleston. The judge dismissed that charge, but kept another charge against Price of illegally possessing the gun after being convicted of previous felonies.

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Biden Guarantees Assault Weapons Ban Passage – ‘Not a Joke’

President Joe Biden said Tuesday on “CNN Tonight” that he will pass the assault weapon ban again before he leaves office.

Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Democratic voters approve of the job you’re doing. Democratic voters overwhelmingly like you. But one poll shows that almost two-thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024, and the top reason they gave was your age. So what’s your message to Democrats who like you, who like what you’ve done but are concerned about your age and the demands of the job?”

Biden said, “They’re concerned whether or not I can get anything done. Name me a president in recent history that’s gotten as much done as I have in the first two years. Not a joke. The vast majority of the American people do like what I got done. And so it’s a matter of can you do the job, and I believe I can do the job. I’ve been able to do the job. I got more done. I got all this legislation passed. I ran on that. I said this is what I’m going to do, and I’m still getting it done. You know, dealing with, you know, making sure the veterans get compensated for the burn pits, making sure we’re in a situation where we finally have action on guns. By the way, I’m going to get an assault weapons ban before this is over. I’m going to get that again, not a joke.”

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It Begins: NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Officials Urge Credit Card Companies to Create Weapon Code for Gun and Ammunition Purchases

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, along with other elected officials and state pension fund trustees, have requested that major credit card companies implement a weapon code for the purchase of firearms and ammunition.

“New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, trustees of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System, and elected leaders today called on American Express, MasterCard and Visa, three of the world’s largest credit card companies, to support a proposal to establish a merchant category code (MCC) for gun and ammunition stores,” according to the news release.

Officials in New York City and the state of New York have asked American Express, MasterCard, and Visa to make a four-digit merchant category code (MCC) like the ones used for other retail categories to better identify and report suspicious behavior, such as large purchases of firearms.

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FBI secretly pressured Americans to ‘voluntarily’ give up gun rights

The FBI secretly pressured Americans into signing forms that relinquish their rights to own, purchase or even use firearms, according to a trove of internal documents and communications obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The forms were presented by the FBI to people at their homes and in other undisclosed locations, according to bureau documents unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act by the firearm rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA) and shared with the DCNF. At least 15 people between 2016 and 2019 signed the secret forms, which ask signatories to declare themselves as either a “danger” to themselves or others or lacking “mental capacity adequately to contract or manage” their lives.

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ATF Shows Up At People’s Homes To Confiscate Rare Breed FRT-15 Triggers

A new report from the gun blog website AmmoLand Shooting Sports News claims that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents have shown up at the homes of “multiple people” to confiscate previously legal forced reset triggers for AR-15 style rifles that were recently classified as “machine guns.” 

According to the report, it is unknown how the ATF acquired the customers’ information – though the owners in question acquired their triggers via Gun Broker or the Rare Breed Triggers website.

“It is possible the ATF received the customers’ information from credit card processors or shipping companies,” AmmoLand said, adding the federal agency had received customer information from Authorize.net and Stamps.com to track people who’ve bought 80% lowers from gun parts kits manufacturer Polymer80. 

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Florida’s AG Commissioner Challenges DOJ Reply in Cannabis Patients’ Gun Rights Suit

Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner took issue with a recent Department of Justice memo attached to a move to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges disqualifying the state’s medical cannabis patients from legally owning firearms. The memo characterized marijuana users as “dangerous.”

“The DOJ’s argument is as offensive as it is inaccurate,” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat, said in an Aug. 8 written statement. “We were disappointed not only with the  motion but with the memo attached to the motion, calling marijuana users dangerous.”

“DOJ’s argument is … inaccurate, utilizing centuries-old case law and making false claims demonizing medical marijuana patients—including perpetuating prejudicial stereotypes that cannabis users are dangerous or mentally ill.”

However, the Justice Department argues in their request for dismissal that it would be “dangerous to trust regular marijuana users to exercise sound judgment” with firearms because marijuana “causes significant mental and physical impairments that make it dangerous for a person to possess (a) firearm.”

On Aug. 9, Fried responded to a motion from the DOJ to dismiss her April lawsuit challenging the disqualification of the state’s nearly 741,000 medical cannabis patients with active identification cards from owning firearms. According to Fried’s office, Florida has 2.5 million concealed weapons permit holders on record.

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