1 week, 2 days ago
“Many of them will be lies.” Not all of them. How many? How many are true? What did you do, David? What crimes did you commit, or what malfeasance are you guilty of? What are you trying to cover up by changing the subject and throwing money around to primary incumbents?
— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) April 16, 2025
Ha! David and I had the same thoughts. Great minds think alike I suppose!
1 week, 3 days ago
SCOTUS keeps kicking that can down the road.
More specifically:
Reuters is mischaracterizing this a bit. The SCOTUS rejected an interlocutory appeal, not certiorari of the final case. I think GOA will have to ask for en banc review now before appeal to the supreme court.https://t.co/zZ4s3r7Ziy
— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) April 7, 2025
But it’s just an excuse. They’re cowardly and don’t want to deal with it. They also don’t want to deal with the Snope AR ban case from Maryland or any other state.
I understand that there may be other issues at play here. For example, Thomas and Alito may not be allowing this to be taken up on certiorari because they know they don’t have the votes and they don’t want to set bad precedent. After all, the great libertarian Gorsuch hinted during the bump stock ban case that congress should make them illegal.
Either way, this continues the cowardly behavior of the court. The priests in black robes aren’t all that, are they? They’re scared of their own shadows.
1 month, 3 weeks ago
One can only hope the supreme court does the right thing. This is a very big deal for firearms manufacturers.
Additionally, if this goes forward in the states, you know who pays the cost? Firearms owners. They will have to pass the cost on or not survive. So, it affects all of us who own firearms. I’m certain that’s part of the strategy. Legal costs are exorbitant.
2 months, 3 weeks ago
A Republican bill filed on Capitol Hill last week would deregulate suppressors as firearms under both the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act.
The Silencers Helping Us Save Hearing, or SHUSH, Act was introduced on Jan. 30 by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, and has four co-sponsors, all from the GOP. The language of the five-page bill deletes all federal regulations– including taxes, fees, and registration requirements– of suppressors. Those who paid a transfer tax for such safety accessories in the two years before the bill’s enactment would get a refund.
“Despite what Hollywood may lead you to believe, silencers aren’t silent, and they aren’t just for secret agents,” said Lee in a statement. “They are a vital tool for hearing protection for countless marksmen and gun enthusiasts across America, and making them prohibitively difficult to obtain is an assault on the 2nd Amendment. The SHUSH Act eliminates federal regulation of silencers and treats them as the non-lethal accessory that they are.”
U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) will spearhead the bill in the House, where it will join a stack of suppressor reform legislation that includes the Hearing Protection Act.
“Suppressors are a vital tool for responsible gun owners that protect hearing, enhance safety, and reduce firearm noise—but thanks to Hollywood and federal overreach, they’ve been unfairly vilified,” said Cloud. “Law-abiding Americans shouldn’t have to endure months of red tape and pay an additional tax just to access a safety accessory. The SHUSH Act puts an end to this unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, eliminates the federal tax, and prevents state overreach by treating suppressors like any other firearm accessory.”
More than 4 million suppressors are in circulation, a figure that has more than quadrupled in less than a decade.
According to a joint release from Cloud and Lee, the measure has the support of the National Association for Gun Rights, Gun Owners of America, the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The SHUSH Act in the Senate is filed as S.345 and has been referred to the Committee on Finance.
If I don’t get anything else out of this administration, I want suppressors removed from the NFA.
There is no excuse for not doing this bill and pushing it through quickly. There is no excuse for suppressors to have ever been in the NFA to begin with. This is about hearing protection, something OSHA claims to care about.
In fact, there is no excuse for the NFA.
3 months ago
Then, in December, a 26-year-old allegedly used a 3D-printed ghost gun to fatally shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street.
The assassination jolted the public. While it didn’t necessarily indicate that untraceable weapons were becoming more prevalent, it did raise questions about the state of the ghost guns market. Was Polymer80’s closure a sign that the market was shriveling up — or was it, hydralike, sprouting new heads?
Law enforcement officials, small arms researchers, and ghost gun manufacturers who recently spoke to The Trace described the law enforcement gains against ghost guns as tenuous at best, especially in light of the Trump administration’s aversion to new regulations. Ghost gun technology, they warned, is only getting more sophisticated — and as a result, the weapons are becoming more appealing to criminals.
In the vast majority of the country, it is perfectly legal to own ghost guns, but not to sell them. Companies like Polymer80 have sidestepped this prohibition by selling kits containing all the components necessary to build an unserialized firearm: barrels, triggers, unfinished frames also known as “80 percent” receivers, and all the requisite pins and screws. Since the kits were initially not considered firearms, customers could buy them without a background check, and then assemble their ghost guns at home.
Between 2017 and 2023, police recovered more than 92,000 ghost guns — the vast majority of which were built from kits, according to data released in January by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Children bought the kits and then shot themselves by accident. Mass shooters used them to kill office workers and classmates.
The violence prompted the Biden administration to crack down. In 2022, the ATF issued a rule effectively reinterpreting the federal legal definition of the word “firearm” to include most ghost gun kits. To sell the kits, retailers would need to apply for a federal firearms license, serialize the products, and conduct background checks for every sale. The ATF’s data shows that in 2023, the number of ghost guns recovered annually by police increased by less than 1 percent, the smallest jump over that seven-year span.
We reviewed the websites of 12 online retailers known for offering ghost gun kits and found that at least four were continuing to sell them. The Trace showed the listings to Rick Vasquez, a former ATF firearms expert. He said that while these four retailers were likely violating the new rule, selling the kits is something of a legal gray area while the regulation is being considered by the Supreme Court.
“Something of a gray area.” I’d say it’s completely illegal for the ATF to do this because it infringes on the 2A. There’s nothing gray about it, but Rick Vasquez will say anything.
TCJ has a long history with Jennifer, and she’s just being as hysterical as she always is. So let’s review what actually happened and the only possible result from it all.
In order to pull something like this assassination off and get away with it, he would had to have used cash for everything, that cash having been gotten some place other than his own home town. He would have had to procure burner phones for use only once, those phones purchased with cash in some place other than his own home town. He would have had to be wearing professional grade disguises when he did that. Then he would have had to travel only by train or bus, with the tickets purchased with cash. He would have had to travel with professional level disguises all the way from his home town and back. A hoodie doesn’t count. He would have had to jettison his clothing at frequent stops so as not to leave traces of fibers. He would have had to wear a hair net so as not to leave hair samples. He would had to have used gloves at every step of the way so as not to leave finger prints.
Folks, as best as I know, there are only two entities on earth who can pull off this sort of thing: the CIA, and Mossad. He was always going to be caught. I say it again. He was always going to be caught.
So given that, what difference does it make where he got his firearm or what type he used? He could purchase firearms legally anyway – so what difference does it make if he had used an unserialized firearm?
Here is your answer: none. It makes no difference at all. He was always going to be caught. So the type of fiream he chose or how he got it had absolutely nothing to do with perpetrating the crime.
But communicating that to her readers wouldn’t let Jennifer use scary phrases like “Ghost Guns” to frighten soccer moms into believing that the more America builds unserialized firearms, the more assassinations there will be.
That’s the non sequitur she is trafficking in with this commentary. As I said, she’s just being hysterical. But that’s what she does.
3 months, 1 week ago
A court vacating the final rule means nothing to the tyrants and controllers. They’re at it again.
Then again, if they are keeping a searchable database of gun owners in violation of federal law — and I believe they are — why wouldn’t they continue to violate the law including judicial orders? No one has stopped them yet. No one has fired them yet. No one has defunded them yet.
There have been absolutely no consequences to their illegalities.
4 months ago
Can be found here.
Occasionally, the courts get one right. In this case, it’s nice to see the court affirm the notion that the FedGov can’t just make up stuff to disarm peaceable men.
4 months, 1 week ago
First up, Mark Smith assesses the recent delay of the Snopes case.
Second, Mark assesses the potential picks to head the ATF. Personally, I would prefer to see the ATF completely eradicated. Its mere existence of prima facie unconstitutional. The existence of federal gun laws is prima facie unconstitutional. But if all we get out of this is an eradication of the “secret” gun registry and a prohibition on enforcement of laws by the ATF, then it’s very important who runs the FBI.
I would also suggest that it makes sense to send 90% of the employees of the FBI and ATF to the border to enforce border laws. As for those still trying to come across, send the Marine Corps to shoot them. If that sounds harsh, think of this as an invasion. What do you think Russi and China would do in such a case? They care about their borders, and we don’t. To most of the American elite, America is an idea, not a sovereign nation with borders.
This whole problem with the border could be solved in an instant. Stop traffic. All traffic, including trade. Allow no one to cross the border, not even for work. But you see, home builders, yard workers and house cleaners are needed for the elite, so that’s not going to happen. As is stands, they get the middle class to pay for medical care via socialized medicine while they get to pay lower wages than they otherwise would, and we bear the brunt of the deal.
Finally, Mark further assesses the inside baseball maneuvers in the SCOTUS on 2A cases.
5 months, 1 week ago
Via David Codrea.
@GIFFORDS_org’s Litigation Director say that a stabilizing brace “gives” a pistol “more power and more velocity and therefore more lethality.” [Watch]
Especially if they have a shoulder thing that goes up!
We’ll have to call it the “high caliber stabilizing brace” for lack of a better phrase. I don’t know what it is, but I want one.
We can put this in the same category as the items below.
Prior:
5 months, 2 weeks ago
Well, it is Illinois, and the circuit court may ride roughshod over this decision like they did Judge McGlynn’s earlier decision. Here is the decision.
For all the good I think is in here, I still think he (and virtually all other judges and justices) miss the point about the second amendment existing for the amelioration of tyranny. Personal self defense is a cleaned up, sanitized version of the 2A meant to make the 2A more palatable for the inside-the-beltway types.
Self-defense must include defense against the tyranny of the state to be complete.
