The Federalist

According to a police affidavit, six days before Alissa shot 10 people to death, he purchased a pistol. That would have required him to pass a federal background check also run by the FBI. It seems the FBI is not very good at this “stopping mass shooters” thing.

Remember this when the Democrats try to pass laws banning private gun sales. Their "background checks" don't work.

Concealed Nation

The only charge that remains is disorderly conduct; the felony recklessly endangering safety charge for firing the handgun will not proceed. Having to argue in one case that Ziminski fired the first shot that night might have proved embarrassing while trying to prosecute the Rittenhouse case, where their story is that Kyle started all the trouble. So Ziminski’s inconvenient gun charge has simply gone away.

Predictably corrupt.

Rittenhouse tried to do the right thing. He's learning that doing the right thing is not any kind of protection.

Virginian-Pilot

For the first Yuletide ever, a new law makes it illegal for Virginians to sell their personally owned firearms without buyers clearing the kind of background checks that can only be handled by federally licensed dealers.

Gifts — the genuine kind with zero money, goods or services swapped — are exempt.

Otherwise, both parties must enlist a dealer for a criminal history check run through the Virginia State Police, with the state capping the dealer’s service fee at $15.

Will criminals obey the law? Of course not.
Will this solve any crimes? See above.

Second Amendment Foundation

The Second Amendment Foundation and several partners today filed a federal lawsuit challenging California’s one-gun-per-month limit, declaring the limitation a violation of the Second Amendment.

It looks like we are going to find out if we have 5 votes for gun rights on the Supreme Court. I'm a bit less sanguine about that now than I was before the Texas case got shut down.

Second Amendment Foundation

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state of Maryland’s ban on common semiautomatic rifles.

The lawsuit was filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and captioned Bianchi, et al. v. Frosh, et al. Partnering with SAF and CCRKBA in the case are the

If Biden wins, we may have a narrow window with a favorable Supreme Court. Let's use it.

American Thinker

Here's a serious question. Have we passed that Rubicon in America beyond which it is no longer possible to pretend the American government is legitimately representing the people? I know that question is on a lot of Americans' minds these days, and I think it speaks volumes about our brewing crisis that none of our elected leaders has even attempted to acknowledge, let alone address, the growing unease outside the capital. People are arming up right now in record numbers not because of hunting season; they're buying weapons because their instincts tell them America is on the brink. But if America is on the brink, the D.C. Leviathan seems unsympathetic or unaware. That makes for an awfully dangerous situation.

There are three boxes to which a free man can go when seeking to remain free.

He begins with the soap box -- advocating for retaining his liberty, using the 1st Amendment to protect his ability to speak. The media's bias (especially following the final capitulation of Fox News), combined with Big Tech's censorship of the internet, and pervasive cancel culture, have created a situation where speech is no longer free.

If speech alone is insufficient, he moves to the ballot box, voting for leaders who will correct the situation. While this may not resolve the problem immediately, so long as leaders are chosen by popular vote in free and fair elections there remains hope.

The presidential race in 2020 appears to have demonstrated that the ballot box is no longer free or fair.

That only leaves one box left. Pray we need not open it.

Second Amendment Foundation

The Second Amendment Foundation was joined by several other gun rights organizations today in a federal challenge of Maryland’s prohibitive concealed carry regulations that essentially ban average state residents from exercising their right to bear arms for personal protection under the Second Amendment.

Joining SAF in this legal action are the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Maryland Shall Issue, Inc. and three private citizens. Named as defendants are State Police Secretary Woodrow Jones III and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, in their official capacities. The case is known as Call, et.al. v. Jones et. al. SAF and CCRKBA are represented by the Washington, DC law firm Cooper & Kirk.

We're getting these lawsuits because Trump put the justices on the court to hear them.

Second Amendment Foundation

SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and Louisiana Shooting Association and two private citizens, Caleb Reese and Joseph Granich, both in the affected age group. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Raymond M. DiGuiseppe of Southport, NC, Adam Kraut and Joseph Greenlee from Sacramento, CA, and John W. Dillon from Carlsbad, CA, and George J. Armbruster III from Lafayette, LA. Kraut is FPC’s Director of Legal Strategy and Greenlee is the group’s Director of Research. The case is known as Reese v. BATF.

Neither Reese or Granich have criminal records. Both are over age 18, and thus have reached what is generically called the age of majority, which means adulthood. Yet they are denied full rights under the Second Amendment to purchase and own handguns, according to the lawsuit, which states, “The Handgun Ban prevents (them) from purchasing handguns of the makes and models of (their) choice, with full manufacturer warranty and support…in violation of (their) constitutionally enumerated rights.”

With the current composition of the Supreme Court, this seems a promising way of advancing gun ownership rights. The age limit is arbitrary and contravenes a specific enumerated right. While there are other age limits other than 18 in effect (alcohol, 21) that case has so many special factors that it isn't much help.

Biden stated recently he would have voted against the landmark DC v Heller case, which firmly established the 2nd Amendment as an individual rather than a collective right to arms. Presumably he would appoint Supreme Court judges who would vote similarly, which is probably why Biden refuses to release list of Supreme Court judges.

This is hardly a surprise. Biden has signaled his opposition to gun rights by such things as hiring "Beto" as his gun control czar. But it's nice to have him on the record as opposing the Bill of Rights.

... and they did it because of red flag laws. They are also refusing to share their bodycam footage, because of course they are. After all, that footage would expose them as liars who shot and killed a man while he slept peacefully in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend, who they also shot.

The police are keeping the survivors under surveillance and threatening them with arrest if they attend protests.

Everyone involved here needs to go on trial for murder and violation of civil rights. But they won't. Because they are police.

It's a district court, meaning appeals are inevitable. But the ruling is narrow and based on sound Constitutional law, particularly as it is focused on possession in the home and the impossibility of compliance with the plain language of the law (eg, everyone in the home would need to have a FOID and have it on their person literally at all times).

I think the smart play by the antis would be to not appeal this. They might -- might! -- win one level up at the Illinois Supreme Court. But if this gets to the national Supreme Court, it tracks so closely to Heller that I have to image the statute is doomed -- and that would put at risk similar statutes in other states.

But, of course, they already have.

We're likely to find out what our new Justices think of the 2nd Amendment sooner rather than later.

New York Post

A federal court says New York’s ban on nunchucks, the martial arts weapon made famous by Bruce Lee but prohibited in the state for decades, is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

It says arms, not firearms. Knives, swords, nunchuks, spears, arrows, are all fair game.

This will make it easier when it is time to challenge restrictions on tanks and warships.

The legislation requires a mental health check and limits the quantities that can be bought at one time. It will, obviously, be completely ineffective.

Think Progress

According to Liptak, Stevens “helped persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority, to ask for ‘some important changes’ to Justice Scalia’s opinion.”

The result was a passage providing that Heller should not “be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

First the factual aspect. Assuming it's accurate, it confirms something the gun rights community has long suspected. (I don't particularly doubt the accuracy of the claim, although Stevens may be overstating his own role as as persuasive force...)

Think Progress

The upshot of Stevens’ highly unusual revelation — justices, even retired justices, rarely disclose internal Court deliberations — is that there are probably no longer five votes on the Supreme Court who support this language in Heller. A wide range of firearm restrictions intended to keep firearms out of the hands of especially dangerous individuals or to keep them out of “sensitive places such as schools” could soon fall.

Now the facts.

We don't know where the current court sits on gun rights. Roberts has demonstrated squishy behavior before. Kennedy was replaced with Kavanaugh, presumably a solid 2nd Amendment vote, but Trump's first pick Gorsuch replaced Scalia (solid pro-gun vote) with a presumably solid pro-gun vote. Neither Kavanaugh nor Gorsuch have really been tested yet and Roberts is untrustworthy. We're probably better off with Kennedy replaced. But we need to win one more to feel secure, and even then, we can't count on the new Justices until we see how they vote.

Since Stevens is clearly trying to stoke panic here, let me rebut.

Gun free zone laws around schools have stopped precisely zero school shootings. As with other places declared gun free, criminals view them as soft targets. The only people deterred from carrying in such zones are the honest, law-abiding people who you would want to have a gun in case of such an attack.

"Laws intended to keep firearms out of the hands of especially dangerous individuals" has a couple possible meanings. Do they mean felons? Most felons will be able to get a gun as easily as they can get drugs, ie, illegally. Challenges to the core of felon-in-possession laws seem unlikely in the near future, though we will likely see nibbles around the edges for people acting in self-defense, whose crimes were not violent in nature, and who have been rehabilitated into society. Do they mean people like the Parkland shooter, who should have been on the naughty list but was not due to law enforcement failures? Law enforcement will have failures no matter what laws you pass. Do they mean people like the man who died at the hands of police in Maryland recently? How many innocent people need to die because one of their in-laws didn't like them owning a gun?

New York wants to check your social media before letting you buy a gun. And that includes a year of your internet search history.

No mystery writer or fiction author with ever again by able to buy a gun under those rules, which I suspect New York is just fine with.