Tag: 2nd amendment

“Not Today, Satan!”: Ex-FBI Agent Finds Possible ATF Honeypot Website Operation Selling Glock Switches

Ex-FBI agent and federal whistleblower Kyle Seraphin has uncovered a fake Polymer80 website selling illegal Glock Switches (devices that convert pistols into machine guns), which he describes as a likely honeypot operation set up by the ATF. 

“Have you ever wanted to buy an illegal MACHINE Gun DIRECTLY from @ATFHQ ?” Seraphin wrote on X. 

If this is a honeypot operation run by the federal government—whether the ATF or another agency—its web developers should refine the website’s rough appearance; it looks rushed and clumsily mimics the now-defunct Polymer80 site. Notice how “Glock Switch” product is number one on the list, which tells you all you need to know about intentions here: entrapment.

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‘Blesses the Government’s overreach’: Clarence Thomas swipes at fellow justices over ‘series of errors’ in ‘ghost gun’ regulations ruling, and includes his own evidence

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 Wednesday to uphold a federal agency’s rule regulating so-called “ghost guns,” with the conservatives breaking ranks as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from a majority opinion penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“Ghost guns” and “weapons”

The case, Bondi v. Vanderstok, stems from a 2022 Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) regulatory revision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) that defines firearm, firearm frame, and receiver. The GCA authorizes the ATF to regulate “any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.”

That revision followed a 2021 statement from Merrick Garland in which the then-attorney general said: “Criminals and others barred from owning a gun should not be able to exploit a loophole to evade background checks and to escape detection by law enforcement.”

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ATF Game-Changer? Gun-Rights Scholar Nabs Chief Counsel Post

In what could prove to be a momentous development, the new top lawyer at the ever-overreaching Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a Second Amendment proponent and scholar who clerked for the Supreme Court’s foremost gun-rights advocate. “Good news from the DOJ today,” said the National Association for Gun Rights. “This one could be HUGE.” 

The move came without any official publicity. Robert Leider‘s name and photo simply appeared on the ATF Leadership page last week, indicating he now holds the title of Assistant Director/Chief Counsel. Leider fills a vacancy created by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s February firing of previous Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks. 

At the time, Bondi told Fox News, “Yesterday I fired the general counsel from ATF. These people were targeting gun owners. Not gonna happen under this administration.” Continuing to shake things up last month, Trump also made the unusual move of giving Kash Patel control of the ATF as well at the FBI. 

Leider comes to his new role from an associate professor post at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Clarence Thomas when Thomas was a Seventh Circuit and then a Supreme Court justice. He has a blog encouragingly titled Standing His Ground, and has written about gun control, self-defense law and what he calls the “constitutional allocation of military power.” 

In an April 2024 blog post about gun control targeting AR-15’s and other rifles, Leider assailed a lower-court ruling that upheld an Illinois AR-15 and “high capacity” magazine ban, with judges claiming the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling asserted the Second Amendment only applies to self-defense against crime. “The Seventh Circuit’s rule…that arms most useful in military service are constitutionally unprotected is a complete perversion of the traditional understanding of the Second Amendment,” Leider wrote. In an August 2024 article published at SSRI, Leider championed the idea that the Second Amendment protects “an individual right for common defense.” 

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Study: Concealed Carriers Stop More Active Shooters Than Police Do

Data compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) shows that armed civilians stop more mass shootings than police do.

American Thinker pointed to the CPRC data last week week, noting not only that concealed carriers stop more mass shootings that do police, but that concealed carriers do so with “fewer mistakes.”

CPRC president John Lott Jr. observed that his group did a “deep dive into active shooter scenarios between 2014 and 2023” and found:

Not only do permit holders succeed in stopping active shooters at a higher rate, but law enforcement officers face significantly greater risks when intervening. Our research found police were nearly six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.

Lott explained, “From 2014 to 2023, CPRC researchers found that armed civilians stopped 180 of 515 active shooting cases. Of the attacks in places where people were allowed to carry, we found that permit holders stopped 158 of the 307 instances.” In all those instances, an innocent bystander was shot only one time.

On the other hand, “In the 156 cases stopped by law enforcement, we found police accidentally shot the wrong person in four cases, killing fellow officers twice and civilians twice.”

Lott summarized, “These findings highlight a reality that is often ignored: responsible gun owners save lives. Concealed handgun permit holders aren’t reckless vigilantes, but they are law-abiding citizens who step up in moments of crisis when seconds matter and police are minutes away.”

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What Hunters Should Know About Colorado’s First-in-the-Nation Gun Ban

Colorado is poised to become the first state in the nation to ban entire categories of rifles, pistols, and shotguns based solely on their operating systems and without regard for cosmetic features like collapsible stocks or pistol grips.

However, recent amendments to the legislation have created loopholes that would make it easier for hunters to continue owning these now-banned types of firearms. These amendments earned the support of Governor Jared Polis and passed the state Senate on a narrow 19-15 vote.

Now, the bill heads to the state House of Representatives, where the Democrats supermajority all but assures the bill’s passage.

Sportsmen’s groups have decried the legislation as an attack on Second Amendment rights and warn it could impact conservation funding moving forward.

“Modern sporting rifles and semi-automatic shotguns are not only important to our hunting heritage but are highly popular in the recreational shooting community which is widely credited as the source of roughly 80% of conservation funding generated through the Pittman-Robertson Act,” said the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. “This legislation would severely undermine our hunting heritage, firearm rights, and would negatively impact the American System of Conservation Funding.”

The bill’s supporters argue that the legislation is necessary to prevent mass shootings, and they refuse to characterize the bill as a “ban.”

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Bill Lowering Minimum Age for Rifle Purchases Passes FL House Committee

Legislation to lower the minimum rifle purchase age from 21 to 18 passed a Florida House committee on Wednesday.

The legislation, House Bill 759, is sponsored by state Reps. Michelle Salzman (R) and Tyler Sirois (R).

The minimum age for rifle purchases was raised from 18 to 21 in the wake of the February 14, 2018, Parkland high school shooting, and many Republicans legislators in the state are ready to remove the restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of 18 to 20-year-olds.

Orlando Weekly quoted Gun Owners of America’s Luis Valdes speaking in support of HB 759: “As a father, I want my daughter to be armed when she’s under the age of 21 and she’s living outside of my house and she’s able to protect herself, because right now this [law] disarms women, disarms our college students, and disarms our children.”

State Rep. Dianna Hart (D) opposed HB 759, saying, “We say brains are not developed until you’re 25, but we want to hand 18-year-olds long guns.”

Hart did not mention that out nation gives hand grenades, fully automatic rifles, and other weapons to 18-year-olds who sign up for the military.

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Mel Gibson Controversy Highlights a Bigger Scandal: Many Americans Lose Their Gun Rights for No Good Reason

Elizabeth Oyer, a former public defender who was appointed as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney in April 2022, says she was fired last Friday because she refused to sign off on a recommendation to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights. The movie star and director, who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and was recently designated as one of the administration’s three “ambassadors” to Hollywood along with Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, lost the right to own firearms because of a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.

Oyer presents the episode as a conflict between public safety and political favoritism, and The New York Times framed the story the same way. But the incident also illustrates how difficult it is for people who have lost their Second Amendment rights as a result of criminal convictions—a category that includes the president himself—to regain those rights, even when there are no grounds to think they pose a threat to public safety.

In March 2011, Gibson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge involving his girlfriend, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner sentenced him to 36 months of probation. Although Gibson’s deal with prosecutors allowed him to avoid jail time, his plea triggered an ancillary penalty under 18 USC 922(g)(9), which makes it a felony for anyone who “has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” to receive or possess a firearm. Another provision of the same law, Section 922(g)(1), sweeps more broadly, imposing the same lifelong disability on anyone who has been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration, no matter how long ago it was committed and whether or not it involved violence.

As Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in an opinion she wrote as an appeals court judge, the constitutionality of the latter prohibition is doubtful. Barrett dissented from a 2019 decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the application of Section 922(g)(1) to a manufacturer of therapeutic shoes and footwear inserts who had pleaded guilty to mail fraud. History “demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” she wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen added heft to that argument by clarifying that gun control laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” when they impinge on conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that Section 922(g)(1) failed that test as applied to Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania man who had pleaded guilty to food stamp fraud, a state misdemeanor that was notionally punishable by up to five years in prison. Based on similar reasoning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last year overturned the Section 992(g)(1) conviction of Steven Duarte, a California man who had lost his gun rights because of a nonviolent criminal record.

Without such judicial intervention, “prohibited persons” like Range and Duarte have little recourse. Under 18 USC 925(c), they theoretically can ask the attorney general to restore their Second Amendment rights. The attorney general has the discretion to do that based on a determination that “the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.” But that responsibility has been delegated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which Congress has barred from considering such applications.

“Although federal law provides a means for the relief of firearms disabilities,” the agency explains, “ATF’s annual appropriation since October 1992 has prohibited the expending of any funds to investigate or act upon applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities submitted by individuals. As long as this provision is included in current ATF appropriations, ATF cannot act upon applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities submitted by individuals.”

If the ATF cannot act on such applications, can people with disqualifying criminal records seek relief in federal court? No, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the 2002 case United States v. Bean.

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Gun Owners Take DC Magazine Restrictions To Supreme Court

Gun owners in the nation’s capital are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the District of Columbia’s ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The petition in Hanson v. District of Columbia was docketed, or officially accepted for filing, by the court on Feb. 28. The respondent, the District of Columbia, was directed to file a response by March 31.

The district enacted the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008 after the Supreme Court invalidated the city’s sweeping restrictions on gun ownership in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). In Heller, the nation’s highest court determined that individuals have a right to possess firearms for lawful purposes, including self-defense at home.

The statute made it a felony-level offense to have a magazine that could hold more than 10 rounds. A violation can result in a prison term of three years and a fine of $12,500. District officials say the law is needed to protect the public.

Lead petitioner Andrew Hanson and co-petitioners Tyler Yzaguirre, Nathan Chaney, and Eric Klun, who all have concealed carry pistol licenses in the District of Columbia, possessed magazines holding more than 10 rounds outside D.C. and said they would use their magazines for lawful purposes in the district if the 10-round limit did not apply.

Hanson argues in the petition that the district’s magazine cap is unconstitutional according to a test the Supreme Court articulated in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which recognized a right to bear arms in public for self-defense.

Weeks after Bruen was decided, the petitioners sued the District of Columbia, asking for a declaration from a federal district court that the magazine cap ran afoul of the Second and Fifth Amendments.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued an April 2023 decision that denied Hanson’s request to block the law on constitutional grounds. Contreras found that the local law adheres to the U.S. Constitution.

The judge found that the District’s ammo limitation, which was aimed at promoting public safety, was justified. The ban constituted “an attempt to mitigate the carnage of mass shootings in this country.”

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We Caught FBI Using “Minority Report Style” Secret Form Pressuring Gun Owners To Forfeit Their Rights

Gun Owners of America just caught the FBI coercing more people into giving up their Second Amendment rights!

Thanks to a FOIA request by GOA’s lawyers, we uncovered even more evidence on the FBI’s unconstitutional and unlawful NICS Indices program.

In 2019, it was discovered that the FBI was using a document titled “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form” that purported to allow American citizens to “voluntarily” waive their Second Amendment rights. 

By completing this FBI form, law-abiding Americans allegedly “consent” for the FBI to enter their names into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, marking them as permanently prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms or ammunition.  And as the form warns, once an individual waives their rights, it’s impossible to get them back.

Now, the mere existence of this form was troubling, and it clearly violates the Second Amendment and even the Gun Control Act. But at that point, we weren’t sure how extensively the FBI was using the form, if in fact it was being used at all.

Fast-forward a few years to 2022.

GOA published our initial findings that the FBI had provided these forms to agents for use on American gun owners, who were pressured into signing and therefore “voluntarily” relinquished their rights to purchase, possess, and use firearms.

These FOIA records painted a vivid picture of FBI agents showing up to people’s homes, place of work, etc., presenting to them these forms, and “asking” them to declare themselves to be a “danger” to themselves or others, or lacking the “mental capacity to adequately contract or manage” their lives.

You can imagine how coercive these sorts of FBI visits must have been.  The FBI’s use of this secret form has occurred during recent years when the bureau has become increasingly politicized and weaponized against Americans, including gun owners.

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Oklahoma Senators Approve Bill To Protect Second Amendment Rights Of Medical Marijuana Patients

Lawmakers in Oklahoma this week advanced a bill aimed at protecting gun rights of state-registered medical marijuana patients, although federal law still bars cannabis users from owning firearms regardless of their patient status.

The Senate Committee on Public Safety unanimously passed the measure, SB 39, from Sen. Julie Daniels (R), on Wednesday with a vote of 6-0. If it’s enacted, the legislation would specify that applicants for state-issued handgun licenses would not be disqualified merely for being a medical marijuana patient.

It states that “an applicant shall not be considered ineligible solely on the basis of being a lawful holder of a medical marijuana patient license” and also makes a medical marijuana exception around disqualifications for “any violation relating to illegal drug use or possession.”

Yet another provision in the bill says that “nothing in this section shall be construed to allow the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to deny an otherwise qualified applicant from obtaining a handgun license pursuant to the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act solely on the basis of the applicant being a lawful holder of a medical marijuana patient license.”

Ahead of the vote at Wednesday’s hearing, Daniels pointed out that courts across the nation are increasingly pushing back against the notion that merely using marijuana should deny them their Second Amendment rights.

“In recent years, the courts have all come down on the side that someone should not be denied a firearm license or be prosecuted for possession of a firearm solely because they use marijuana,” she told colleagues. “And in Oklahoma, of course, we have a medical marijuana program. So the point of this bill is to make clear that solely because you have a medical marijuana patient card does not mean that you should be automatically denied a firearm license.”

Carrying or using a shotgun, rifle or pistol while under the influence of marijuana—even if it was “obtained pursuant to a valid medical marijuana patient license”—would remain illegal if the drug affects someone “to a degree that would result in abnormal behavior,” the bill says.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations, for its part, said in a statement on Wednesday that it will abide by the new rules, if adopted.

“We respect the right of Oklahomans to legally have firearms,” the agency said, according to local ABC affiliate KOCO News 5, which first reported the committee’s passage of the bill. “We will work with new laws passed by the legislature.”

As for the federal law against gun ownership by marijuana users, a federal appeals court panel earlier this month dismissed a three-year prison sentence against a person convicted for possession of a firearm while being an active user of marijuana, ruling that the federal government’s prohibition on gun ownership by drug users is justified only in certain circumstances—not always.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said in the opinion that while not all disarmament of drug users violates the Second Amendment, it nevertheless sometimes can.

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