Tag Archives: 2A

Featured, Gun Rights, States Rights, US

Oklahoma Senate Passes Constitutional Carry Bill

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Oklahoma City, OK – The Oklahoma Senate passed concealed carry, or “constitutional carry,” legislation that would allow Oklahoma residents who are 21 and older, as well as military personnel 18 and older and legally eligible to own a firearm, to concealed carry their gun. The passage of Senate Bill 1212 would remove the current requirement of obtaining a concealed carry permit in order to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense and follows the Oklahoma House approving the legislation in a 59-28 vote on April 25.

The Senate passed the legislation by a 33-9 vote, according to a report by The Hill. Tulsa World reported that state Sen. Nathan Dahm (R), the author of the bill, said the legislation would have no effect on locations that have banned firearms such as governmental buildings and schools, and that “the bill would still require a background check currently required to purchase a firearm.” The Norman Transcript notes that “under current law, Oklahomans who are legally able to purchase a firearm are required to attend an eight-hour training course, undergo an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) background check, and be fingerprinted and photographed if they’re not already in the state system.”

A report from the Associated Press noted that “A background check would still be required before a person could purchase a firearm and handguns would remain prohibited in places where they are currently banned, including elementary schools, colleges, universities and government buildings. The bill also excludes anyone prohibited by state or federal law from owning a weapon as well as those convicted of assault and battery, domestic abuse, violating a protective order or drug crimes.” The AP also referred to a statement from Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that announced the bill would remove “the training requirement for carrying a firearm as well as an extensive background check process that includes mental health and court records.”

Breitbart reported that “State Sen. Kevin Matthews (D-11) opposed the legislation, arguing that people should be required to obtain a permit for a gun, similar to obtaining a license to drive a car. Dahm refuted Matthews “by pointing out that the Second Amendment protects a constitutional right to bear arms, not a constitutional right to drive cars.”

Currently, there are twelve states that have passed legislation to abolish permitting requirements to concealed carry a firearm, including Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, and West Virginia. Breitbart reports that the majority of Montana and Arkansas recognize constitutional carry as well.

According to a report by Breitbart News:

FBI figures published by the NRA show that Alaska’s handgun murder rate “declined after the state enacted permitless carry in 2003.” Moreover, in the years since Alaska’s permit requirement was abolished “handgun murders have declined as a percentage of the total number of murders.”

A drop in handgun murders also took place in Arizona after that state abolished its concealed carry permit requirement in 2010. And in Wyoming–which abolished its permit requirement in 2011–handgun murders have declined as well.

The bill to eliminate carry permits is now at the desk of Republican Gov. Mary Fallin. Tulsa World reported that “Fallin, a Second Amendment supporter, signed legislation to allow open carry of firearms but has previously vetoed gun bills.”

Civil Liberties, Government Accountability, Gun Rights, Politics, US

Unpublished CDC Study Supports Claim Of Over 2 Million Yearly Defensive Gun Uses

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[Editor’s note, April 27th, 2018, 10: 15 am EST: Gary Kleck has removed his research paper online. According to Reason, it was pointed out by National Review’s Robert VerBruggen “that Kleck treats the CDC’s surveys discussed in this paper as if they were national in scope, as Kleck’s original survey was, but they apparently were not. From VerBruggen’s own looks at CDC’s raw data, it seems that over the course of the three years, the following 15 states were surveyed: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. (Those states, from 2000 census data, contained around 27 percent of the U.S. population.)

Informed of this, Kleck says he will recalculate the degree to which CDC’s survey work indeed matches or corroborates” his own studies. An earlier version of Kleck’s paper, published April 25, can be seen here.]

Washington, D.C. – An unpublished study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck’s claims from his 1990s study that indicated there were more than two million defensive handgun uses (also known as DGUs) per year in the United States.

Breitbart reported that “since the early 1990s, Kleck has maintained that there is a minimum of 760,000 DGUs annually. That is his low estimate; Kleck and research partner Marc Gertz have contended the actual number is closer to 2.5 million.” Although Kleck conducted what some have called the most thorough survey of the subject during the 1990s, his findings were disputed. In February 2015, Kleck doubled down his findings and noted that while there were plenty of critics of his work, none have been able to counter his findings with empirical evidence.

While the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is prohibited from using Congressional funding on research that aims “to advocate or promote gun control,” during the 1990s the CDC engaged in research that examined the frequency of innocent Americans using guns for self-defense, and the level of harm from guns used by violent criminals. Kleck recently announced that he has found unpublished data from the CDC.

Kleck’s controversial claims that there were more than 2.2 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) in the United States each year, has now been bolstered by the previously unpublished CDC study. Nonetheless, NPR, citing the National Crime Victimization Survey’s lower estimate of around 100,000 DGUs annually, revisited the DGU controversy last week, apparently oblivious to the existence of the CDC surveys.

In Kleck’s latest research paper, titled “What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?”, Kleck claimed that in 1996, 1997, and 1998 the CDC specifically asked about DGUs in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Kleck summarized in his paper:

In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
conducted large-scale surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU) in four to six states.
Analysis of the raw data allows the estimation of the prevalence of DGU for those areas.
Estimates based on CDC’s surveys confirm estimates for the same sets of states based on data
from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (Kleck and Gertz 1995). Extrapolated to the U.S.
as a whole, CDC’s survey data imply that defensive uses of guns by crime victims are far more
common than offensive uses by criminals. CDC has never reported these results.

A report from Reason magazine quoted Kleck’s reaction to the unpublished CDC study; he explained that a figure of 2.46 million DGUs a year “[implies] that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.”

Civil Liberties, Government Accountability, Politics, US

WATCH: Joe Rogan Blasts Hollywood’s “Hypocrisy” Over Gun Control

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Los Angeles, CA — While interviewing NRA TV host Colion Noir on his podcast the Joe Rogan Experience, the two discussed the the anti-gun “left-wing” Hollywood elite that make millions to billions of dollars on movies that often feature a heavy dose of gun violence. Rogan said that many of the same “liberal actors” publicly rebuking gun violence and advocating for gun control are protected by people carrying guns and wearing flak jackets.

After Noir finished discussing gun-free zones, Rogan asked Noir what he thought about arming teachers, prompting Noir to explain that “anything we hold valuable in this country is protected with guns.”

Rogan responded to Noir’s commentary by calling out Hollywood:

No one is more anti-gun than Hollywood. When you hear about any sort of crime or gun violence, the left-wing people in Hollywood are the most vocal, the most virtue-signaling, the quickest to jump on their pedestal. Meanwhile, what percentage of their f***ing movies involve gun violence? And if you look at the Academy Awards, did you see the security at the Academy Awards? You see all these left-leaning liberal actors being protected by people with flak jackets on. Carrying guns with fingers outside the triggers. I mean, dogs? It’s crazy.

Rogan, a strong civil libertarian, is no stranger to controversy as he is known for his refusal to comport to political correctness and has vocally waded into public discussion surrounding guns, mental health, liberty, tyranny and more on numerous previous occasions.

During a podcast in 2016, Rogan gave his thoughts on gun control as it relates to the Second Amendment, noting that it largely relates to government tyranny, not crime, stating:

“The whole point of the law is you can’t let some tyrannical dictator decide who can and can’t armed. Because at the end of the day, what we really have to worry about as much as crime, is we have to worry about the government turning into a crime (sic).”

“An armed militia is in the possibility that it all goes wrong. That’s what it’s for. It’s not for when everything is going right, it’s for when it all goes wrong. To deny the possibility that it could all go wrong, to me, you’re lying. You’re lying. You’re pretending we’re better than we are.”

“To say that we’ve reached some utopian place where we don’t have to worry about the government turning into a tyranny – bull$#hit.”

Watch Rogan’s full interview with Noir below where he targets Hollywood’s collective position surrounding guns.

Civil Liberties, Government Accountability, Gun Rights, Politics, States Rights, US

Judge Upholds MA AR-15 Ban: “Not Within Scope of Personal Right to Bear Arms”

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Boston, MA— A lawsuit challenging Massachusetts’ ban on assault weapons was dismissed by a federal judge on April 5, who asserted in his ruling that military-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, banned by the state in 1998, are “not within the scope of the personal right to ‘bear Arms’ under the Second Amendment.”

“The AR-15 and its analogs, along with large capacity magazines, are simply not weapons within the original meaning of the individual constitutional right to ‘bear arms,’” U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in the decision.

Young said in his ruling that the features of a military-style rifle are “designed and intended to be particularly suitable for combat rather than sporting applications,” and that Massachusetts was within its rights to enact a ban through elected representatives.

“In the absence of federal legislation, Massachusetts is free to ban these weapons and large capacity magazines. Other states are equally free to leave them unregulated and available to their law-abiding citizens,” Young wrote. “These policy matters are simply not of constitutional moment. Americans are not afraid of bumptious, raucous, and robust debate about these matters. We call it democracy.”

The Hill reported that the lawsuit dismissed by Young was filed by the Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts, which claimed the ban infringed on Second Amendment rights. The group asserted in its complaint that the term “assault weapons” is non-technical and “entirely fabricated” to politicize the most popular types of guns in the United States.

“Healey unilaterally decreed that thousands of Massachusetts residents are suddenly criminals simply for having exercised their Second Amendment rights,” the complaint said, in reference to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who expanded in 2016 the definition of “copies or duplicates” of AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles that are prohibited under the state’s 1998 assault-weapon ban.

In a statement, the National Rifle Association (NRA) criticized the decision.

“Like all law-abiding Massachusetts gun owners, the NRA was extremely disappointed that the court upheld Massachusetts’s ban on many of the most popular firearms in America,” the group said.

In his decision, Young, who Bloomberg reports was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan, quoted the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in a critical 2008 decision that overturned Washington’s ban on hand guns, but also warned of potential limitations.

“Weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like” aren’t protected by the Second Amendment and “may be banned,” Young quoted Scalia as saying, referring to the automatic rifle popular with the military. The AR-15 is similar to an M-16, Young said, equating the military fully automatic firearm with a civilian semi-automatic.

In addition, Young also rejected attempts by the gun-rights group to challenge the ban on the grounds that AR-15s are extremely popular and widely owned within the United States.

“The AR-15’s present day popularity is not constitutionally material,” Young said.

Gun Rights, Politics, US

Parkland Gun Control Activist Backs Out of Debate With Pro-2A Classmate

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Parkland, FL – On March 25, Kyle Kashuv, a Second Amendment-supporting student from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, challenged classmate Cameron Kasky, a student activist promoting pro-gun control March for Our Lives, to a debate.

The challenge from Kashuv came after Kasky responded to a recent National Rifle Association (NRA) video, which stated “no one would know [Parkland students’] names” had their classmates not died, referring to Kasky, David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez and the select few gun control advocates being promoted across mass media – while pro-2A students are largely denied a platform.

“I think that’s the most pathetic thing I’ve seen out of this… And that’s the NRA — you’ll notice, they can’t attack our argument, so they’re attacking us personally. The fact that they’re saying all we want out of this is for people to know our names. They have no idea how much each of us would give for it to be February 13th again,” Kasky told “Fox News Sunday,” referencing the day before the school shooting took place.

In response to Kashuv’s tweet, Kasky agreed to organizing a debate “in the near future.”

But on Monday, Kasky backed out of a debate on the issue with Kashuv, claiming that Kashuv made a “personal” attack against a family member of a shooting victim.

Kasky explained his rationale for backing out of the debate in a tweet:

“Kyle, I’ve enjoyed my discussion about gun laws with you so far, but after seeing this, I think I’m out. For personal reasons. I disagree on certain policies with some family members of some victims, but I never go after them, especially not like this. This is low.”

Kashuv’s tweet, which apparently caused Kasky to back out from the planned debate, countered an argument from a victim’s family member about clear backpacks by musing “Instead, let’s violate our Constitution?”; Kashuv apologized for the tweet and explained that he was unaware he was responding to a victim’s family member.

The Daily Wire reported that conservative political pundit Ben Shapiro viewed Kashuv’s question as not “some sort of egregious sin” as he was simply responding “to the argument of a victim’s family member in perfectly polite political fashion.”

Kasky has been accused of directing personal attacks numerous times while promoting his gun control views, including infamously declaring that Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “allowed this to happen.”

“It’s Rick Scott and Marco Rubio who allowed this to happen,” he said. “They’re enablers, and they — the blood of 17 people and all those injured and all the families that have been hurt — this is all them.”

Most recently, Kashuv turned his attention to another Parkland student and gun reform activist, David Hogg.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Gun Rights, Politics, Social Media, US

YouTube Increases Limits on Gun Content, Bans Firearm Demo Videos

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San Bruno, CA— YouTube has announced that beginning in April, the company will ban how-to videos related to building or refashioning guns, as well as all content that promotes the sale of guns or gun accessories.

According to YouTube’s statement:

Specifically, we don’t allow content that:

— Intends to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g., private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items. These accessories include but may not be limited to accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire or convert a firearm to automatic fire (e.g., bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, conversion kits), and high capacity magazines (i.e., magazines or belts carrying more than 30 rounds).

— Provides instructions on manufacturing a firearm, ammunition, high capacity magazine, homemade silencers/suppressors, or certain firearms accessories such as those listed above. This also includes instructions on how to convert a firearm to automatic or simulated automatic firing capabilities.

— Shows users how to install the above-mentioned accessories or modifications.

“We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “While we’ve long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories.”

The announcement by YouTube marks the latest company to take a stance in the U.S. gun-control debate, following major retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart, which have taken assertive steps to implement 21-plus age limits for gun sales in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Bloomberg reports that YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has faced criticism for hosting videos about guns.

According to a report by Bloomberg:

For many gun-rights supporters, YouTube has been a haven. A current search on the site for “how to build a gun” yields 25 million results, though that includes items such as toys. At least one producer of gun videos saw its page suspended on Tuesday. Another channel opted to move its videos to an adult-content site, saying that will offer more freedom than YouTube.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry lobbying group, expressed concern about the “censorship of commercial free speech,” and called YouTube’s new policy “worrisome.”

“We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales,” read a statement released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “We see the real potential for the blocking of educational content that serves instructional, skill-building and even safety purposes. Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square. The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech.”

[RELATED: Reality Check: The True Meaning of the Second Amendment]

A report from MSN revealed that in the midst of YouTube’s new policy announcement, Spike’s Tactical, a gun manufacturing company in Florida, had claimed that their Facebook and YouTube accounts had been suspended for “violating community guidelines.”

The move to censor pro-gun content comes only days before Saturday’s March For Our Lives, a rally described by the media as an event organized by survivors of the February 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 dead; the highly-publicized March 14 walkout had an early push from “organizers of the Women’s March on Washington — the same group that donned pink ‘pussy’ hats in a Washington, D.C., protest march following President Donald Trump’s inauguration” according to a report by Lifezette.

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/976201267654594562

Although the new policies will reportedly begin being enforced in April, Bloomberg reported that InRange TV, a channel devoted to firearms, posted on Facebook that they would immediately begin uploading videos to PornHub, an adult content website.

“YouTube’s newly released released vague and one-sided firearms policy makes it abundantly clear that YouTube cannot be counted upon to be a safe harbor for a wide variety of views and subject matter,” InRange TV wrote. “PornHub has a history of being a proactive voice in the online community, as well as operating a resilient and robust video streaming platform.”

With the continued and growing censorship on social media/video platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, many of these gun enthusiasts may find comfort in decentralized blockchain-based alternatives like Steemit, DTube and BitChute.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Gun Rights, Politics, Social Media, US

Pro-2A Parkland Survivor Questions Exclusion from Twitter’s Live Q&A

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San Francisco, CA – Twitter held a livestreaming session on March 19 to promote the upcoming “March For Our Lives” event, featuring Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students answering questions from Twitter users. Twitter selected MSD students and noted gun control proponents David Hogg, Emma González, Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind, Ryan Deitsch and Jaclyn Corin to take part in the event.

MSD junior Kyle Kashuv, a pro-2A student, responded to not being invited by the social media platform to the livestream question and answer session by asking where his invitation was to the event. The Daily Wire reported that Kashuv confirmed he was not invited to the event.

Another MSD student survivor of the school shooting, freshman Sarah Stricker, responded to Kashuv’s Twitter post, noting the exclusivity of students being “focused on”, writing, “I believe survivors from the classrooms that were shot in, should be looked at. Or at least students that were actually in the building, and saw what I saw.”

Stricker continued, “here we are, suffering from flashbacks and jumping at every loud noise, while we watch kids that were on the other side of the school get attention thrown at them,” seemingly denoting that the students garnering large-scale media coverage weren’t even in the same building as shooter Nikolas Cruz.

Hogg, a senior at MSD, previously boasted about hanging up on the White House during a phone call in the wake of the school shooting, and more recently, in an ad touting next week’s “March For Our Lives”, Parkland student David Hogg wondered, “What if our politicians weren’t the bitch of the NRA?”

Twitter CMO Leslie Berland responded to Kashuv’s inquiry by noting that the livestream Q&A was meant for discussion of the upcoming march, and extended an invite to the student to conduct his own Q&A over the platform.

Mass media coverage following the MSD tragedy has been abundantly directed at featuring a select group of pro-gun control students, although there are other student survivors with differing opinions on guns that have been ignored by most of the media outlets.

For instance, the Harvard Institute of Politics recently extended an invite to MSD students to take part in a panel discussion on gun law reforms, which is set to take place shortly before the students participate in the pro-gun control “March For Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C., on March 24.

Entitled “#NEVERAGAIN: How Parkland Students are Changing the Conversation on Guns,” the panel will, according to The Washington Examiner, “feature the same exclusive group of students who have received extensive media coverage for their attacks on the National Rifle Association and desire to enact strict gun control laws throughout the country.”

Similar to Twitter’s exclusively pro-gun control student invitations, the Harvard IOP invited Parkland activists Hogg, González, Kasky, Wind, and Deitsch while ignoring survivors like Kashuv, whose desire to protect students while respecting the Second Amendment has earned him a meeting with President Trump and other high-profile elected officials. However, that praise has not translated into significant media coverage.

CBS News’ 60 Minutes most recent episode also featured Hogg, González, Corin, Wind and Kasky.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Gun Rights, Politics, US

NJ High School Revises Gun Policy Following Student Suspension Reports

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Lanoka Harbor, NJ — Two New Jersey high school students were allegedly suspended after one reportedly posted a gun photo on Snapchat that showed “four rifles, ammunition [magazines], and a gun duffel bag” taken during a family visit to a shooting range with the caption “fun day at the range,” according to Lacey Township resident Amanda Buron, who said she was a family friend of one of the students.

NJ.com reported that Buron claimed the students received a five-day in-school suspension for violating the school’s policy on weapons possession after a screen shot of the image circulated among students and social media, and was eventually brought to the attention of the Lacey Township High School administration.

The school faced a swift backlash over the reported suspensions, as the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC) sent a cease and desist letter to the school district, which noted that the school district’s weapons policy allowed students to be suspended for up to a year if “reported to be in possession of a weapon of any type for any reason or purpose on or off school grounds.”

The ANJRPC noted that they were prepared to take legal action if the policy wasn’t modified.

“The policy is clearly wrong and violates the Second Amendment,” ANJRPC executive director Scott Bach said. “We hope that they’re reasonable people and they will fix it. If they don’t, we’re prepared to take legal action.”

Bach also pointed out that schools lack the authority to “chill the rights of their students off of school grounds.”

“Schools do not have the authority to chill the rights of their students off of school grounds, and this blatant infringement of constitutional rights will not be tolerated,” Bach said. “I don’t care if no students were disciplined. The policy has got to go.”

After being threatened with a lawsuit, last week, by the ANJRPC, the Lacey school district quietly revised the policy in question, which prohibited students from legally handling a gun off campus. The policy now omits any mention of possessing a weapon off school grounds, nor a specific suspension length for offenders.

“Students are forbidden to carry any type of weapon or simulated weapon to school,” the revamped policy states, which can be accessed on the district’s website.

Bach told NJ.com that his organization considers the district’s policy change a victory, but is currently reviewing it.

“It addresses many of the major issues we identified, but our counsel is still reviewing it,” Bach said.

Bach also took issue with the district’s failure to take responsibility. “Instead of the superintendent fessing up and admitting the policy was wrong, they try this misdirection,” Bach proclaimed.

In an email to NJ Advance Media, on Thursday, Lacey schools Superintendent Craig Wigley said that “information posted on social media is incorrect” and that student privacy laws prevents him for commenting on the matter, declining to say what aspect of the account was inaccurate.

“We are not at will to contradict public opinion on the internet,” Wigley wrote.

Although the policy has been modified, the social media uproar over the boys suspension could potentially lead to a large turnout at a school board meeting scheduled for Monday evening at Lacey Township High School.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Government Accountability, Gun Rights, Politics, US

Watch: Rep. Massie Warns Gun Control Measure Is Hidden in New Bill

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Washington, D.C.— Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to social media to sound the alarm about gun control legislation he first warned about last year, which at the time was coupled with H.R. 38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, in an effort to amend the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to “require each federal agency and department, including a federal court, to certify whether it has provided to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) disqualifying records of persons prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm.” 

“We’ve got about a week to act,” Massie warned on March 6 in a video posted to social media. “I want to let you know what’s going on in Congress as far as gun control goes. You’ve heard a lot of ideas floating in the news—raising the legal age to buy a long gun, for instance—or a new assault weapons ban. Any number of bad things have been mentioned. But I wanted to boil it down for you.”

Back in December 2017, Massie revealed a bait and switch using the concealed carry legislation, which stated that its purpose was to amend “the federal criminal code to allow a qualified individual to carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun in another state that allows individuals to carry concealed firearms.”

“What you don’t know, and what virtually no one in Washington wants you to know, is that House leadership plans to merge the fix-NICS bill with popular Concealed Carry Reciprocity legislation, HR 38, and pass both of them with a single vote,” Massie wrote last year. “Folks, this is how the swamp works. House leadership expects constituents to call their representatives demanding a vote on the reciprocity bill, when in fact the only vote will be on the two combined bills.”

The Senate’s version of the Fix NICS Act designated $625 million to expand the national background check database. Massie stated that of the most startling aspects of the legislation is that “it compels administrative agencies, not just courts, to adjudicate your second amendment rights,” which Massie said fulfills an Obama administration agenda of obligating other governmental agencies to add names of people banned from gun purchases to the NICS database.

In reference to the Fix NICS legislation, Congressman Massie noted:

The bill encourages administrative agencies, not the courts, to submit more names to a national database that will determine whether you can or can’t obtain a firearm. When President Obama couldn’t get Congress to pass gun control, he implemented a strategy of compelling, through administrative rules, the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration to submit lists of veterans and seniors, many of whom never had a day in court, to be included in the NICS database of people prohibited from owning a firearm. Only a state court, a federal (article III) court, or a military court, should ever be able to suspend your rights for any significant period of time…

If we continue to give the executive branch more money and encouragement to add names to the list of people prohibited from buying a firearm (without a day in court) and if the gun banners achieve their goal of universal background checks, one day, a single person elected to the office of President will be able to achieve universal gun prohibition.

According to Massie, Congress is now attempting to include the Fix NICS Act within H.R. 4909, the STOP School Violence Act, which comes to the floor for a vote next week. Massie warned constituents that calling their representatives to express support for “stopping school violence” will unwittingly cause them to be supporting a bill that would task unqualified government agencies to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

In terms of how this plays out in the real world, Massie warned, “If you tell someone at the VA that somebody else manages your money, they can take away your right to own a gun. They put you in the NICS database. Not only can you not go to a store and buy a gun, it’s illegal for you to possess a gun or even possess ammunition. And veterans are getting thrown into this system everyday. They’re having their right to own a gun stripped merely because they say they don’t manage their own finances.”

Massie went on to say that “leadership has announced they are bringing FiX NICS to the floor next week. That’s why we only have about a week. They are going to sugar coat it. They’re going to put like a gel capsule around this gun control bill. The sugar coating is HR 4909… what they’re doing is wrapping this horrible gun control — Fix NICS… and puts a wrapper around it called the STOP School Violence Act.”

Government Accountability, Gun Rights, US

Seattle Police Achieve State’s First “Red Flag Law” Gun Seizure

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Seattle, WA— A law that went into effect in 2017 introduced the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), which allows law enforcement in the state of Washington to confiscate a gun owner’s firearms if the owner is deemed a threat to themselves or others by a judge. This law, also referred to as a “red flag” gun law, has led Seattle to become Washington’s first city to use the law to confiscate a firearm from an individual.

Acting as petitioners, law enforcement agencies, blood-related and adopted relatives, married partners, romantic partners, current and former roommates, and people holding other certain specific associations can apply for an ERPO in Washington against a gun-owning individual considered to be an “extreme risk.”

According to Chapter 7.94 of the Washington legislature’s Revised Code of Washington (RCW) which lists the state’s permanent laws, the petitioner must include an “affidavit made under oath stating the specific statements, actions, or facts that give rise to a reasonable fear of future dangerous acts by the respondent.” ERPOs may be granted as an “immediate temporary order” or a full order.

Within Chapter 7.94 is RCW 7.94.050, related to temporary, or ex parte ERPOs:

A petitioner may request that an ex parte extreme risk protection order be issued before a hearing for an extreme risk protection order, without notice to the respondent, by including in the petition detailed allegations based on personal knowledge that the respondent poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to self or others in the near future by having in his or her custody or control, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm.

RCW 7.94.090 states that “Upon issuance of any extreme risk protection order under this chapter, including an ex parte extreme risk protection order, the court shall order the respondent to surrender to the local law enforcement agency all firearms in the respondent’s custody, control, or possession and any concealed pistol license issued under RCW 9.41.070.” A granted ERPO is valid for one year and can be renewed for one-year periods.

While this as been championed as a valuable tool for law enforcement, due process procedures come into question; under the provisions of an ex parte ERPO, the accused respondent will not have the opportunity to face their accuser or challenge the claim until after a temporary order is already issued. This effectively allows law enforcement take a person’s firearms first, with due process occurring after firearms are removed. 

While a court hearing typically scheduled two weeks following an order allows a respondent to challenge the ERPO request, the fact that a provision allows for gun confiscation without being arrested or charged with a crime led to concerns reportedly raised by 2nd Amendment advocates as well as civil liberties groups.

David Combs, a vocal opponent of this law when it was known as Initiative 1491, wrote:

I-1491 duplicates new laws and doesn’t provide a treatment model, while Washington State’s ‘Joel’s Law’ passed in 2015 already provides protection for individuals and those close to them by providing families a legal process for obtaining an involuntary treatment to a mental health facility when a person is determined to be a danger to themselves or others. An individual with a record of an involuntary treatment beyond 14 days loses the right to possess firearms indefinitely.

[RELATED: Reality Check: Trump Did Not Make It Easier for Severely Mentally Ill People To Buy Guns]

“We now have to go to someone’s house and knock on the door and say, ‘We’re from the government. Can we have your guns?’” Seattle Police Sergeant Eric Pisconski, head of the crisis response unit for the Seattle Police Department, told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “That can get very dangerous.”

“There’s certainly a big concern of the connection between mental health and people exhibiting violent behavior and whether or not they should have access to firearms. The ‘erpos’ give us that tool now as an option,” said Pisconski.

According to a Seattle police statement released on March 2nd, the city became the first law enforcement agency in Washington to confiscate an individual’s firearm through an ERPO:

Over the last year, police had received multiple calls about the man’s escalating behavior. In one recent incident, staff at a restaurant near the man’s home called police and reported that the man was harassing them while carrying a holstered firearm. Police also seized a shotgun from the man in another incident.

In a KATU report, police claimed the volume of complaints about an individual led them to apply for an ERPO, including reports from neighbors claiming the man was “staring” at them through a window while open-carrying a holstered pistol.

“He was roaming the hallways with a .25 caliber automatic,” Tony Montana, who reportedly knows the man from the apartment complex where he resides, told KATU. “And it created a lot of fear obviously because I didn’t know if he was coming after me or gonna just start shooting the place up.” KATU noted that other ERPOs “have been served and executed around the state, but Seattle police said they are the only agency so far to seize a gun because the owner refused to hand it over.”

“The 31-year-old man met officers outside of his apartment and was taken into custody for violating a previous order to turn over his firearms, the Seattle Police Department’s statement read. “Officers then entered the man’s apartment and recovered a .25 caliber handgun. Police are also working to obtain several other firearms owned by the man, which are currently in possession of a family member.”

“We attempted multiple times to get the individual to fulfill that order of turning over their firearms,” Pisconski said. “And he refused multiple times. We were forced, at that point, to take the next step in the ERPO law which is petitioning for a search warrant to go in and enter their home and remove the firearms from them.”

According to KOMO News, Washington is among five states that have a “red flag law” that allows seizure of weapons in circumstances in which a court is petitioned to do so. Rhode Island is considering similar legislation, and an analysis from Rhode Island ACLU has noted a number of concerns including “its impact on civil liberties, and the precedent it sets for the use of coercive measures against individuals not because they are alleged to have committed any crime, but because somebody believes they might, someday, commit one.”

Gun Rights, Politics, States Rights, US

Justice Thomas Ravages SCOTUS’s Refusal to Hear Challenge to CA 10-Day Waiting Period

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Washington, D.C.— The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a Second Amendment challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period on gun sales, continuing a nearly decade-long pattern of refusing to wade into the contentious debate on gun control. The court’s refusal to hear the case leaves the waiting period in California and other jurisdictions in place unfettered. Justice Clarence Thomas issued a dissent over the Court’s refusal to hear the case.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from plaintiffs Jeff Silvester and Brandon Combs to hear the case. Second Amendment proponents argued that California’s 10-day waiting period, especially for individuals who have already passed a background check and legally own firearms, amounted to a violation of the right to keep and bear arms.

The last major precedent-setting firearms rulings came in 2008 and 2010, when ordinances in Washington, D.C. and Chicago that prohibited the private possession of handguns as violations of 2nd Amendment were struck down, and ruled that Americans have a right to have guns at home for self-defense.

Justice Thomas said the court’s record of failing to intervene in gun cases amounted to treating the Second Amendment as a “disfavored” constitutional right, noting that his fellow justices regularly hear cases involving unreasonable search and seizure, abortion and free speech rights, but haven’t reviewed an important gun rights case in eight-plus years.

In his dissent, Thomas wrote that the reversal by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is “symptomatic of the lower courts’ general failure to afford the Second Amendment the respect due an enumerated constitutional right.”

“If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly,” Thomas wrote, “I have little doubt that this Court would intervene. But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court.”

“The Court would take these cases because abortion, speech, and the Fourth Amendment are three of its favored rights,” Thomas wrote. “The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.”

The Washington Examiner reported that a California district court initially ruled in favor of Silvester and Combs, two lawful California gun owners who, along with two nonprofits, challenged the law. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling, which effectively kept the waiting period in place. In upholding the restrictions, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said “the 2nd Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.”

“In the Ninth Circuit, it seems, rights that have no basis in the Constitution receive greater protection than the Second Amendment, which is enumerated in our text,” Thomas surmised.