Tag: gun control

Syria’s new leader says all weapons to come under ‘state control’

Two weeks after seizing power in a sweeping offensive, Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday said weapons in the country, including those held by Kurdish-led forces, would come under state control.

Sharaa spoke alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, after earlier meeting with Lebanese Druze leaders and vowing to end “negative interference” in the neighboring country.

Ankara-backed rebels played a key role in supporting Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which headed a rebel alliance that seized Damascus on Dec. 8, toppling longtime ruler Bashar Assad.

During a press conference with Fidan, Sharaa said Syria’s armed “factions will begin to announce their dissolution and enter” the army.

“We will absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control, whether from the revolutionary factions or the factions present in the SDF area,” he added, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Sharaa traded in the olive-green military shirt he sported just days ago for a suit and tie during his meetings on Sunday at the presidential palace.

He also said “we are working on protecting sects and minorities from any attacks that occur between them” and from “external” actors exploiting the situation “to cause sectarian discord.”

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Many Preppers and 2nd Amendment Proponents Believe That the Arms Trade Treaty Will First Lead to Registration of All Firearms

The UN’s Arms Trade Treaty which covers everything from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships – came into force on 24 December 2014. This treaty has not been ratified by our Congress but had the support of our Secretary of State, John Kerry who signed it and Our president at that time, who without expressly mentioning the treaty, said in a speech at the UN that all nations “must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.” The problem with that statement and this treaty is that we the people aren’t in control of what those ‘international norms’ are and as we have seen time and time again, those international norms might be detrimental to our country.

Many preppers and 2nd Amendment proponents believe that the Arms Trade Treaty will first lead to registration of all firearms and when that happens, historically the next step is confiscation through some means. Technically, no treaty can be put into action in the United States unless it has been ratified by a 2/3 majority of the senate. This fact is what most people cite when they are trying to refute any legitimate concerns about the UN Arms Trade Treaty or any other treaty’s potential effect on our country. This sounds well and good and serves to placate some, but for this fail-safe to have any weight you would first need to have a government that followed the letter of the constitution and additionally, that government would need to follow the wishes of the citizens they are representing.

Our government has proven time and time again that following the constitution is simply not something they feel they have to do when it stands in their way. For example, the senate has never voted on the Kyoto Protocol but that hasn’t stopped the EPA from enacting rules complying with the main goals of that treaty. Coal plants are being shut down left and right while the US and China agreed in 2014 to let China keep growing their output of carbon emissions (with coal power plants) until 2030. There are many examples of policies that are enacted that fall well outside the bounds of Constitutional limits on power but that doesn’t stop our representatives does it? On any issue there is more brainpower spent on finding ways around the Constitution than actually following it with the seeming goal of every single facet of law being finally decided by the Supreme Court. It’s as if in our society, the rules we decided long ago to set for ourselves are only as good as the interpretations of people today and if every single thing can be challenged (and in some cases changed), we don’t really have a Constitution at all. What we have is a framework for legal arguments that only establishes a baseline which can be over ruled completely by a simple majority of ideology on the bench.

As for a government that listens to their constituents, that long gone relic of thought is promised by every single person running for office. “I feel your pain” The truth of the matter is that in this day and age, every politician is a benefactor of the same special interests. There are no democrat and republican sides whenever both are receiving money from the same companies. The elected politicians, by overwhelming majority do not care what you say or want because they don’t answer to you. Their actions directly contradict election results, polls and public outcry. The 2014 mid-term elections  held should have sent a very strong signal to the leadership of both parties that the country wasn’t on-board with the policies of the current administration and the direction of affairs with the Congress, however; Obamacare and Amnesty both remain intact without so much as a whimper from our newly elected majority who promised for years to repeal it as soon as they were ‘in power’. To add insult to injury, the Republicans just released a 1 trillion budget proposal just over 24 hours before a procedural vote on it knowing that nobody would have time to read it. Same tricks but a different face is behind the podium. Why should we expect anything different from what we have been seeing?

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‘Deceptively Colored Firearm’ Bill Introduced by Equally Deceptive Michigan Democrats

“Democrats push ban on ‘deceptively colored firearms’ amid flurry of lame duck gun bills,” The Midwesterner reported Wednesday. “Designates illegal any firearm other than black, brown, dark grey, dark green, silver, steel, or nickel in color.”

Senate Bill 1134 would amend the Michigan penal code to make “An individual who violates this section or any rule promulgated under this section …  guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year or a fine of not more than $500.00.”

This insulting and oppressively matriarchal assault on both the First Amendment right to expression and the Second Amendment right to arms is the “brainchild” of Democrat Senator Dayna Polehanski, who can get away with such tyrannical acts of legislative sabotage because she’s a “safe seat” Democrat. Per Ballotpedia, she won Michigan State Senate District 5 in 2022 by 61.1% to 38.9% over her Republican opponent, and she’ll be in office until 2027.

Forget that she’s inventing a “solution” in search of a problem, and a Google search for terms like “homicide with ‘colored firearms’” yields no relevant (but unintentionally racist) results from Google, and even if they did would not justify depriving gun owners of their rights under threat of a “law” enforcement response and punishment. Much like the Clinton “assault weapon” ban, it’s entirely cosmetic. And it’s not even an original idea, which, considering it comes from a Democrat Moms Demand Action endorsee is hardly surprising.

The impulse to ban them goes back years ago to then-New York City Mayor and perennial Everytown billionaire money man Michael Bloomberg holding a press conference where he denounced “red and yellow DuraCoat-painted guns … saying anyone who sold them was ‘sick’ and ‘twisted’.”  That, in turn, per a 2008 Daily News report, prompted Steve Lauer of Lauer Custom Weaponry to push back by “market[ing] a line of bright colors called the ‘Bloomberg Collection,’ …[and] introduce… a bright-red shade called ‘Furious Mike.’”

The bill is not without exemptions, notably for “an individual who owns or possesses it on the effective date of the amendatory act that added this section,” and, of course, for “Only Ones” of:

“The United States… This state or another state… A department, an agency, or a political subdivision of the United States, this state, or another state… A member of an entity or organization… while engaged in the course of that member’s duties with that entity or organization or while going to or returning from those duties.”

How the problem of “deceptively colored firearms” goes away when in the hands of someone with a badge is not explained. Neither is the rational basis for “grandfathering” colored guns for one group of citizens, but not providing equal protection for individuals who got theirs “after the effective date of the amendatory act that added this section,” but instead dictating that “no later than 14 days after receipt” they’ll be required to either surrender it “to the department of state police for disposal” or “Modif[y] the deceptively colored firearm or covert firearm so that it is no longer a deceptively colored firearm or covert firearm and cannot be readily converted into one.”

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Ghost Guns and the Second Amendment

The latest boogeyman conjured up by the Biden administration is ghost guns.

In his September 26 executive order on “Combating Emerging Firearms Threats and Improving School-Based Active-Shooter Drills,” President Biden mentioned these ominous “ghost guns”:

One way to continue the progress on reducing gun violence is to stay ahead of emerging violent crime threats involving firearms.  My Administration has always taken these threats seriously.  In April 2021, one of my Administration’s first executive actions to reduce gun violence was directed at stopping the proliferation of firearms without serial numbers, often referred to as “ghost guns.”

The executive order goes on to describe these ghost guns as “unserialized, 3D printed firearms — which can be used for illicit purposes such as gun trafficking, possession by people convicted of felonies or subject to domestic violence restraining orders, or unlawful engagement in the business of manufacturing or selling firearms.” These ghost guns can’t be traced by law enforcement and they “can be rendered undetectable by magnetometers used to secure airports, courthouses, and certain events.” They are even “a significant risk to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”

So, what can the federal government do, constitutionally, about ghost guns?

Absolutely nothing.

Article II of the Constitution defines the powers of the president. It gives no authority to the president to ban or regulate firearms of any kind.

Article I of the Constitution grants all legislative powers to the Congress. But the Constitution is also clear that the legislative power of Congress is not absolute. There are about thirty enumerated congressional powers found in the Constitution, most of them in the eighteen paragraphs of Article I, Section 8. None of them give authority to the Congress to ban or regulate firearms of any kind.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Second Amendment does not grant to any American the positive right to keep and bear arms. It recognizes a preexisting natural right. The Second Amendment is an additional limitation on federal power to infringe upon gun rights besides the fact that no authority is granted to the president or the federal government to infringe upon them in the first place.

So, all of this simply means that the federal government has no authority to ban or regulate firearms of any kind: no pistols, no revolvers, no rifles, no assault rifles, no shotguns, no sawed-off shotguns, no machine guns, and no ghost guns. It also has no authority to restrict how Americans manufacture or modify any of their firearms.

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Federal Judge Enjoins Enforcement of the Illinois ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban

A federal judge in Illinois recently issued a permanent injunction against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, deeming it inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA) “is an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment and must be enjoined,” U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn wrote in Barnett v. Raoul, which combines several challenges to the law, on Friday. “The Government may not deprive law-abiding citizens of their guaranteed right to self-defense as a means of offense.”

McGlynn imposed a 30-day stay on his injunction to allow an appeal that seems likely to succeed. Last year in Bevis v. City of Naperville, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against PICA that McGlynn issued in April 2023. The 7th Circuit concluded that the state was likely to prevail in its defense of the law.

The 168-page opinion that McGlynn issued on Friday, which followed a bench trial, aims to reconcile the 7th Circuit’s reasoning, which was based on a distinction between “military” weapons and “Arms protected by the Second Amendment,” with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedents. That’s a tall order. But the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), which represents the plaintiffs in one of the PICA lawsuits, argues that the evidence presented at trial showed that “PICA fails even under the Seventh Circuit’s misguided test,” which it says “conflicts with binding Supreme Court precedent.”

Illinois legislators enacted PICA in January 2023, six months after a gunman used a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle to kill seven people at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park. Among other things, the law bans a long list of specific rifle models, along with any semi-automatic rifle that accepts detachable magazines and has one or more of six listed features: a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, a protruding grip, a folding or adjustable stock, a flash suppressor, a grenade launcher, or a barrel shroud. PICA also bans “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” defined to include rifle magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and pistol magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch (D–Westchester) said the law was aimed at “weapons of war.” That phrase suggested that Welch was talking about selective-fire rifles like those carried by U.S. soldiers, which can shoot automatically.

That was clearly not true. Such rifles are strictly regulated under federal law, which has forbidden sales of newly manufactured machine guns to civilians since 1986. PICA does not deal with machine guns; it deals with semi-automatic firearms, which fire one round per trigger pull.

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Federal Judge Vacates Bump Stock Rule, Recognizes ‘Right to Possess’

Senior United States District Judge David Alan Ezra vacated the ATF’s bump stock ban rule on Monday and recognized plaintiff Michael Cargill’s “right to possess” the device under federal law.

The case is Gargill v. Garland, in the U.S. District for the Western District of Texas.

Cargill secured a favorable ruling against the bump stock ban in this same district court in 2023, however, the court did not provide any means of relief for Cargill. But the New Civil Liberties Alliance noted that once the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against the bump stock ban the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the district’s court denial of Cargill’s motion for relief, instructing the district court “to consider alterations to the judgment or other relief[.]”

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Ghost Gun Seizures Nearly Triple In Two Years

The number of ghost guns recovered by U.S. law enforcement rose swiftly between 2016 and 2022, the same year the Biden Administration introduced background checks and outlawed accessible built-at-home kits without serial numbers for these types of firearms which had previously evaded tracing due to their DIY nature.

Now, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that pro-gun groups, manufacturers and citizens have brought against the U.S. government trying to overturn these rules that they say are based on an unjust expansion of the term firearm and therefore are beyond the power of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to enforce.

A lower court sided with the plaintiffs and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case back in April.

Since the introduction of the new rules and states also passing their own bans and regulations on the subject, there are indications that the proliferation of ghost guns has slowed.

There are no 2023 numbers available from ATF.

However, an analysis of police department data from 34 cities by Everytown Research showed a well-known manufacturer of ghost gun kits, Polymer80, was still the seventh most common source of guns used in crimes in 2023 across these municipalities at 1.5 percent.

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Kamala Harris says she owns a Glock despite supporting handgun bans in SF, prompting speculation it’s unregistered

Vice President Kamala Harris told “60 Minutes” Monday that she owns a Glock handgun — triggering allegations of hypocrisy due to her own past support for firearm bans and questions about whether she’s complying with existing gun-control laws.

“I have a Glock and I’ve had it for quite some time,” the 59-year-old Harris told CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker.

“My background is in law enforcement, so there you go.”

Asked if she had ever fired the gun, Harris laughingly replied, “Yes, of course I have, at a shooting range— yes, of course, I have.”

Harris previously supported handgun bans in both San Francisco, where she began her political career and served as district attorney between 2004 and 2011, and Washington, where she has served in federal office since 2017.

California state law requires gun buyers to have a Firearm Safety Certificate and DC requires all handguns to be registered.

Glocks, furthermore, cannot legally have magazines with a capacity of more than 10 bullets in the nation’s capital, and some models of Glock come with a standard capacity that exceeds that limit.

“DC residents have to register their firearms. And DC issues a gun-registration ID card for each firearm, with the make, model, and serial number. Post your card, Kamala,” tweeted Mike Davis, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and a former Senate Judiciary Committee aide.

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Massachusetts Governor Uses Emergency Powers To Fast-Track Sweeping Gun-Control Law

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has signed an emergency preamble to the state’s sweeping gun control bill, fast-tracking its implementation and halting an ongoing effort by gun rights activists to delay its effects.

The law, H.4885, was originally scheduled to take effect on Oct. 23, or 90 days after Healey signed the bill in July, but her decision to proceed with signing the emergency preamble means it goes into effect immediately.

Under Massachusetts law, governors have the authority to issue an emergency preamble to expedite legislation when “the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety, or convenience” is deemed necessary.

The law’s expedited enactment was praised by gun control groups but sharply criticized by gun rights advocates, who had hoped to gather enough signatures to delay its implementation until a potential 2026 referendum.

H.4885 expands Massachusetts’ already strict gun regulations, in part as a response to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which affirmed an individual’s right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.

The expedited law includes provisions banning untraceable “ghost guns,” expanding restrictions on “assault-style” firearms and large-capacity magazines, and tightening the state’s “red flag” rules. It also mandates that firearm license applicants pass a standardized safety exam and complete live-fire training, while also providing mental health information to local licensing authorities.

“This gun safety law bans ghost guns, strengthens the Extreme Risk Protection Order statute to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others, and invests in violence prevention programs. It is important that these measures go into effect without delay,” Healey said in an Oct. 2 statement to media outlets.

The governor’s decision to fast-track the law has drawn swift condemnation from gun rights organizations. Tody Leary, owner of Cape Cod Gun Works and a leader of the grassroots Civil Rights Coalition, sharply criticized the move, accusing Healey of bypassing the democratic process.

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Debunking the Worst Gun Control ‘Hot Takes’ After Second Trump Assassination Attempt

Donald Trump by all accounts survived another assassination attempt earlier this month when Secret Service agents engaged a rifle-wielding man lying in wait in bushes adjoining a hole at his private golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the former president was playing.

As is so often the case after high-profile incidents involving the criminal misuse of firearms, a lot of gun control activists immediately took to the internet with their “hot takes,” declining to wait for correct information to come to light or to analyze whether their initial gut feelings had any relationship to reality.

And, as usual, many of these immediate hot takes really missed the mark. Here are three of the most common assertions erroneously made in the days following the second known attempt to assassinate Trump.

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