Tag: gun control

Rogue ATF Defies Federal Courts, Continues To Target Law-Abiding Gun Owners Over ‘Illegal’ Pistol Brace Rule

The federal government is now being accused of continuing to enforce the same pistol brace interpretation that federal courts have already struck down, exposing law-abiding Americans to potential felony charges carrying up to 10 years in prison.

The Biden-era pistol brace rule, which reclassified millions of braced pistols as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act (NFA), was vacated by federal courts and deemed unlawful.

Following that defeat, the Department of Justice quietly dropped its appeal, effectively leaving the rule dead and unenforceable nationwide.

Last year, the firearm community celebrated a definitive victory.

According to FFL Guard, in cases like Mock v. Bondi (formerly Mock v. Garland), federal judges slammed the Biden-era rule that overnight reclassified millions of braced pistols as “short-barreled rifles” (SBRs).

The courts found the ATF’s move was “arbitrary and capricious,” a blatant violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and a direct assault on the Second Amendment.

Even the DOJ seemed to wave the white flag, dropping its appeal in 2025. But according to a March 2026 court filing in Texas v. ATF, the agency is now claiming that, while the rule is gone, its interpretation remains.

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Judge Extends Restraining Order Against James O’Keefe, Asks Him to Surrender All Firearms

On Wednesday, a judge extended a restraining order against James O’Keefe until May 11 and asked him to surrender his firearms.

James was served with a restraining order while he was livestreaming at his West Palm Beach, Florida, headquarters on Tuesday.

The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Deputy served James with a domestic violence restraining order.

The domestic violence restraining order was from Matthew Tyrmand, a former Project Veritas board member.

“Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department just served me with a domestic violence restraining order from Matthew Tyrmand. The former board member from Project Veritas who said he wants to murder me,” James O’Keefe said.

“Despite admitting multiple times on hidden camera wanting me dead, Matthew Tyrmand filed a restraining order against ME in Miami Dade County,” O’Keefe said.

“Saying such things as: “I would kill him [O’Keefe]. Because he is one of the most evil people I’ve ever known.,”” he said.

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Chicago: Pro-Gun Control Mayor’s ‘Armed Security’ Detail Costing Taxpayers $30 Million A Year

A report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s senior VP and general counsel Lawrence Keane indicates pro-gun control Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “armed security” detail costs taxpayers about $30 million a year.

According to Keane, the detail “includes as many as 150 Chicago Police Department officers.”

Keane noted that Johnson avails himself of the security provided with firearms while simultaneously praising restrictions on citizens’ ability to own the rifle of their choice:

In Chicago, Mayor Johnson has backed some of Illinois’ most restrictive firearm policies. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2023 reversed a lower court’s preliminary injunction against Illinois’ ban on so-called “assault-style weapons,”… [which included the] state’s magazine restrictions, Mayor Johnson praised the ruling and called the law an “important step” that would keep “weapons of war” out of neighborhoods.

Keane observed, “The practical message to Chicago residents was clear. Government officials and their armed details can enjoy armed personal protection but the public should accept tighter limits on the tools of lawful self-defense.”

Numerous other pro-gun control Democrats have taken a similar “guns for me but not for thee” approach in leadership policy.

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Why Is The Trump DOJ Still Enforcing The Biden Pistol Brace Rule?

The current Department of Justice is choosing to continue enforcing an unconstitutional legal theory being weaponized against gun owners by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

According to a recent statement in GOA’s Texas et al. v. ATF case, DOJ claims that ATF “continue[s] to enforce the NFA’s and the GCA’s regulation of short-barreled rifles against some brace-equipped pistols, even though the Rule has been universally vacated.”

For those who are unfamiliar, in 2022 the Biden Administration issued an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to ban pistol braces, a popular firearm accessory designed to allow shooters with disabilities to “brace” their firearms against their forearm.

The Biden DOJ used this rule to effectively outlaw firearms equipped with stabilizing braces, by regulating them as short-barreled firearms under the National Firearms Act. This move turned the law-abiding owners of upwards of 40 million pistol braces  into felons practically overnight, unless they destroyed their firearm or registered it with the federal government.

GOA and other pro-gun groups challenged this pistol brace rule in multiple courts across the country, culminating with a total elimination of the rule in court.

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Machine Gun Found on Bus Rider in Anti-Gun Washington State

Anti-gun activists love anecdotes. They like to present stories of people who survived horrific experiences or who lost people in senseless atrocities, all to try and leverage our emotions into supporting gun control.

The problem is that we’ve got stories, too. We’ve got a lot of them. They range from people who lost loved ones to people who used guns for self-defense.

Or, there are times when we just trot out the stories that show how little their preferred laws actually do.

King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) deputies say neighborhood complaints about crime in White Center are skyrocketing.

To combat that increase, the KCSO Special Emphasis Team has been working alongside the Department of Corrections and King County Metro’s Bicycle Emphasis Enforcement Squad (BEES) to conduct extra patrols.

…

On Tuesday, KCSO deputies were on an emphasis patrol when they found a man smoking weed on a bus. Major Hamill tells us the BEES followed the bus and had the driver pull over so they could take the man into custody for smoking weed on the bus.

“The deputies stumbled onto something much bigger from just that small stop,” Hamill said.

He tells us the deputies tried to escort the man off the bus, but he became uncomfortable and tried to pull away.

When they patted him down, Hamill said deputies found a gun — an Uzi with a silencer under the man’s shirt and tucked down his pants.

An Uzi is a military-grade machine gun that is generally illegal to own in the United States.

That’s right, some dude was sitting on the bus, smoking weed, while walking around with a suppressed Uzi.

There are a number of transferable Uzis in civilian hands. I’ve got a buddy who has one, actually, and there are a whole lot more than his running around out there, so it’s not quite accurate to say it’s “generally illegal” to own. It’s quite legal, so long as you’ve got the money and the paperwork.

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This Democrat Claims To Be Moderate, But Backs Huge Firearms Crackdowns on Law-Abiding Americans

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington’s Third District has portrayed herself as a working class moderate Democrat. Recent stories have shown that the congresswoman is anything but, with former acquaintances claiming that she is “cosplaying as a poor person.” Her history on the Second Amendment has shown that cosplay has ventured into her policy stances as well.

During a 2022 candidate debate, Gluesenkamp Perez laid out the first steps toward restricting gun ownership for constituents by preventing adults between the ages of 18 and 20 from exercising their constitutional rights.

“I’m a pragmatist,” Gluesenkamp Perez stated. “I think the first reasonable thing is to increase the age of purchase to 21, because kids are just not as old as they used to be.”

Gluesenkamp Perez’s statements echo the 2020 Washington State Democrat Party platform that the congresswoman adopted. Some “reasonable” measures that Democrats proposed include: ending open carry in Washington, a mandatory waiting period on firearms purchases, mandatory registration and licensing, a volume limit on firearms and ammunition ownership, a sweeping “assault weapons” ban, a ban on magazines with a capacity greater than 10, mandatory liability insurance for firearms owners, the criminalization of 3-D printed firearms, and ending reciprocity for concealed carry licenses for states who wouldn’t adopt these radical restrictions.

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Federal Appeals Court Seems Skeptical of Reciprocity Argument

A three-judge panel on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals appears to be skeptical of the arguments used by an over-the-road truck driver challenging Minnesota’s refusal to recognize his Florida and Georgia carry permits. During oral arguments on Wednesday, at least two of the three judges on the panel seemed to have a hard time with Jeffrey Johnson Sr.’s contention that requiring him to get a non-resident permit before he can carry in Minnesota is an unreasonable burden on his Second Amendment rights. 

From Courthouse News:

“If Minnesota can require all of its residents to get a permit, why would it violate the Second Amendment by requiring others to?” U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Grasz, a Donald Trump appointee, asked.

U.S. Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson agreed, piling on to the questioning against Johnson’s attorney, Ryan Morrison.

“Is it your position that, having conceded that the Minnesota permitting process is appropriate for Minnesota residents … that Minnesota must enact a statute that allows reciprocity, or else they’re in violation of the Second Amendment?” Erickson asked. “Do you have a case that says that anywhere in the world?”

The George W. Bush appointee continued with his concern about Morrison’s argument, finding it absurd that those outside of Minnesota shouldn’t be held to the same standard as residents.

“So you have greater rights as a nonresident than as a resident?” Erickson asked. “It just says, if you want to go into Minnesota, you just got to follow the Minnesota permitting process.”

The answer to Erickson’s question is arguably “yes”; non-residents do have greater rights, or at least more leeway, than residents of a particular state. Attorneys Chuck Michel, Anna Barvir, and Kostas Moros raised that point in an amicus brief filed in Gardner v. Maryland, which is another case dealing with the lack of reciprocity.

As the three noted, there’s a national tradition of exempting “travelers” from carry restrictions that states impose on residents that dates back to at least the late 1600’s. 

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Democrats Love Gun Control And Violent Criminals Because Both Can Punish You

While at a gun store recently, I was inundated with warnings against illegally buying a gun for someone else. The counter even had signs threatening up to 15 years in prison. 

They don’t mean it. This was proven a few days beforehand, when a convicted ISIS terrorist opened fire at Old Dominion University, killing an ROTC instructor before the cadets heroically took him out. Not only had this terrorist been set free in the United States after only a brief prison term, but he had bought a stolen gun from a man whom the Biden administration had declined to charge for allegedly repeatedly and illegally buying guns for other people; instead, they had him write an apology letter. So much for 15 years.

Meanwhile, I was at the gun store because Democrats, having taken full control of the state government, are rushing through a radical gun-control agenda, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” by which they mean various popular semiautomatic rifles and even handguns. We may hope the courts will do their duty and strike down these blatantly unconstitutional laws, but many Virginians are stocking up in case they don’t. 

A criminal who admitted to illegally buying guns (one of which showed up at a murder scene) got off with a “sorry,” but if a store were to keep selling “assault weapons” after the deadline, Democrats would undoubtedly demand the maximum penalty. Democrats are not actually trying to reduce crime or save lives with their gun-control schemes. If that were what they cared about, they would insist on enforcing the law (including existing gun laws) against actual criminals rather than finding new ways to harass ordinary, law-abiding gun owners. 

Just look around Virginia. The first act of the new Democrat governor was to make the entire state a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. The far-left Fairfax County prosecutor let a particularly dangerous illegal immigrant off the hook again and again, despite police objections, until he allegedly murdered a woman. Also in Fairfax County, public schools allowed an adult illegal immigrant to enroll as a high school student; he then allegedly sexually assaulted girls at least a dozen times — and the county is refusing to hand him over to ICE to be deported.

Part of the left’s obsession with gun control is that actually dealing with crime would mean slaughtering their sacred cows. Hating on some imagined Bubba the southern hick and Chad the suburban gun collector is encouraged, but leftists are not permitted to worry about the crazy homeless guy on the subway, the panhandling junkie outside their door, or thuggish young men loitering around the corner. Expressing those concerns will get Democrats denounced as hateful bigots by their own side.

A recent New York Times piece illustrated how leftists pretend away the obvious about crime. Titled “We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online,” the column constantly referred to trans-identified killers by their preferred pronouns, and its search for root causes ignored that these murderers were men pretending to be women. This is a perfect example of how left-wing pieties prevent Democrats from actually facing problems and offering real solutions.

This is repeated again and again. Leftists are told not to worry about family breakdown and the evils of fatherlessness, or how mass immigration encourages factionalism and damages social trust and capital. They are not even allowed to notice when massive government spending is an obvious grift (e.g., hundreds of millions spent on homeless programs that don’t fix anything but do keep a lot of NGOs flush with cash). And when welfare money is stolen by the billions, they leap into action to defend the imported criminal gangs systematically defrauding the American government.

But Democrats are allowed to hate guns and gun owners, especially those who are white, male, and Christian. And they are allowed to redirect all their legitimate fears and concerns onto gun owners, who thereby become a scapegoat for all the problems that left-wing ideology prevents leftists from even confronting. 

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Virginia Democrats Exempt Legislators From Their Own Gun Law

The 2026 legislative session has come to a close in Virginia, but not without some last minute changes to several gun control laws that are now on their way to Gov. Abigail Spanberger. 

None of the changes benefit gun owners, except for one… and with that bill only a very select number of Virginians will qualify. 

It reads to me like Virginia Democrats did exempt lawmakers from facing misdemeanor charges if they leave one of their guns where it’s visible in their car, so long as it’s in the parking garage reserved for them. 

This isn’t just hypocrisy. This is a taunt from the anti-gun caucus in Richmond, a reminder to Second Amendment advocates that, no matter how many of them might rally on the statehouse grounds in opposition, they have the power to both pass any gun control bill they want and exempt themselves in the process. 

I asked on X whether this would be the one gun bill that Spanberger vetoes in an attempt to look moderate, but I’m not holding my breath. 2A folks are already complaining about her, so what are they going to do about one more legislative middle finger? If she vetoes the bill, though, she’s going against the gun control lobby who spent a lot of money getting her elected and the Democrat majority in the General Assembly. Maybe she lets the bill become law without her signature, but I think the law.. and the exemption for lawmakers, is going into effect later this year. 

***UPDATE***

As it turns out, while the House of Delegates did approve the language exempting lawmakers from the gun storage bill, that language did not make it in to the version that was sent to the governor. Here’s what happened: 

The Senate and House couldn’t agree on the language of HB 110, so it was assigned to a conference committee to hammer out the differences. The substitute bill that emerged on Saturday morning contained the exemption for lawmakers, and was adopted by the House on a 60-36 vote. The Senate, however, asked for a second conference committee (instead of rejecting the compromise bill outright), and the House agreed, apparently on a voice vote. HB 110 was sent back to the drafting table, and when it emerged for the second time, the lawmaker exemption was gone. The Senate quickly passed the bill and the House concurred a short time later. The bill sent to the governor can be found here. 

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Virginia Democrats Already Pushing Sweeping Gun Control After Being in Office for Barely a Month

It begins. Democrats in Virginia have been in power for barely a month and they are already pushing sweeping new gun control laws.

To make matters worse, they are doing this at a time when the country has seen four terrorist attacks on the homeland in the span of just two weeks. God forbid the American people are able to defend themselves from all of the potential terrorists that Democrats imported into the country on Joe Biden’s watch.

This is all about control.

FOX News reports:

Virginia Dems send sweeping gun ban to Spanberger as West Virginia weighs expanding machine-gun access

Virginia Democrats have sent a sweeping gun-control package to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk, while West Virginia lawmakers are debating the opposite approach — a proposal that would allow residents to lawfully obtain machine guns.

The dueling efforts highlight how sharply gun policy is diverging across the old Virginia border. More than 160 years after West Virginia split from Virginia during the Civil War, the two states are again charting very different political paths — with Democrats in Richmond advancing new firearm restrictions while Republicans in Charleston explore expanding Second Amendment rights.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signaled she looks forward to “reviewing” the sweeping firearms ban from state Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Dunn Loring, when it reaches her desk next week.

“As the mother of three daughters in Virginia public schools and a former federal law enforcement officer who carried a gun every day, Governor Spanberger knows how important it is to make sure kids and families are safe,” Spanberger’s office said in a statement to Richmond’s ABC affiliate.

“The governor is grateful for the efforts of legislators and advocates to address gun violence in Virginia communities, and she looks forward to reviewing all legislation that comes to her desk.”

Some pro-gun activists in the state have responded by handing out free AR-15 magazines.

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