Tag: self defense

Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2025 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks: Instead of 3.9%, the correct number is at least 36.6%. Excluding gun-free zones, it averaged over 52.9%. In 2025, it was 58.3%.

The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a public place, not involving gang violence or some other crime such as robbery. Such an incident could be something as minor as one person being shot at and missed up to a mass public shooting.

While the FBI includes cases where civilians stop active shooters, the news media frequently relies on the limited number of these cases to argue that such interventions are rare. Headlines illustrate this framing: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times). The FBI’s reports acknowledge that armed civilians stopped active shooting attacks in eight of the twelve years they reviewed.

When John Stossel asked the FBI about our claim that they had omitted many cases, the Bureau responded: “[Our data is] not intended to explore all active shooting incidents but rather to provide a baseline understanding . . .”

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Second Shot At The Second Amendment: Could Heller Be Undone By An Errant Qualifier?

Many of us are gearing up with columns previewing the Court’s October term and have highlighted the upcoming arguments over bans on AR-15s and semiautomatic weapons in out of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago (Viramontes v. Cook County) and the Second Circuit in New York (Grant v. Higgins).

A recent column from Professor Rory Little suggests that these cases will strike at what he considers a glaring flaw in the Heller decision that recognized the individual right under the Second Amendment. Professor Little repeats a common claim about Heller that some of us have challenged. I wanted to briefly address that controversy again. The column appeared in Scotusblog, a respected site that offers tracking and commentary on pending Supreme Court cases. Here is the portion that I wanted to address:

The 2008 Heller decision, which changed precedent to find a Second Amendment right to own handguns for self-defense, was decided 5-4. To me (and others) it is clear that Justice Antonin Scalia had to include various qualifiers in his opinion, or he would have lost one or two of his five votes and Heller would have come out differently. Part III of the opinion was clearly added to capture, or keep, the narrow but earth-shattering majority, and ought to be viewed as the binding judgement of the court. Specifically, in addition to listing various “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms” left undisturbed, part III said “we also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. … the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’” (quoting United States v.Miller, a 1939 precedent upholding bans on machine guns). I add emphasis on “at the time,” because the Viramontes briefing all but ignores what the court said was this “important limitation.”

As the solicitor general’s brief notes, “the AR-15 rifle was developed in 1956,” and the first semiautomatic rifle of any kind was sold in 1903. Thus, while they may be the “most commonly owned rifle[] in America” today (albeit by less than 10% of all Americans), semi-automatic rifles were undisputedly not in common use “at the time” the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791. Indeed, as the SG’s brief also explains, it is the modern technological developments in the AR-15 that makes it popular today. (This is also why they are commonly used in mass-shootings.) Rather, the solicitor general’s Viramontes brief subtly changes the language, saying (on page 21) that the proper Second Amendment test is whether AR-15s “are in common use” today (again, my emphasis). This radically departs from the doctrinal limits that were essential to cementing the Heller result. In his 2025 dissent from denial of certiorari, Kavanaugh (joined by Justice Samuel Alito) adopted this same semantic transfiguration of Heller (changing “were” to “are”) – an error (or strategy) presaged in Kavanaugh’s 2011 Circuit judge dissent when Heller was remanded in 2011. Many folks will be listening on Dec. 2 to see whether a majority of justices will agree that Heller did not actually mean what it appeared to say.

As others have noted, this is an old saw repeated by many critics of Heller.

Justice Scalia anticipated this argument in the actual Heller decision. He wrote:

“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way…Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

As I recently discussed in a column, this issue came up nine years ago when Massachusetts attempted to ban stun guns. The Court issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that sent back a case to the First Circuit and rejected the logic that they were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment. The Court pointed out that in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), it expressly rejected that argument and held that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” It also rejected two other rationales. (Notably, the Court is considering another stun gun case in Calce v. New York after the Second Circuit failed to heed the warning of the Court).

Notably, a new challenge has been filed in Connecticut over a ban of convertible handguns. It is likely to raise many of these same issues. The Firearm Industry Trade Association filed a lawsuit this week that will be before the district court as the Supreme Court hears arguments on the two pending cases.

I obviously disagree with Professor Little and other experts who raise this claim. There are, of course, good-faith arguments against the Heller decision. Some like Professor Little view that decision as “earth-shattering.” I do not.

I still believe the Court was correct in viewing this as an individual right. However, I do not believe that this claim of a glaring and hypocritical contradiction between Heller and later cases is fair or supported. There was no sleight of hand in “changing ‘were’ to ‘are.'”

This really does not come down to a change in verbs. While many hope that packing the Supreme Court will result in an immediate reversal of Heller, it is unlikely to turn on the word “were.”

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New Jersey Faces Lawsuit Over Knife, Baseball Bat Ban For Self-Defense

A pro-Second Amendment group led a lawsuit Monday seeking to have New Jersey’s laws barring the carrying of items like baseball bats and knives for self-defense thrown out.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs and Knife Rights filed the lawsuit on behalf of four individual plaintiffs, arguing that by prohibiting the use of items other than firearms for self-defense, New Jersey was violating the Second Amendment rights of residents. The complaint said that the state has been in “panic mode” since the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller v. District of Columbia.

“New Jersey demands that its citizens be defenseless when they go about their day in public. Defenseless. Until forced to issue Permits to Carry a Handgun by the Bruen decision in 2022, New Jersey banned its citizens from carrying any weapon for self-defense,” the complaint filed Monday says. “Still today, New Jerseyans cannot carry any ordinary object for protection against violent crime, not a baseball bat, not a stick, not a knife, not a pair of scissors, not anything. If a person keeps an ordinary baseball bat in her car or if she keeps a small baton (sometimes called a kuboton) on her keychain she can find herself arrested and thrown in prison under New Jersey law.”

“The Second Amendment protects all common arms not just guns. There are many situations in which a person may prefer to defend against violent attack with something other than a firearm,” the legal filing continued. “New Jersey does not allow that. This is how a single mom using a carpet cutter to defend herself and her young daughter against a violent and potentially fatal beating found herself a convicted felon.”

In a 1990 decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court, the conviction of a single mother for carrying a carpet cutter and using it to protect herself when an ex-boyfriend was beating her was upheld.

The Supreme Court has already ruled on non-firearms being protected, issuing a unanimous ruling in Caetano v. Massachusetts that held that stun guns were protected by the Second Amendment. While the main opinion was unsigned (also known as a “per curiam” opinion), a concurrence from Associate Justice Samuel Alito went into more detail.

“A weapon is an effective means of self-defense only if one is prepared to use it, and it is presumptuous to tell Caetano she should have been ready to shoot the father of her two young children if she wanted to protect herself,” Alito wrote in a separate opinion. “Courts should not be in the business of demanding that citizens use more force for self-defense than they are comfortable wielding.”

“The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself,” Alito added. “To make matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her of a criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life.”

Second Amendment Foundation President Massad Ayoob, who has decades of experience as a law enforcement officer, firearms instructor and an expert witness in the use of force for self-defense, explained why many states tend to treat knives and other items more stringently in self-defense cases in an August interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Historically, the pistol was seen as the weapon that would be chosen by the lady or the gentleman and the knife and the club were seen as the weapons of the thug and there’s a little bit of that yet today,” Ayoob said.

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SCOTUS Directs NYC to Offer Defense of Its Stun Gun Ban

The Supreme Court wants to hear from the city of New York after the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and several individual plaintiffs asked the Court to accept their lawsuit challenging the Big Apple’s ban on stun guns. The request from the High Court doesn’t guarantee that the justices will grant cert in Calce v. New York, but it does indicate that one or more justices are interested in the lawsuit. 

Back in 2016, SCOTUS issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that rejected the state’s arguments in favor its own stun gun ban. The Court reminded the First Circuit that the Second Amendment doesn’t only protect those arms that existed in 1791, but modern arms as well. SCOTUS didn’t directly strike down the stun gun ban, but it did negate the argument used to uphold it. …………………

While Massachusetts ended its outright prohibition shortly thereafter, New York City has kept its ban on the books. A district court judge and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld the ban, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to “provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in common use.”

The cert petition filed with the Court not only questions the Second Circuit’s opinion on the validity of the stun gun ban, but how the Court reached its conclusion. Does a challenger to a ban on a type of arm have to first demonstrate that the arm is “in common use” to establish that the ban implicates the Second Amendment’s plain text? Or is it up to the defenders of the ban to demonstrate that the arm is not in common use for lawful purposes? 

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Indiana Man Charged with HOMICIDE After Shooting ‘Suspicious’ Man Trying to Break into His Home – Police Let Would-Be Burglar Go Minutes Before Incident

An Indiana man has been busted for killing a ‘suspicious’ person in what he argues was self-defense. At the same time, evidence also shows police let the perpetrator walk minutes before the incident occurred.

As WANE reported on Tuesday, 30-year-old Fort Wayne resident Martell Pickens was home on May 7 when someone reported a suspicious person in his neighborhood. The individual, later identified as 25-year-old Khadolphee Taylor, was seen on video allegedly trying to break into various vehicles.

Taylor then attempted to break into Pickens’s home. Pickens armed himself and went outside to confront Taylor.

Pickens demanded to know what Taylor was doing and then told him to “back up.” But Taylor ignored Pickens and continued to advance toward him.

Pickens then shot him once in the chest.

When Fort Wayne police officers arrived on the scene, Taylor was bleeding from the gunshot wound.

He was then rushed to a nearby hospital and was later pronounced dead.

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Gun Survey Data Surprises Activists, Bolsters Defensive Gun Use

Gun control activists wanted better numbers, and the latest survey handed them something far more uncomfortable. New findings from Georgetown professor William English’s updated National Firearms Survey deepen the case that defensive gun use is more common than critics admit, that so-called “assault weapons” are widely owned, and that gun ownership is spreading across a broader slice of America.

That is exactly why the new results sting. The 2021 version of the survey already rattled the anti-gun crowd by showing large numbers of Americans owning AR-15-style rifles, high-capacity magazines and firearms for self-defense, but critics insisted the data was flawed and overstated the reality.

Instead of folding, English tightened up the design and ran the survey again in 2026. The updated version did not rescue the gun control argument. It made the picture sharper, and for activists, a lot worse.

One of the biggest takeaways is that ownership of AR-15-style rifles is not some fringe habit. The new survey estimates that 26.4 million American adults now own an AR-15 or a similar semiautomatic rifle with a pistol grip, which undercuts the familiar claim that these firearms are rare or outside ordinary lawful use.

High-capacity magazines show the same pattern. The latest data estimates 44.5 million Americans currently own one, and gun owners are now slightly more likely to own one than not. That is a big problem for activists who still rely on the phrase “weapons of war” as if repetition can erase common ownership.

The findings on defensive gun use may be even more awkward for the anti-gun side. English’s original survey estimated that adults use firearms for protection about 1.67 million times a year, and critics mocked that number as unbelievable.

The redesigned survey pushed the estimate higher, not lower. It now places annual defensive gun use at about 2.2 million incidents, with some of the increase tied to reported protection against animal attacks, which makes the real-world picture look even more grounded in lived experience.

That matters because the debate over gun rights often gets flattened into slogans. People who carry and people who keep firearms for protection are not talking about fantasy scenarios, but about the daily reality of crime, danger and the right to respond when trouble shows up fast.

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Toronto homeowner charged after opening fire during potential car theft

The case has raised the issue of how Canadians can protect themselves, their families and their property when faced with a potential break-in or theft.

Earlier this year in Vaughan, a homeowner got his gun out to protect himself and his family during a home invasion. York Regional Police did not press charges in that case.

The Toronto case has also renewed attention on “Castle Law” protections in Canada. The idea has gained support from some Canadians who believe people should be able to defend themselves and their property when police cannot respond immediately.

Police response times can be 10 to 12 minutes, and an armed attacker can do significant harm during that time.

The broader concern raised was that Canadians defending themselves, their families, homes and businesses can face criminal charges while dealing with people who have entered their property.

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Homeless Repeat Criminal Who Broke into Portland Business Files $10 Million Lawsuit After Getting Shot by Owner 

A career criminal with a lengthy record of burglaries and thefts who broke into a Portland countertop fabrication business and was shot three times by the owner while attempting to flee is now seeking $10 million in a civil lawsuit, arguing the property owner used excessive force against him.

The incident took place on March 6, 2023, around 5:30 a.m.

The criminal, 43-year-old Kenneth Voyles, who was homeless and had methamphetamine in his system, entered Touchstone Granite & Marble Inc. by pulling plywood off a damaged garage door and cutting through metal bars.

Voyles later claimed he was looking for food and to get out of the cold but also admitted he intended to rob the place.

Inside the building, he ran into the 70-year-old owner, James Grant, an Army veteran with a concealed weapons permit who had been living in a back room of the business.

Grant, who was not wearing his hearing aids, confronted Voyles, threw a cup of urine and tiles at him, and ordered him to leave.

“I go, ‘Stop!’ Like, ‘Please stop!’” Voyles claimed in court, according to a report from the Post Millennial. “He’s assaulting me. He was pretty angry.”

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Italy Once Conquered the World, Today Citizens Aren’t Allowed to Defend Themselves

Watching the news and conservative social media feeds from Italy, one sees that migrant crime has exploded across the country. Even global tourism destinations such as Rome have become unsafe at night, while robberies and other violent or sex-related crimes are occurring at an alarming rate, even during the day.

For two thousand years, Rome projected power across three continents, building an empire on the discipline of its legions and the authority of its law. Today, Italy is being overrun with invaders, and an Italian citizen who fights back against a criminal in their own home or shop faces a mandatory criminal investigation and often a prison sentence longer than the one handed to the person who attacked them.

Gun ownership is highly restricted, castle laws are virtually nonexistent, and even the police are discouraged from defending themselves or using force to apprehend noncompliant criminals.

Under the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, any use of lethal or serious force against an intruder or attacker automatically triggers an “iscrizione nel registro degli indagate,” a formal entry into the register of criminal suspects. Prosecutors typically open the case as manslaughter or “eccesso colposo di legittima difesa” (culpable excess in self-defense), pending forensic and ballistic review.

A 2019 reform, Law no. 36/2019, was intended to strengthen self-defense rights, establishing that proportionality between defense and offense is presumed inside one’s home or business. In practice, judges continue to draw a hard line: force used against an active, ongoing threat is defensible; force used against a suspect who is already fleeing is not, and courts have consistently classified the latter as excessive or even as an act of vengeance.

American laws are generally much more favorable toward self-defense and the defense of one’s home. California Penal Code section 198.5, a “castle doctrine” statute, gives homeowners a legal presumption of reasonable fear once an intruder has forcibly entered, shifting the burden onto prosecutors to disprove that fear.

Italian law, even after 2019, still requires the defender to establish that danger was actual and the response proportionate, case by case. Separately, 38 U.S. states have “stand your ground” laws removing any duty to retreat anywhere a person is lawfully present. Italy has no equivalent.

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Elderly Italian man sentenced to life in prison for defending his family against thugs…


Something disgraceful and horrific just went down in Italy, and you need to know about it because many decent, law-abiding Italians believe this was a brazen and heartless move by the “communist” wing of their government.

It all started when a decent, law-abiding man who owned a jewelry store, about 31 miles from Turin, was confronted by robbers.

There’s a moment during every violent crime when the victim has no idea whether he and his family are going to live or die. At that moment, the bad guys control all of it, and every decision is made in a split second.

Later, from the safety of a courtroom, judges can slow everything down, examine each movement, and decide exactly when the danger supposedly ended. It’s basically armchair quarterbacking of a dangerous and scary situation.

An Italian man by the name of Mario Roggero is now going to prison for the rest of his life because Italy’s highest court decided he crossed the line.

The 72-year-old jeweler had worked for nearly half a century without a criminal record. Then three men entered his family’s jewelry store, threatened everyone inside, tied up his daughter, and fled with money and jewelry. Roggero followed them into the parking lot and opened fire, killing two and wounding the third.

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